The incoming Trump administration has promised dramatic transformations on many vital domestic issues. The best gauge of this development is the fierce level of opposition his policies have generated from Democratic stalwarts. One representative screed is a New York Times Op-Ed by Professors Michael Greenstone and Cass Sunstein, who lecture the incoming president on climate change: “Donald Trump Should Know: This is What Climate Change Costs Us.”
Greenstone and Sunstein have a large stake in the game: During their years in the first Obama administration, they convened an interagency working group (IWG) drawn from various federal agencies that determined that the social cost of carbon (SCC)—or the marginal cost of the release of a ton of carbon into the atmosphere—should be estimated at about $36 per ton (as of 2015). Choose that number and there is much justification for taking major policy steps to curb the emission of carbon dioxide. Greenstone and Sunstein hoped that the working group process would draw on the “latest research in science and economics,” and establish the claimed costs by “accounting for the destruction of property from storms and floods, declining agricultural and labor productivity, elevated mortality rates and more.”
Their effort should be dismissed as a rousing failure, and as an affront to the scientific method that they purport to adopt in their studies. The first error is one of approach. The worst way to get a full exchange of views on the complex matter of global warming is to pack the IWG entirely with members from the Obama administration, all surely preselected in part because they share the president’s exaggerated concerns with the problem of global warming. The only way to get a full and accurate picture of the situation is to listen to dissenters on global warming as well as advocates, which was never done. After all, who should listen to a “denier”?
This dismissive attitude is fatal to independent inquiry. No matter how many times the president claims the science is rock-solid, the wealth of recent evidence gives rise to a very different picture that undercuts the inordinate pessimism about climate change that was in vogue about 10 years ago. The group convened in the Obama administration never examined, let alone refuted, the accumulation of evidence on the other side. Indeed, virtually all of its reports are remarkable for the refusal to address any of the data at all. Instead, the common theme is to refer to models developed by others as the solid foundation for the group’s own work, without questioning a word of what those models say.
The second major mistake in the government studies is the way in which they frame the social costs of carbon. As all champions of cost/benefit analysis understand, it is a mistake to look at costs in isolation from benefits, or benefits apart from costs. Yet that appears to be the approach taken in these reports. In dealing with various objections to its reports, the IWG noted in its July 2015 response that “some commenters felt that the SCC estimates should include the value to society of the goods and services whose production is associated with CO2 emissions.” Their evasive response has to be quoted in full to be believed: “Rigorous evaluation of benefits and costs is a core tenet of the rulemaking process. The IWG agrees that these are important issues that may be relevant to assessing the impacts of policies that reduce CO2 emissions. However, these issues are not relevant to the SCC itself. The SCC is an estimate of the net economic damages resulting from CO2 emissions, and therefore is used to estimate the benefit of reducing those emissions.”
Read the entire essay here, it is well worth your time. h/t to Dr. Judith Curry.
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Translation: The IWG is founded on the fundamental premise that we are eradicators of the CO2 pollutant. By definition, then, we do NOT recognize any benefits whatsoever of CO2, and so to consider benefits would violate our mission.
The United Nations seems to play the same game, as evidenced by a report I came upon a couple days ago (can’t seem to find it again), in which the language of “cost/benefit” analysis was terribly misappropriated to characterize a benefit analysis were there was none, … where, in fact, benefits of zero additional CO2 was the actual gist of the “analysis”. In other words, the flaw in these sorts of organized appeals is the hidden assumption that CO2 has zero benefits, and so the only benefit considered is the benefit of eliminating the cost of its evil.
Instead of “hide the decline”, they hide the benefits.
Thee Tax Shalt Be – $36 per MMCC Libra.+
Or $1.26 trillion world-wide. Now that should get a lefty’s heart a flutterin’.
I agree that putting lots of carbon in the air is probably bad but the more CO2 the better.
When all solutions that advocates of climate change are examined, they all strangely converge, not on a cohesive solution to the alleged problem, but instead they converge on socialism. That tells me that even when such people might have a point of truth, they only tell it to advance the broader lie.
As for me, when I see that less than 25,000 years ago where the city of Chicago currently sits was under almost a mile of solid glacial ice, I know that the climate is *always changing*. I also know by looking at the records from the Vostok Station that the trend in CO2 trailed the trend in temperature by about 800 years. I can plainly see who is really in denial, and it isn’t me.
