"If The Uncertainties Are Not Small, Standard Cost–Benefit Analysis As Applied To The Economics Of Climate Change Becomes Incoherent"

Partha Dasgupta reviews Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, by Bjorn Lomborg (via email):

A challenge to Kyoto, by Partha Dasgupta, Nature: Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist created a sensation six years ago. The author offered figures to dismiss claims that the ecological-resource base in many parts of the world is deteriorating, and argued that the costs of reducing ecological losses are usually higher than the benefits. Never mind that several of the world's foremost environmental scientists expressed more than mere scepticism towards Lomborg's grasp of their science: prominent publications such as The Economist promoted the book vigorously... People learning of my own work in developing ecological economics would ask, "And have you read Lomborg?" — implying, "Why have you thrown away so much of your working life?"

Things have changed over the past year. Former US vice-president Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth and the Fourth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have given rise to great public concern, and many now regard global warming to be the central problem facing humanity. Lomborg's latest book, Cool It, is a response to that change in public perception. He doesn't question the science...; he questions whether we should do much about it. ...

The book is a series of exercises in cost–benefit analysis, interspersed with quotes on climate change from the writings of famous people who should know better than to speak in hyperboles. Lomborg produces figures to show that it would be better to replace the Kyoto Protocol with strategies that encourage economic growth and blunt the harmful effects of climate change. Here is a sample: did you say Kyoto would result in fewer floods? Maybe, but it would reduce flood damage by only US$45 million a year, whereas building appropriate infrastructure could lower it by $60 billion a year. Didn't you also say that global warming would cause additional deaths from heatwaves? Yes, but what about the greater numbers who would not die of cold? ... What about more severe hurricanes? Well, Kyoto would reduce the increased annual damage by only 0.6%, whereas taking better precautions could lower it by 250%. And so on.

Lomborg reports that Kyoto's annual cost would be $180 billion in foregone output, whereas the smart strategies he outlines ... would cost a mere $52 billion a year. By his reckoning, those strategies would limit the rise in concentration of carbon dioxide to 560 parts per million (p.p.m.) and the accompanying temperature rise to 4.7 °C. Smart strategies would cost far less than Kyoto, deliver higher economic growth worldwide, and markedly reduce poverty. From the vantage point of Kyoto, there is a free lunch to be had wherever you look. ...

All this is spelt out in such a breezy, engaging style, it's hard not to find the arguments entirely reasonable. Unfortunately, Lomborg's thesis is built on a deep misconception of Earth's system and of economics when applied to that system. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now 380 p.p.m., a figure ... in excess of the maximum reached during the past 600,000 years. If there is one truth about Earth we all should know, it's that the system is driven by interlocking, nonlinear processes running at different speeds. The transition to Lomborg's recommended concentration of 560 p.p.m. would involve crossing an unknown number of tipping points (or separatrices) in the global climate system. We have no data on the consequences if Earth were to cross those tipping points. They could be good, or they could be disastrous. Even if we did have data, they would probably be of little value because nature's processes are irreversible. One implication of the Earth system's deep nonlinearities is that estimates of climatic parameters based on observations from the recent past are unreliable for making forecasts about the state of the world at CO2 concentrations of 560 p.p.m. or higher. ...

These truths seem to escape Lomborg. His cost–benefit analysis involves only point estimates of variables..., implying that he believes we shouldn't buy insurance against potentially enormous losses resulting from climate change. ...

The integrated assessment models of Earth's system on which Lomborg builds his case are arbitrarily bounded on either side of his point estimates. It can be shown that if those bounds are removed (as they ought to be), even a small amount of uncertainty — when allied to only a moderate aversion to uncertainty — would imply that humanity should spend substantial amounts on insurance, even more than the 1– 2% of world output that has been advocated. If the uncertainties are not small, standard cost–benefit analysis as applied to the economics of climate change becomes incoherent, even if those uncertainties are judged to be thin-tailed (gaussian, for example); this is because the analysis would say that no matter how much humanity chooses to invest in protecting Earth from passing through those later tipping points, we should invest still more.

Economics helps us to realize what we are able to say about matters that will reveal themselves only in the distant future. Simultaneously, it helps us to realize the limits of what we are able to say. That, too, is worth knowing, for limits on what we are able to say are not a reason for inaction. Lomborg's seemingly persuasive economic calculations are a case of muddled concreteness.

