Dec 18, 2018 at 2:58 PM | Phil Clarke

I do detect that Phil Clarke (Economics) has substituted for the usual Phil Clarke.

As M Courtney correctly points out, real world evidence (science and economics) proves that assumptions based on false assumptions have a poor chance of being accurate. Economics based on Climate Science is doomed to failure as Skeptical Science and Guardian experts and contributors keep proving.

With some notable exceptions, including those on this Blog, I find the Socialist addiction to Climate Science anti-social, and a crime against humanity.

I picked their worst-case scenario to give you the best chance of demonstrating that mitigation is worthwhile. If the worst-case isn't worth countering then nor are all the others

The report makes the case that mitigation is worthwhile. The 2011 update could not have been clearer:

The modelling showed that the growth rate for Australian national income in the second half of the 21st century would be higher at the end of the century with mitigation than without

Seems to me arguing that this is not an economic case for mitigation is akin to arguing black is white.

OK, I should have said "we haven’t had 1° of warming since 1990" not "we haven’t had 1° of warming since the Millennium". But that is even worse for your argument. Think it through.

You were assessing progress against a 110-year target, thinking it was 100 years. Think it through. The 'no mitigation' scenario used by Garnaut was SRES A1F1 which shows +0.55C rise in global temperatures by 2020 relative to 1990. NASA GISTEMP shows exactly this rise to date, HADCRUT4 about 0.48C. Not exactly 'science fiction', then.

And we have had no mitigation. 

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme covers half the population of the developed world, and has reduced emissions even as GDP increased. It is not enough, but it is not nothing.

But how much poorer will people today be by wasting resources on mitigation? You’re still advocating a regressive tax on the poor of today so as the rich of tomorrow can be bit richer. It’s immoral.

I mentioned no specific tax, there are revenue-neutral options that are interesting. The economic case is that resources allocated to mitigation are not wasted, they reduce the economic damage of climate change (with a welcome co-benefit of reduced air pollution), to the benefit of everyone. And the amount of resources required is not that large

You have not found a paper that says mitigating climate change is cheaper than adapting to it.

I have cited several, Grant McDermott has a nice synthesis here of the costs of climate change. (especially Fig 3.)

And the cost of mitigation, according to the IPCC:

Under these assumptions, mitigation scenarios that reach atmospheric concentrations of about 450ppm CO2eq by 2100 entail losses in global consumption—not including benefits of reduced climate change as well as co‐ benefits and adverse side‐effects of mitigation of 1% to 4% (median: 1.7%) in 2030, 2% to 6% (median: 3.4%) in 2050, and 3% to 11% (median: 4.8%) in 2100 relative to consumption in baseline scenarios that grows anywhere from 300% to more than 900% over the century. These numbers correspond to an annualized reduction of consumption growth by 0.04 to 0.14 (median: 0.06) percentage points over the century relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year.

Insignificant really. In purely economic terms, mitigation is perhaps the best value deal you will ever be offered.

M Courtney

I share your left-wing views, just not your belief in Corbyn :-)

It is curious, then, to find a right-winger like Nigel Lawson, in his book "An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming" deal rather well (IMO) with the issues you're debating with Phil just now.

I find it troubling to be on the same side of any debate as Lawson, but it just goes to show that each argument should be viewed on its merits, and not be dismissed simply because one disapproves of the person making it.

Needless to say, the Wikipedia entry for the book concludes by quoting the criticisms of it, under the heading "Scientific opinion", as if that renders his argument wrong without more ado:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Appeal_to_Reason

"golf charlie, all my arguments on this thread have been socialist - biased towards the poor against capital.
Dec 18, 2018 at 8:05 PM | M Courtney"

I know! I do not share your belief in Corbyn, but I too have always argued against the social injustice of corrupted Climate Science, inflicted on a worldwide scale, by those who can afford to, with other people's money.

I am, on balance, to the right of centre.

M Courtney, are you familiar with the Brandt Report from 1980?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandt_Report
"The Brandt Report suggests primarily that a great chasm in standard of living exists along the North-South divide and there should therefore be a large transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. The countries North of the divide are extremely wealthy due to their successful trade in manufactured goods, whereas the countries South of the divide suffer poverty due to their trade in intermediate goods, where the export incomes are low."

The Paris Climate fiasco seems to have objectives that match Brandt's. But Brandt did not mention condemning the poorest to die by denying them the opportunities to improve their lives.

"Infrastructure is not permanent. It needs maintenance. It needs replacement. As you have to replace it anyway the cost of adaptation is largely built in to society already. Any mitigation costs are additional."
Dec 18, 2018 at 8:12 AM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

A point well made, and probably more succinctly than I have tried to do on previous occasions.
If sea level rise accelerated enormously to, say, one metre per century, it would still be largely irrelevant to most people living or working close to sea level because all the existing buildings will be knocked down and re-built at least once anyway in the intervening years.

