by John Q on January 27, 2006
People who’ve been following the debate about global warming closely will be aware that the economic modelling used in projections of future climate change by the IPCC has been severely criticised by former Australian Statistician Ian Castles and former OECD chief economist David Henderson. The critique emerged in a rather confused form, with a number of letters and opinion pieces before finally being published in contrarian social science journal Energy and Environment. Responses, including mine, have been similarly partial and sporadic.
I’ve finally prepared a full-scale response to the main claim made by Castles and Henderson, that the use of market exchange rates, rather than “Purchasing Power Parity” conversion factors for national currencies, biases estimates of future emissions upwards. My conclusion is that although PPP measures are preferable in comparisons of national welfare, the biases introduced by using market exchange rates are not important in modelling emissions and will, on average, cancel out. You can read it all here.
Update: Ian Castles has sent a response which I’ve posted here. It doesn’t seem to me that Ian responds to my argument except to deny that the MER/PPP issue was the main point of the critique.
I should also note that Holtsmark and Alfsen (2004), whose paper I’ve just found, present much the same argument as mine.
by John Q on January 4, 2006
The news that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded in Australia comes at the end of a year in which, to the extent that facts can settle anything, the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled. Worldwide, 2005 was equal (to within the margin of error of the stats) with 1998 as the warmest year in at least the past millennium.
More significantly, perhaps, 2005 saw the final nail hammered into the arguments climate change contrarians have been pushing for years. The few remaining legitimate sceptics (such as John Christy), along with some of the smarter ideological contrarians (like Ron Bailey), have looked at the evidence and conceded the reality of human-caused global warming.
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by John Q on November 14, 2005
Via Jennifer Marohasy, I found yet another version of one of the blogosphere’s (and, more generally, the anti-environmentalist right’s) most popular doctored quotes reproduced this time by Frank Furedi who writes in the Times Higher Education Supplement
Appeals to a “greater truth” are also prominent in debates about the environment. It is claimed that problems such as global warming are so important that a campaign of fear is justified. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, justified the distortion of evidence in the following terms: “Because we are not just scientists but human beings… as well… we need to capture the public imagination.” He added that “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified statements and make little mention of any doubts that we have”.
Schneider’s statement was originally quoted in an interview in Discover magazine (not available online as far as I can tell). Read in full and in context, it’s an unexceptional statement about the difficulties of dealing with the media and their penchant for oversimplication and overdramatisation. However, the history of the quote, and its use by anti-enviromentalists is fascinating and, in many ways, a demonstration of Schneider’s point.
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by Tom on October 18, 2005
I don’t know whether a definitive bean-counter’s verdict has yet been ventured on the costs and benefits of London’s Congestion Charge, but I’m in favour of it anyway, partly because that nice Paul Krugman was kind enough to write a very clear description of the economic case for road-pricing which I found pretty convincing, but mostly because as a resident on the edge of Zone 1, I can now walk to work without choking on the traffic fumes. Hoorah.
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by Daniel on October 15, 2005
Tim Lambert has done very good work over the years keeping people honest on the John Lott “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis and on the Lancet study. However, his work on the strange subculture of DDT loons also deserves a bit of publicity.
Basically, there are lots of people out there, mainly the same sort of people who are fans of Stephen Milloy’s “junkscience.com”, who believe that “liberals and environmentalists” are responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people in the third world from malaria because they banned DDT in the 1970s, because they read the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This charge is rubbish from start to finish … as in, DDT wasn’t banned in the 1970s, and using DDT is usually not the best way to prevent malaria. Tim’s DDT archive has the whole damn story.
Why are people so keen on DDT? Don’t know. There’s no compelling economic interest in treating the stuff as if it were a panacea; it’s a commodity chemical which is banned as an agricultural pesticide (in order to avoid creating resistant mosquitoes and compromising its use as an antimalarial) and which has only a niche demand as an antimalarial (because pyrethroid-treated mosquito nets are usually a more cost-effective prevention method). All I can think of is that claiming that environmentalists are responsible for millions of deaths in the third world is a handy way of slagging off environmentalists. One has to say, looking at the calibre of human being pushing the DDT argument in Tim’s archive, for them to cry crocodile tears over the genuine problems of the third world while doing nothing to ameliorate them, simply to fight a domestic political battle, would not exactly be out of character. Nice one Tim for exposing this vile, pernicious rubbish.
by John Q on October 6, 2005
Tim Worstall gets us past that pesky NYT paywall to link approvingly to a John Tierney column arguing that the way to encourage energy conservation in the US is not to fiddle with standards but to raise prices. Broadly speaking I agree. At a minimum, getting prices right is a necessary condition for an adjustment to sustainable levels of energy use. Nevertheless, the rate of adjustment and the smoothness with which adjustment takes place can be greatly enhanced by the adoption of consistent pro-conservation policies, or retarded by the adoption of inconsistent and incoherent policies.
