From MIT’s campus newspaper, The Tech:
Not worth the fight huh? Them’s fightin’ words to some people.
Opinion: Global warming not worth the fight
The United States would gain little in trying to forestall climate change
Global warming is real. It is predominantly anthropogenic. Left unchecked, it will likely warm the earth by 3-7 C by the end of the century. What should the United States do about it?
Very little, if anything at all.
As economists, we are inclined to take the vantage point of the benevolent dictator, that omnific individual with his hands upon all of the policy levers available to the state. When placed in such a position, the question of how to respond to global warming is answered by performing a simple comparison: does x, the cost of optimally mitigating carbon emissions, exceed y, the benefit of that carbon mitigation? Where the answer is yes, the global carbon mitigation effort remains rightfully nascent, where the answer is no, it springs up and becomes law with a just and sudden force.
H.L. Mencken once wrote, “Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Such is the economist’s explanation of climate change.
Global warming is a tragedy of the commons, carbon emissions are a negative externality, and reducing CO2 in the atmosphere is a global public good. These types of problems have been well-studied by economists, and solutions to them are known. Unfortunately, these solutions require a sovereign power to enact them, and in this world there is no global power to enforce economically optimal solutions, no benevolent dictator, no organ of international government capable of superceding national sovereignty and its attendant self-interest. The international system is not cooperative — it is best defined as anarchic and follows the Thucydidean maxim: the strong do as they can… the weak suffer as they must.
Instead of thinking as economists, we should think as international relations realists. In the realist school of thought, a man comports with another’s will only in proportion to the cudgel wielded over his head. We will not, solely through moral suasion, convince others to act against their own national interests.
Countless man-hours of scientists and economists have gone into trying to estimate the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation. Yet the real question is not whether y is greater than x, but rather whether it is greater than x + z, where z is the cost of enforcing an agreed upon reduction in carbon emissions. This is the minimum threshold that must be passed before any action is possible, and the chances of passing it in the near future are slim: not in least part because we lack the technology to monitor the emissions of other countries. But even if we did have the technology, the nature of the problem makes the challenge nearly impossible. Suppose two nations Alpha and Beta, agree to limit their emissions, and suppose further that it is cheaper for Alpha to reduce its emissions in the present while it is cheaper for Beta to limit its emissions in the future. What prevents Beta from reneging on its agreement after Alpha has already committed to a reduction? The act of punishing a defector, whether it comes in the form of a trade sanction or other action, is itself a public good that carries some cost to the punisher.
The sound and the fury that has characterized the public discourse on global warming often obscures a basic economic fact: we are in the situation we are in because it requires fewer resources to generate electricity with coal or propel automobiles with petroleum than it does to accomplish those same goals with solar cells and biofuels. The “green economy” our politicians have placed on a pedestal is not an improvement over our existing one — there is no gain to be had in producing with the effort of three men what we previously accomplished with two. We should tolerate this inefficiency only insofar as it helps us avoid some other, greater harm.
Full story here
h/t to WUWT Jimbo and Climate Depot
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You need outsourcing scientist from Russia:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
Excerpt: This indicates that, actually, the Global dT linear increasing trend is not a global phenomenon.
At the same time, approximate 60–70-year repeating pattern is observed for
both Global dT and Arctic dT [Alekseev et al., 2000; Alekseev, 2003].
“Global warming is real. It is predominantly anthropogenic. Left unchecked, it will likely warm the earth by 3-7 C by the end of the century.”
_______________________________________
The author’s opening paragraph leaves no doubt about his position on AGW, does it?
Stu says:
October 15, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I think us regulars share some of the blame for this too. In having this wonderful platform to voice our opinions, we sometimes don’t give enough credit for the amazing amount of work that is put into providing it.
Thank you, Anthony for your wonderful blog, and thank you moderators for the great work that you do.
Of course I like the general statement that it’s best to do nothing.
Hoewever, in regard to the science it’s a too easy way to get out of the woods that have been created by the cooked data.
In fact it is totally unacceptable.
You can’t leave the shoddy science at the table and walk away.
Some very basic steps need to be undertaken.
We need the correct science instead of cooked books.
We need a very, very big public apology and a very serious proposal how we can stop the multi trillion dollar runaway train of legislation and measures taken on the basis of this failed science currently underway and how we get our tax dollars back.
