Results for “climate change” 362 found
What to do about climate change?
A new Cato study, by Indur Goklany, suggests that instead of carbon taxes we should spend money on better water policy, drought prevention, anti-malarials, sea level protection, and so on. In general we should make the world as wealthy as possible. Here is the link, the piece is intelligent throughout and well worth reading.
Two questions suggest themselves. First, is the choice either/or? I don’t see arguments against a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Second, is there really enthusiasm for the proposed measures or is the real intent to do little or nothing on carbon? Since this is both a Goklany piece and a Cato piece, an interesting question arises: who exactly is now obliged to push for anti-malarial foreign aid? Cato? Goklany? Either/or? Both? Or is it enough to just make the comparison once and leave it at that?
How are markets adjusting to climate change?
A loyal MR reader asks:
Are the markets adapting to the warmer world?…
# Are the prices of real estate in cooler areas of the world going up at the expense of the prices in warmer areas of the world?
# Is R&D money being invested in cheaper and more efficient cooling systems for buildings, cars, individual people?
# Are the shares of wine producers in the UK or Germany going up? As the south of the UK gets warmer, the quality of the wine should increase. What is happening to wines from regions where grapes won’t grow in the future?
# How about ski resorts? Would you start a new one now?
It is hard to specify the relevant comparison or "event study" (what should the price of a UK winery be?), but I haven’t heard of significant market price adjustments in secondary assets. This NYT article, about real estate price effects, is mostly speculative. Corn and ethanol prices are way up, so why not Canadian real estate? Most of all, the time horizon of many pending global climate changes might be thirty years or more, maybe a century. The claim of Nicholas Stern is that "we," standing in for the social welfare function, should care about the future more than markets do; evaluating that view, here are my posts on the social discount rate.
A few of you asked for posts on carbon taxes but that has been covered already. A carbon tax will work only with some probability, mostly because international cooperation may not be forthcoming. That means it is best to sub in a carbon tax for some other tax, in balanced budget fashion. Here is a more general post on global warming.
#This counts for at least two more in a series of 50. I’ll say I’m up to 30.
Addendum: Glen Whitman links to David Friedman.
John Kay on climate change
In the Financial Times today or on John’s website.
US President George W. Bush made four assertions: there are large uncertainties about the science and the economics; the Kyoto agreement would involve large costs and negligible benefits for the US; proposals to deal with greenhouse gas emissions that exclude developing countries are ineffective; and that research and development on new technologies should take priority over expenditure for meeting emissions reduction targets. It pains me to say it but on all points Mr Bush is right.
If we accept that the risk of a greenhouse effect is large enough to demand action, the question is: what sort of action?
Greenhouse gas emissions are cumulative; it seems likely that more good will come of stopping the flow entirely later than slightly slowing it now. If only the faddish short-term fixes (such as offshore wind farms) were likely to lead to longer-term solutions (such as nuclear fusion, or solar after three more decades of Moore’s Law-type progress) – we wouldn’t have to make difficult choices today.
Climate Change Change
I took my kids to see the dinosaurs in the Smithsonian yesterday. As I was wandering around, I came across a surprising exhibit on the ice age that noted the following:
Initiation of glacial conditions may be triggered by surprisingly rapid climate changes. Therefore, the minor global cooling trend of recent decades…is being carefully watched and studied. Already the effects on food production are severe in many parts of the world….We are now in a relatively warm period (“interglacial”) following one of several major glacial periods. It is not certain when the present interglacial period will end but…imagine the impact of another full scale glacial advance like that just a few thousand years ago!
Clearly, the Smithsonian needs to update some of its exhibits but when they do so I hope they note that the “scientific consensus” on global climate change has been much more variable than the climate.
The climate segment of the new bill
The bill aims to tackle global warming by using billions of dollars in tax incentives to ramp up wind, solar, geothermal, battery and other clean energy industries over the next decade. Companies would receive financial incentives to keep open nuclear plants that might have closed, or to capture emissions from industrial facilities and bury them underground before they can warm the planet. Car buyers with incomes below a certain level would receive a $7,500 tax credit to purchase a new electric vehicle and $4,000 for a used one. Americans would receive rebates to install heat pumps and make their homes more energy-efficient.
I would like to know more details, most of all about how things actually happen (for instance can they succeed in keeping the nuclear plants open?). At the very least I will reiterate my oft-repeated claim that the age of policy gridlock has been dead for some while. (And Congress just passed the Chips and Science Act.) Here is the full NYT story. I do hope to cover the new bill more as details come out, but in terms of broad sweep most of the basic ideas already have been analyzed on MR.