Agreed, and I’ll keep repeating my new tag line with pleasure, as you pointed out – “Observation TRUMPS theory.” ;-D
Climate change has been taking place for eons, long before Mankind started using fossif fuels. Even if we could somehow cause climate change to stop, under our current global climate sea level rise would continue to rise and extreme weather evernts would continue to happen unabated. There is no economic benefit to be had by haulting climate change. The climate change we have been experiending is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of sceintific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. We must also consider that CO2 is necessary for life as we know it on this planet and the amount of CO2 currently in our atmosphere is historically low and well below the optimum for plant growth. So the additional cost to society of adding CO2 to our atmosphere is currently zero. The real concern is that our supply of fossil fuel is finite and burning up this finite supply just as quickly as possible may not be such a good idea. Before the supply runs out, Mankind must convert to alternate sources of energy and we must lower our population so that these alternate sources of energy will meet our needs. So there are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them. Our real problem is Mankind’s out of control population. If Mankind does not control his own population then Nature will, catastrophically.
Human population isn’t out of control. It will stabilize under ten billion. That’s baked in the cake.
The UN estimates 11.2 billion in 2100, but that’s just idiotic extrapolation. When the Muslim world undergoes the demographic transition that the rest of the world has already undergone, “problem” solved.
On the UN’s unwarranted alarmism, based upon unrealistic assumptions about Africa and China:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140918-population-global-united-nations-2100-boom-africa/
I see zero evidence that anyone in the fantasy Muslim world cares about anything or anyone else in the real world.
Chimp- With a little luck you will be proven right but I believe that steady progress on population control is dependent on steady progress economically. That progress, in turn, depends on political stability, education and energy cost and availability. That’s why your numbers aren’t ” baked in”.
There is nothing actually controling population except misery and catastrophy. Where I live the population density just keeps increasing.
Ironically, it is the increased use of fossil fuels that will stave off population growth. History shows us that industrialization and economic development decreases population, it does not increase it. So “conservation” is a fools game. Encouraging Africa and other developing portions of the world to access and use their coal, oil and gas, and to industrialize and modernize their economies, is the way to ending overpopulation, misery, famine and death, not “conserving” fossil fuels as if no future energy breakthroughs will ever occur.
Bingo!
So someone needs to work out what the social cost of decarbonising (SCDC?)would be.
What factors would that include?
Reduced plant fertilisation, 3rd world poverty, lack of economic progress?
https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/what-is-the-social-cost-of-reducing-carbon/
The root, the axiom, of their logic is that anything Man does is harmful. In this context it is Man’s CO2 that is harmful.
Both are yet to be proven yet their political-science says it is true therefore Man must be controlled to save him from himself. The proposed controls rarely, if ever, are of any actual benefit to anybody but the proposers and their friends.
“The proposed controls rarely, if ever, are of any actual benefit to anybody but the proposers and their friends.”
Exactly. And the only people that think they’re “saving the world” by pushing CO2 emission reductions are those that completely take for granted all that they have BECAUSE OF said CO2 emissions.
I think there is an advantage that Trump is a Twitter guy. It would be good to have pithy bullet point condensed reports of significant research findings that he could be informed about with a link.
Gary, I have been comment contributing sound bites linked to graphs, charts, papers, whatever, for ages here. Wrote three rbooks, the last of which does much that you ask, but in short essay rather than Twitter form. You have a great idea. Get me funding and I will make it operational. Else not.
I’m concerned that Ivanka has drunk the CACA Kool-aid. But maybe her outreach to ecoloons is just for show. She and her husband are liberal, but on many issues, so is The Donald.
I’m going to the inauguration, but that’s not the time or place to discuss such issues. Maybe I’ll be able to grok some answers without being as obnoxious as usual.
Despite Tillerson’s mouthing CACA platitudes, over all I feel pretty good about Trump’s appointments so far.
The Californian snowflakes want to secede their state – my long experience with Americans leads me to think that most would support them eg Texans for a start.
Toneb; a bit more study will learn you that water phase change and ad/convection plus radiation up to over 70,000ft, render CO2 irrelevant. Water has near-limitless spare capacity for that.
“The SCC is an estimate of the net economic damages”
If they don’t look at both negative AND positive effects of CO2 emissions, then they do not know the meaning of the word “net”.
“…declining agricultural … productivity…” This is bad. Vegetation loves CO2. Glad to hear someone from Stanford stand for good science.
Gunga Din December 20, 2016 at 3:15 pm
+10
Apparently for people like Gore, Greenstone, Sunstein, Mann, etc., global warming is a “get rich quick” scheme that really works!