And we need a fail safe solution to protect our societies from getting screwed over by the scientific and political establishment ever again.
No heads to role just a role back and some gestures of well intended remorse.
That’s my opinion.
Decent article, its right on some things and what was he smoking on others. He right that it would be cheaper to adapt than spend bill. or trill. on something thats going to happen “weather” we like it or not. Pun intended! Off topic but i have a question for you Anthony and i wanted your thoughts on it. I have seen and heard on this site and others people say that weather is not climate and vice versa, mainly from the warmist crowd, of course i know that climate is weather over the long term any way you look at it. My question is, and i hope it brings in a slew of opinions, Who better to be a “climate scienctist” than a meteorolgist, a person who studys it . As compared to the other guys who clame to be climate scienctist but whos degrees are in everything but climate or weather? what say you Anthony. I get so tired of hearing the warmists say that if you are not a climate scienctist then you do not know what you are talking about, and thats to anybody not just you. And i wonder what DR. Lindzen thinks too considering that his doctorate is in meteorolgy. Thanks Gray
“there is no gain to be had in producing with the effort of three men what we previously accomplished with two”
May I make an old-fashioned suggestion that we strive to produce from two men what we previously accomplished from three. It is based on a little heard concept nowadays of efficiency. Specific fuel consumption, waste heat recovery, thermal insulation, mechanical losses, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics ………. the list of technologies that can and are being further refined goes on. We do stupid things like using gas as fuel in power stations when it used to be only piped to the user directly without transmission loss other than initial low compression. If you ask an engineer to design a wind turbine he will but it does not follow that he considers it a good idea in comparison to other generation means. Instead, ask him for efficiency and you will get noticeable improvements. Produce incentives that attract experimentation and development. Let the market weed out snake oil salesmen that prey on the gullible. I for one have had enough of stridency overcoming logic, of celebrity overcoming stature and belief overcoming logic. Tired of having to revert to humour to call-out charlatans and sick of received wisdom in the name of education.
(Rant off)
“Firstly, it misunderstands international trade. Our economic well-being is independent of Chinese productivity.” and “The belief that another country’s rise or fall impacts our economic well-being in any appreciable way is unsupported by economic theory and disproven by empirical evidence…”
Statements like that are why Economists are laughed at much in the same way that the CAGW crowd are laughed at by the average person. To wit: delusional and self-important.
I find this helps suppress the urge to write a sarcastic diatribe, usually:
http://xkcd.com/386/
This is precisely the point made by Lord Lawson in the UK House of Lords review about 2-3 years ago in response to Stern.
The only way that Stern could provide a “benefit” from mitigation measures was by assuming the worst possible scenarios from the IPCC and also committing a cardinal sin in economics and not discounting future values. By doing this he was roundly dismissed by economists at the time, but this seems to have been forgotten now.
In order to facilitate discussion (as opposed to name-calling), I commonly point this out to warmist colleagues and ask them to address adaptation as the only possible response. And since no-one can tell which parts of the globe will get warmer/colder, wetter/dryer from “global climate disruption” the only proper course for adaptation is to increase our level of development at the most rapid speed possible since it is well understood that increased development is the best way to increase our ability to adapt.
Yes, it is also a somewhat cowardly approach – I could argue the science for little anthropogenic effect on climate – but getting into a slanging match is certainly not going to change their opinions. They can believe in AGW all they want as far as I am concerned – just so long as they don’t screw up the global economy doing ****-all about it!
The author writes:
“Global warming is a tragedy of the commons…”
Earth is not a commons. The idea that there is some universal agreement among nations about uses of the world’s resources is a total fiction. Yes, there are particular treaties, but the sum total do not and could never make of Earth a commons. The proof is obvious. Today Iran wants to assert more control over the Middle East through attaining nuclear weapons. Some nations wish to stop Iran. If those nations do not succeed, many other nations will suffer because of Iran’s newfound control. Clearly, that part of the Earth that we call the Middle East is not part of a commons.
The consequences of warm are bigger plants. Why do you think they add CO2 to greenhouses?
Hey I have a question, can you have a greenhouse without a roof?
