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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: spiral3 who wrote (71171)	6/9/2008 10:31:06 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 543150

Energy breakthroughists want to reduce reliance on carbon technologies as the main weapon against GW. So? Does that mean that other people can't have a different basis for supporting it? That #14 had something to do with reducing GW is a pretty safe bet in my book. Perhaps you should consider Lomborg's book. Since he was involved with the committee and since he does not have GW tunnel vision, that would be a good source. The serendipitous thing about alternative energy is that everybody favors it. They don't necessarily favor it for the same reasons you do.

To: spiral3 who wrote (71171)	6/16/2008 6:08:03 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543150

The Stern report is rather controversial, and many,; even many who support the idea that global warming is happening, that it is primarily caused by human emissions of CO2, and that it will be a problem; disagree with him about the discount rates he uses, and his assumptions of low and rapidly declining marginal benefit to additional income. And that's assuming his basic data is correct, but its questionable as well. Not that its obviously wrong, or that other sources have indisputably better data, but any such estimates about costs of global warming, and costs of reducing CO2 over a century are going to be highly uncertain. And apparently he doesn't consider other methods of dealing with the issue other than by reducing CO2. Nordhaus review of Stern on global warming Here is Bill Nordhaus's critique of the Stern report. Nordhaus argues that Stern's "new" results boil down to the choice of a lower discount rate. I agree with Stern that the discount rate should be zero or near-zero for resources which will not be reinvested but rather represent alternative consumption streams across the generations. If we are doing normative analysis, however, and considering alternatives to controlling global warming, a' la Copenhagen Consensus, we are by definition considering other investments. In that case the correct rate of discount is given by opportunity costs, which might be quite high, provided the alternative investments will in fact be undertaken. (On this topic, there are a few really good comments here.) Having pondered the report a bit more, my main question is what it would cost for China and India to cut back on carbon emissions, all relevant institutional changes included in the calculations. In other words, that figure should count costs of persuasion, enforcement, and implementation, not just the cost of one technology rather than another in the abstract. We do not have a good sense of these costs, and given how many basic tasks these economies fail at, I can imagine the cynic citing the figure of infinity. (To consider one analogy, what is "the cost" of getting avian flu out of China?) Furthermore China in particular has a high rate of savings, and both economies have high rates of return on capital. Current compliance costs should thus be compounded, when considering their future importance, at rates considerably higher than zero. marginalrevolution.com Blast from the past/ Discount Rates again meganmcardle.theatlantic.com "...Mr. Stern tells us that the cost of U.K. flooding will quadruple to 0.4% from 0.1% of GDP due to climate change. However, we are not told that these alarming figures only hold true if one assumes that the U.K. will take no additional measures--essentially doing absolutely nothing and allowing itself to get flooded, perhaps time and again. In contrast, the U.K. government's own assumptions take into account a modest increase in flood prevention, finding that the cost will actually decline sharply to 0.04% of U.K. GDP, in spite of climate change. Why does Mr. Stern not share that information? But nowhere is the imbalance clearer than in Mr. Stern's central argument about the costs and benefits of action on climate change. The review tells us that we should make significant cuts in carbon emissions to stabilize the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 550 ppm (parts per million). Yet such a stark recommendation is not matched by an explicit explanation of what this would mean in terms of temperature. The U.N. Climate Panel estimates that stabilizing at 550 ppm would mean an increase in temperature of about 2.3 degrees Celsius in the year 2100. This might be several degrees below what would otherwise happen, but it might also be higher. Mr. Nordhaus estimates that the stabilization policy would reduce the rise in temperature from 2.53 degrees Celsius to just 2.42 degrees Celsius. One can understand the reluctance of the Stern review to advertise such a puny effect..." opinionjournal.com A Critique of the Stern Report cato.org A stern review of Stern "...From my brief glance, it seems like he uses two climate sensitivity distributions, one based on the 1.5-4.5C of Wigley and Raper (drawing on the IPCC TAR) and another higher range based on Murphy et al 2004. While he doesn't go as far as to use some of the rather silly pdfs that have been presented, he's clearly been strongly influenced by them, mentioning a 20% chance of climate sensitivity exceeding 5C a few times. Of course most of the exciting numbers being quoted from his report are those arising from the highest end of the higher range that he uses. I've said before and I'll say it again, it seems quite a hostage to fortune to base policy decisions entirely on stuff that we are all pretty confident will not happen..." "...On top of the high climate sensitivity range, Stern uses the rather extreme A2 scenario (and essentially describes it as "business as usual") for his projections, even though it is already clear even 5 years on that we are falling behind this emissions pathway..." julesandjames.blogspot.com Also see en.wikipedia.org