More Friedman on global warming -
"Brian writes:
"But cherrypicking and believing the scientific outliers is a pretty risky way to handle the intersection between science and politics."
I appreciate the civility, but I note that it is unaccompanied by any supporting evidence for your claim.
If you look through the discussion on my blog, you will note that the claims about hurricane strength--responding to an argument Mike Huben fell back on, which is how we got into that question--are from an author of the current IPCC section on that subject and an author of the previous section. They represent their view of the current consensus in the field. I'm a little puzzled as to how that qualifies as an "outlier."
I am even more puzzled as to how my repeated reference to an 80 cm increase in sea level by 2100 can be described as cherry picking, given that that's from the IPCC report. If anything, it's the other way around--80 cm is the upper end of their range after it has been adjusted upwards on the assumption that the rate of ice sheet melting will continue to increase.
I realize you would like to believe that anyone whose statements are inconsistent with your views is a "denialist" or a "doubter," but it's really worth seeing who said what before making such a claim.
To save you a little work, here are the pieces that got quoted in the discussion:
http:// sciencepolicy.colorado.ed...sea_leaves.html
(the original open letter by Landsea explaining why he was reigning from the IPCC)
http:// sciencepolicy.colorado.ed...on_landsea.html
http:// sciencepolicy.colorado.ed...pter_hurri.html
http:// sciencepolicy.colorado.ed..._ipcc_and_.html
I think reading those makes it clear that it was Trenberth who was misrepresenting the existing scientific consensus, Landsea who was defending it. And it was Trenberth, not Landsea, who eventually backed down, conceding that the claim he had made at the press conference, that recent huricane activity was due to global warming, was not true--although, of course, he didn't link his later position to his earlier position.
You might also consider the following, from Neville Nicholls, one of the ICPP authors:
"We concluded that the question of whether there was a greenhouse-cyclone link was pretty much a toss of a coin at the present state of the science, with just a slight leaning towards the likelihood of such a link. But the premature reports suggested that we were asserting the existence of much stronger evidence."
Is that the impression you had of the current scientific consensus?"
David Friedman
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But let me here consider a simpler question. Suppose we simply have restrictions on the use of carbon sufficient to sharply reduce output of CO2. That means a sharp increase in the cost of energy, which is one of the inputs to lots of things. When you increase the cost of an input, you increase the cost of outputs. Increasing the cost of doing things makes people poorer. There is no particular reason to expect the effect to be concentrated on poor people, but reductions in the income of the poor hurt them more than proportional reductions in the incomes of people like us, for obvious reasons.
You reply that perhaps "investments in efficiency and new technologies might make us all wealthier." But just which new technologies people invest in depends on relative costs, and "efficiency" is defined only in a context of relative costs. If power is expensive enough, the efficient way to farm is with hand labor and the efficient way of getting from Chicago to New York is to walk. In your less extreme case, people will be investing in finding the best way of achieving their objectives with (say) ten dollar a gallon gasoline instead of three dollar a gallon gasoline, and similarly for other power sources. That makes us better off if the real cost of power is several times its current price, due to global warming externalities. But it makes us worse off if the real cost is only a little more than its current price--which is the conclusion I've been arguing for. We're investing in solving the wrong problem, hence less likely to get the correct solution than if we were solving the right problem.
I hope that helps; obviously there is a limit to how much detail one can offer in the context of this sort of exchange.
You end by quoting my comment that:
"A century from now the effect on sea level, by current estimates, will be a rise of less than a meter. It is only when you go further than that that effects become really big."
If you read the rest of the book, you will see the other shoe drop. I think the range of consequences of possible technological change, for good or bad, over the next century is large enough so that any attempt to bear costs now to prevent problems more than a century in the future is almost certainly a mistake. We simply don't know enough about what that world will be like. We could, by then, have wiped out our species; we could have become something close to gods. If we take an intermediate assumption--growth rates in real per capita income comparable to those of recent decades--we will be rich enough to dike Bangladesh out of petty change. Arguments about preventing problems centuries in the future depend on a degree of conservatism that is simply indefensible on the current evidence.
David Friedman
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