Economics – Page 78 – a sibilant intake of breath

Black carbon and climate change

[Image removed at the request of a subject (2019-10-01)]

Al Gore’s latest book – Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis – includes a fair bit of discussion of black carbon, a human pollutant that causes global warming, but not in the same way carbon dioxide (CO2) does. Greenhouse gasses like CO2 prevent long-wave infrared radiation from leaving the Earth into space. Black carbon, by contrast, warms the planet by absorbing a lot of short-wave radiation from the sun. In essence, it has a very low albedo.

Some other pertinent things to know about black carbon:

The largest source is biomass combustion – such as burning forests and grasslands to clear them for agriculture.
The areas where this is happening most are Brazil, Indonesia, and Central Africa.
Black carbon settling in the Arctic is a major cause of warming there: possibly responsible for 1°C of the 2.5°C of warming already observed there.
Black carbon is also a major threat to Himalayan glaciers, which in turn provide the source water for rivers of critical human importance, such as the Ganges.
Black carbon is washed out of the atmosphere by rain, and only has a lifetime of a few weeks. If we stopped emitting it, its contribution to climate change would cease quickly.

The last of those is very encouraging. Unlike CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for a very long span of time, black carbon is something we could tackle on a short timescale, by mandating things like filters on diesel engines and the cleaner burning of coal and biomass.

As mentioned before, recent research has also highlighted the importance of non-CO2 greenhouse gasses. Anything that allows us to take more rapid and effective action to halt climate change is welcome news. Also, it requires a lot less political will to install better filters on diesel engines than it does to curb activities that are critically linked to greenhouse gas emissions.

Monbiot’s open letter to Canada

In Monday’s Globe and Mail, British journalist George Monbiot penned an open letter to Canada about climate change. Monbiot points out how Canada “will be the only [Kyoto Protocol] signatory to wildly miss its targets,” and calls for Canada to curb oil sands development and engage more effectively in international negotiations. He argues that: “The oil-sands industry is causing damage out of all proportion to its value – not only to the world’s ecosystems but also to Canada’s.”

Along with Elizabeth May, he will be debating what action Canada should take on climate change, with Bjorn Lomborg and Nigel Lawson arguing that Canada should not undertake a strong response.

Climate Cover-Up

James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a valuable exposé of the efforts that have been made by self-interested actors to prevent political action on climate change, by manipulating the public debate and confusing people about the strength of the science. Written by a Canadian public relations professional, and written with a focus on actors and events in Canada, Hoggan’s book examines how the media has been involved in the debate, how companies have worked to create false grassroots campaigns (‘astroturfing’), the role played by think tanks, the use of lawsuits to intimidate and silence critics, the ‘echo chamber’ effect wherein false claims are endlessly repeated by sympathetic sources, and more. Hoggan makes a convincing case that status quo actors – particularly petrochemical firms – have been working for decades to keep the public confused, and keep legislators inactive.

Hoggan provides both logical and documentary evidence to back up his claims – pointing out things like how most of the scientists that actively deny the consensus view of climate change are being funded as advocates, not as scientists:

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association isn’t paying Pat Michaels to go back into his lab and do research helping the world to a better understanding of how human activities are affecting the climate. The coal-fired utility owners are paying him to “stand up against the alarmists and bring a balance to the discussion.”

Hoggan provides many specific examples of malfeasance, and argues that the public relations personal directing the campaign against action on climate change are often indifferent to whether the claims they are making are true or false. They are tested for how well they affect public opinion, not how well they represent the reality of the situation.

Hoggan does sometimes present information in a misleading way. For instance, he compares the risk of climate change with the risk of car and house insurance, and says that: “in both cases the risk of disaster is significantly less than the greater than 90 percent certainty that scientists ascribe to the climate crisis.” He is referring to how the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” and defined ‘very likely’ as cases where “expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence” support an assessed probability of over 90%. The IPCC was saying that there is a scientific consensus that there is a 90% chance that the unequivocal warming that has been observed has anthropogenic causes, not that the “risk of disaster” is 90%. The question of how serious the consequences of warming will be is distinct from the question of what is causing warming. Another odd error is one sentence written as though the consulting company McKinsey was a person: “When McKinsey talks about a carbon revolution, he strikes the right tone.”