Comments

[James Killus]

Does Bjorn have a probability for the loss of Florida and Louisiana to storms and sea level rise? I wonder what he thinks those things are worth.

Ah well, we could all just take to living on boats.

[ken melvin]

If the odds are one in 100 that the seas will raise 40 ft., a consequence that's going cost at least $100 zillion, then spending $1 zillion to preclude the catastrophe is in order.

[robertdfeinman]

I heard him being interviewed on the radio last week. If he believed in a flat earth he would be more believable. It seems pointless to refute his many errors. I'll only cite one.

One of his arguments had to do with Denmark installing wind turbines "too soon". The new ones are much more efficient, so waiting would have made more sense. He claims all the old ones will need to be torn down and replaced. (Why this is necessary, he didn't explain.)

Anyway what he was arguing was that we should wait until technology is perfected before we adopt it. This is a prescription to do nothing. Even if we think at some point in the future that it is now "perfected", how do we know it won't be more perfected the next day?

Technology evolves because people use what's available. They see what's wrong and how it can be improved and those who adopt it (even when it's not "perfected") fund future development.

I don't know how people like this get a platform. Is it just book publishers pushing a book or is there more to it? I understand that the talk shows like to have a guest who will be interesting, but they seem to invite anyone these days. (Not quite true, I haven't heard any get rich quick artists on pubic radio - yet.)

[Bruce Wilder]

I've been reading more and more on climate change, and I think people are really having difficulty getting their minds around the nature of the challenge/threat/risk. I include myself, especially. From an economic perspective, there's going to be a huge collective action problem, but the time frames are also remarkably long, and all the scientific uncertainty creates a further cloud of confusion.

I think Dasgupta did remarkably well here, in expressing some of the basic ideas, though he may have been too abstract, in references to separatrices. (You should realize that you are way too smart and way too mathematically competent, when you think calling something a separatrix is going to be a persuasive and enlightening metaphor!)

Groups like the IPCC struggle to explain the nature of the problem, and still explain it very poorly (imho). Al Gore's movie was excellent, but, with its emphasis on concrete events, like increased intensity of hurricanes or a rising sea level that drowns Manhatten and Florida, it also missed the mark, somewhat. Bastards like Lomborg exploit the uncertainty and the misplaced concreteness of scenarios of drowning polar bears, increased flooding, rising sea levels and the like, to suggest that mitigation and muddling through will work just fine.

The truth is that the next 2-3 degrees of warming will probably not do huge net damage to the human habitability of the planet. There may actually be gains to offset losses, and mitigation measures will be feasible to repair or minimize the damage.

It is what happens after 2-3 degrees of Celsius of warming, when we cross some tipping point, about which we may be only guessing at this time. No one may yet have fully anticipated the specific event or process or interaction, which will mark this "separatrix", this tipping point. It is unlikely to be a mere rise in sea level (though that may figure as a consequence).

Once we cross that tipping point, whatever it is, the ability of humans to control climate change may slip away. Policy analysis goes from incoherant to hopeless, as nature takes over. Lots of tipping point processes are under discussion, like an interruption in the flow of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, or like a prolonged drought killing the Amazon rain forest or the Siberian permafrost thawing, releasing unimaginably vast quantities of methane from the peat that covers northeastern Russia. (Yes, life on earth might well end not in fire or ice, but a huge, natural fart. Gross, but possibly true ;) One tipping point might be something as simple as a pace of climate change, for as little as a decade, that outruns the ability of climate zone ecology bands to migrate northward or toward higher elevations. Trying to identify these possible tipping points leads to a lot of lurid (and dare I say, perversely entertaining) speculation. Any one scenario is speculative, and, in our ignorance, may be assigned a low Bayesian probability. Lomborg and his ilk roll their eyes at these Hollywood screenplays, but they fail to recognize that, although any one of these scenarios may be properly assigned a low Bayesian probability, the probability of "some" scenario rises rapidly from very low at under 2 degrees of temperature change to something very close to 1 -- to certainty -- at temperature changes of greater than 3 degrees celsius. The IPCC midpoint estimate of 4.7 degrees by the end of the century might well take the planet beyond the point of no return.

This all becomes very tricky for policy advisors and policy makers to articulate and respond to. We don't know what the tipping points are, exactly, or when we will cross them, but it is wrong to confuse uncertainty about what those tipping points are, with uncertainty about whether there are tipping points.

