By Institute for Energy Research ——Bio and Archives--May 3, 2017
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Even using the worst case IPCC concentration pathway, and using the biggest damages from the IPCC's table of published estimates of the amount of global warming in question, we saw that both in 2050 and 2100, the IPCC's own estimate of the economic cost of compliance with the policy goal [of limiting warming to 2°C] was greater than the estimate of the climate change damages from "doing nothing."
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However it's done, how ambitious should an emissions reduction program be? There's an international consensus that we should aim to limit the temperature rise to 2°C; sure enough, Nordhaus goes into full debunking mode here: "The scientific rationale for the 2°C target is not really very scientific." Instead, he argues for cost-benefit analysis--but this leads him to an only slightly higher target: his best estimate of the optimal climate policy if done right would limit the temperature rise to 2.3°C. The qualifier "if done right" is important. Stabilizing temperature rise in the 2‚Äì3 degree range already requires very large reductions in CO2 emissions, albeit reductions that Nordhaus (and just about all serious energy economists) believe can be achieved at only moderate cost, given sufficient lead time. But what if some major nations refuse to participate in the effort? What if domestic policy is poorly designed, so that the costs of emission reductions are higher than they should be? In such cases, Nordhaus concludes, the target temperature should be considerably higher, possibly close to 4°C. [Paul Krugman, bold added.]To be sure, Krugman goes on to say that he disagrees with Nordhaus on this matter. But Paul Krugman is not a pioneer in the field, and he hasn't spent decades developing a peer-reviewed model that was one of three selected by the Obama Working Group to estimate the harm of carbon dioxide emissions. William Nordhaus was, and William Nordhaus is saying that the popular 2°C target "is not really very scientific." I sure hope those who marched for science will take seriously the input from one of the most respected authorities on the planet. To make the case that governments should intervene to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it's not enough to list a bunch of potentially bad things that could happen from "business as usual." There are serious scholars in the field of economic science who are using the state-of-the-art modeling to argue that popular climate goals will hurt humanity more than they will help. When so many environmental activists glibly dismiss these warnings, it leads me to suspect that the "refusal to follow the science" is more widespread than these marchers realize.
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The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.