Now that they’ve solved the “social cost of carbon”, they should move on and calculate the “social cost of humans”.
+
I never understood the phrase “social cost of …” . What does it mean? I would have thought the lack of fossil fuels has a greater ‘social cost” than the provision of cheap energy from them.
See Robert? That’s why you’ll never get ahead in Ottawa!
Robert of Ottawa,
IN RE “I never understood the phrase ‘social cost of …’ . What does it mean?”
To answer, I am an economist
Social Cost is a term in welfare economics. It is the amount the social surplus (or combined producer and consumer surplus) is not maximized. It is a measure of allocactive inefficiency. It is often an excuse or justification for government interventions abet government intervention can also cause inefficiency as in the case of price controls. The social surplus is usual maximized when marginal social cost equals marginal social benefit at that level of production consumption or transforming scare resources into a higher valued output for society. Normally free markets will get to the allocative efficient result, but this depends on social costs equaling private costs and/or social benefits equaling private benefits, i.e.no spillovers or externalities in production or consumption, and there is a laundry list of other things including informational failures which can cause inefficiency or social costs relative to what id deemed optimal maximizing societal welfare. Honey production is an example of a positive externality of spillover since the bees pollinate a neighbor’s crops so social benefit is greater than private benefit of consuming a quart of honey,and markets will have honey production where private marginal cost equals private marginal benefit for a less than optimal level of honey produced for society. Pollution is the textbook example of a negative externality since the producers and consumers of an item does not bear the cost of say a polluted river because of a paper factory dumping waste in the river. There is a marginal benefit to society of having one more say paper cup, a private marginal cost to produce it in terms of the necessary resources to make one more cup which the factory purchases, but also an unaccounted spillover where say an extra cup makes it so less fish are caught down stream for fishermen or it is marginal more polluted reducing the benefit of swimming downstream. Here marginal social cost is higher than marginal social benefit. Markets only tie together marginal private costs and benefits.
In the case of CO2 or fossil fuels, is is ASSUMED that there is a negative spillover or cost being global warming which would hurt third parties including future generations. I and others would personally dispute human CO2 emissions is a negative externality since it does not cause the planet to warm, and it the planet did warm, then it would be a social benefit (e.g.longer growing seasons).
The textbook way to fix an externality is to add it back in the private costs by a tax on CO2 emissions,similar to a tax on leaded gas which causes brain damage to urban dwellers as a pollutant which is not paid for at the pump (abet a tort claim for damages would mimic a Piquovian tax). This is why some economists want to estimate the marginal social costs of CO2 per GTon as to establish the proper tax level to maximize the social surplus. The estimation in my opinion,it outdated based on bad models, is politically based, ignores benefits such as fewer people dying of cold or increased agricultural output or grossly exaggerates costs. Similar to scientific models of climate, social scientists are making a bunch of assumptions with a wide degree of error. Merely changing something such as a discount rate massively changes results. The AGW crowd assumed CO2 had a negative spillover 25 years ago before they even took a deeper look at it since it sort of made sense on assumption, e.g.sea level rising due to warming,such also justified more study and jobs to study it. If someone turned in the IPCC report on social costs as a college term paper,it would be a D paper or be given back for a rewrite.
see theeuroprobe,org and type CO2 into the search box MG
From: Watts Up With That? To: mickgreenhough@yahoo.co.uk Sent: Tuesday, 20 December 2016, 20:07 Subject: [New post] A must read: Obsolete Climate Science on CO2 #yiv7178224867 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv7178224867 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv7178224867 a.yiv7178224867primaryactionlink:link, #yiv7178224867 a.yiv7178224867primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv7178224867 a.yiv7178224867primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv7178224867 a.yiv7178224867primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv7178224867 WordPress.com | Anthony Watts posted: “Obsolete Climate Science on CO2by Richard A. Epstein, Stanford UniversityTuesday, December 20, 2016The incoming Trump administration has promised dramatic transformations on many vital domestic issues. The best gauge of” | |
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
This one paragraph of a “must read” essay by Stanford University’s Richard A. Epstein, IMHO sums up the “climate change” aka “global warming” fiasco/scam/scientific scandal that has snowballed into an out of control ideological behemoth. The new fashionable religion of our age, with its High Priests and clergyman ruthlessly dismissive of counter-evidence, new or contradictory ‘science’ and viciously scornful of real-world observations that mock the holy (corrupt/overheated) computer models that underpin the faith…
“This dismissive attitude is fatal to independent inquiry. No matter how many times the president claims the science is rock-solid, the wealth of recent evidence gives rise to a very different picture that undercuts the inordinate pessimism about climate change that was in vogue about 10 years ago. The group convened in the Obama administration never examined, let alone refuted, the accumulation of evidence on the other side. Indeed, virtually all of its reports are remarkable for the refusal to address any of the data at all. Instead, the common theme is to refer to models developed by others as the solid foundation for the group’s own work, without questioning a word of what those models say.”