Very, very long-term paleoclimate research is absolutely clear: the earth's climate tends toward rough equilibria, and negative feedback processes apparently compensate for and "resist" modest and transitory forcings. But, when the earth's climate is forced far enough away from its equilibrium, positive feedback processes can take over, and the climate changes to a radically different equilibrium. Fluctuations in a narrow band of a few degrees can go on for a long time. But, beyond that, the available equilibria are not continuous. The earth's climate can, and has, tipped in extremely rapid change to a something completely different, triggering mass extinction of species.

The very modest pace of climate change in the 20th century, and the relative ease of mitigation measures needed in the immediate future (next 20-50 years), may be extremely misleading.

Climate change in the 20th century, for a variety of poorly understood reasons, did not amount to much, but the pace of change has accelerated markedly in this decade. You can see this in the range of IPCC projections. The mid-point of these projections constitute essentially a kind of trend-line extended from 20th century experience. Actual 21st century experience is tracking the extreme high of the IPCC projection range. Sudden acceleration of climate change may turn out to be a good thing, in terms of jump-starting political action, but it is also scary.

In our optimism about technological progress, it would be easy to assume that generations hence will have the capacity to cope with whatever climate processes we set in motion, just like we can abate poisoning from lead in gasoline or asbestos in ceiling tile.

We can debate whether it is worth it to spend 1% of 2% of current GDP to take even half-measures that might "benefit" future generations, but that misframes the problem. The critical risk is that we may not restrain ourselves enough to leave them, and most of the rest of life on the planet, a reasonable chance of survival.

[James Killus]

I will add a point to BW's summary: we may have already crossed a tipping point. We simply have no way to tell.

The climate system certainly has substantial delays built into it. Glaciers are currently melting; is that an rapid equilibrium process? No, it is not. We do not know how great a long term sea level rise would be associated with the current level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, much less some hypothetical future.

Robert is actually much too kind to Lomborg's "we should spend the money more wisely" argument. The fact is that denialists are not going to be spending the money on better technology in the future, or on fighting hunger, or ridding the world of tropical diseases. It is going to be spent on huge payouts to the CEO of Exxon, wars in the Middle East, and gated communities to keep out the rabble. Lomborg is the shill in the shell game on the street corner; he gets the book deals and the talk show interviews because the guys running the game have already let him know which shell to pick, and they are telling everyone how smart he is to have found the pea.

[RW]

Lomborg, an individual of obviously limited scientific and ethical background, apparently saw a chance to gain fame and make money and took it. It is another testament to the power of the corporate, conservative media machine that he has any credibility at all but regardless he is not an environmental scientist, has no credibility in the field, and his errors have long since transcended the merely egregious to become truly legion, to the point that the biologist, Kåre Fog of Denmark, has dedicated a site at http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/ to cataloging them and the techniques used by Lomborg to promulgate them.

Don't read too much at a time though or you'll risk losing hope in the ability of humanity to even understand, much less cope with and survive, the world as it is rather than what the powerful or delusional wish us to believe it is; greed and psychosis apparently both like company.

[JF]

Well I gather from the comments posted so far that everyone seems to agree that recent global warming is man-made. This furthers my opinion that the entire global warming debate has degenerated into more of a religion than a true debate regarding science. There is a tremendous amount of debate, both pro and con on whether global warming is caused by the activities of man. I often attempt to have a scientific debate on this topic with supposed scientists, but have a very difficult time as the entire topic has become entirely political.

And I mean, come on, anyone who look to Al Gore as some sort of authority on Global Warming must be smoking something. If I have a political question, I would certainly look to him since he is after all, a politician. But I would no more look to Al Gore on a question of global warming than would I be inclined to ask him his thoughts on nuclear fussion or open heart surgery.

Now I'm sure after reading this comment, some readers may question my motives, but I can assure you that I have no vested interest in this debate. Actually, I do have an interest to know what the truth is as I have much to lose if man-made global warming is indeed a reality. I suppose I'm no different from most of the population in this respect, especially those of us living at an elevation of 20 feet ABS or less.

My attempts to have anything resembling a straight forward and scientific discussion on the global warming topic has been incredibly frustrating. I'll give you an example of what I mean. One of the cornerstones of the global warming debate centers on the interaction of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the tempuratures of the world's oceans. A very natural hypothesis has been promulgated by those who believe in man-made global warming that increased levels of CO2 are causing increases in tempurature, including the tempurature of the world's oceans. That is a very logical theory/conclusion and one that may very well be correct. However, it is also a scientific fact that CO2 disolves easily in water. It is also well known that the world's oceans contain an incredible amount of disolved CO2. It is also a scientific fact that the amount of CO2 that disolves in water is inversely related to tempurature. So an alternative hypothesis to man-made global warming is that the atmosphere could be warming from some natural cause and that would therefore increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In otherwords, higher tempuratures drive increasing CO2 levels, instead of the other way around.

