Essay by Eric Worrall
“… economic modelling has often suggested that temperature increases well above … the 2 °C target … would result in higher total welfare …”
The global economics of climate action
Jarmo Kikstra
Researcher (IACC, S3, TISS)Bettina Greenwell
Communications Officer (CER)23 March 2023
Climate change has serious consequences for the environment and people and is a major threat to economic stability. A new assessment reviews innovative, integrated research that underpins the economic case for strong near-term climate action.
Economic studies analyzing the costs and benefits of ambitious and rapid climate action have struggled to build a strong case due to methodological difficulties in trying to quantify all climate impacts. A new analysis looks at a pioneering approach to project economic impacts along climate mitigation pathways, finding that near-term emissions reductions are globally economically optimal, with central estimates for the “optimal warming” around 1.8-1.9°C by 2100.
Cost-benefit analyses of climate change impacts generally fall in one of two groups. The first group uses statistical methods to relate climate and weather patterns to economic productivity. While there have been improvements in this area, such methods remain a “black box” – it is not possible to easily relate economic productiveness to heat- or drought-related mortality. The second group adds up various climate impacts calculated in a more transparent and detailed manner, but is unable to quantify all impacts as well as all the interactions between them over time.
The assessment, published in Nature Climate Change, finds that new research takes a pioneering approach to build on previous work with increased detail incorporating some of the interaction between sectors, improving upon the methods of previous studies. …
…
Read more: https://iiasa.ac.at/news/mar-2023/global-economics-of-climate-action
If you visit the article above and click the link under the reference section, that takes you to an otherwise heavily paywalled article in Nature.
Strong climate action is worth it
Jarmo S. Kikstra & Paul Waidelich
An immediate and rapid reduction in global emissions is required for many reasons. Integrated research supports the economic case for strong near-term climate action, even before accounting for expected negative impacts on biodiversity, health and tipping points.
What is modelled as economically optimal may very well not be in line with a future that is societally desirable. With every bit of additional global warming, especially at warming levels of higher than 1.5 °C, peo-ple living in small island developing states and low-lying coastal areas are at increased risk of facing displacement, more of the world’s coral reefs are expected to be lost, and the triggering of multiple tipping points becomes more likely. Based on multiple lines of evidence, research-ers have, therefore, argued that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C outweighs the cost. By contrast, forward-looking economic modelling has often suggested that temperature increases well above the Paris Agreement target (and previously the 2 °C target in the Cancun Agree-ments) would result in higher total welfare (Fig. 1). Writing in Nature Climate Change, Kaj-Ivar van der Wijst and colleagues3 report a new way to project economic impacts along climate mitigation pathways …
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01635-2.epdf
If you hit a paywall when clicking the link above, visit the first article and click the reference link, which led me to a non paywalled copy.
I wish the researchers had made it clearer which economic model suggested “optimal” benefit from global warming above 3 C.
Despite the intriguing suggestion that substantial warming might be a net economic benefit, the authors appear to argue purely economic models to not account for biodiversity losses, tipping points, and impacts on poor people. Nevertheless I see this as the beginning of a retreat from the 1.5C trenches.
What prompted this apparent retreat from 1.5C? We can only speculate. Perhaps strong indications we have already passed 1.5C global warming, and nothing bad has happened, have prompted this rather embarrassing effort to regroup around 1.8-1.9C.
One thing I think we can safely predict. If 1.8-1.9C global warming is unequivocally breached, I doubt we will see any climate damage, but we can expect a massive rise in climate gobbledygook and double think. Of course, regardless of what happens to global temperature, the demand for mitigation and research funding will remain as strong as ever.
+1.5 is malarkey
+2.0 is baloney
Real science requires three decimal places for any tipping point
+1.836 is real science
Now that’s a real tipping point.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
“central estimates for the “optimal warming” around 1.8-1.9°C by 2100”
By year 2100 the author is most likely to be optimally dead, and would not care if he was right or wrong.
By year 2100 the author is most likely to be optimally dead, and would not care if he was right or wrong.
so when I predict that haleys comet will return in 2061 thats not scientific because i will be dead by then
but if a 20 year old says it then its scientific because he may be alive
congratulations you just made truth dependent upon human life spans!!!!
who knew that science and the truth depends on how long you live
Oh look, the marketing major who cosplays as a scientist is here!
Must’ve stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.
Hi Steven
Nice to hear from you, hope you are well.
Indeed science is age dependant:
I was reading Max Planck recently, lot of Alzheimer’s (or is it dementia) suppressing stuff in there.
He is quoted to have said: “Science advances one funeral at a time.
