How climate talks can be more successful
May 12, 2014 by Angela Herring, Northeastern University
For more than two decades, members of the United Nations have sought to forge an agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. But so far, these international climate negotiations have had limited success.
What’s more, game theoretical modeling of the negotiations suggests that there are feasible solutions to the problem. That is, there are commitments that the countries participating in the negotiations could agree to that would accomplish the targeted global emissions reductions. “So, if these solutions are there, the question is why negotiations have not yet reached them – why don’t we have an agreement,” said Ron Sandler, a professor of philosophy at Northeastern University who focuses on environmental ethics.
“We thought the problem might be not be with the potential solutions that might or might not exist, but rather reaching them from where we are now,” added Rory Smead, an assistant professor of Philosophy at Northeastern and an expert in game theory.
In a paper released Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, Smead, Sandler, and their colleagues, including Northeastern Assistant Professor John Basl, put forth a new modeling approach that examines this very problem. The results suggest that side agreements, such as bilateral commitments between the US and China or those made in venues like the G8 and G20 summits may be even more important than previously suspected.
Most climate negotiation modeling studies have used social dilemma games such as the prisoner’s dilemma, in which the best interests of the individual agent are not the same as those of the whole. But, as Smead said, “All countries in a sense want to solve this problem—what they disagree on is how to go about solving it.”
So rather than using a social dilemma game, the research team used a bargaining negotiation model. Here’s how it works: Multiple players must coordinate on an agreement with the goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by the targeted amount. While each agent would like to keep his own reductions as low as possible, he would prefer to increase his proposal if it means the group would be more likely to reach a consensus. “If push comes to shove, they’d prefer to do more,” Smead said.
The game starts with each player making an initial proposal to reduce emissions by a certain amount. Then the players see what their fellow participants proposed to and readjust their own proposals. Repeating this several times will eventually either lead to a break down in negotiations or an agreement that makes everyone happy.
It’s a simple model that doesn’t take into account such things as national politics and enforcement scenarios, but it has an important feature: It reveals potential barriers to successful negotiations that might be hidden in more complex models.
The research team found that a few factors were extremely important in maintaining successful negotiations. In particular, agreements were more likely to be reached if the group wascomprised of fewer agents rather than many; if the group consisted of a variety of small and large emitters; and if the perceived individual threat of not reaching an agreement was high.
“The results bare on a number of political questions,” Sandler said. “For instance, while we ultimately need an agreement that includes reductions from almost everyone, side agreements among smaller numbers of participants don’t undermine—but may actually promote—the U.N. process.”
Since smaller groups are more likely to reach consensus, the researchers said, it would be better for a subgroup of countries to come to a consensus on its own and then bring that single proposal to the larger group.
“It would be much better if the rest of the world could figure out a potential agreement and then invite countries such as China and the U.S. to the table,” Smead explained. If that smaller group’s offer is sufficient—that is, if it promises to reduce emissions by the proportional amount necessary to achieve the global goal—then it should be successful in the larger venue.
This suggests that efforts such as the G8 and G20 climate summits are actually beneficial to the efforts of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is considered the most important climate bargaining forum. Many have worried that these smaller efforts weaken UNFCCC’s work, but the new research disputes that concern.
– See more at: http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2014/05/modeling-international-climate-negotiations/#sthash.4YMGgCQu.dpuf
Mooney gets more loony, & the comments i saw keep with the comedy theme:
12 May: Mother Jones: Chris Mooney: This Is What a Holy Shit Moment for Global Warming Looks Like
According to two new studies, the collapse of much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may now be irreversible. That could ultimately mean 10 feet of sea level rise.
If you truly understand global warming, then you know it’s all about the ice…
In the grand scheme of things, though, the consequence would be a very different planet. And West Antarctica is just the beginning. According to glaciologist and Greenland expert Jason Box, when you compare where we are now to where atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean levels stood in past warm periods of Earth’s history, you can infer that human beings have already set in motion 69 feet of sea level rise.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse
Gore out & about shilling for the likes of renewables giants, Siemens & General Electric!
VIDEO: 13 May: Chicago Sun-Times: Mitch Dudek: GOP resistance on global warming makes Gore hot under collar
Former Vice President Al Gore preached global warming at the University of Chicago Monday.
Gore, who said 99.99 percent of climate scientists acknowledge the planet’s climate is changing, compared the situation to a heart problem…
The truth, Gore said, is obstructed by politicians, money and special interest groups…
Gore said the battle is not lost, yet.
