Climate change

The conspiracy of those malign incumbent powers, the laws of physics, against the plucky underdog, coal megacorporations



Dealing with it, predicting it etc.

Tail risk

Tim Harford summarizes Weitzman (M. Weitzman 2007; Martin L. Weitzman 2011; Martin L. Weitzman 2007):

It is only when we ponder the tail risk that we realise how dangerous climate change might be. Local air pollution isn’t going to wipe out the human race. Climate change probably won’t, either. But it might. When we buy insurance, it isn’t because we expect the worst, but because we recognise that the worst might happen.

Regional effects

1200 years of Kyoto cherry blossom records. Source: The Economist

Generic

Is my local neighbourhood likely to be flooded by sea level rises? Flooded by swollen rivers? Scoured by flame? If I live somewhere without a good department of meteorology, there are generic tools that will estimate this for me

These generic tools, I am told by colleagues, at only a fallback. Locally-specific modelling tat takes into account the local climate is likely superior when available, since it is able to be more detailed in the modelling.

Australia

Australia: How the climate crisis will affect you.

A more detailed but older one here.

More usable data can be downloaded.

I have mixed feelings about these tools. The Australian data visualisations are incorporate much high-grade locally-specific modelling, so they are probably more accurate that the generic ones. However, none of the well-visualised easily-accessible data is the stuff I actually want; e.g. a map of average summer temperature does not tell me much. A map of the number of extreme fire danger days tells me more of what I need to know; that is quite hard to find.

Projections of that sort may be found in raw data files in the threshold data sets. However this data is still not ideal, being badly indexed, not particularly well-explained, and confusingly named::

Choosing between e.g. NorESM1-M and MIROC5 left as an exercise

Fixing climate change

  • Paul Hawken et al, Drawdown:

    Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Our organization did not make or devise the plan—we found the plan because it already exists. We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global warming within thirty years. It shows that humanity has the means at hand. Nothing new needs to be invented.

    Most interesting index Solution summary by rank, which is one of the better uses cost rankings of this stuff. If their figures are accurate, this is a good pinup for effective altruism.

Mitigating

Chicago’s Future of water

“We’re going to be like the Saudi Arabia of freshwater. This is one of the best places in the world to live out global warming.”

Robert Pollin, De-growth vs a green new deal

it is in fact absolutely imperative that some categories of economic activity should now grow massively—those associated with the production and distribution of clean energy. Concurrently, the global fossil-fuel industry needs to contract massively—that is, to ‘de-grow’ relentlessly over the next forty or fifty years until it has virtually shut down. In my view, addressing these matters in terms of their specifics is more constructive in addressing climate change than presenting broad generalities about the nature of economic growth, positive or negative.

Carbon pricing

Much interesting actuarial risk management in here. e.g. van den Bremer and van der Ploeg (2021).

Jeff Colgan, Jessica F. Green, Thomas Hale Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change:

While scholars have typically modeled climate change as a global collective action challenge, we offer a dynamic theory of climate politics based on the present and future revaluation of assets. Climate politics can be understood as a contest between owners of assets that accelerate climate change, such as fossil fuel plants, and owners of assets vulnerable to climate change, like coastal property. To date, obstruction by “climate-forcing” asset holders has been a large barrier to effective climate policy. But as climate change and decarbonization policies proceed, holders of both climate-forcing and “climate-vulnerable” assets stand to lose some or even all of the value of their assets over time, and with them, the basis of their political power. This dynamic contest between opposing interests is likely to intensify in many sites of political contestation, from the subnational to transnational levels. As it does so, climate politics will become increasingly existential, potentially reshaping political alignments within and across countries. Such shifts may further undermine the LIO: as countries develop pro-climate policies at different speeds and magnitudes, they will have incentives to diverge from existing arrangements over trade and economic integration.

Carbon offsets and reductions

The incentive design of getting individuals to coluntarily pay more for collective goods is… not ideal.

