see these posts:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/energy_policy/000436cart_or_horse.html

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000437more_cart_and_horse.html

-Greatly increasing automobile fuel efficiency would create thousands of jobs, especially in positions which have been cut back so drastically over the past few years. (John McCain has stated that 800,000 jobs would be created if the US were to adopt the reduction plan in the Kyoto Protocol.)

-Money would stay in the country in which we live (and in our wallets) and not be sent to the Middle East and other trouble spots where problems may exacerbate.

-Reductions in health care spending would follow the reduction of industrial and automotive pollution, due to cleaner air (cutting asthma rates and cancer cases). Also, the frequency and severity of heat waves would likely be reduced, leading to fewer hospital visits from the elderly and people with ailments.

These are only three out of the many benefits of GHG reduction. The economy would not be crippled as the Bush Administration would like us to believe. The economy would flourish as a result of action, rather than inaction.

While we are at it lets add, say, dealing with bird flu as another justification for implementing GHG reductions.

You might say, “Well shouldn’t we care that GHG reductions don’t have much effect on bird flu?”

To which I might reply, “If the only reason to reduce GHGs is bird flu control, it’s a bad idea. If you add up all the other factors, it’s a good idea.” By your logic, once GHG reductions make sense, then adding on perhaps scientifically unsupportable justifications doesn’t matter.

Of course, this warped logic neglects the issue that if resources are taken away from more effective strategies for dealing with bird flu, then such misjustifications can have a serious impact on valued outcomes.

You certainly must know from being a frequent visitor that I am not talking about whether or not GHG reductions writ large make sense. I’ve already said that they do. The point here is that there is no basis that I am aware of for thinking that GHG reductions can have a significant impact on future hurricane losses.

Given Ray P.’s non-response to my very direct question, and the various attempts by the (valued) Chorus here at Prometheus to redefine the issue in all sorts of creative ways other than straight on, I’m beginning to believe that there may be a consensus on this point!

Thanks!

Anyway, looks to me like he’s pointing out that in one place you argue for a no regrets policy, then you don’t. If the only reason to reduce GHGs is vulnerability control, it’s a bad idea. If you add up all the other factors, it’s a good idea.

If you don’t have much to say about that, well, OK then. There go your future papers.

Best,

D

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=273

“Your paper sets up a false dichotomy regarding controlling hurricane damage by vulnerability control vs controlling hurricane damage by GHG reductions. It presupposes that one is faced with a decision between controlling GHG just for the sake of hurricanes, and forgetting about GHG’s and spending money on bribing people to live further from the shoreline. (In your 2000 paper, you seem to make this point more broadly; you state explicitly that you think that climate impacts are best addressed through adaptation rather than prevention. I’m not saying that’s a defensible position based on your analysis, but that is indeed what you state, begging the question of why you go on to imply that it’s worthwhile to control GHG anyway). In reality, the decision is not at all like your false dichotomy. GHG’s have many impacts, increased hurricane damages being one among many. So, your comparison of the climate-related component of increased hurricane damages to the vulnerability component is irrelevant, since nobody is talking about controlling GHG’s for the sole purpose of reducing hurricane damages. Seen in this light, the public attention to the Emanuel and Webster papers is not at all misplaced. It’s part of the whole spectrum of GHG effects that need to go into the assessment of the nature of the threat. To be sure, hurricane damage has high “availability” as a threat, since people can picture it more easily than extinction of some invisible mycorhyzae, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant — it just means that some other threats are under-appreciated. For that matter, it wouldn’t take much tweaking of your “high end” climate damage numbers to make the costs look more alarming: what if the damage function turns out to be quadratic rather than linear? What if Emanuel’s observations turn out to mean that the effect of SST on hurricane intensity is larger than the theoretical prediction? What if we recognize that under business as usual CO2 won’t stop at a doubling, but go on eventually to a quadrupling or worse? None of this says that one should neglect spending on reducing vulnerability, but the clear message I take away from your writing is that people should just calm down and forget all about the effect of AGW on hurricanes. Why wouldn’t people care about such a massive sign of human impact on nature? By the way, in your arithmetic example at the above link the damages are all monetized. Could you clarify how loss of life is figured into these numbers? You make a 10% increase in hurricane damage look small compared to the increase in monetary damage due to economic factors, but comparing a 10% increase in lives lost (as an example) with a 100% increase in costs of McMansions on the shoreline floating away on the flood is not necessarily appropriate. –raypierre”

“But lets be slightly more realistic, how about Kyoto? Assuming that the effects of GHG reductions on hurricane intensity are instantaneous and exactly proportional to emissions concentrations (also dubious assumptions, but lets go with them) under full and successful implementation of Kyoto, including the participation of the US, the reduction in projected damages would be about $0.03.”

Three cents on the dollar doesn’t sound like a lot. However, multiply this by a billion in the case of such a hurricane (i.e. the hurricane causes a billion dollars in damage) and you get 30 million dollars.

Take an average number of storms (6) in a given year, with, say an average of 50 million dollars in damage. There’s 300 million dollars in damage, which could bave been roughly 10 million dollars cheaper from which to rebuild.

Try increasing the savings from hurricane damage in the future with every ppm of CO2 that is reduced on a yearly basis. Billions of dollars will be saved! Now that sounds like a lot, eh?

D

We welcome all sorts of substantive discussions on this site. If you have something of substance to say, then let us know. Please do however take the nasty comments elsewhere.

Thanks!

Also, the cost of adaptation should not be based on the most likely scenario, but rather on the most extreme plausible scenario. What you define as the most extreme plausible scenario is of course highly subjective.

Finally, the cost of mitigation is a tricky one. Several studies show that the cost can be negligible or even negative, if it is acheived by stimulating technological development (which, of course, Kyoto does).