One commenter inferred “we are at optimum.” Perhaps. But I think the “climate debate” has proven only one thing, so far: people are frightened of change.

That’s pretty funny, when politicians claim that “change” is what people want.

One commenter inferred “we are at the optimum.” Perhaps. But I think the “climate debate” has proven only one thing, so far: people are frightened of change.

That’s pretty funny, when politicians claim that “change” is what people want.

1. Sure, there are many different ways to express wealth. I encourage you to play with different metrics and see if it leads to significantly different results than we arrived at — one reason why there has been little debate on this subject is that they do not.

2. It is not available to my knowledge.

Thanks.

Two questions: First, regarding normalization: you and I could disagree strongly on how to express wealth in real terms (net of price level changes) or maybe on how to calculate the exposed wealth time series. But in each case we create an damages time series which is in terms of real wealth losses per unit of exposed wealth. Is that a disagreement about normalization? (Or must a disagreement about normalization be more fundamental such as whether damages should be expressed per unit of exposed wealth?)

Second, is the data used in the appendix of the CCSP report publicly available for internet access? If so, do you have the URLs?

I just read a very interesting article by Vinod K. Dar, an energy industry specialist giving a global perspective of energy use and climate change. In the article, he points out that a large and growing part of the world is leaning more towards the possibility of a global cooling trend, in contrast to the Western view of unstoppable global warming. Either way, he argues that the need for energy is and will outweigh any moral or ethical concerns about changing the climate. He concludes:

“The world has neither the capacity nor the will to change the trajectory of the global climate whether it’s warming, cooling or oscillating. Both climate belief systems are a form of intellectual and emotional self indulgence by elites. They are a distraction from reality, which is coping with and benefiting from whatever change in climate occurs.” (…) “Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris. Human beings are miserable at forecasting but they are pretty good at improvising and adapting. Why not focus on the strength rather than invest so heavily in the weakness?”

I found the entire article refreshingly realistic on the future of energy consumption and recommend a complete read:

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200806181211/global-warming/as-the-earth-cools-what-does-it-mean-for-the-energy-industry.html

Certainly one can argue over any given detail, but I found his conclusion of adaptation over mitigation, most compelling. While you state that “…anthropogenic climate change is real, and deserving of significant attention to both adaptation and mitigation.”, how do you convince a developing world to mitigate their carbon emissions when they do not even hold the same scientific beliefs as the West and the populace demands electricity? Even in the west, where the population largely accepts the idea of warming, people are only willing to sacrifice minimally. In light of the fact that, currently, the globe is not warming and the CCSP report does not find any evidence of increasing weather extremes in the US, is obtaining significant carbon mitigation realistic in this country, much less anywhere else in the world?

It’s fun to speculate what they might have said about a cooling world. Somehow I think it would be just as pessimistic. Which would mean of course that we are at the optimum now.

Maybe you should put it bold, italic and larger. I believe that some people might chose not to see it.