This is as good a time as any to restate the point that, given a gradual adjustment, very large reductions in energy use and CO2 emissions can be achieved at very modest cost. Rather than argue from welfare economics this time, I’ve looked at the kind of adjustments that would be needed to cut CO2 emissions from motor vehicle use (one of the least responsive) and argued that price increases would bring this about over time, without significant pain.
Nicholas Gruen has some related thoughts
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by Chris Bertram on August 27, 2005
Don’t miss the “Guardian’s profile of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1556482,00.html . A nervous breakdown after reading too much Wittgenstein, friendship with Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and the following priceless comment on Richard Dawkins: “My first wife, a wonderful woman, used to refer to Dick as the Selfish Gene, just because of the way he acts. ” Definitely worth a look.
by Jon Mandle on July 30, 2005
I recently traded in a 2000 Toyota 4-Runner to buy a new Prius. It’s great. My gas mileage tripled – over its 1500 miles so far, it has averaged around 50 mpg. The sight-lines take a little getting used to – or maybe it’s just the adjustment after climbing down from an SUV – but it handles well and I’ve had no problem with power. I’m very happy with it and its “super ultra low emissions.”
It will also be nice to claim a tax credit next April. However, starting next year, a provision of the new Energy Bill will cap at 60,000 per company the number of hybrids that can claim a credit. “This year alone, Toyota projects it will sell 140,000 hybrids.”
During the two quarters immediately after the cars and trucks of the automakers become ineligible for the full credit, buyers would receive 50 percent of the credit. The next two quarters after that, the credit is 25 percent. The credit is phased out entirely at the end of the fifth full quarter after the automaker sells 60,000 hybrids or advanced diesels.
“By capping the credit, Congress has limited the incentives available to companies that have been at the forefront of hybrid technology” – namely, Toyota and Honda. Way to get those incentives right, guys!
Meanwhile, Toyota is taking full advantage of its remaining incentives. The new Lexus hybrid uses its additional electric power not to increase its gas mileage, which in real world conditions stays exactly the same as its gas-powered equivalent, but to boost its horsepower. (However, the additional power seems to be largely offset by the increased weight of the hybrid system.) And, yes, it still does qualify for the tax incentive – up to the 60,000 cut-off, of course.
by Ted on February 11, 2005
My beloved fiancee received two hermit crabs for Christmas. Due to pressures both foreign and domestic, she has not named the crabs yet, and has consistently (cruelly, some would say) rejected my suggestions.
(pictured: a very similar hermit crab)
Luckily, I have the wisdom of crowds on my side. If any commentor suggests a pair of names for two hermit crabs which are adopted by my fiancee, I’ll donate $20 to Habitat for Humanity in his or her name.
by John Q on February 10, 2005
Apologies to readers for the rather odd post below, which was meant for my own blog. Since people have made comments, I’ll leave it in place, and add a few notes of explanation. The post refers to a state election campaign in Western Australia, which the incumbent Labor government was, at the outset, expected to lose. A major issue in the campaign is the water supply problems facing Perth, the capital city where the great majority of the population lives. Issues include the traditional Australian ideology of developmentalism, and the role of public-private partnerships
My piece in today’s Australian Financial Review, over the fold, brings together arguments about the Kimberley canal project, which has been debated here on the blog on my blog. As usual, I got a lot out of all the comments, whether or not this is obvious in the published article. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the debate.
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by Henry Farrell on February 8, 2005
Alex Tabarrok “protests too much”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/schelling_is_ow.html in response to John Q.’s “post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003214.html on the Lomborg ranking exercise.
bq. Thus, believe it or not, the new theory of how Lomborg rigged the climate change study is that he chose someone to write the global climate change chapter who was too strong an proponent of its importance! Give me a break.
