“Personally, I am strongly convinced that the cost of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere is not zero.”

The cost to what? What is the quantity of cost? If we can’t tie rising CO2 to specific damage, how do you determine cost? So far, we have only predicted costs. If I had a dime for every time the weather man predicted rain and it didn’t…
It isn’t x that equals 0, it’s your argument.

jae: I assume x is zero and anything else is arm-waving and/or contradictory, preferably both. x = 0, and therefore no one who says otherwise is right. Some guys modeled stuff which suggested x wasn’t 0, but I didn’t think their model was good, so x is still 0.
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@MarkBahner: Thank you for the response. I agree it would be awesome to have someone predict what the global optimum temperature is. I think predicting the global optimum in temperature distribution is easy, so easy that I’m willing to take a stab at it right now off the cuff: A world which was uniformly 16 C everywhere in the world (12 in the winter and 20 in the summer), seems pretty good to me. (The point being that the distribution of temperature is not really independent of the global mean temperature.)

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=ee92dac7-802a-23ad-46f1-77bb1dcf0613&Issue_id=

It strikes me as probable (more than a 50% chance of being true), at least for the marginal emissions of the next decade or more.

In order to answer the question, “What are the net costs of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere?”…it’s very important to try to perform some sort of assessment of what the optimal global temperature (and temperature distribution) is. If emitting CO2 goes towards the optimal temperature (and temperature distribution) then the costs could easily be negative (i.e., there could easily be a net benefit from CO2 emissions).

Curiously, there has been no attempt by the IPCC (to my knowledge) to address the question, “What is the optimum temperature (and temperature distribution) of the earth?”

“Personally, I am strongly convinced that the cost of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere is not zero.”

The odds that the *net* cost (i.e., costs minus benefits) is exactly zero is indeed miniscule. But that’s simply due to the fact that the costs and the benefits are likely to be large numbers, so the odds that they exactly balance are vanishingly small.

“It is undeniable that today’s fossil fuel prices do not take into account the cost of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere. It is also certain that no one knows what the costs truly are. I suppose they could even be negative, and the global warming will be a net benefit to humanity. ”

Just WHAT are you saying? You seem to be contradicting yourself! We have absolutely no proof, right now, that there is a “positive” cost of emitting CO2, IMHO. We have only arm-waving and models (high-tech. arm-waving) which are virtually falsified by the data over the last 12 years. On the other hand, it is sure that the cost of adding plant food is negative.

It is undeniable that today’s fossil fuel prices do not take into account the cost of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere. It is also certain that no one knows what the costs truly are. I suppose they could even be negative, and the global warming will be a net benefit to humanity. This doesn’t strike me as very likely, but rather just seves to illustrate the uncertainty in what the cost of CO2 emissions are. Personally, I am strongly convinced that the cost of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere is not zero.

Accounting for the externalities of pollution makes sense. Pricing them may be difficult, but it is honest to goodness market failure in action. Funny how people love the market until it tells them they need to pay the actual price of their goods.