And if they wanted to, local governments could insist that new buildings are constructed on a base a few inches higher than previously if they thought it really might be a problem. The price of water-front property, worldwide, indicates that nobody considers it to be a problem. Insurance companies should have their eye on this ball even more so. If the risk to water-front properties was rapidly increasing then this would be reflected in premiums. Of course an insurance company would like to make easy money out of a scare story, but there is no evidence that they can yet do so (or at least, no more than they did previously :) ).

So why should we adopt scenario S1 which makes the poor poorer just so as the rich can be richer? It's unjust. There is no economic benefit to the poorest in mitigation. And therefore no net benefit as the poorest (the real people today) are most vulnerable.

Alice through the Looking Glass. What is special about a carbon tax (to quote the most widely suggested option) that makes the 'poor poorer', that differentiates it from revenue raised for other purposes? One proposal is a revenue neutral carbon tax, sometimes named 'fee and dividend', a version of which was implemented in British Columbia, which either returns revenue to taxpayers or uses it to reduce other taxes, this actually benefits most those who consume the least.

A common theme amongst the papers I have pointed to is that it is the poorer, less developed countries will be affected disproportionately by the impacts of climate change. Alice again.

Upthread this claim was made :

there are no studies that find that mitigating climate change is cheaper than adapting to it.

I did not realise when reading it that the actual claim being made was that no such studies exist once I have interpreted them in my own unique, completely unsupported way

As I have demonstrated, there are numerous such studies, authors include a Yale professor awarded the Nobel prize for his work on climate economics. Again, the truth is the opposite of the claim, what genuinely does not exist is any study that makes the economic case for inaction.

Repeating myself is tedious, so, for the last time, a summary of expert economic opinion

We designed a 15-question online survey with questions focused on climate change risks, economic damage estimates, and policy responses. We invited the 1,103 experts who met our selection criteria to participate, and we received 365 completed surveys. The survey data revealed several key findings:

• Experts on the economics of climate change expressed higher levels of concern about climate change impacts than the general public, when asked identical survey questions.

• Economic experts believe that climate change will begin to have a net negative impact on the global economy very soon – the median estimate was “by 2025,” with 41% saying that climate change is already negatively affecting the economy.

• Respondents believe that numerous sectors of the U.S. economy will be harmed by climate change. A majority predicted negative impacts on agriculture (94%), fishing (78%), utilities (electricity, water, sanitation – 74%), forestry (73%), tourism/outdoor recreation (72%), insurance (66%), and health services (54%).

• More than three-quarters of respondents believe that climate change will have a long-term, negative impact on the growth rate of the global economy.

• More than 80% of experts believe that the United States may be able to strategically induce other nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by first adopting policies to reduce U.S. emissions.

• Respondents overwhelmingly support unilateral emissions reduction commitments by the United States, regardless of the actions other nations have taken (77% chose this option over alternatives such as committing only if multilateral agreements are reached).

• The vast majority (75%) of respondents believe that the most economically efficient way for states to comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan” carbon regulations is through “market-based mechanisms coordinated at a regional or national level (such as a regional/national trading program or carbon tax).”

• The discounting approach that the U.S. government currently uses to analyze climate regulations and other policies – a constant discount rate calibrated to market rates – was identified by experts as the least desirable approach for setting discount rates in the context of climate policies. Nearly half (46%) of respondents favored an approach that featured declining discount rates, while 44% favored using rates calibrated with ethical parameters.

• On average, economic experts predicted far higher economic impacts from climate change than the estimates found in older surveys of economists and other climate experts. Respondents predicted a global GDP loss of roughly 10% if global mean temperature increases by 3°C relative to the pre-industrial era by 2090 (this increase approximates a “business as usual” emissions scenario).

• Experts believe that there is greater than a 20% likelihood that this same climate scenario would lead to a “catastrophic” economic impact (defined as a global GDP loss of 25% or more).

• Our findings revealed a strong consensus (69%) that the “social cost of carbon” should be greater than or equal to the figure currently used by the U.S. government (only 8% believe the value should be lower).

If sea level rise accelerated enormously to, say, one metre per century, it would still be largely irrelevant to most people living or working close to sea level because all the existing buildings will be knocked down and re-built at least once anyway in the intervening years.

A 1 metre sea level rise would inundate 20% of Bangladesh. You would build a sea wall around the whole country?

Wow. This discussion board seems to exist in a parallel universe.

"Repeating myself is tedious, so, for the last time, a summary of expert economic opinion
Dec 19, 2018 at 9:30 AM | Phil Clarke"

Don't keep repeating other people's tedious bollocks.

