Joe Romm Flip Flops Again

Not long ago Joe Romm criticized an analysis by The Breakthrough Institute which argued that the number of offsets (and other allowances) were over-allocated in the Waxman-Markey Bill, allowing business-as-usual emissions to continue for an extended period:

It is clear that the offset provisions in Waxman-Markey do not vitiate the targets.

Romm has apparently changed his mind and now joins those who say that allowances are over-allocated in the bill:

Since EIA will keep overestimating CO2 emissions, too many allowances are still likely to be issued.

Joe also recognizes the problem of "double-counting" that I pointed out last spring when he writes:

It is important to note that the EIA is likely to keep overestimating CO2 emissions, since they simply will not model any national or state policies that have not been enacted into law.

Its nice to see Joe is catching up on his analyses. Better late than never!

Cap and Trade Delayed?

From E&E News PM:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today said the Senate may not act on comprehensive energy and climate change legislation until next year, given the chamber's busy fall schedule.Speaking to reporters about the possibility of taking up the bill this fall, Reid said the Senate must first finish work on health care and regulatory reform."So, you know, we are going to have a busy, busy time the rest of this year," Reid said. "And, of course, nothing terminates at the end of this year. We still have next year to complete things if we have to."

Are You a Climate Skeptic?!

Further evidence that climate science is deeply troubled. In a conversation on the difficulties of sustaining intensity of public opinion on climate policy, I cited the Knight et al. BAMS piece in conversation last night in a small group of professional colleagues, mentioning that it said that global temperatures had not increased in a decade, and that this sort of thing worked against sustaining intense public support. It seemed like a fairly obvious point, and uncontroversial.

However, one colleague, a scientist working at the climate science-policy interface who I met for the first time this week, looked at me incredulously when I mentioned the 10-year period of no warming and asked, "What are you a climate skeptic?!"

I said, "No I'm not, I'm just citing a paper in BAMS I saw today."

He accused, "You said ten years; That is selective."

I replied, "Well, that is just what the paper says. I'm just explaining what it said."

He again accused, "No, you said 10 years!"

Um, OK.

When stating facts reported in peer reviewed journals that are in articles justifying continued concern about warming results in being called a "climate skeptic" by a colleague, then you know that the community has some deep issues.

Dubious Statistics

A while ago I mentioned a group scientific effort published by NOAA seeking to show that the current slowdown in global temperatures was not unusual. They have now had their report published in BAMS (PDF), and the lead author has gone a step further and said that the slowdown was to be expected:

"We found about 1 in every 8 decades has near-zero or negative global temperature trends in simulations which would otherwise warm at expected present-day rates. Given that we have seen fairly consistent global warming since the 1970s, these odds suggest the observed slowdown was due to occur."

Two questions:

1. Does anyone want to point out the flaw in the statistical reasoning? (Hint: Boulder hasn't had 100 year flood since 1896, we must be now overdue!)

2. Can anyone point to a prediction of a slowdown in temperature increase made before the slowdown occurred?

Beyond GDP?

Joseph Stiglitz wants to develop new metrics to assess well being, and cites the limitations of conventional metrics of GDP (pictured above in comparison to infant mortality, from Gapminder.org). He writes in the FT today:

A political leader attempting to promote the well-being of his citizens is pulled in different directions: he will be graded on economic performance but there are many other dimensions to the quality of life, including the state of the environment. While there is no single indicator that can capture something as complex as our society, the metrics commonly used, such as gross domestic product, suggest a trade-off: one can improve the environment only by sacrificing growth. But if we had a comprehensive measure of well-being, perhaps we would see this as a false choice. Such a metric might indicate an increase in wellbeing as the environment improved, even if conventionally measured output went down.

This was one of several motivations for Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, when he established the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which I chaired and for which Amartya Sen served as adviser and Professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques served as co-ordinator, and whose final report is issued on Monday.

National income statistics such as GDP and gross national product were originally intended as a measure of market economic activity, including the public sector. But they have increasingly been thought of as measures of societal well-being, which they are not. Of course, good statisticians have warned against this error. Much economic activity occurs within the home – and this can contribute to individual well-being as much as, or more than, market production.