“I want to recruit you. I want to ask you to get involved,” Gore told the crowd of about 200 students, faculty and others at the event, which was sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
“Our politics must come to the rescue and must empower us to make intelligent forceful decisions to protect the public interest, and we are not yet doing it … now is the time to act,” said Gore, who proclaimed “a revolution is coming” in the form of alternative energy…
After Gore finished his prepared remarks, he sat for a discussion with David Axelrod, director of the Institute of Politics.
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/gop-resistance-global-warming-makes-gore-hot-under-collar/mon-05122014-1012pm
Perhaps those countries not willing to sell themselves down the tubes are the ones who understand that the GHE theory is not valid in any respect. Climate is driven by the sun not some trace gas.
***Gerson’s “intuitions” run amok, even tho he says they are “useless”:
13 May: WaPo: Michael Gerson: Michael Gerson: Americans’ aversion to science carries a high price
(Gerson writes about politics, religion, foreign policy and global health and development in a twice-a-week column and on the PostPartisan blog.)
Merely raising climate disruption in this context will cause many to bristle. Skeptics employ this issue as a prime example of motivated reasoning — politicians motivated by the prospect of confiscation, scientists motivated by securing acclaim and government contracts.
In its simplest, cable-television version, this charge, at least against scientists, is outrageous. The assumption that the vast majority in a scientific field is engaged in fraud or corruption is frankly conspiratorial. In this case, the conspiracy would need to encompass the national academies of more than two dozen countries, including the United States…
But none of these objections relates to the scientific question: Is a 40 percent increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution driving disruptive warming? And further: Can this process be slowed, allowing societies and ecosystems more time to adapt?
Our ***intuitions are useless here. The only possible answers come from science. And for non-scientists, this requires a modicum of trust in the scientific enterprise. Even adjusting for the possibility of untoward advocacy, it seems clear that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have produced a modest amount of warming and are likely to produce more. This, in turn, is likely to produce higher sea levels, coastal flooding, shifting fisheries, ocean acidification, water shortages, lower crop yields and vanishing ecosystems. The consequences will vary by region but are likely to be more severe in poorer nations…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-americans-aversion-to-science-carries-a-high-price/2014/05/12/7800318e-d9fe-11e3-bda1-9b46b2066796_story.html
” if the perceived individual threat of not reaching an agreement was high.”
There is the root of the problem for them. Despite all the claims made of impending doom by those who are looking to make a financial gain, the individuals involved do not really believe that there is a real threat and so are not prepared to make sacrifices in order to reach agreement.
omnologos says:
May 13, 2014 at 12:22 am
Environmental ethics philosophers using game theory to model climate change talks by policymakers regarding emission reduction.
It cannot get more amateurish than that.
Oh, how so true.
I wonder what woukd have happened if those folks ever took two steps back and looked at this scene from the side.
But it will never happen, they are too caught up with their self importance and sense of “We Save the World” meme.
Sad.
This is the sort of intellectual contortion that astronomers has to perform in order to explain the behavior of the planets in an earth-centered universe.
Congratulations. They’ve reinvented power politics. How is it different from the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was supposed to prevent France and Britain go to war on behalf of Poland, but failed miserably in this respect. At least so far as the German Reich is concerned.
As for the Soviet Union, which took the greater part of pre-war Poland after signing a ceasefire agreement with Japan (which left it free to attack US possessions), it was a complete success. It could keep most of this conquest thereafter, even up to the present day via its successors.
However, it shows the weak point of such bilateral treaties. All those left out are free to choose sides later on, and can make the party of their choice an indisputable winner over the other one.
Therefore the one perceived as weaker at the moment by the rest of the world has an advantage, which makes the more powerful party reluctant to go ahead. Except, of course, “if the perceived individual threat of not reaching an agreement was high” enough.
It is all about perceptions, you see, not facts. Those only come later, when the bill is due.
Anthony, I think you may have missed the point. Success is not a criteria for continuing to have lavish vacations in exotic locations at the expense of people who can’t afford such vacations themselves.
The International Pretense Climate Circus has had over 20 years to accomplish:
1) Convince people that the climate is dangerous
2) That it is dangerous because of CO2
3) To curtail the use of fossil fuels as a way to make the climate less dangerous
The IPCC has failed at each and every one of those tasks.
1) The climate is no more dangerous now that it was 20, 50, or 100 years ago.
2) People around the world do not find that climate is a crisis
3) We are using more fossil fuel than ever
It is long past time to run this circus out of town.
If there was any actual purpose to the IPCC they would have done the achievable. Instead they waste billions upon billions to fail to achieve the impossible.
Controlling and reducing carbon black is achievable. Carbon black is a health issue and is linked strongly to melting ice by ways that are not model based. The Climate Circus could have led the way to developing international standards and actual solutions to achieve a reduction in carbon black. But that would possibly reduce the CO2 obsession of the Circus.
