Via Quark Soup

Notice of an interesting debate between Bjorn Lomborg and James Annan's buddy, Myles Allen. Before commenting further, allow Eli to say that David Appell was one of the first bloggers from which the bunnies learned, and he was sorely missed during his hiatus.

Allen's decription of climate change is clear and understandable, the sort of thing you need when exchanging words with Lomborg. Appell summarizes it well, so we will only provide the link (honor among blogger and all that) However it is Allen's economic argument that reduces Lomborg to surstromming or if you prefer, lutefisk. The basic point is that Lomborg is only looking at current and near term damage and using a small social discount rate, for which he relies on Yohe and Tol among others. But

1. The major damage will occur around late in the century,
2. There is no reason to believe the majic coal fairy will invent some great new technology which will solve the problem
3. The ground has shifted and Anthoff, Tol and Yohe (2008) following Weitzman now understand that the costs are asymmetric, heavily weighted to the high end of warming and the risks on that end are so large that the social cost of coal goes to $200/ton C

Abstract: The Stern Review reported a social cost of carbon of over $300/tC, calling for ambitious climate policy. We here conduct a systematic sensitivity analysis of this result on two crucial parameters: the rate of pure time preference, and the rate of risk aversion. We show that the social cost of carbon lies anywhere in between 0 and $120,000/tC. However, if we restrict these two parameters to match observed behavior, an expected social cost of carbon of $60/tC results. If we correct this estimate for income differences across the world, the social cost of carbon rises to over $200/tC.

Allen importantly points out that the cost of mitigation is reasonable (10-20%) compared to the value of the energy industry. Moreover, the cost of fixing the things that Lomborg and his crew of merry economists consider more important for human welfare is small, 50 billion. Allen puts it to Lomborg,

I came of age in Mrs. Thatcher's Britain. And under Mrs. Thatcher you applied the principle that you paid for what you wanted to do. And that's essentially all we are saying here if we want to use fossil fuels we need to pay to make sure that we can use them in such a way that doesn't impose risks on other people who haven't chosen to take those risks.

This reduces Lomborg to saying that well, up till now we have not been very successful. From Eli's post about "Clean Coal" the answer is to paraphrase Robert Siegel putting it to the coal man:

But Mr. Lomborg, you are also saying that you influenced that opinion. That in part what people are saying about climate change is, is in part, what when you've gotten them to think it is by campaigning over the last eight years

There are a bunch of other interesting talks, including Lumo's love interest Klaus at the Climate Forum site. Having taken a good approach, Allen apologies for it

We thought our participants might be amused to see Myles Allen in action in a debate against Bjørn Lomborg, the well-known critic of mainstream opinion on climate change, at last week's Swiss Climate Forum in Thun, Switzerland. Myles would like to make clear the debate format pushed him into being unscientifically combative... If any participants were at the forum, we'd be happy to hear from you.

Never apologize, never complain. Comments