That said, Climate Cover-Up succeeds in its key purpose: revealing that not everyone is engaging in the climate debate in an honest or ethical manner. The scientific consensus that climate change is real and risky is exceedingly strong, and yet the public and policy-makers have been very effectively confused and encouraged to delay action. By revealing the extent to which the debate has been manipulated, Hoggan’s book will hopefully contribute to the eventual improvement of public understanding of climate change, and the development of a will to act sufficiently strong to sort out the problem before the worst potential consequences become inevitable. Hoggan also continues that effort through DeSmogBlog – a site he created to provide ongoing updates on climate change misinformation campaigns.

[Update: 13 October 2010] Another good book on the same topic is Naomi Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

The Lomborg delayer stance

Bjorn Lomborg is a polarizing figure: a statistician who claims that most environmental problems are less severe than people believe, and who argues that spending money on climate change is wasteful. His objective claims about the state of the environment have been challenged in other places, and I won’t consider them now. Rather, I will look at why his stance on climate change is deeply problematic.

In 2002, Lomborg founded The Copenhagen Consensus: a group that sought to determine the best way to spend a hypothetical $50 billion to improve human welfare. At the top of the list were things like nutrition and fighting AIDS. Climate change was ranked as providing poor value for money.

To go from that to claiming that we should not spend money fighting climate change is where Lomborg makes a major error. In his book Cool It: A Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming he argues that the relatively low return per dollar spent dealing with climate change means those actions ought not to be taken. Sometimes, expensive things are simply necessary – even when there are other laudable places to spend money. James Hoggan sums up the argument against Lomborg’s prioritization approach well:

According to what [John] Mashey describes as the Lomborg method, you can avoid almost any spending issue that doesn’t suit your political or economic preferences. You begin by proposing a list of alternative priorities that include useful, desirable items that everyone must agree deserve attention – the treatment of AIDS or the provision of food and water to the desperate. Then you make sure that these are items that, for political reasons, will never get funded (foreign aid is a low political priority, especially in difficult economic times). Finally, you invoke the false dilemma: you suggest that your audience must accept your prioritization, because if they can’t (or won’t) pay for the items on the top of the list, it would be irresponsible to start thinking about paying for the items that are a lower priority.

As I have said before, preventing catastrophic climate change is the foundational challenge we are facing now as a species. If we wreck the habitability of the planet, all our efforts in achievements in other areas will become meaningless. Given that, to argue that we should ignore climate change while spending more on AIDS prevention fails to properly consider the totality of risks we are facing.

Carbon footprints and investment

[Image removed at the request of a subject (2019-10-01)]

In an era where it is increasingly sensible to think about the climatic impact of personal choices, I wonder what the implications are for investing. The whole basis for investment is the idea that someone else can put wealth to more productive immediate use than you can: so much so that you hope they will be able to achieve their productive end and return your money with interest. In a world where most economic activity involves greenhouse gas emissions, it seems inescapable that investing (particularly successful investing) has climatic consequences. That may be especially true for those who think that growth, capitalism, and climate change are deeply linked.

What is unclear is what ethical implications that has. It may well be laudable to choose to invest in things that a low-carbon world will probably involve: renewables, energy efficiency, etc. Indeed, it may be praiseworthy to do so even when that strategy entails lower returns or higher risks than an investment strategy that is indifferent to climatic considerations. Whether it is actually unethical to invest in a neutral or high-carbon way is less clear.

People who are living low-carbon lives by avoiding things like automobile ownership, excessive consumption, and air travel will likely find themselves with more savings to invest than their counterparts who don’t adopt such choices. For someone really dedicated to cutting their personal emissions, it seems plausible that the emissions induced by their investments could be a dominant part of their total footprint. As such, the secondary and tertiary effects of investment choices bear consideration.

The US and China on climate

The Economist is running an interesting debate on the topic: “This house believes that China is showing more leadership than America in the fight against climate change.”

It’s a discussion I look forward to, primarily because of how it will highlight actions that China is taking. Too many people believe that China has shown no leadership whatsoever on this issue and is in a position to eliminate any benefits that arise from emission reductions elsewhere. As it happens, I think the Chinese leadership is concerned about the issue, and is hopefully open to the kind of comprehensive international agreement that will be necessary to put the world on a pathway of declining greenhouse gas emissions.

Getting to carbon neutrality

Responding to an unusually poor article, written by Lorrie Goldstein and printed in the Toronto Sun, I wrote that: “If you want high human welfare and prosperity for decades and generations ahead, dealing with climate change is not optional. The longer Canada waits to begin the process of going carbon-neutral, the more costly and painful that process will be.”