Carbon sequestration

A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change:

The hope was that the soil might save us. With civilization continuing to pump ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, perhaps plants—nature’s carbon scrubbers—might be able to package up some of that excess carbon and bury it underground for centuries or longer.

That hope has fueled increasingly ambitious climate change—mitigation plans. Researchers at the Salk Institute, for example, hope to bioengineer plants whose roots will churn out huge amounts of a carbon-rich, cork-like substance called suberin. Even after the plant dies, the thinking goes, the carbon in the suberin should stay buried for centuries. This Harnessing Plants Initiative is perhaps the brightest star in a crowded firmament of climate change solutions based on the brown stuff beneath our feet.

Such plans depend critically on the existence of large, stable, carbon-rich molecules that can last hundreds or thousands of years underground. Such molecules, collectively called humus, have long been a keystone of soil science; major agricultural practices and sophisticated climate models are built on them.

But over the past 10 years or so, soil science has undergone a quiet revolution, akin to what would happen if, in physics, relativity or quantum mechanics were overthrown. Except in this case, almost nobody has heard about it—including many who hope soils can rescue the climate. “There are a lot of people who are interested in sequestration who haven’t caught up yet,” said Margaret Torn, a soil scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

A new generation of soil studies powered by modern microscopes and imaging technologies has revealed that whatever humus is, it is not the long-lasting substance scientists believed it to be. Soil researchers have concluded that even the largest, most complex molecules can be quickly devoured by soil’s abundant and voracious microbes. The magic molecule you can just stick in the soil and expect to stay there may not exist.

Bathtub Dynamics

Mental models of climate change and their difficulties for our ape brains. 🏗

thanks Sweatybird

Wildfires

See bushfires.

Visualising it

…and ML

See Climate change and ML.

Economics

From the Australian Climate Council:

  • A report called 'Hitting Home' from earlier this year, which showed that the cost of extreme weather disasters in Australia has already doubled since the 1970s.
  • A report from 2019, working with a team at University of Melbourne, which included the finding that the property market is expected to lose $571 billion in value by 2030 due to climate change and extreme weather, and will continue to lose value in the coming decades if emissions remain high.