On the GDP-Temperature relationship and its relevance for climate damages
I have worried about related issues for some while, and now that someone has done the hard work I find the results disturbing and possibly significant:
Econometric models of temperature impacts on GDP are increasingly used to inform global warming damage assessments. But theory does not prescribe estimable forms of this relationship. By estimating 800 plausible specifications of the temperature-GDP relationship, we demonstrate that a wide variety of models are statistically indistinguishable in their out-of-sample performance, including models that exclude any temperature effect. This full set of models, however, implies a wide range of climate change impacts by 2100, yielding considerable model uncertainty. The uncertainty is greatest for models that specify effects of temperature on GDP growth that accumulate over time; the 95% confidence interval that accounts for both sampling and model uncertainty across the best-performing models ranges from 84% GDP losses to 359% gains. Models of GDP levels effects yield a much narrower distribution of GDP impacts centered around 1–3% losses, consistent with damage functions of major integrated assessment models. Further, models that incorporate lagged temperature effects are indicative of impacts on GDP levels rather than GDP growth. We identify statistically significant marginal effects of temperature on poor country GDP and agricultural production, but not rich country GDP, non-agricultural production, or GDP growth.
That is from Richard G Newell, Brian C. Prest, and Steven E. Sexton. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990
That is an older paper by the excellent Michael Kremer, worth keeping in mind, here is the abstract:
The nonrivalry of technology, as modeled in the endogenous growth literature, implies that high population spurs technological change. This paper constructs and empirically tests a model of long-run world population growth combining this implication with the Malthusian assumption that technology limits population. The model predicts that over most of history, the growth rate of population will be proportional to its level. Empirical tests support this prediction and show that historically, among societies with no possibility for technological contact, those with larger initial populations have had faster technological change and population growth.
This bears on my earlier Bloomberg column, today cited by Mike Lee, suggesting that having more children is likely to help out on the climate change issue.
Will the storms change public opinion?
Highlights
Individuals experiencing extreme weather activity more likely to support climate adaptation policy.
Effect of extreme weather activity on opinion is modest and not consistent across specific adaptation policies.
Effect of extreme weather activity on opinion diminishes over time.
Here is the paper, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Does Trump spell climate doom?
The Niskanen Center says no, Vox says yes. Bailey and Bookbinder at Niskanen:
…while the Clean Power Plan is a dead letter for reasons explained below, every other such executive action will be litigated and delayed. The environmental NGOs’ law departments are getting back into their 2003-2006 mode even as we write this. Not only were the great majority of similar Bush agency actions overturned by the courts, but the current makeup of both the D.C. Circuit and the other federal appellate courts are significantly more favorable to environmental litigants than they were a decade ago.
…getting rid of the CPP is not going to have much of an effect on steadily-declining power sector emissions. As EPA has indicated, the CPP would have little real impact on emission paths in the early years, as low gas prices and state renewable mandates have done most of the work already. There is no sign either will change soon and technology (e.g. LED streetlights) is driving electricity demand reductions in ways that will probably continue.
Trump’s reputed interest in freeing-up permitting of energy infrastructure (e.g., gas pipelines and drilling on public lands, if indeed it can be achieved) may have the paradoxical effect of further reducing emissions. It could make it easier to get currently very cheap Marcellus / Utica gas into the center of the country and perhaps even increase overall natural gas output. This can have only one outcome; reduced national gas prices overall and less coal consumption.
Roberts and Plumer at Vox:
You can see a partial list of past House Republican bills here. In 2013, they proposed cutting EPA funding by fully one-third. GOP committees churned out bill after bill to cut research funding for renewable energy by 50 percent, block rules on coal pollution, block rules on oil spills, block rules on pesticide spraying, accelerate oil and gas drilling permits on public land, prohibit funding for creation or expansion of wildlife refuges, cut funding for the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, and … well, there are 61 items on the list.
The Senate GOP isn’t far behind: In 2015, they floated a bill to cut the EPA’s budget by 9 percent and block rules on everything from ground-level ozone pollution to climate change. There may be a few more moderate GOP senators who think global warming is a problem, like Susan Collins (R-ME). But they do not dominate the caucus: Fossil-fuel enthusiasts like Mitch McConnell and James Inhofe do.
There’s no indication that Trump will buck his party on these issues.
Overall I am more persuaded by the Niskanen analysis, but both pieces are worth reading. Here is my earlier post on the same issues.