When I ask this question to the so called experts, all I get is...silence....followed by more political blather. Is this what this society is coming to? A bunch of political B.S.?

And if some fool out there comes back and tells me something like "Gee don't you know that the majority of NASA scientists agree in made-made global warming, bla bla bla" I'll blow a gasket. That's like saying the majority of army officers think we'll win in Iraq. I mean, no kidding! Scientists who work for NASA are looking for more grant money and what better than global warming to get that funding going.

[Meh]

Um, JF, your hypothesis would involve a measurable decrease in the CO2 dissolved in ocean water, but the measurements have been made and no such decrease has been found...

[reason]

as Meh says plus the relative alkalinity of the oceans is DECREASING (the implication of the CO2 from the ocean hypothesis is that the relative alkalinity of the ocean would increase - dissolved C02 being acidic).

I'll put my usual oar in here and raise two question:

1. What makes him think dollar amounts are useful units in these questions? (And how actually does he know that the dollar COST of individuals and firms meeting emissions standard, translates to a dollar cost in GNP growth? One man's cost is another man's income.) i.e The money illusion argument.

2. We have enormous political difficulty combating inequality within countries, even more difficulty combating it between countries, why in hell doesn't anybody understand the political problems that global warming will cause. Some people will lose and some people will win from global warming - don't think it is straight forward to get the winners to compensate the losers. There is going to be conflict - costly conflict!

[Cyrille]

Ahem...

-measurement in the atmosphere show that the isotopes from man-produced CO2 now had a MUCH increased concentration. So it can't be from the oceans.

-since humanity produce far more CO2 than the planet can absorb, if you believe it comes from the oceans, where did the man-made CO2 go?

-in this particular climate modification, temperature changes are FOLLOWING CO2 increases (they are a few decades behind -consistent with the physics of it). So they can't be the cause of the release!

-when a scientist quickly refutes a story that is obvously false, that does not mean the issue is too political for a scientific discussion, that means the story is obviously false.
When the same scientist has had to do the same for 20 years (I saw a conclusive proof of the global warming effect in 1988), with many stories that were planted in order to promote the illusion of a genuine controversy while the science is about as conclusive as that for proving that it's the earth spinning around the sun, you should understand if he occasionally feels it's a waste of time.

-there are other gas with a heat retention effect, that are not produced naturally at all. Everytime you refill the fluid in a fridge or air-conditioning (or when it gets dismantled), that means a gas with a MUCH MUCH higher heat retention effect than CO2 has been released. Are they a product of the ocean because of higher temperatures too?

We are way beyond the diagnosis of whether global warming is for real. Trying to bring it back to that stage all the time is a terrible sin to those who will suffer from it. All those delays are just making it worse as the cost to mitigate, once very modest, will keep growing fast.

Already the question no longer is whethet we can avoid a catastrophe, but the magnitude of the catastrophe. +2 celsius IS a catastrophe in itself, especially in such a short period of time (at least 400 millions refugees, mass extinctions, most of Africa uninhabitable, the whole Greenland icecap melting in the long run as well as much of Antarctica ...). You don't want to know what +5 could do.

[Ralph Sylvestersen]

Something’s rotten (even) in the state of Denmark

Bjorn Lomborg seems to appear on the scene as an errand boy for the new Janus approach of Denmark.

Denmark, well known for its leading role in development and use of wind energy – yes, as a matter of fact, until recently a world leader in that field - now also has become a world leader in air pollution.

How did it come about, that a Scandinavian country shifted from being an invocative leading sustainable developer to an extremely high contributor of greenhouse gases [GHG]?