“The group convened in the Obama administration never examined, let alone refuted, the accumulation of evidence on the other side”.
This seems to me to be extremely telling of the political motivations that the Obama people brought to office with them. Who, as an honest broker, confronted with a multi-trillion dollar problem, chooses all the most expensive solutions, with no attempt whatsoever, to quantify or qualify the issue? In fact, using all available resources and creating some new ones, to further exaggerate the problem when voters prove indifferent.
“lecture the incoming president on climate change”
I think a better word is HECTOR.
By controlling population numbers, we would decrease the chances of people giving birth to more people gullible enough to believe that CO2 is a “pollutant”, thereby increasing the number of people smart enough to know that it is not.
Seriously, though, I think the bigger problem with number of bodies on the planet is not so much the number itself as it is the DENSITY. Our problem is how we cram ourselves together into collectives, how we fill up space, how we undervalue large clearances or breathing room between our structures, and how many people fail to respect the FLOW of movement within the whole system of civilized structures.
Of course, very few people would consider this a proper focus on a problem, because it would be regarded as some crazy theory that no rational person could possibly entertain. It would entail trying to undo a chain of bad habits that has ruled developing civilizations from the very beginning of civilization.
l WA
If you want to read a joke on made-up whatever costs they could find or imagine ignoring benefits, see the IPCC reports on economic cost estimates. It is laughable. They loss of tourism jobs due to ski resorts closing … at what? 1/8 degree C per decade forecasted which they also say should be unnoticeable to humans? Also agricultural output falls, when we know now almost as a fact now that added CO2 aids photosynthesis and helps plant grow increasing output (we can see how greener the planet is by satellites which is a shock to some lay alarmists reading fake news in the NYTs or Guardian) not to mention the longer growing season (if it did warm as forecasted by their crap models). It is complete garbage. Newspapers too have added social costs hype of added wars, increased murders and kidney stones, so see what is next. What about all the climate change increase in hurricanes, storms, fires, and droughts which never happened or did opposite?
If anything, increased CO2 has a positive net benefit to society, not a net cost,and is not a negative externality, more likley a positive one, and still positive even if hypothetically true that temps rising a tad.
[I am an economist. If you want to see another joke, look at federal regulations and the cost of a life the feds use which is a multiple overestimate of the true number. This justifies thousands of regulations and government regulatory jobs from air bags to warning lights at rural railroad crossings few people use. Thousands of federal employees would not have a job if they used a more accurate estimate as opposed to the overestimate which evolved. Even on the state level same, we have mandatory sprinkler systems in all new residential houses built where I live to save lives where the cost is much bigger than the benefit.]
Does one ton of carbon equal 3 tons of CO2 (more or less) or does one ton of CO2 = 1/3 of a ton of carbon?
I meet this lazy acceptance of green misinformation frusrating. Up here in the Great White North, Trudeau wants to introduce a Carbon tax and nobody supposedly knows what it will cost. With bafflegab over the term “carbon” it’s not surprising
The fundamental, and almost universally unrecognized, and suppressed, problem here is that there simply is no hard-data evidence in support of greenhouse warming. A search by a colleague of over 10,000 climate-related, peer-reviewed journal articles amazingly revealed only one hard-data-based study of greenhouse warming, that of Knut Angstrom in 1900, and Angstrom’s result was negative, i.e., there is very little effect on temperature from an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Astonished by this, I conducted my own hard-data-based study in 2015 (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/10/interesting-climate-sensitivity-analysis-do-variations-in-co2-actually-cause-global-significant-warming/), which arrived at essentially the same conclusion, but confirmed the likelihood that my colleague’s suggestion that ozone depletion by chlorine derived from CFCs and basaltic volcanoes might be the actual cause of global warming.
This wanton exclusion of hard-data-based studies from climate “science” is professionally inexcusable, and, in my opinion, should be the focus of all attempts to debunk the insidious and completely unsupported theory of greenhouse warming.