The ski resort that is Swiss (and sets its own exchange rate)
I hope Robert Mundell is proud:
The idyllic Swiss village of Grächen, flanked by better-known competitors Zermatt and Saas-Fee, has declared itself a financial microclimate, with constant exchange rate of 1.35 francs to the euro. The rate has been in place during winter months since 2011, and squarely ignores the official rate, which is currently closer to parity. It’s observed by the vast majority of hotels, shops, lift pass providers and restaurants—and has particularly paid off during the last two weeks. The only catch? You have to pay cash.
“In 2011, when the euro started falling during the eurozone crisis, bookings decreased rapidly for the winter season because it was just becoming too expensive for tourists, especially those from abroad,” explains Berno Stoffel, director at the tourism office in Grächen, which has less than 1,400 permanent residents and is almost exclusively economically dependent on farming and tourism. As the Swiss franc has soared, resorts in neighboring France, Austria and Germany – all in the eurozone – have become cheaper. “We had to do something so we decided to play central bank,” says Mr. Stoffel.
And so far it’s proved lucrative.
“I have heard from colleagues in other resorts that they have seen a huge number of holiday cancellations after the Swiss National Bank removed the currency floor, because it’s just become too expensive. We haven’t had a single cancellation on a holiday home or in a hotel due to the currency,” he says.
That is from Josie Cox at the WSJ. Here is a picture of the village.
How the Chinese view their own climate agreement
Both sides put out their joint statement, the U.S. issuing it via the White House and China releasing it through the official Xinhua News Agency. But whereas one side gave it a high gloss, the other seemed to be trying to bury it under the rug. The top story on the website affiliated with the Communist Party flagship paper The People’s Daily was about Xi and Obama meeting the press — but the article made no reference to the climate agreement. Other stories on the homepage touched on the climate statement but tended to relegate it to the latter half of the article, and omitted the American-style superlatives. The popular Beijing News, a state-run paper known for gently testing the editorial boundaries, also didn’t mention the climate deal in its Nov. 12 cover story on the APEC meeting that brought Obama to China. It focused instead on the meeting’s anti-corruption accord and progress on plans for a pan-Asian free trade zone spearheaded by China.
Here is one reason why:
Beijing is under fire domestically for its unsuccessful efforts to curb local air pollution, noting that people were furious that authorities managed to clear the air for the visiting APEC dignitaries but can’t do it on a daily basis for their own citizens. ” There may be worries that focusing on climate change rather than air pollution doesn’t meet the public’s main concerns,” Seligsohn said via email.
That is all from a good piece by Alexa Olesen at Foreign Policy.
Does a warm climate discourage economic output?
Geoffrey Heal and Jisung Park have a new paper “Feeling the Heat: Temperature, Physiology & the Wealth of Nations,” here is the abstract:
Does temperature affect economic performance? Has temperature always affected social welfare through its impact on physical and cognitive function? While many studies have explored the indirect links between climate and welfare (e.g. agricultural yield, violent conflict, or sea-level rise), few address the possibility of direct impacts operating through human physiology. This paper presents a model of labor supply under thermal stress, building on a longstanding physiological literature linking thermal stress to health and task performance. A key prediction is that effective labor supply – defined as a composite of labor hours, task performance, and effort – is decreasing in temperature deviations from the biological optimum. We use country-level panel data on population-weighted average temperature and income (1950-2005), to illustrate the potential magnitude of the effect. Using a fixed effects estimation strategy, we find that hotter-than-average years are associated with lower output per capita for already hot countries and higher output per capita for cold countries: approximately 3%-4% in both directions. We then use household data on air conditioning and heating expenditures from the US to provide further evidence in support of a physiologically based causal mechanism. This more direct causal link between climate and social welfare has important implications for both the economics of climate change and comparative development.
The NBER version is here, I do not otherwise see ungated access.
The decentralization of science, including climate science
If you would like takes on Climategate different from my own, here are Megan McArdle, Seth Roberts, and Clive Crook, plus I have mislaid a Bob Murphy post, maybe he can leave the link in the comments (it's here).
I am by no means an expert in climate science but I will explain in more detail why I would stress different issues. (Please do set me straight where I am wrong.) I see science, including climate science, as very much a decentralized process, based on the collective efforts of thousands of researchers. The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which has held up well. These results all point in broadly similar directions. Call me naive but, with apologies to Robert Sugden, I don't think many scientific results depend on what comes out of East Anglia, even if you include its emailing affiliates from Penn State and the like. Even very, very simple climate models generate many of the basic results.
