An op-ed article signed by 16 scientists rejecting the need for “drastic action to decarbonize the world’s economy,” published Friday by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, has been widely and thoroughly fact-checked and challenged elsewhere.
[Jan. 31, 9:42 p.m. | Updated | The Journal has published a rebuttal op-ed piece from a long list of climate scientists under the headlin “Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate.”]
Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists criticizes their take on the science in a piece titled, “Dismal Science at The Wall Street Journal.” Peter Gleick, an analyst of global water and climate issues, chides the newspaper in a Forbes post, noting that the Journal turned down a letter of concern about human-driven climate change from 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences (which ended up published in the journal Science). Chris Mooney dismantles what he calls the authors’ “reductio ad Lysenko” argument. There’s lots more. (Of course Climate Depot finds the letter breathlessly exciting.)
I’ll be publishing some more scientists’ reactions to the piece shortly, but first I wanted to add a fresh element not dealt with elsewhere so far: a critique of the 16 scientists’ take on climate economics.
After all, any conclusion about the pace of emissions cuts necessary to limit dangers from climate change is implicitly as much (or more) about economics as science.
To learn what’s wrong with the signatories’ read of economic literature, review the following excerpt from an e-mail exchange I had over the weekend with William D. Nordhaus, the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale, whose work is at the heart of the piece’s rejection of the need for “drastic” steps to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (as if that’s the only kind of response being considered):
Revkin:
I’m pulling together some reactions to facets of the much discussed Wall Street Journal op-ed on climate overstatement and wanted to get your reaction to their views of your work….
Here’s the link and the relevant passage:
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.I presume they’re alluding to your 2007 white paper, “The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy.”
But they seem to ignore the sections on your view of wise policy (which closely meshes with mine, by the way):
The summary message of this study is that climate change is a complex phenomenon, subject to great uncertainty, with changes in our knowledge occurring virtually daily. Climate change is unlikely to be catastrophic in the near term, but it has the potential for serious damages in the long run. There are big economic stakes in designing efficient approaches. The total discounted economic damages with no abatement are in the order of $23 trillion. These damages can be significantly reduced with well-designed policies, but poorly designed ones, like the current Kyoto Protocol, are unlikely to make a dent in the damages, will have substantial costs, and may cool enthusiasms for more efficient approaches. Similarly, overly ambitious projects are likely to be full of exemptions, loopholes, and compromises, and may cause more economic damage than benefit.
In the author’s view, the best approach is one that gradually introduces restraints on carbon emissions. One particularly efficient approach is internationally harmonized carbon taxes – ones that quickly become global and universal in scope and harmonized in effect. A sure and steady increase in harmonized carbon taxes may not have the swashbuckling romance of a crash program, but it is also less likely to be smashed on the rocks of political opposition and compromise. Slow, steady, universal, predictable, and boring – those are probably the secrets to success for policies to combat global warming.
Nordhaus:
The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. This is true going back to work in the early 1990s (MIT Press, Yale Press, Science, PNAS, among others). I have advocated a carbon tax for many years as the best way to attack the issue. I can only assume they either completely ignorant of the economics on the issue or are willfully misstating my findings.
Enough said.