Denmark, with an annual growth rate of 12, 7% in primary energy consumption of fossil fuels in 2006, now has the highest rate of energy growth among OECD members’ countries – even higher than the growth rate in China (8, 4%). Add thereto, the GHG-emissions from the Danish International Shipping Industry [DISI] – which now owns and manages a fleet with a gross tonnage of approximately 50 million - equal to ca. 10 percent of the entire world fleet (and with a heavy segment of high-speed container vessels, (Maersk-Line etc.)). In 2006 DISI consumed about 40 million tons of heavy marine bunker oil – more than twice of the country’s entire domestic energy consumption (total domestic fossil fuel consumption 2006: 19, 5 mill. tons oil equivalent, according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007)

To Denmark, that gives a yearly consumption rate of 11 tons fossil fuel/capita and a corresponding emission rate of 32, 5 tons CO2/capita – far beyond the figures from US.

So, The Kingdom of Denmark, which ironically embraces Greenland, has as a world leader in air pollution sent a messenger to play down the consequences of the global warming.

[ken melvin]

Thanks Cyrille. Ralph, the shipping is separate Denmark. It would occur no matter who owned the ships.

[Cyrille]

Besides, even if global warming was not man-induced, I fail to see how that would change anything to the desirability of fighting it. Next time there is an epidemy of plague, should we just sit and watch?

[Alex Tolley]

JF: You are a "useful idiot" for the GW deniers. There is no "tremendous amount of debate", consensus amongst the climate scientists is far wider than those working at NASA and has nothing to do with looking for grant money. You have spouted several of the misleading stories promulgated by GW deniers to create a smokescreen.

We are long past the time of doubting that GW exists, that is driven primarily by the release of CO2 which has come from burning fossil fuels. The only serious scientific debate is how far and fast GW will progress.

Why you don't even think that just MAYBE vested interested like ExxonMobil have far more to lose and have funded many of the GW "skeptics" is beyond me.

Although I haven't read "Cool it", I have read several articles by Lomberg covering his ideas of reallocating resources away from GW mitigation and they are full of holes. For example, he picks up on the damage caused by hurricanes (which he agrees could get worse as GW increases) and suggests that we would be better off forcing people to buy insurance and moving away from the coast. What he conveniently overlooks is the accompanying rising sea levels that will be extremely difficult and expensive to keep back with dykes around major coastal cities, not to mention that the rest of the world will have to live with the consequences.

The right wing talk show hosts frequently propagate these silly stories. I recently heard Rush Limbaugh suggest that since he had read that California had "cooled" due to irrigation, that Californians should just use more water and irrigate their gardens to counteract GW effects. Where we are supposed to get that water, especially as GW will be making the state drier with smaller Sierra snowpacks is beyond me, and typical of the stupidities mouthed by GW deniers.

[Ralph Sylvestersen]

Ken Melvin

You are probably right, emission from shipping occurs no matter of flag - but Denmark has, as other annex I parties to the Kyoto protocol an obligation to pursue limitation or reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol from marine bunker fuels, working through the the International Maritime Organization .

[anne]

Ralph Sylvestersen, please explain why Denmark would have changed in environmental approach or approach to policy on climate change. What would be driving the change, as opposed to, say, Norway or Sweden or Finland. I have thought something was curious about Denmark's current governing policies but know too little to even know if I am correct.

[anne]

Denmark's current government has struck me as curiously harsh on international affairs as well as on enviornmental policy. But, if this is so, why should this be so?

[ken melvin]

For the useful idiot:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6994760.stm

[Gerard MacDonell]

Does Lomborg concede that the points he raised six years ago were wrong before moving on to explaining why their being wrong does not matter?

[anne]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/esa-swl091407.php

September 14, 2007

Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable....

[Oops.]

[Mike M.]

This is one of those far left hate sites, isn't it? So how's all that anger and ad hominem attacks and suppression of dissent working for you? Swinging a lot of public opinion your way, is it? Ya know, that's how I've always thought scientific debate should be conducted: smear any opponent as scum of the earth, dedicated to man's destruction. Why not just kill him and any other loud mouth denier? After all, it's the end of the world we're talking about here, right? C'mon, you're just the type of guys for the job. I can just see your daydreams, Capitalists and Christians, hanging from nooses across the land.

[nick]

I haven't looked at the Danish numbers, but my experience is you really have to dig fairly deep to figure out what's going on.

Example: Last year, greenhouse gas emissions of the Netherlands were 3 percent below the 1990 level, which is halfway towards the Kyoto target. Sounds good. But while electricity consumption was up, Dutch electricity production was down, thus reducing CO2 emissions. The Dutch simply imported electricity -- much of it likely from coal-fired plants in Germany and nuclear reactors in France --, shifting at least part of their emissions abroad.