I remember comments of some Russian Scientists after Kyoto. Two reasons for demonizing CO2. To get the U. S. to reduce its industrial might for commercial reasons amd to control people. Control of people has come too close for comfort. Definitely sour industrial might has decreased. Seems both reasons were valid.
My grandfather (one of the wisest men I ever met) told me a a joke that went around during the great depression in Germany in the 1930s:
A guy continued to move his firewood from one side of his property to the other. He moved it back to the original site the next day. And moved it again the following day. When asked why by a neighbor, he said: “At least I have work, and you don’t”
Perfect description of the “green jobs” fallacy today. Isn’t it?
Apparently you changed some things after being called out on it, but you definitely sank to previously unreached lows with this one.
The Tech is the student’s newspaper at MIT, and the guy is an EE graduate student. Neither the paper, not the author can be considered authorities on the subject, yet you quited them as such…
Not good for your credibility…
REPLY: Fixing an error in the title, and leaving them and my personal the admission of an error in open comments isn’t a good thing? Since when? – Anthony
A thumbs for fixing the error. Two thumbs down for committing it in the first place.
Surely this is just the AGW crowd preparing another back-door escape route? A quick glance at the pilot to make sure he’s not looking, and then the parachutes are packed and the bomb bay doors kicked open. “Sorry we couldn’t do anything about warming, but that was all the fault of the Chinese/Indians/Europeans/Russians/Aliens. We tried — doesn’t that entitle us to keep our jobs and our grants?”
#1, the Earth will not warm 3-7C by 2100, it will mainly warm in the UHI affected cities, but there is a limit to even that warming. UHI works like an air inversion, is manmade, and most places with a long history of it are already maxed out. It’s an urban problem. Over time, a city may or may not wish to cope with UHI via long range planning. To each thier own as needs be.
So, yes, the USA needn’t shoot its collective feet over an urban problem, nor should it light its economy on fire and run screaming down the road in tortured agony.
The USA has a much larger problem: One of entrenched multi-level bureaurocracy strangling productivity and progress.
If people like John Holdren and Lisa Jackson want to light themselves on fire and run screaming down the road, hey, it’s America.
It is a very well thought out essay. There a couple of mistakes. Yost assumes “we lack the technology to monitor the emissions of other countries.” It is a serious and complex issue. But work has been done on it and the problem is not insurmountable. See:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12883
Yost states “the National Resource Defense Council estimates that if left unchecked, global warming will cost the U.S. 1.8 percent of its GDP by the year 2100. Meanwhile the Stern Review estimates the cost of carbon mitigation to total 2 percent of world GDP by the year 2100.” Why is it valid to compare US and world GDP? Let’s see what the NRDC actually said.
“Global warming comes with a big price tag for every country in the world. The 80 percent reduction in U.S. emissions needed to stop climate change may not come cheaply, but the cost of failing to act will be much greater. New research shows that if present trends continue, the total cost of global warming will be as high as 3.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Four global warming impacts alone — hurricane damage, real estate losses, energy costs, and water costs — will come with a price tag of 1.8 percent of U.S. GDP, or almost $1.9 trillion annually (in today’s dollars) by 2100. We know how to avert most of these damages through strong action to reduce the emissions that cause global warming. But the longer we wait, the more painful — and expensive — the consequences will be. ”
See: http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/cost/contents.asp
And, not all of the cost of AGW can be quantified in to monetary terms.
See: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/fcons.asp
Yost is disingenuous. He is not engaging in honest debate. He is picking out facts selectively to back up his thesis.
No doubt a global climate control treaty would be very complex. But would it be that much harder to enforce then the WTO?
How come you “skeptics” don’t do the basic fact checking when you like the conclusion?
As usual, people are talking without knowing what they’re talking about. The problem with MIT is that while it is the greatest place for science in technology in the world, it also has one of the best business and economics departments, and it prides itself on its successful integration of research with industry. What this means is that you get some of the most hardcore scientists doing the best science in the world on one side, many of which take an absolutely uncompromising position on issues like AGW (uncompromising in the sense that they stick to the real science), but on the other side, the economics, industrial application of research results and the $$ signs have gotten a firm grip on many people’s thinking. So it is absolutely no surprise that you can find plenty of people thinking the way the author of that essay does.