"A 1 metre sea level rise would inundate 20% of Bangladesh. You would build a sea wall around the whole country?
Wow. This discussion board seems to exist in a parallel universe.
Dec 19, 2018 at 9:34 AM | Phil Clarke"

So you are invoking the precautionary principle.

"Of course an insurance company would like to make easy money out of a scare story, but there is no evidence that they can yet do so (or at least, no more than they did previously :) ).
Dec 19, 2018 at 1:39 AM | michael hart"

They are making money out of scare stories!

However, if central and local government, plus the utilities etc, are being pressured to take more preventative action to reduce flooding, by clearing drainage and waterways, this is no bad thing. People built and modified drainage for a reason.

I am NOT familiar with the Somerset Levels, but they were developed over hundreds of years, by generations of local people, to provide agricultural and habitable land. The flooding 5 years ago demonstrated the cost cutting interference of the ignorant Green Blob, claiming to save the triple-crested water vole, whilst destroying human lives.

Phil, from the report you linked to:

"In an effort to clarify the level of consensus among economists with respect to climate change risks, economic impacts,
and policy responses, we conducted a survey of expert economists. Our survey builds on a similar 2009 survey conducted
by other researchers at the Institute for Policy Integrity. We surveyed all those who have published an article related
to climate change in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal since 1994. This
survey allowed us to compare the views of economic experts to the views of the general public and help establish expert
consensus on the likely economic impacts of climate change and the recommended policy responses."

A self-selecting survey, if ever I saw one, since by definition it excludes those economists who weren't sufficiently concerned about climate change to publish "an article related to climate change in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal".

Given the performance of economics "experts" so far this century, I take the first finding to be one of the most interesting:

"Experts on the economics of climate change expressed higher levels of concern about climate change impacts
than the general public, when asked identical survey questions."

I suspect the general public probably have it about right!

This is also interesting:

"On average, economic experts predicted far higher economic impacts from climate change than the estimates found in older surveys of economists and other climate experts".

As self-reinforcing climate change hysteria ramps up, current economists are more concerned that economists used to be in the past. So which experts are correct? Yesterday's? Today's? Neither? Curious also that economists, with a notoriously bad track-record of accurate predictions, should be even more concerned than "other climate experts".

Then there's this:

"We sent each respondent an email message that described the nature of this project, informed them of the reason for
their selection, and requested their participation through an embedded hyperlink to the survey. We administered
the survey online through SurveyMonkey.com, creating separate but identical surveys for each respondent subset so
that data could be segregated. The first page of the online survey had nine multiple-choice questions, and the second
page had two multiple-choice questions and four open-ended questions that asked for a numerical response in a text
box. Respondents were told that the survey would take less than 15 minutes to complete, and that individual responses
would be anonymous (the survey did not ask for any identifying information or track individual responses). The survey
remained open for 18 days, and respondents were sent two reminder emails that included deadline details. These emails were sent to the entire pool since we could not determine who had already completed the survey.
Excluding those who did not receive our e-mail, our overall response rate was 33.1%. Not all respondents answered every question. This rate is roughly consistent with the average response rate for online surveys of this type."

Personally, I'm not sure I'd give too much credence to a survey comprising mostly multiple-choice questions (which inevitably push those surveyed to give particular answers), which took less than 15 minutes to complete, and which wasn't responded to by more than 2/3 of the self-selecting climate-concerned economists who could be expected to give the "correct" feedback.

A self-selecting survey, if ever I saw one, since by definition it excludes those economists who weren't sufficiently concerned about climate change to publish "an article related to climate change in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal".

Two possible explanations - there exist a number of economists who are knowledgable about climate economics but think climate change is not enough of a problem to write about, so are not sufficiently motivated to publish. This would fit with my observation that there are no published studies that demonstrate that climate mitigation is not cost effective. By definition such economists would be aware of the work of Nordhaus, Tol, Yohe et al, but would be happy, for some reason, to remain silent, rather than challenging the prevailing consensus of economic opinion, even though successfully challenging and changing the consensus is an excellent way of promoting understanding (not to mention one's career). After all who wouldn't want to prove himself smarter than a Nobel prize winner?

Possibility two: the majority, possibly all, economists who have studied the economics of climate change have concluded that it is a problem worthy of researching and publishing on.

I know which hypothesis I find more persuasive.

Possibility Two: Most if not all economists who have got

"Possibility two: the majority, possibly all, economists who have studied the economics of climate change have concluded that it is a problem worthy of researching and publishing on.
I know which hypothesis I find more persuasive.
Possibility Two: Most if not all economists who have got
Dec 19, 2018 at 10:28 PM | Phil Clarke"

Isn't the most likely probability that economists will say anything for a quick buck?

Just coincidence that wattsupwiththat have a post about the Economics of Climate Science.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/19/where-did-the-money-go/

wattsupwiththat have a post about the Economics of Climate Science.