Now at the end of the circus, whole nations are rejecting the failed agenda of the IPCC. But rent seeking enablers in academia are going to come up with new games to try and make the IPCC relevant.
I think they will fail.
In reply to:
“Most climate negotiation modeling studies have used social dilemma games such as the prisoner’s dilemma, in which the best interests of the individual agent are not the same as those of the whole. But, as Smead said, “All countries in a sense want to solve this problem—what they disagree on is how to go about solving it.”
What ‘game’ are the climate negotiators playing? The ‘climate negotiators’ are trying to commit countries to destroy their economies, to spend money on schemes that do not work (to work would mean the green scams would significantly reduce CO2 emissions, ignoring the fact that there is no climate warming problem ).
The politicians have run out of GDP to spend. To force the transfer of GDP to be spent on green scams will require massive cuts in education, health care, roads, and so on. The dirty secret is the climate solution will require massive cuts in the standard of life and massive loss of jobs, with no benefit.
The climate negotiated solution requires sending billions of dollars every year (which are not available) to be spent by corrupt and inept developing countries with absurd waste from a world climate monitoring agency (to be set up) and a world global carbon trading scam. The countries will cheat, the fairy tale schemes will never work, if work means stop the CO2 emissions from rising.
‘Investing’ (indirectly and directly forcing GDP to be spent) on green scams that do not work will not significantly CO2 emission. There are billions of years of fuel available for fourth generation nuclear fission. Nuclear energy works as it provides power 24/7 (Green scam energy does not) which is a necessary requirement (see riots in countries such as Pakistan and South Africa due to interruption in electrical power). The problem is nuclear has risks and is significantly more expensive than coal fired power plants and is significantly more expensive than natural gas if there is a local source of natural gas.
You’ve got to be kidding. People actually tried this? They actually write stuff like this down and peddle it as meaningful stuff? Oh man, that’s just painful.
A radical concept, but perhaps the UN should concentrate on mediating disputes between nations. And leave the climate to mother nature.
Naahh! That is too simple and the UN never does simple.
It is clear that the real problem of climate talks is that most of the negotiators know that the premise of the discussion is not what it is purported to be. Since they are only going to negotiate fully in matters which do impact their own country and its well being, they balk early and often. If these people all honestly believed their country’s interests were in real danger, many agreements would already be in place.
This is all theater to obfuscate the true purpose of the UN IPCC charade:
ie: UN World Governance Government via Lies & Deception.
http://green-agenda.com/
backup: http://web.archive.org/web/20140513130548/http://green-agenda.com/
‘Over two decades of failure in climate talks’ has lead to game over, just look as theses glaciers!
‘Nothing can stop retreat’ of West Antarctic glaciers
Key glaciers in West Antarctica are in an irreversible retreat, a study team led by the US space agency (Nasa) says.
It analysed 40 years of observations of six big ice streams draining into the Amundsen Bay and concluded that NOTHING now can stop them melting away.
Although these are abrupt changes, the timescales involved are likely measured in centuries, the researchers add.
If the glaciers really do disappear, they would add roughly 1.2m to global sea level rise.
The new study has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, but Nasa held a teleconference on Monday to brief reporters on the findings.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27381010
‘Game theoretical modeling of the negotiations’ is based on a false premise – that the countries participating in the negotiations could agree on the endgame proposed.
Prof. Sandler’s ‘solutions’ are simply not acceptable to all parties, so agreement can never be reached. He seems to *assume* that he is correct, and that everyone will eventually be persuaded to accept that. This is because his mindset is seemingly based on rhetoric – the art of persuasion, rather than on logic, the science of reaching correct conclusions.
Prof. Smead, meanwhile, is seeking a negotiation pathway to the dreamed-of objective of universal acceptance of the proposition of anthropogenic global climate change (or whatever they are calling it these days), and the ‘solutions’ imagined to provide remedies to the only important problem (disregarding the problems that would be occasioned by the proposed solutions).
A more universal viewpoint in game theory would consider the positions, objectives, and strategies of ALL other players.
There are considerations on the table that are non-negotiable. Poor countries are not going to hobble their own economies or stress their own populations in the name of a ‘threat’ for which they can see no evidence. They know that their people are already stressed, but they don’t know how much more stress could push the population past the tipping point into open revolt.
Productive people in affluent countries are not going to willingly and happily sacrifice all they have worked for to return to a pre-industrial lifestyle.
The only people who could support the exorbitantly priced ‘solutions’ proposed are those who expend the resources of others and who don’t think it will hit them in their own purses. This faction is not enough to determine the outcome of the negotiations.
Game theory tells us that sometimes the only way to win is to not play the game.