Alex may sneer, but this is exactly what at least one, and possibly two of the members of the Lomborg panel suggest, according to the “Economist”:http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3630425
bq. Thomas Schelling of the University of Maryland, who voted on the final choices, thinks that presenting climate change at the bottom of the list as “bad” is misleading. He says he and the other gurus did not like Kyoto or the aggressive proposals made by Dr Cline, whom he sees as the “most alarmist of the serious climate policy experts”, but Dr Schelling says he would have ranked modest climate proposals higher on the list, because he sees climate as a real problem. Robert Mendelsohn, a conservative Yale economist who was an official “critic” of the climate paper in this process, goes further: because Dr Cline’s positions are “well out of the mainstream”, he had no choice but to reject them. He worries that “climate change was set up to fail.”
This is strong language for academics – Mendelsohn is saying that Lomborg may have tried to predetermine the outcome by ensuring that the climate change choice was unpalatable to all the panelists. Nor does this invalidate John’s previous argument that the panelists as well as the choices on offer were selected in order to conduct towards this outcome – a different group of economists might well have preferred even the more radical climate change option that was on offer. I’m not sure what the point is to Tabarrok’s surly and ungracious post. If he doesn’t believe that choices between several options can be fixed so that individuals go for the one rather than the other, he only needs to find out a little more about the gentle art of push-polling. If he’d like a slightly more rigorous discussion, I refer him to William Riker’s work on heresthetics. If he doesn’t believe that there’s some serious reason to suspect that this is what happened here, he should re-read Schelling’s and Mendelsohn’s descriptions of the process, as quoted in the Economist. There’s nothing here that’s exactly difficult to get.
by John Q on February 7, 2005
The wheels are coming off Bjorn Lomborg’s attempt to undermine the Kyoto Protocol. The Economist, which backed Lomborg’s exercise, published an interesting piece on climate change recently, noting that some members are dissenting, and ending with the observation, from Robert Mendelsohn, a critic of ambitious proposals for climate change mitigation, who worries that “climate change was set up to fail”. This was my conclusion when I reviewed the book arising from the project.
It’s a pity, because, done well, the Copenhagen project could have been a really good idea, and even as it is, a lot of valuable work was done.
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by John Q on January 22, 2005
Friday’s Australian Financial ReView section (subscription only) runs my review of Bjorn Lomborg’s new book. CT readers won’t be surprised to find a lot of criticisms of the Copenhagen Consensus project that produced the book. But I found a fair bit to praise as well. The review, pretty lengthy, is over the fold. Comments appreciated.
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by Chris Bertram on December 26, 2004
I’ve just been watching the news of the terrible disaster unfolding in the Indian Ocean region. Thousands upon thousands dead, and reports still coming in. One expert on the BBC just spoke about the displacement of millions of cubic kilometres of water. How powerful, unpredictable and savage nature can be. An awful day.
by John Q on December 13, 2004
In previous posts on Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus exercise, both before and after the event, I expressed the suspicion that the whole thing was a setup, designed to push Lomborg’s favorite line that money spent on implementing the Kyoto protocol would be better allocated to foreign aid projects of various kinds. (I’ve pointed out some contradictions in Lomborg’s general argument, here).
However, I thought some good could come of the exercise, if the conclusions were taken seriously. In my last post, I observed
As attentive readers will recall, the conference concluded that fighting AIDS should be the top global priority in helping developing countries and also that climate change mitigation was a waste of money. I agree with the first of these conclusions, and more generally with the need for more spending on health poor countries, and I hope that Lomborg will put some effort into supporting it. I’ll try to keep readers posted on this.
Now Lomborg has revealed his priorities. Chris points to an article by Lomborg in the Telegraph. The supposed top priority item, initiatives to combat AIDS, gets two passing mentions. The entire article, except for a couple of paras, is devoted to the pressing need to do nothing about global warming.
It’s obvious from reading this piece that the entire lavishly funded Copenhagen exercise was a put-up job, designed to secure impressive-sounding endorsements for Lomborg’s anti-Kyoto agenda, and that the supposed concern for making good use of aid funding was a hypocritical scam. A lot of work went into relative rankings for different health policies, but I don’t expect to hear anything from Lomborg on this score. Similarly, I doubt we will ever see him campaigning for more funding for AIDS programs, as opposed to using them as a cheap anti-Kyoto debating point.
If I was one of the eminent economists who participated in the ranking exercise, or who submitted papers supporting various initiatives, I would be feeling really angry with Bjorn Lomborg right now.
