Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Some people argue that we are morally obliged to reduce greenhouse gases aggressively because otherwise the world’s current development path would be unsustainable, and our descendants will be worse off than we are.
But will a warmer world indeed be unsustainable, and leave our descendants worse off?
I examine these claims out to the year 2200 in a post titled, “Will Global Warming Make Future Generations Worse Off?” at MasterResources. My analysis uses the IPCC’s own assumptions regarding future economic development and results generated by the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Note that both the IPCC and Stern are viewed quite favorably by proponents of drastic GHG reductions (see, e.g., here).
The first figure shows for both developing and industrialized countries, the GDP per capita – an approximate measure of welfare per capita – used in the IPCC’s emissions scenarios in the absence of any climate change in 1990 (the base year used to develop the IPCC’s emission scenarios) and 2100. For 2100, the figure shows the GDP per capita assumed in each of four representative IPCC scenarios used in the Stern Review. These scenarios are arranged with the warmest (A1FI) scenario on the left and the coolest (B1) on the right. Below each set of bars, the figure indicates the IPCC’s designation for that scenario (A1FI, A2, B1 and B2) and the corresponding projected increase in average global temperature from 1990 to 2085 (which ranges from 2.1-4.0°C).
This figure shows that, per the IPCC, in the absence of climate change, GDP per capita would grow between 11- and 67-fold for developing countries, and between 3- and 8-fold for industrialized countries. [Some people have complained that these GDPs per capita are implausibly high. If that’s the case then the IPCC’s estimates of climate change are also implausibly high, since these GDPs per capita are used to drive the IPCC’s emissions and climate change scenarios.]
Although the IPCC did not provide any estimates for 2200, the Stern Review assumed an annual growth rate of 1.3 percent after 2100 (Stern Review, Box 6.3). In my calculations below I will assume a more modest growth rate. Specifically, I assume that GDP per capita would double between 2100 and 2200, which is equivalent to an annual increase of 0.7 percent. This is also conservative in light of historical experience: GDP per capita quintupled between 1900 and 2000 (per Maddison 2003).
But climate change might reduce future welfare per capita. Stern famously estimated that unmitigated climate change would reduce welfare by an amount equivalent to a reduction in consumption per capita of 5-20 percent “now and forever” if one accounts for market impacts, non-market (that is, health and environmental) impacts, and the risk of catastrophe. He also raised the spectre that under the warmest (A1FI) scenario, the 95th percentile of the welfare losses due to climate change could rise from 7.5 percent in 2100 to 35.2 percent in 2200.
For the sake of argument and extreme caution, I will assume that the loss in welfare due to uncontrolled climate change under the warmest scenario (A1FI) will indeed equal Stern’s 95th percentile estimate of 35.2 percent. I make this assumption despite the fact that one can’t be too skeptical of centuries-long projections based not only on uncertain climate models but equally uncertain socioeconomic and technological trends. To quote from a paper commissioned by the Stern Review: “changes in socioeconomic systems cannot be projected semi-realistically for more than 5-10 years at a time.” [Emphasis added.] Second, the Review itself emphasizes “strongly” that the numbers should not “be taken too literally.” No less important, many notable economists have even disputed the Stern Review’s more modest 5-20% estimate for losses as overblown (e.g., Yale’s William Nordhaus and Hamburg’s Richard Tol). [The IPCC itself uses 5 percent as the upper limit.]
[For details on the methodology used to estimate welfare losses for the other scenarios check out my paper, Discounting the Future, in the latest issue of Regulation magazine. ]
The following figure shows the net welfare per capita in 2100 and 2200 after adjusting GDP per capita in the absence of climate change downward to account for welfare losses due to uncontrolled climate change per the Stern Review’s 95th percentile estimate. To put the numbers in this figure into context, in 2006, GDP per capita for industrialized countries was $19,300; the United States, $30,100; and developing countries, $1,500.
Note that net welfare per capita in 2200 is underestimated for each scenario because the GDPs per capita in the absence of climate change were underestimated while welfare losses due to climate change were overestimated.