The above graphic, included in the recent Copenhagen Diagnosis, illustrates this situation nicely. The graphic shows three different pathways, each of which would give humanity a 75% chance of limiting warming to 2°C – a target that has been widely endorsed by governments, including those of the UK and EU. In a scenario where global emissions peak in 2011, they would only need to fall to about 5 gigatonnes by 2050, a reduction rate of 3.7% per year. Waiting just four more years, and having them peak in 2015, increases that to 5.3% per year. In the scenario with the 2015 peak, humanity as a whole needs to be carbon neutral before 2050, in order to provide the 75% certainty of avoiding more than 2°C of warming. Waiting until 2020 means that emissions need to fall by 9% per year afterwards, with carbon neutrality reached around 2040.

Bear in mind that these are global pathways. Under a contraction and convergence approach, where countries cut emissions while simultaneously becoming more equal in terms of per capita emissions, Canada would need to cut even faster. This illustrates firstly how wrongheaded it is to hope for a few more years of a hydrocarbon boom before we start the process of adjustment. It also illustrates the urgency of getting an effective global agreement in place soon. This isn’t an issue on which we can simply doddle for a decade. If we don’t want to see our children living in a transformed world, humanity needs to act fast and on a massive scale.

On a personal level, this may also bring some clarity to the many discussions we’ve had here about carbon ethics. If we individually want to mirror what the world as a whole needs to do, we should be planning to have our personal emissions peak virtually instantly, and fall every year thereafter. People who are my age should be thinking seriously about the possibility of living carbon-neutral lives by the time they face retirement – and about what accomplishing that would require.

Climate Change Futures Markets

Over at FiveThirtyEight – a website that leapt to fame on the basis of statistical analysis of the 2008 US election – there is a discussion of futures markets for climate change. The idea is to let people place bets on what will happen, and the hope is that the sum of opinions backed up with money will provide reasonably high quality information on what is likely and what is not:

Personally, I’d envision a robust series of contracts on temperature, CO2 emissions, precipitation, and perhaps tropical storms that expired at various intervals along the lines of those used for US Treasury bonds — say at 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30 years. I’d encourage the use of options and perhaps derivatives, which can be helpful in pricing not just the mean estimates of temperature or precipitation but also the uncertainty surrounding these estimates. I’d run the markets through a major, cross-national platform such as the United Nations, IMF or World Bank, so as to encourage participation and create liquidity. And I’d make them open to as many people as possible with few legal restrictions or transaction costs.

This is similar to the idea of using such markets to predict the outcome of elections. While implementing the idea is bound to produce some problems, it could be a good thing to try. For one thing, it could help create mechanisms through which additional insurance could be provided for climatic risks, whether of extreme weather, crop failure, or other phenomena.

Wind farms and NIMBY syndrome

Over at Boing Boing, there is an interesting article about wind power and the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome. The article suggests that the general understanding of the NIMBY syndrome is wrong, and the problem is not that people locally oppose what they support in a general sense. Rather, people who oppose wind farm on principle become energetic opponents when the prospect of it being installed locally arises. I am not sure how convincing I find the analysis, but the issue is an important one and not only for wind. Whatever our post-fossil fuel energy mix is going to consist of, it is going to require facilities being built near where people live, whether those facilities are concentrating solar plants, dams, wind farms, carbon capture and storage facilities, nuclear reactors, or something else.

The same issue was discussed in the film The Age of Stupid. There, it seemed pretty clear that the primary objection people had was local wind farms depressing property values. The Boing Boing article does discuss one partial solution there: offering the locals a share of the revenues from the project might change their thinking.

Climate denial and conservative think tanks

In 2008, three academics published the paper “The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism” in the journal Environmental Politics. The researchers analyzed 141 books published between 1972 and 2005, all of which expressed skepticism about the seriousness of environmental problems, including climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, resource shortages, air pollution, and others. Of these, the researchers found that over 92% were published by conservative think tanks, written by authors affiliated with those think tanks, or both.

Contrast that with Naomi Oreskes’ 2004 Science article: “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” in which she examined the positions taken on climate change within peer-reviewed scientific articles. Of the 928 articles examined, none expressed disagreement with the consensus view that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.

Peter Jacques uses their survey to argue that “scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism.” That is to say, groups with an economic or ideological commitment to the present arrangement – where most energy comes from fossil fuels and the atmosphere is a free dumping ground for greenhouse gasses – are continuing to press for policy inaction by self-serving means, using information and arguments at odds with that in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. None of that is surprising, though it does demonstrate the irony of climate change deniers claiming to be an embattled and persecuted minority, concerned only with getting the truth out despite the efforts of nefarious scientists and environmentalists to silence them.