News

References

Ackerman, Frank. 2017. Worst-Case Economics: Extreme Events in Climate and Finance. Illustrated edition. London New York: Anthem Press.
Ackerman, Frank, Stephen J DeCanio, Richard Howarth, and Kristen Sheeran. 2009. “Limitations of Integrated Assessment Models of Climate Change.” Climatic Change 95: 297–315.
Aono, Yasuyuki, and Keiko Kazui. 2008. Phenological Data Series of Cherry Tree Flowering in Kyoto, Japan, and Its Application to Reconstruction of Springtime Temperatures Since the 9th Century.” International Journal of Climatology 28 (7): 905–14.
Bremer, Ton S. van den, and Frederick van der Ploeg. 2021. The Risk-Adjusted Carbon Price.” American Economic Review 111 (9): 2782–2810.
Charpentier, Arthur, Laurence Barry, and Molly R. James. 2021. Insurance Against Natural Catastrophes: Balancing Actuarial Fairness and Social Solidarity.” The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, May.
Colgan, Jeff, Jessica F. Green, and Thomas Hale. 2020. Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change.” SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3634572. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
DeCanio, Stephen J. 2003. Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique. Palgrave Macmillan.
Dugmore, Andrew J., Christian Keller, and Thomas H. McGovern. 2007. Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting Fates of Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands.” Arctic Anthropology 44 (1): 12–36.
Dugmore, Andrew J., Christian Keller, Thomas H. McGovern, Andrew F. Casely, and Konrad Smiarowski. 2001. Norse Greenland Settlement and Limits to Adaptation.” In Adapting to Climate Change, edited by W. Neil Adger, Irene Lorenzoni, and Karen L. O’Brien, 1st ed., 96–113. Cambridge University Press.
Fricke, Evan C., Alejandro Ordonez, Haldre S. Rogers, and Jens-Christian Svenning. 2022. The Effects of Defaunation on Plants’ Capacity to Track Climate Change.” Science, January.
Geyer, Charles J. n.d. “Markov Chain Monte Carlo Lecture Notes,” 125.
Ghil, Michael, and Valerio Lucarini. 2020. The Physics of Climate Variability and Climate Change.” Reviews of Modern Physics 92 (3): 035002.
Hsiang, Solomon M., Kyle C. Meng, and Mark A. Cane. 2011. Civil Conflicts Are Associated with the Global Climate.” Nature 476 (7361): 438–41.
Keen, Steve. 2020. The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change.” Globalizations 0 (0): 1–29.
Laitner, John A, Stephen J DeCanio, and Irene Peters. 2000. “Incorporating Behavioural, Social, and Organizational Phenomena in the Assessment of Climate Change Mitigation Options.” In Society, Behaviour, and Climate Change Mitigation, 1–64. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Mielke, Jahel, and Gesine A. Steudle. 2018. Green Investment and Coordination Failure: An Investors’ Perspective.” Ecological Economics 150 (August): 88–95.
Miguel, Edward, and Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak. 2022. The Economics of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poor Countries.” Annual Review of Economics 14 (1): 253–85.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. 1 edition. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Ou-Yang, Chieh, Howard Kunreuther, and Erwann Michel-Kerjan. 2013. An Economic Analysis of Climate Adaptations to Hurricane Risk in St. Lucia.” The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice 38 (3): 521–46.
Pielke, Roger, Gwyn Prins, Steve Rayner, and Daniel Sarewitz. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation.” Nature 445: 597–98.
Pollin, Robert. 2018. “De-Growth Vs a Green New Deal.” New Left Review, II, no. 112: 5–25.
Proust, Katrina M, Stephen R Dovers, Barney Foran, Barry Newell, Will Steffen, and Patrick Troy. 2007. “Climate, Energy and Water: Accounting for the Links.” Canberra: Land & Water Australia.
Rolnick, David, Priya L. Donti, Lynn H. Kaack, Kelly Kochanski, Alexandre Lacoste, Kris Sankaran, Andrew Slavin Ross, et al. 2019. Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning.” arXiv:1906.05433 [Cs, Stat], November.
Schiermeier, Quirin. 2018. Droughts, Heatwaves and Floods: How to Tell When Climate Change Is to Blame.” Nature 560 (7716): 20–22.
Schlenker, Wolfram, and Charles A Taylor. 2019. Market Expectations About Climate Change.” Working Paper 25554. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sterman, John D. 2011. Communicating Climate Change Risks in a Skeptical World.” Climatic Change 108 (4): 811–26.
Sterman, John D., and Linda Booth Sweeney. 2007. Understanding Public Complacency about Climate Change: Adults’ Mental Models of Climate Change Violate Conservation of Matter.” Climatic Change 80 (3-4): 213–38.
Sterman, John D, and Linda B Sweeney. 2002. “Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming.” System Dynamics Review 18: 207–40.
Thiébaux, H. J., and F. W. Zwiers. 1984. The Interpretation and Estimation of Effective Sample Size.” Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 23 (5): 800–811.
Weitzman, Martin. 2007. Structural Uncertainty and the Value of Statistical Life in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change.” Working Paper 13490. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Weitzman, Martin L. 2007. A Review of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.” Journal of Economic Literature, 22.
Weitzman, Martin L. 2011. Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 5 (2): 275–92.
Yglesias, Matthew. 2012. The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think. Simon & Schuster.
Zhao, Boyang, Isla S. Castañeda, Jeffrey M. Salacup, Elizabeth K. Thomas, William C. Daniels, Tobias Schneider, Gregory A. de Wet, and Raymond S. Bradley. 2022. Prolonged Drying Trend Coincident with the Demise of Norse Settlement in Southern Greenland.” Science Advances 8 (12): eabm4346.

No comments yet. Why not leave one?

GitHub-flavored Markdown & a sane subset of HTML is supported.