“You are far more justified in worrying about being killed by a meteor.”
–Or, a bit more likely, by a meteorite.
Instead of the paper/scissors/rock game theory, try the you_cut_the-cake_so_I_pick_first_slice game. Do I get a grant for that?
Regarding the Gerson column…”The assumption that the vast majority in a scientific field is engaged in fraud or corruption is frankly conspiratorial. In this case, the conspiracy would need to encompass the national academies of more than two dozen countries, including the United States…”
Not that hard to believe. The U.S. pharmaceutical craze is pretty much at this level. In 1966, a Dr. Wilson published “Feminine Forever,” and kicked off the menopause-hormone craze.
The “cover” was that any woman who was perimenopausal could be prescribed this drug in order to reduce menopausal symptoms, or avoid aging into them. The allure was genuine: they aesthetically enhanced complexion, hair, and, um, lubrication. Women were happy, the docs made money and were happy, and the drug company was happy.
By 1977, conjugated estrogens were being prescribed to 28 million women per year. If you slice and dice the overall population, this means that this soon-to-be-discovered-as-dangerous drug was being prescribed to nearly every woman who could possibly be a candidate, and had means to pay (health insurance coverage). Each and every one.
That success was achieved by the drug company marketing to patients and the medical establishment.
Then, in 1975-1977, it became apparent that estrogen replacement therapy caused endometrial cancer.
Not to be discouraged, the drug companies figured out that adding progesterin to the estrogen solved that problem. Hence “ERT” declined but was replaced by “HRT.”
The medical establishment had been alerted to the apparent superior cardiac health outcomes of women taking HRT versus not – and came just shy of endorsing HRT leadingly for its cardioprotective effect.
The drug company would need clinical trial data to get FDA approval to market specifically for cardioprotection, so the medical establishment got together with the drug company and developed, beginning in 1991, the Women’s Health Initiative study. In 2002, it became apparent that HRT led to breast cancer, and also to heart disease, and so the trial was halted early.
This time, science worked. It halted a confederacy of profit-seeking dunces that had all been working together since the 1960s. And causing untold numbers of endometrial and breast cancer cases along the way.
NPR has something of a good story on this: google NPR and “the marketing of menopause.”
This is just one example.
We in the U.S. have found certain birth control drugs or devices to be unacceptable here, but have allowed them to be distributed in other countries.
We have exported “population control” to many countries, including tying population goals to foreign aid and loans, then have been surprised when the result has been forced sterilization and sex-selection abortion. Then, we act like the preference to abort females was some indigenous bit of culture, rather than our, Western, influence when pressuring population control goals.
Connelly covers some of this very well in “Fatal Misconception.”
There are plenty of genuine international conspiracies that are well documented.
We need distinguish between out-and-out conspiracies (of which there are few or none) and fashionable endeavors where people of all sorts meet knowing they think the same way. The latter is not a ‘conspiracy’ any more than wearing bell-bottoms in the 1970s was.
“And for non-scientists, this requires a modicum of trust in the scientific enterprise”
Bit late to worry about that now. I can’t think of anything in the last century that’s harmed the ‘non-scientist’ view of science more than AGW alarmism. The repercussions will be felt for decades to come.
Hmm . . . Is it a meteor until it hits the ground? If not, is it a meteor after it has struck someone (in the open air) and before it hits the ground?
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
The only hammer these people have to offer is expertise in game theory. Unfortunately, they had to make a lot of invalid assumptions in order to make climate change look like their particular “nail”.
On the positive side (for them), they may have gotten their game theory research funded from the large pool of money devoted to climate change. And, their paper has gotten more publicity than if they were applying their theory to some other problem, such as over-fishing.
While each agent would like to keep his own reductions as low as possible, he would prefer to increase his proposal if it means the group would be more likely to reach a consensus.
=============
this is a flawed assumption. the third world is seeking compensation, not reduction.
all that is required for agreement is for the developed countries to pay compensation before agreement to reduce emissions. the developed countries are insisting on agreement to reduce emissions before agreement to pay compensation.
the question of payment before or after reduction is the true stumbling block. the less developed countries believe that if they agree first, they will never see the money. the developed countries believe if they pay first they will never see reductions.
Bloke down the pub says:
May 13, 2014 at 2:53 am
Right on the money.
The word ‘negotiation’ belongs to specific contexts. For example, the United Auto Workers Union and motor companies negotiate contracts. In such genuine negotiations, all the possible outcomes are known, though practical research can be required to nail down the specifics. By contrast, in the so-called negotiations described in the article, no outcomes are known and no amount of practical research can nail down the specifics in a reasonable amount of time.
Did I cover everything that the authors overlooked?