Conclusions
This figure shows that despite understating future net welfare per capita:
- Under each scenario, net welfare for both developing and industrialized countries increases from 1990 to 2100, and from 2100 to 2200. Thus Nobelist Robert Solow’s (1993) criterion for sustainable development – namely, that current generations should “endow [future generations] with whatever it takes to achieve a standard of living at least as good as our own” – should be easily met. In other words, claims to the contrary, if the world’s current developmental path is unsustainable, it won’t be because of climate change.
- Well-being in both 2100 and 2200 should, in the aggregate, be highest for the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) scenario and lowest for the poorest (A2) scenario, again regardless of climate change. That is, the richest-but-warmest world is to be preferred over poorer-but-cooler worlds. Thus, if humanity could choose between the four IPCC scenarios, for the next several decades it should choose to realize the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) world. In other words, in order to improve net welfare, governments should be striving to push their countries on the path of higher wealth rather than lower carbon. So why are the world’s governments trying to negotiate a deal in Copenhagen later this year that would make their populations poorer and reduce their welfare?
- In both developing and industrialized countries net welfare per capita should be much higher in 2100 than in 1990, and higher still in 2200, notwithstanding any climate change or which scenario one picks. That is, regardless of the circumstance, future generations, particularly in today’s developing countries, will be better off than current generations. Thus the premise underlying the argument that we are morally obliged to control emissions now to ensure that future generations won’t be worse off isn’t supported by the Stern Review’s own analysis.
In fact, this raises the question whether it is moral to require today’s poorer generations to spend their scarce resource on anthropogenic GHG-induced global warming – a problem that may or may not be faced by future, far wealthier and technologically better endowed generations – instead of the more urgent, real problems that plague current generations and will continue to plague future generations as well.
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Justin Sane (21:49:18) :
“After another 2 years of non-global warming hopefully the people will take action and throw Obama’s policies out on their ass. If the Republicans won’t run on an anti-AGW platform then it’s time for an independent party, or a new tea party!”
I wished it was that simple!
The powers behind the AGW scare go beyond the current Administration.
Opposition is building though.
Maybe it is time to start a new political party!
Make it an Atlantic Party because most of the Europeans are fed up too with their political establishment and the EU.
“kim (21:59:13) :
If you haven’t read it yet, go read Peter Huber in the City Journal: ‘Bound to Burn’.”
thanks, Kim, for recommending this excellent article – a MUST read! – taking Carbon truly personally!
here is the direct link:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_carbon.html
Well I think the title of the essay is based on a false premise; that tomorrow’s generations are going to be wealthier than today’s.
And I think we are about to find that out much faster than anyone would have believed on the day before last year’s election day.
So today we have California’s EPA that has so far as I know NO scientists of any knid on it’s panel deciding that the fuel industry must cut the carbon content of fuel by 10%; and that includes the carbon content of all the enterprise that goes into obtaining and distributing that fuel.
Present gasolines are essentially mixtures of saturated alkanes or paraffin series hydrocarbons; which can be represented as H2(CH2)n. I don’t believe there is much in the way of Ethylenes series of Acetylenes in gasoline, and they go out of their way to remove any trace of aromatic hydrocarbons; which are carcinogenic.
So the only way to reduce the carbon content, is to reduce (n) which means lower Octane ratings, and hence lower compression and therefore lower thermal efficiency engines.
Alcohols, which can be written in the form H2O(CH2)n are worse, since there isn’t any stored chemical energy available from that H2O part; and that is just the burning of the alcohol, and includes none of the energy to obtain the alcohol; or grow the feedstock material whatever that is.
It’s a pretty safe bet, that alcohols or any other oxygenated fuel is counterproductive if the aim is to reduce carbon.
Well those geniuses on the EPA board (I think one of them is actually a nurse; which is as close to being a scientist as anyone on the panel gets) are banking on some future hydrogen fuel component; but there we have a real problem. The nearest hydrogen mines are 93E6 miles away, and don’t meet OSHA working conditions. In addition the transportation costs are prohibitive.
Now when you talk getting hydrogen from lower yield hydrogen ores of which we have plenty; then you are really talking about massive energy losing processes; that can only increase the carbon content of the exercise.