There are concerns, too, that a focus on the material aspects of GDP may be especially inappropriate as the world faces the crisis of global warming. Should we “punish” a country – in terms of our measure of performance – if it decides to take some of the fruits of the increase in productivity from the advancement of knowledge in the form of leisure, rather than just consuming more and more goods?

What we measure affects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things. In the quest to increase GDP, we may end up with a society in which most citizens have become worse off.

The French commission that Prof. Siglitz is participating on can be found here, along with their interim report issued last June.

While I agree with many of the critiques of GDP asa measure of well being, at the same time it does say something about well being (see the data at gapminder.org). I am not optimistic that new metrics will ever replace GDP, however effective policy making no doubt depends upon a more comprehensive view that GDP alone affords.

From this perspective, I think that Stiglitz is misguided when he writes of GDP that "Flawed statistics may also lead us to make incorrect inferences." This is undoubtedly a true statement, however, it is not that GDP is a "flawed statistic" -- it actually measures quite well what it is supposed to measure. The issue has to do with the use of GDP in policy making as an indicator. This is a little like using student standardized test scores as the sole metric of a graduate student applicant's prospects for success in our graduate program. Sure it works in many cases, but students are more than just a single number, and maybe GPA, letters, interviews and statement of application should be considered as well. Can all this be boiled down to a new and improved index? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Decision making will continue to require consideration of imperfect and incomplete statistical indicators. Efforts to boil down complex issues like well-being to a single indicator are likely to fail for the same reasons that GDP fails as a single indicator. For better or worse, we will have to continue to rely on multiple indicators about contested and uncertain values.

Debate with Marc Morano

Looks like I'll be debating Marc Morano in Washington, DC in March. The event will be hosted by AEI and moderated by Andy Revkin. We'll make sure that it is made available online for those who cannot attend in person. We'll also be negotiating a suitable resolution to be debated (feel free to offer suggestions in the comments), which won't be settled until after we see what happens in Copenhagen and with U.S. cap and trade legislation. I'll provide updates on the event as things get organized. Thanks to AEI and Andy Revkin for helping to make this happen.

South Africa and Todd Stern on Targets and Timetables

South Africa emits the 12th most carbon dioxide among nations (2006), which places it ahead of countries such as Brazil, Australia and France. Yesterday a government spokesperson explained that South Africa is not going to sign up to targets and timetables for emissions reductions:

"We are committed to taking responsible action to reduce our emissions but we are not ready to agree to any targets that would undermine our growth trajectory... We think that it is premature for South Africa to agree to targets... If we were to agree to targets now, we think that it could actually hamper our economic growth... The only viable source of energy at this particular point in time is through the use of coal-powered stations."

Testifying before Congress yesterday and speaking on rapidly developing countries, U.S. chief negotiator Todd Stern displayed a bit of Yogi Berraesque philosophy:

I have said on occasion that countries like these are often willing to do more than they are willing to agree to do.

Stern's testimony indicates that he is apparently under the impression that South Africa has agreed to halt its increasing emissions by 2025, which looks suspiciously like a target and a timetable of the sort explicitly rejected by the South African government. Stern was able to include the following two statements in his testimony with no apparent deleterious effects of the resulting cognitive dissonance:

According to the International Energy Agency, 97 percent of the projected increase in global emissions between now and 2030 will come from developing countries... In some cases, they are taking action at the federal level that outstrips our own.

And similarly,

They [developing countries] must take actions that will significantly reduce their emissions below their so-called “business-as-usual” path in the mid-term (around 2020), to an extent consistent with what is called for by the science . . . At the same time, we cannot expect developing countries – or indeed any country – to commit to actions that they cannot plausibly achieve or to make promises that are antithetical to their need to fight poverty and build a better life for their citizens.

It'll be very interesting to see how the dissonance gets resolved in Copenhagen.

Inviting Marc Morano to Debate

Marc Morano is upset that Andrew Freedman, a blogger with the Washington Post, won't debate him about climate change. Not wanting to see Marc left without a debating partner, I'd be happy to debate Marc Morano on climate policy. Were we to do an Oxford-style debate I'd propose the following resolution:

Resolved: Governments around the world should adopt a low carbon tax to finance technological innovation and other policies focused on decarbonizng the global economy. At the same time enhanced investments are needed around the world on policies focused on improving resilience and adaptive capacity.

How about it Marc?

Can Climate Policy Survive Doubt?