Die Wissenschaft …”
Many examples of it, here is just one:
Newton’s theories of light colour or refraction were rubbish, but because he was so clever elsewhere, no proposed alternatives were acceptable while he was around.
Major Moshism!
who knew that science and the truth depends on how long you live
========
Science advances one funeral at a time – Max Planck
Reading further I see vuk already posted this quote along with others.
Science is never settled and death is one of nature’s greatest inventions as a mechanism for continual improvement.
Wow. Major logic fail.
Considering the source, expected.
Oh, cool. Economics has been promoted to Science now.
Halley’s comet is based on known verified science
The other is pure superstition.
At least try to comprehend the difference. !
Confusing economics with science.
Sorry I see someone else has pre-agreed with me. 😉
R.I.P. Dr. Stephen Schneider. He passed away 2010 somewhere over the Atlantic on his way to London. Besides flipping from Global Cooling to Global Warming, 1978-1981, he lost a lot of credibility for that quote.
Not that it matters, I recall he was flying to London from Stockholm and he died in First Class.
Well, that’s better, than intestate.
I think you’ll find that Schneider officially died in the jetway after the flight.
The airlines have an unwritten rule that nobody dies in the air. You ain’t dead until somebody official says so, and no doctor riding on the flight is going to pronounce someone dead, then have to stick around the airport for hours afterwards to sign a ton of paperwork.
The find the right balance to be tell others to give up FF but keep on using them ourselves. That is the religion of CC.
Hmm, uptick, but I make it +1.838.
And the assertion that we can control a global average temperature to within 10ths of a Degree C simply by altering the amount of an atmospheric trace gas measured in parts per million is a kind of delusional hubris. It is so astonishing why this doesn’t bother many eminent ‘scientists’, particularly the arrogance of the narrative that describes so casually how easy it will be to choose what the Earth’s average temperature can be.
The 61 year mean opacity of the atmosphere from the NOAA TIGR2 data set is 1.868754. It doesn’t appear to be changing either. The overall greenhouse effect is almost constant. Don’t think we will reach any of these apocalyptic goals.
+2.5 is salami.
+3.0 is pepperoni.
“An immediate and rapid reduction in global emissions is required
for many reasons.”
And then they go on to not list the “many” reasons.
“Integrated research supports the economic case for strong near-term
climate action, even before accounting for expected negative impacts
on biodiversity, health and tipping points”
The greatest biodiversity occurs in the tropics where it is warm. And warmer not colder is better for health. Flu season is in winter. More people die in the winter. Tipping points? Undefined propaganda.
As I recall, China and India are located on the globe and constitute the majority of humans. If anyone has any good ideas on how to require them to rapidly reduce emissions, I’m all ears. It is apparent that saying “pretty please” is not working.
There is no need for them to reduce “emissions” there isn’t a “climate emergency”.
Why would anyone want China and India to reduce their CO2 emissions? Especially China. They make a lot of great stuff, and take, soon to be worthless, dollars for it. The U.S. is what 31 $Trillion in debt now? I’ve lost track.
Flu season is in winter. More people die in the winter.
they dont die of the flu
they dont get the flu because of the cold
heres a clue
its cold. people stay inside. they expose each othr to respiratory viruses.
like the flu.
the flu doesnt kill you. it may cause respiratory failure which causes cardiac arrest
its the heart stopping that gets you, not the flu
Vitamin D levels lower in winter.
Cold temperatures reduce your immunity.
Thank you for comfirming that, Steven. A marginal increase of ~2°C should do nicely to reduce winter deaths, don’t you think?
I fail to get your point. Most everything you posted supported the notion that more people die in winter.
That’s alright. He fails to get his own point.
Basically, every time he posts… he FAILS !
Death is natures way of suggesting you slow down.
its the heart stopping that gets you, not the flu
=======
Nope. the killer is pneumonia. Your lungs fill up with fluid and you effectively drown.
That’s exactly what I’d expect of an English major self identifying climate scientist and now medical expert.
So if they all stay inside with one another and with the same prexisting lingering infections, how now only do they get cross infections?
You see having a science degree let’s one see through the BS haze.
Friendly advice, Steven.
You can be supercilious and condescending.
Or you can be wrong.
Being both is absolutely not a good look.
The heart stopping is only a mode of dying. It’s how we all die, obviously.
Influenza absolutely is the cause of death in someone whose heart stops because of it. Sign a few hundred death certificates, it’ll come easier after a while.
Congrats.
You have just proven that warming is highly beneficial for human survival. 🙂
It’s not the bullet that kills you it’s all the bleeding.
Absolutely brilliant, Sir Mosher. You’re a doctor too….