Ah yes; there is that ever present renewable green solar energy which arrives on earth at an average rate of 168 Watts per square metre; according to the official NOAA Global Energy Budget.
Another 107 W/m^2 is refelcted giving an albedo of 31.3% of which only 28% is contributed by the surface reflection; the rest is clouds.
So much for the belief that the polar ice caps are a big deal in global energy balance. The 30 W/m^2 global average surface reflection comes mostly from the non polar regions.
So the solution to renewable green energy, is to commit LOTS of land area to the production of fuel; and wouldn’t you know it, the best lands for that would also be highly desirable for food production; which takes a lot of energy.
So I think the future generations are going to be scratching for energy; pretty much like we started out clambering around in fig trees to gather figs.
Oh there’s wonderful article in SCIENCE Vol 324 April 17/2009, on page 326
“Fusion’s Great Bright Hope” a Long Winding Road to Ignition.
The NIF combines 192 lasers to produce a 500 TerraWatt beam of Ultraviolte light (351nm). That is more than the total generating capacity of the United States.
It takes 25 nanoseconds for that beam power to travel the 305 metres from the source to the target; but then the blast only lasts 20 nanoseconds; so it has already shut off before it ever reaches the target.
The target is a thing of beauty. It’s a small Beryllium spherical shell filled with a mixture of Deuterium and Tritium; well they say Hydrogen isotopes’ but you can bet that no H is permitted.
If you thought that the Deuterium and Tritium was the fuel; well that wouldn’t be quite true. Actually the fuel is that little Beryllium spherical shell; which gets blown to smithereens when the laser gets there, and squishes the isotopes into near nothingness.
The Beryllium sphere is about the size of a peppercorn (thermonuclear dimensional unit) containing 150 micrograms of D&T which are cooled to 18 Kelvins. They say it forms a layer of ice on the inside of the Be sphere. How did that oxygen get in there?
When it goes bang, the temperature goes up to 100 million Kelvins.
Now get a picture of this little gem; well actually its the size of a ten storey building; and you have all that extremely precise optics sending the laser into the target chamber where the temperature of the Beryllium fuel pellet has to be 18 Kelvins or the D&T hithchikers won’t form an ice layer on the shell inside. The 100 miilion K, is what you were trying to get, so now you have to siphon off that thermal energy fromt he target chamber so you can clean up the mess, and then cool it down to 18 K again so you can stick another Beryllium fuel pellet in there, and fire the whole shebang again; maybe an hout later; who knows ?
Isn’t this just the most ingenious engine you ever heard of. You have to go from 1E8 Kelvins down to 18 Kelvins before you can put some more fuel in the engine to fire it off again.
Now if you are wondering why I say the Beryllium sphere is the real fuel; you just have to consider all the energy that it takes (from fossil fuel sources) to machine that thing and make it so uniform and symmetrical that it impldes uniformly. Lemme guess; you thought there was some place In Texas, or Alaska, where you could actually dig up those litle Beryllium spheres by the ton.
Guess where Beryllium sits on the scale of toxic nasty materials; well so much for the theory of cheap clean energy.
I might add that many years ago at a laser meeting (CLEO I think), the keynote speaker was one Charles H Townes; who knows a thing or two about lasers.
And he told those assembled there that if they thought laser implosion was a way to make thermonuclear energy; they were smoking something illegal. Oh he thought you could study high density high temperature plasmas with lasers; but the idea is to obtain energy.
So thermonuclear is the energy of the future and as they say; it always will be. And thank heaven for that, because if we had cheap clean energy in unlimited quantities; then we could really screw up this planet.
George
Humanity will not be able to colonize other planets,because of the distances to be covered. But the more immediate danger for human survival is the growth rate of 4%/a in the Third World countries with doubling times under 20 years.While the industrial countries have adapted (with only 1%/a),the masses in Africa,Asia,S-America enlarge their slums,multiply by youth armies,rape and religion and flee to the North into the industrial countries.This will change the technical/scientific level downwards and bodes badly for the future of mankind as a whole.There is little hope that a better UNO could ever enforce procreation rules in accordance with the scientific-industrial level.