Over at the Washington Post, several of its expert bloggers at the Capital Weather Gang are mixing it up on questions related to climate science and scientific consensus.

Matt Rogers has doubts.

Andrew Freedman does not.

Meantime, Marc Morano of ClimateDepot looks to maximize the PR value of the debate.

Can climate policy survive expressions of doubt? I think that it can and it must. but this means giving doubt its proper place in debates about climate, as being not just acceptable, but fully expected and welcomed. So good for Rogers and Freedman both for expressing their views. If you read closely enough you'll see that their policy preferences are not really so different, and therein lies an important lesson.

As Walter Lippmann once said, and I often paraphrase, democracy is not about getting everyone to think alike, but it is about getting people who think differently to act alike.

Non-Fossil Fossil Fuels??

On CCNet Benny Peiser highlights a recent paper in Nature Geoscience that will be sure to get the Peak Oil crowd worked up. A press release describes the paper as follows:

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

"With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!" says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth's crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

Of course, the ultimate arbiter of the paper's argument will be the market and actual hydrocarbon supply.

Some Very Good News

The New York Times reports today that childhood mortality has declined significantly in Africa in recent years, citing a remarkable figure of 10,000 less deaths per day. Here is an excerpt from the story:

The number of children dying before their fifth birthdays each year has fallen below nine million for the first time on record, a significant milestone in the global effort to improve children’s chances of survival, particularly in the developing world, according to data that Unicef will release on Thursday.

The child mortality rate has declined by more than a quarter in the last two decades — to 65 per 1,000 live births last year from 90 in 1990 — in large part because of the widening distribution of relatively inexpensive technologies, like measles vaccines and anti-malaria mosquito nets.

Other simple practices have helped, public health experts say, including a rise in breast-feeding alone for the first six months of life, which protects children from diarrhea caused by dirty water.

Wealthy nations, international agencies and philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates have committed billions of dollars to the effort. Schoolchildren and church groups have also pitched in, paying for mosquito nets and feeding programs.

Taken together, they have helped cut the number of children under 5 who died last year to 8.8 million — the lowest since records were first kept in 1960, Unicef said — from 12.5 million in 1990.

“That’s 10,000 less children dying per day,” said Unicef’s executive director, Ann M. Veneman.

A Crass Relabeling or Robbing the Poor?

On issues of adaptation my views have changed over the past 15 years. I once thought that adaptation would have to be a key part of any international climate policy. I still think that it should have a major international dimension, but I also think that it should be clearly distinguished from mitigation. A report in today's FT helps to explain why it is important to keep separate climate policy and what traditionally goes under the heading of development policy:

The European Union is to offer a modest €15bn a year to help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change, setting the stage for a fight before an international conference in Copenhagen in December.

Rich and poor nations have traded recriminations over the central question of how much money developed countries should contribute to developing nations such as China and India to help them adapt to and limit global warming. . .

One point of contention in the proposal is language suggesting that the EU could use development aid promised for poor countries as part of its climate-change contribution.

That possibility has stirred opposition from aid and environmental groups, which otherwise praised the Commission for putting an offer on the table after months of delay.

Elise Ford, head of Oxfam International’s Brussels office, said the proposal would “in effect rob tomorrow’s hospitals and schools in developing countries to pay for them to tackle climate change now”.

What the EU appears to be proposing is either (a) to simply relabel development money as climate adaptation money, which adds no marginal value to efforts to build resilience in poor countries, or (b) to actually take money from aid programs and reprogram it in other ways deemed more appropriate for climate adaptation. Neither proposal is very appealing, to say the least.

Climate adaptation is not something different than development, it is in fact a subset, and often not the most important factor in human suffering and misery around the world. Climate adaptation should be pursued through existing development programs (as flawed as they may be) rather than as a useless appendage to a international process focused on energy policies.

Who Needs Democracy?

I am flat-out amazed when I read statements like those I see in Thomas Friedman's NYT column today:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Autocracy means a system of government ruled by one person with absolute power. Looking back over history, both recent and further back, how well did society fare under autocracy?