“What prompted this apparent retreat from 1.5C? We can only speculate.”
They’re seeing pitchforks on the horizon.
A pitchfork shortage got us into many messes.
I think the Dems want to ban pitchforks 🙂
My wife and I intend to dress like those 2 and get some photos- I’ll upload to this site when I have the photos.
Pitchfork control will limit tine length and number.
I’ve seen that picture before. It looks like an altered copy of the painting on the 2007 Worldcon web site.
He’s holding the iconic rocket Hugo Award.
Look like a sex toy (so I’m told ).
It’s a classic- according to Wikipedia, that is, the one I posted:
There’s a send-up of the painting at the end of the wedding which starts “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”
Don’t forget torches. And maybe rope.
The Little Ice Age was an era of plague, famine, and war. Why any warming from that state is detrimental requires a leap of faith I do not comprehend.
Yes. yes – but we have just had the “plague” and the war is under way, whilst the famine is being organised as we write.
It is surprising that people talk of 1.5 degrees or more without noting that this is a global average temperature. Each country will have its own ‘temperature’ that may or may not change.
Not only each country has constantly changing temperatures, each zip code / postcode has constantly changing temperatures.
The averaging construct is arrant nonsense – no practical application to real-world experiences.
Even Hansen admitted (eventually) that “global average temperature is not a useful metric”,
“The averaging construct is arrant nonsense – no practical application to real-world experiences.”
I’ve been saying that for years. Yet we’re constantly presented with useless graphs showing a single line for global temp. All I can do any more is roll my eyes.
Well, most of us here in Old Blighty would be happy to see at least +2C.
It’s also why the target is absurd and irrelevant. Models can’t get the spatial distribution of the trend correct, and it matters very much where that temperature change happens, and when (nighttime not mattering a f***all).
And warming in higher latitudes…, a complete blessing !
Small islands are growing in area.
Coral is thriving, not declining.
Multiple tipping points is an oxymoron: a seesaw with multiple fulcrums is better known as a table.
“a seesaw with multiple fulcrums is better known as a table.”
I almost spewed on that one. 🙂
Especially tables I build. I can never get all five legs the same length.
It is very easy. You just keep adjusting the length of each of them until you just have a plank lying on the floor which will be a stable table.
The problem then is that you then have to do the same thing with all the chairs.
There are a number of clues that real-world engineering and science is intruding on their group-think.
Recent back-pedalling on nuclear power and the date to stop production of ICEs being examples.
I think its debatable on whether or not we have hit 1.5C or even 1C. One can argue that the 1.5C has been breached in cities and, low and behold, we’re totally fine. But out in the wilderness, it probably hasn’t even breached 1C yet. Either way your point is taken that everything is totally fine as far as climate is concerned.
Do nothing about GHGs, and promote reliable, ample supplies of fuels and electricity. Adapt as necessary to whatever happens.
Has anyone ruled out this policy option by reliable analysis? No. It is all based on unreliable models, first for the climate system, and then for the economics.
The people need to push back.
“It is all based on unreliable models…”
___________________________________
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken
I believe that should read “ALL of them imaginary.”
Mencken never moderated words. I think “most” was hyperbole and “all” would have made him a smaller-font footnote.
“Has anyone ruled out this policy option by reliable analysis?”
Yes it’s been ruled out by the rulers. You can’t control people with fear using reasonableness.
Despite the intriguing suggestion that substantial warming might be a net economic benefit, the authors appear to argue purely economic models to not account for biodiversity losses, tipping points, and impacts on poor people. Nevertheless I see this as the beginning of a retreat from the 1.5C trenches
trenches?
you obviously havent kept up with the science
Says the marketing major who doesn’t know how a daily average temperature is calculated and who doesn’t understand measurement uncertainty.
Were you quoting someone?? Jeez, you can’t even figure that out.
“for biodiversity losses, tipping points, and impacts on poor people.”
1. biodiversity losses from global warming.. NONSENSE. !
2 Tipping points.. ….ROFLMOA.. fictious nonsense.
3 Impacts on poor people……Ask them how easy it is to stay warming in the middle of winter
Your comment highlights the basic cluelessness and depravity of the whole AGW scam. !
”to not account for biodiversity losses,”
Scraping the bottom of the barrel? Look up biodiversity over latitudinal gradients
”impacts on poor people”
The bottom of the barrel is already scraped, time to look elsewhere.