So, Willis 'I'm all about the data' Eschenberg quotes a big scary number as the amount the US spends on 'climate'. No direct link to his source, to check you have to type in the URL from a graph caption.

Turns out the source - the US GAO - does not indicates exactly how the money is spent, just which programs and departments it went to; and it includes any expenditure, whether it's primary function is on agriculture, defence, transport, foreign aid or whatever that has a 'climate' dimension in its rationale. By definition, climate is pretty pervasive. It also includes research into energy efficiency and alternative energy sources, including nuclear fusion, which I don't think I would want to be done 'on the cheap'.

According to Office of Management and Budget reports, federal climate change funding was $13.2 billion across 19 agencies in 2017. In the 6 agencies we reviewed, we found that 94% of their reported climate change funding went to programs that touch on, but aren’t dedicated to climate change, such as nuclear energy research… Based on its review of the budget justifications of six agencies representing 89 percent of OMB-reported funding, GAO identified few programs (18 of 533) whose primary purpose is to address climate change. The remaining programs were multi-purpose—the budget justifications included other program goals in addition to addressing climate change. The 18 programs represented about 6 percent of these agencies’ reported climate change funding for fiscal year 2017.

So Willis's number for 'climate expenditure' is 1,600% inflated compared to actual climate change work. It's still a large number in absolute, if not relative terms, but the largest element is for science and technology and that includes the satellite programs, which again, do not come cheap, but do provide a source of employment for Drs Spencer and Christy….

Just more WUWT propaganda.

Just out of interest, why is there this complaining about WUWT “propaganda” on this site? Unlike, say, the BBC, comments can be made on every WUWT article that I have seen, and thus these questions about the various authors’ integrity can be addressed directly to those authors.

With respect, that is backwards. The BBC has a Code of Practice which forbids spurious claims. For example, they recently slipped up in respect of penguins and sea level rise; a viewer complained, the BBC Executive ruled in favour of the complaint and the corporation issued a correction and apology.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications (search 'penguin')

Anthony Watts' blog has no such oversight. With a few exceptions, anyone mounting a challenge to party line gets first snipped and then banned. Indeed the list of banned commenters includes several distinguished scientists. He is all about the clickbait and the headline, and riling up his devoted 'base'.

A recent WUWT headline was
Study: Wind Farms Kill Off 75% Of Buzzards, Hawks And Kites That Live Nearby

Naturally, the actual study made no such conclusion. The birds had simply high tailed it somewhere where there were fewer windfarms. Our very own Stew Green decided to try and improve the accuracy of the site:

Anthony I would update the article if I were you
Your title is just quoting the Daily Mail tile without the quotation marks
“Blades kill off 75% of buzzards, hawks and kites that live nearby, study shows”
..and of course that is a clickbait title
Cos as commenters above say the study doesn’t say that 75% DIED
A better title “Indian study finds 75% less buzzards, hawks and kites living in turbine areas”

If 'commenter power' was a thing, then Watts would have corrected his headline, but of course he did not. So the propaganda charge stands.

I don't know if you're aware of the 'Smokey' controversy? If you peruse the WUWT archive going back a few years you will encounter many comments by Smokey, an outspoken defender of the site party line. It emerged that Smokey was in fact Dave Stealey (also dbs, dbstealey), who was also a site moderator.

That's right. Watts allowed one of his moderators to assume a fake identity and post in the very threads he was moderating. Amazingly, his opponents' views got snipped, edited or delayed into irrelevance.

Here's an extract from the WUWT site policy: Internet phantoms who have cryptic handles, no name, and no real email address get no respect here. If you think your opinion or idea is important, elevate your status by being open and honest

Pure bunkum. Just my opinion, but if you want to avoid ridicule, I'd advise against citing WUWT as any kind of authority.

The worst cases imagined still leave all the people of the future better off than the poor today. The best cases imagined for mitigation still leave the poor today worse off than with no mitigation. Therefore mitigation is a bad idea. And you have repeatedly failed to find any paper that counters that obvious logic. All you have found is that preventing climate change is cheaper than harmful climate change when the harmful climate change would be - a statement of the obvious.

You seem a little confused. The economic consensus is that our (rich and poor) future prosperity will be greater if we engage now in mitigation than if we do not. Not that difficult, surely?

And why not? The Dutch have been doing that for centuries, and the Bangladeshis are doing it, anyway, without any prompting, assistance or demand from “the West” (or do you think that the natives can only do as directed by the White Man (well, the more honourable amongst them, of course)?)

GDP per capita (USD round numbers)

Netherlands: 48,000
Bangladesh: 1,500

Can I assume you support the transfer of wealth from the Netherlands to Bangladesh, so they can fight the rising seas on equal terms?