[James Wimberley]

The Danes, because they started early on wind energy, have I believe already begun replacing the first installations (naturally installed in the best sites).
Lomborg's "never be a pioneer" logic is the reasoning of the banker not a responsible policy analyst.

[german_reader]

I've never understood those, who focus entirely on climate change. Nobody can know with 100% security, if there is a climate change, if it's man made or natural and how the consequences for single countries will be. I think the arguments of those, who believe in climate change are quiet good. But I personally wouldn't exclude completely the possibility that the climatic events we can observe are temporary, could have natural causes or have less dramatic consequences than predicted. There's always a significant share of insecurity in theories that try to explain such complex phenomenons. And I can perfectly understand those, who have doubts.

But that's not my point. My objection would be that the environmental policies, we need to address climate change, are essentially the same as those, necessary to manage other challenges, which are much more certain. Why not catch several flies with one hit?

Saving energy, finding alternatives to fossil energies like oil and gas or reducing the consumption of natural resources in general, are not only a reasonable way to respond to a possible climate change. They are also a good possibilty to handle the threats that arise from Peak Oil, overpopulation or the ascent of new economic giants like Brazil, Russia, India or China. And they are a good opportunity to reduce the dependency of Western nations from insecure providers such as Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Russia or Iraq. An argument even hardcore conservatives like George Bush seem to understand.

World population could reach 9 billion at the end of the century. The population of the US could grow to 750 million or more until 2100. Many scientists are convinced that the world population is already to large to allow all people - without dramatic changes in production and consumption - the same standard of living as the existing industrialized countries. Pessimistic observers see the sustainable level of population for the US in the range of 300 million ( with the current consumption habits ), a number it has reached now.

Future generations of human beings, and many people already living, will not be able to enjoy a comparable level of wealth without serious changes in economic structures, consumption habits, energy production or the use of natural resources. And the coming scarcity of natural resources could lead to violent conflicts that may cost the industrialized world much more ( in the financial and non-financial sense ) than an early orientation of our economies towards possible challenges like climate change.

Doing nothing could be much more expensive than acting premature. The difficulties to develop our economies could take a lot more time than is now foreseeable. And the point of no-return could be reached must faster than many believe.

Moreover the step towards sustainable technologies could be a great boost for many economies, creating new jobs and new income. An argument even clima-sceptics might understand. Green technology for example could employ more than 1 million in a country like Germany in 2020 - compared to 700,000 in the car industry nowadays. Another good reason to support climate/evironment friendly policies.

So why not fight climate change and resolve ( hopefully ) many other problems at the same time?

Doing it would be a very complex task, which requires the consideration of many different factors. The example of Denmark shows that concentrating on a single issue, a single sector of the economy is not enough. What we need are coordinated attempts to address the basic problems of the current global economic system. Without international cooporation neither climate change nor any of the other fundamental challenges will be soluble.

[ken melvin]

g_r, good and well said.

[johne]

JF, those grant-obsessed NASA scientists should get on board -- didn't they hear the famous NPR interview in which their boss expressed his doubts (at least) about global warming? Or they could go private, where global warming deniers don't seem to lack for funds.
And I assume Mike M. is being satirical.

[johne]

JF, those grant-obsessed NASA scientists should get on board -- didn't they hear the famous NPR interview in which their boss expressed his doubts (at least) about global warming? Or they could go private, where global warming deniers don't seem to lack for funds.
And I assume Mike M. is being satirical.

[James Killus]

Thank god we have folks like Mike M. to show us how to respond to ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments.

german_reader,
It's quite true that there is abundant "low hanging fruit" on the matter of energy policy, climate change, population policy, and many other matters. Simply ceasing to subsidize carbon intensive extractive industries (especially through military action) would be a big plus.

But (gad, I hate to be so predictable, but the "But" was so obviously coming), there are vital issues and there are vital issues. I spent many years in environmental research, with some effect on policy, but everything I ever worked on pales before the sorts of environmental changes that greenhouse warming has the potential to unleash.

You write, "...I personally wouldn't exclude completely the possibility that the climatic events we can observe are temporary, could have natural causes or have less dramatic consequences than predicted," and I have seen the same thing written so many, many times by both well-meaning and sensible people, and also by paid denialist shills and hacks. What I seldom see discussed is the flip side: that it's entirely possible (and, indeed, seems more likely with each passing year) that the consequences may be more dramatic than predicted. If I were to mention the possibility of hurricanes that develop supersonic wind speeds, I would be denounced as a radical fear-monger, yet such things are not scientifically impossible. A "runaway greenhouse effect" similar to what is seen on Venus is very, very, unlikely for the Earth, but it is more likely than the "it all came from the oceans" theory that is presented above.