It's correct to claim that East Anglia is a "central player" in climate change studies and that the IPCC looks to its estimates, as most sources report. It's no less important that other, competing models — in a competitive scientific framework — support similar perspectives. Here's a sentence from the unit's own account of its origins:
It is likely that CRU ranks only behind NCEP/NCAR, ECMWF (ERA-40) and NCDC as the acknowledged primary data source by climate scientists around the world.
In other words, it's not the only source. I simply don't think that all those other scientific units are controlled by people who hate capitalism, or SUVs, and wish to conspire to destroy them and succeed in faking and twisting the data. Or if you want to look outside the "conspiracy," consider this short bit:
“We knew about global warming long before you read about it in your newspapers,” says Niels Gundel, as he cocks his rifle and peers out across the water. He is speaking Greenlandic, with a tour guide acting as interpreter.
And:
I find myself grasping at reasons to be hopeful. The Arctic has been subject to some natural warming in the past: there was a brief heating in the Middle Ages. Couldn’t it be happening again? I couldn’t find a single scientist who said this was the primary cause. The warming in the past was localised, affecting only parts of the Arctic; this is affecting everywhere, all at once.
In the last two years I recall seeing numerous (distinct) new findings, all along the lines of "climate change may be accelerating," As far as I can tell, most of these new results do not rely on East Anglia per se.
I'm open to persuasion — I would love to think climate change is not a problem and sadly I don't think it's a problem we will succeed in solving – but so far I haven't seen the discussions of ClimateGate address these points in a manner which would change my mind.
The lessons of “Climategate”
I've had many readers emailing me, asking what I think of the "trove" of emails unearthed from climate change researchers. I'll admit I haven't read through the rather embarrassing revelations, I've only read a few media summaries and excerpts. I see a few lessons:
1. Do not criticize other people in emails or assume that your emails will remain confidential, especially if you are working on a politically controversial topic. Ask a lawyer about this, if need be. "Duh," they will say to you.
2. The Jacksonian mode of discourse, or mode of conduct for that matter, can do harm to your cause, especially if you are otherwise trying to claim the scientific high ground.
The substantive issues remains as they were. In Bayesian terms, if it turns out that many leading scientists do not practice numbers one and two, I am surprised that you are surprised. It's very often that the scientific consensus "sounds that way."
In other words, I don't think there's much here, although the episode should remind us of some common yet easily forgotten lessons.
I should add that this episode will seem very important to you, if you conceive of the matter in terms of the moral qualities of "us vs. them."
Addendum: Robin Hanson offers a similar opinion. I wrote my post before reading his, yet we come to the same conclusions I think.
My Markey-Waxman query repeated: what are the climate benefits of the bill?
Barkley Rosser, who is not held in the thrall of the Cato Institute, posts in the comments:
Maybe it's still early but this apparent gap in the literature is not encouraging. I'll repeat my query. What would be the climate benefits of this bill? If you want to cite an estimate involving strategic interdependencies with China and India, fine. But please cite something that puts forward and defends a particular estimate.
Is there a better case for this bill than: "it will raise government revenue, which I favor anyway, and raise the costs of unsavory corporations, which doesn't strike me as so terribly unjust anyway, and on the estimate of climate benefits I will just fudge it and hope for the best and claim we must do something?" David Frum comments.
Matt Yglesias has a different argument: better to start now than never.
I would phrase a related point more technically: acting now may be
keeping open a valuable option on doing more later. Still, I wish to
know what that option is worth, noting that if major action is impossible today it may be impossible tomorrow as well.
In the comments section of this post I'm not interested in being lectured about CO2 in the time of the trilobites, corrupt scientific groupthink, hearing that geo-engineering would be cheaper, or reading that various wimps won't face up to the need for nuclear power. I'm also not interested in hearing whether the costs of shifting to greener energy are high or low, at least not today. I just want to see the benefit estimates on this particular policy and if you put any serious estimate forward in due time I will assess it and report back to you.
Yes it is hard to model international interdependencies and option value — two of the major potential benefits — but we try to model such complexities for other policies all the time. Surely it's worth some group doing a 50-100 page study of what we can hope to achieve. Then we could see how plausible is the case for the bill.
If there is such a study, I promise I won't complain about the discount rate, I won't pretend that uncertainty militates in favor of inaction, and I won't dismiss it by saying a carbon tax would be better and then refusing to judge cap and trade vs. nothing. I want to see whether you need crazy or sensible judgments to get large aggregate benefits from proceeding.
Comments, of course, are open but subject to the above caveats. No trilobites!