Look up – poor people can no longer afford energy
“Poor people can no longer afford energy”
In a report lodged in the House of Commons library three days ago the latest estimates of fuel poverty in the UK are
England 13%, Scotland 25%, Wales 12% and Northern Ireland 18%
That equates to around 7.3m people in England, 1.4m in Scotland, 372, 600 In Wales and 340,000 in Northern Ireland. That’s over 9.4m people.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/chp-8370/
Umm, yes they do. Such externalities are notoriously difficult to quantify, hence are obviously guesstimates. The combination of discount rates used and estimates of externalities account for the majority of the differences between the studies.
It is best to regard them, in aggregate, as a sensitivity analysis.
“biodiversity losses”? Cold sucks for outdoor living.
I upvoted your comment to offset those who downvote certain names without even reading. Probably the +/- system matters little.
The continuous shuffling of notional changes in the predicted temp rise is getting closer & closer to the situation that eventually prevailed in the crash of the Tulip Mania, where the values being pandied about bore no connection to the realities of actual production capacities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
“Integrated research suggests” “damage functions exceed costs by ~3x”.
What damage functions?
The disingenuous hubris of this paper is stunning.
Are “damage functions” a series of subroutines in their Ouija board computer models? 😉
Gotta move Armageddon past their retirement age.
I agree with the sentiment, but I don’t believe anyone under 70 retires anymore. So long as there’s a dollar on the table, someone will walk off a golf course to grab it. Revolution might come from those under 20? if those over 70 keep clearing off the table.
It’s coming.
I’ve, engaged a private detective, to find, the shifting climate crisis goalposts.
2.5C from current would be optimal, 4C is when harms may begin to exceed benefits.
This whole 1.5C or 2.5C from preindustrial nonsense is… nonsense.
“In his Nobel Prize lecture, Nordhaus described a 4°C increase in global average temperature as “optimal” — that is, the point at which the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change are balanced.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h1RkSuAs03Q&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nobelprize.org%2F&feature=emb_logo
Unfortunately, that talk doesn’t go into any detail about the DICE model or how the optimal temperature increase/policy action figure was derived.
It seems that most of the subsequent analyses have been based on variations of DICE, and, like Stern, are critically dependant on the discount rates chosen for the run. Proper impact analysis requires multiple runs with a spread of discount rates.
Optimal for whom? I like warm, but people are all different.
Cost optimal, not optimal temperature. It’s the point where the economic impact of the “damage” + the amount spent on reducing GHG emissions is lowest.
the climate jackals know their man made climate change hoax is wearing thin. they are desperate.
We are seeing the SARS-CoV-2/Covid -19 narrative slowly unraveling. The lies about natural origins, the lies about risk and mortality, the lies about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines are all falling apart. Maybe the climate change narrative is next?
“We are seeing…” different worlds from different angles. There will be a next thing. I hope it isn’t violent.
More people die in winter than in summer. Reasonable hypothesis: if the climate warms significantly more lives will be saved than lost.
Warm is good. Cold is bad. And as a bonus, CO2 is plant food!
Whatever happens in the way of weather or climate, we can expect a massive rise in climate gobbledygook and double-think from the Climate Alarmists as this is their only thesis.
Imagine a 2030’s that includes paying off student loans for the sort of college degree that leads to IPCC advocacy?
“What prompted this apparent retreat from 1.5C? We can only speculate.”
Eric there is no need to speculate, I can tell you exactly what is going on. They can’t lose their cash cow. Think about the trillions of dollars these crooks have wasted in the name of saving the planet. How do they tell us they will save the planet? By not exceeding 1.5C increase in temperature. How can they prevent that? By lowering CO2 emissions. We have given them the trillions of dollars, we have surpassed the 1.5C temperature increase and the kicker is CO2 hasn’t gone down one little bit. On the contrary it has continued to increase. They have completely failed at everything except spending our money. Enough is enough this madness has to stop.
The 1.5C forecast arrived before the ink was dry on the agreement to kill 6 billion undesirables through energy and food depravation. The WEF will need to try again.
The west is marching into war by destroying it’s wealth in the name of saving the planet. This won’t be the first time a Crusade ends badly
China, India, Africa. They are not going to shut down emissions. Full Stop. Ain’t going to happen along with a whole raft of other countries. Regardless of what it might say on a piece of paper.
Unless the west can out compete these other nations our wealth will soon be theirs. Every empire has its day. When the wealth runs out, the empire falls.
What was the basis for the Western empire?
Follow the temperature chasing money and promotions.
“Climate change has serious consequences for the environment and people and is a major threat to economic stability.”
Stopped reading there.
How soon we forget. I think that might have been Nordhaus.
He and Romer received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2018 for their work in that field.
Google took me to PBS which presented me a chart with no axis labels. The green line that looked “best” against the unspecified metric still declined by 2100. Maybe the robots will not love us by then?