One the other hand, absent a change from "business as usual" a near total melting of the polar ice caps is inevitable. It has happened before, and it will certainly happen again if the human race burns all the available fossil fuels without some sort of mitigation technology. What we don't know is when. This sort of "uncertainty" is what we are dealing with.

It won't happen within my lifetime, and almost certainly not within the lifetime of anyone now alive. Is that okay?

For myself, I do not think it is okay, no matter when it happens, and I also believe that any attempts to minimize or trivialize the stakes are wrong-headed. If the ice caps melt, it will represent the most significant global event in human history. Do we care about future generations as a whole, or is the point just to amass enough wealth so that one's own descendents will be the king beetles on the dung heap?

[german_reader]

@James Killus,

read all of my post ( even, if it's boring ):

"And the point of no-return could be reached must faster than many believe."

I think we have no dissent. The consequences of climate change could be much more dramatic than predicted ( for example a breakdown of the gulfstream ) and they could come much faster than many foresee.

My main argument was not that we should wait until the signs become clearer ( and the situation perhaps runs out of control ). My argument was that we should use a flexible strategy to convince climate change sceptics or enthusiastic believers of industrial progress.

If you concentrate your argumentation on climate change alone, you become vulnerable. It's always a good strategy to have several other arguments in the backhand. For example Peak Oil, overpopulation or the rise of new industrial giants like India or China. And it's normally easier to convince somebody with a different opinion, if you argue in his own categories: Green technology can create a lot of new jobs, we can make our countries more independent from insecure providers such as Iran, Iraq or Russia, the costs of doing nothing would be much higher than acting now, we can lower the burdens for our children and grandchildren and so on.

Try to anticipate their arguments and find an answer. Than your chances to have success with your argumentation will be much better. That's the only thing, I wanted to say. May be I was to diplomatic.

[James Killus]

german_reader,

My concern about having "many arguments" is that often this leads to a morass of policy disputes. Or, to use an analogy from the literary marketplace, one might think that a science fiction mystery romance would sell very well to science fiction readers, mystery readers, and romance readers, but in practice, it only sells to those who are all three.

In my experience, global warming denialists love to change the subject to something else and then haggle forever on irrelevant details. Indeed, that seems to be Lomborg's primary tactic.

In any case, I am entirely willing for the more diplomatic folks such as yourself to play "good cop," as I am (obviously) more naturally suited to play "bad cop." And to maintain the illusion that we are not in cahoots, sometimes we must argue with each other.

[John Morrison]

The runaway Greenhouse effect on Venus was caused by Venus's long solar day -- 117 Earth days -- with a secondary cause of Venus's being almost 30% closer to the sun than Earth. The long solar day meant (early in Venus's history, when Venus was much more Earth-like) that every day, it got much hotter before cooling down in the evening. Carbon bottled in the planet was released because of the heat, becoming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas, and increased carbon dioxide reduced the planet's ability to cool off. This increased the temperature further, increasing the amount and rate at which bottled-up carbon was released. This was an example of positive feedback, furthering the process.

The consequences of a positive feedback loop are often runaway -- rapid, exponential -- until something crashes into a hard limit. On Venus, the result was an atmosphere with ninety times Earth's pressure. I have no idea what the doubling time of the exponential phase was..

Until a couple years ago, I viewed the prospect of a runaway greenhouse effect leading to another Venus as sufficiently remote to disregard. Then I learned that for the previous couple of years, the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide had doubled from earlier years.

I still believe that the prospect of Earth becoming another Venus is remote, but remote enough to disregard? In any case, the doubling time of the exponential phase has to be far longer than on Venus.

[Joe Duck]

It can be shown that if those bounds are removed (as they ought to be), even a small amount of uncertainty — when allied to only a moderate aversion to uncertainty — would imply that humanity should spend substantial amounts on insurance, even more than the 1– 2% of world output that has been advocated.

But isn't it true that the studies that show this are few compared to those that would agree that the long tail likelihoods are small? The cost of catastrophe is enormous but the *likelihood* of catastrophe is extremely small - it balances out to suggest we should apply moderate rather than, say mitigation that would cost 2% of GDP.