Of course, to the outsider, all that is known are the three letter associated with the person taking, with all the weight of their 150 years of glorious history, so it is absolutely no surprise that too much authority is given to people that should absolutely not be listened to.
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be very funny how people will trust Lindzen, yet the fact that the original Limits To Growth report was written by MIT faculty is completely forgotten. If you are to trust people just because they are MIT professors, why do you trust Lindzen and you distrust Meadows???
Mike says:
“How come you “skeptics” don’t do the basic fact checking when you like the conclusion?”
Mike, you have no credibility. Sorry about your own abysmal “fact checking,” but when you quote the anti-science National Resource Defense Council your credibility goes up in smoke.
The NRDC is nothing but a green propaganda organization like the World Wildlife Fund. In fact, google’s “Searches Related to National Resources Defense Council” lists the following:
Greenpeace
Sierra Club
Enviro Defense Fund
World Wildlife Fund
Defenders Of Wildlife
…and so on.
Posting an eco-wacko NGO as your Authority probably works on alarmist echo chambers like realclimate. But here, we know the playas.
GM says:
October 15, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“As usual, people are talking without knowing what they’re talking about. The problem with MIT is that while it is the greatest place for science in technology in the world, it also has one of the best business and economics departments, and it prides itself on its successful integration of research with industry.”
===========================
Ok, get that “best business and economics departments” to break down the final costs of the green revolution.
Oh, I forgot, they were always given money. They never had to earn it.
gryposaurus says:
October 15, 2010 at 1:21 pm
[we’re discussing my hypothetical question, “if CO2 could ‘by magic’ be cut back to 250ppm, would that be a Good Thing?”]
—Do you believe that the temperature would drop by 0.7C? (or whatever number you believe)—-
–Most likely about half that.–
Okay. I live in a cold climate, so I’d just as soon see it stay the same, or a bit warmer, but I guess that wouldn’t kill me.
—-Do you believe that storms, tornados, and other extremes of weather would become less frequent and/or less intense?—-
–Yes, less energy would be would be taken into the system, less intense El Nino, much less water in the atmosphere.–
Yeah? We’re lacking in quantifyable evidence of “how bad” the extremes were, back when CO2 was 250ppm. There’s anecdotal evidence that we (they) had extremes. God didn’t need to explain to Noah what a “flood” was. Some mention of “drought”, too, I think. “Storms”? Yeah… Plagues of Locusts, even.
I don’t have any evidence that it’s any “worse” now than back in the “good old days” of 250ppm. Do you?
—-Do you believe that agricultural production would decrease from the decreased CO2? (if not, why not?)—-
–No, there is plenty of CO2 at 250ppm from the natural cycle to maintain agriculture.–
Any evidence for that? AFAIK, increased CO2 (in the ranges we’re talking about) increases plant growth. This is measurable and replicable. I have no reason to believe that it isn’t happening as we speak. How would cutting back *not* be bad for agriculture? You mention “much less water in the atmosphere”… Can that be good for agriculture.? I’ve got a bad feeling about this!
—-If so, do you believe that this would starve billions of people?—-
–No.–
—-If so, is this okay with you?—-
–No.–
Well, okay, as long as we’re not killing people, I guess we’re in agreement. Since we can’t do it, it doesn’t matter, but I’m afraid that it would turn out to be a big mistake!
Best,
Frank
I applaud the realistic economic analysis. However, there is still work to do regarding honest science. And the issues started long before AGW, e.g. ozone, DDT, etc.
Fundamentally, so-called AGW is an economic cost-benefit question.
There are many associated issues, but intervention fails this rudimentary test manifold.
Sometimes, it is best to just stand there, lest we create unintended consequences worse than the perceived problem:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122541582835686689.html
“Global warming is a tragedy of the commons, carbon emissions are a negative externality, and reducing CO2 in the atmosphere is a global public good.”
Of these three statements in this sentence I say that is is unproven to be a tragedy, that is an assumption; carbon emissions [as CO2] are a negative externality is also assumed as the sign is unknown; and reducing CO2 is a global good is likewise assumed to be a good when plants are starving for additional CO2. All based on the increase in global temperature which is also assumed but not proven. I guess I have to reject the whole article if the premises are not proved valid.
John Andrews