Hat tip - Keith Kloor

What Dieter Helm Thinks About EU Climate Polcieis

Dieter Helm, the Oxford economist, is not too impressed (PDF):

While the EU focuses on the short-term carbon price and renewables, global emissions are likely
to go on rising, driven by coal and by developing countries such as China and India. Both of these countries will increase their populations by 1 billion by 2050 and are heavily dependent on coal. Therefore, were the EU serious about climate change, the emphasis would be overwhelmingly on coal and China and India. But, as noted above, the production base for the 2020 20 per cent target (and for Kyoto) means that the measurement of ‘success’ is not the impact on global concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the production of CO2 in the EU. As also noted above, it is perfectly possible for the latter to go down, and the former to go up, and, indeed, possible that the consequence of reducing the latter might actually further exacerbate the former. So why has the EU not taken seriously the China/India/coal problem? The answer is that there appears not to be the political will to do what would be implied: not only to make much larger cuts in EU carbon production, but also to make the large financial and technology transfers to the developed countries. On the contrary, the EU has been lulled into the false assumption that tackling global warming is cheap. Across the EU, the most widely quoted number from the Stern Review is that it will only cost 1 per cent GDP (Stern, 2007). Politicians drop the caveats about ‘good policy’ and have been very keen to assure voters that climate-change policy will not have a significant impact on their standard of living. They can have their cake and eat it: claiming that economic growth can go on at 2–3 per cent per annum for the rest of the century and the world (and not just Europe) can decarbonize.

Read Prof. Helm's entire critique here in PDF.

Reminder- Short Course in Denver on Climate Science and Politics

If you are in the Denver-Boulder area and would like to learn a bit more about climate policy, then you might be interested in a three-lecture Enrichment Program course (non-credit) that I am giving starting in less than 2 weeks through the University of Denver titled "Climate Science and Politics: A Dysfunctional Union."

The course will meet over three successive Monday evenings starting September 21 at DU and in the lectures I'll cover mitigation policy, adaptation policy, and science in policy and politics. Here is the blurb on the course from the DU web site:

Climate Science and Politics: A Dysfunctional Union

Leaders around the world agree that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses risks requiring action. However, acknowledging the need for action and implementing effective policies are two different things. In fact, over the past decade when concern has increased about climate change, the world economy has become even more carbon intensive. This is a complex problem. Just ask Roger Pielke, Jr., a CU Environmental Studies professor who studies the science and politics of climate change. What are the obstacles to de-carbonization of the global economy? Pielke argues that success will require many decades of cooperative work and significant amounts of money. By contrast, quick fixes in the form of legislation or treaties are all but certain to fail. Learn about efforts to deal with the impacts of the changing climate with a focus on recent disasters exacting higher tolls on humanity. Discuss the role of scientists, advisors and policy makers in these politicized debates. How is science used and/or misused? How can the scientific community help to encourage a healthy interaction of science and politics? Come away with greater understanding of the often-dysfunctional union between climate science and politics, how it impacts society, and where we go from here.

Sign up here.

Focus of Attention 101

The Economist blog Democracy in America has a thought provoking critique of how "liberals are hurting Barack Obama" that has considerable relevant for blogging in the area of climate change, and especially the loudest voices in the debate. Here is an excerpt:

The basic problem for liberals is time. There are only so many hours of news to fill; every minute spent talking about a conservative outrage is a minute not spent talking about, say, whether unions would walk away from the table if the White House didn't include a public option in the health-care bill. The latter story is about Democratic power; the former is about Democratic weakness. How low must the self-confidence of the majority party be if it can't take some ribbing from powerless conservatives?

The second problem is tone. Like it or not, liberalism is the ideology of the big cities. When liberal interest-groups mock conservatives, they often sound like Noel Coward characters making fun of the rubes.

The final problem is, ironically, the market. Wonkish writing about the Democratic agenda does not sell. Mockery does. (That silly Dick Cheney story at the Huffington Post is on its way to 2000 comments from readers.) There's an impetus for members of the new liberal media to be the first with a particularly juicy right-wing attack. And that's ironic, because the internet has provided them with unlimited space to cover whatever they want. There's not really any need to package the most salacious story for the front page. Those stories simply provide a more immediate reward—links, traffic, possibly an obscure Republican backing down—and the effect of crowding out the liberal agenda is too delayed to notice.

Some good advice implicit in these comments.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Apparently Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s soon-to-be prime minister, believes in magic. The FT reports today that Japan now seeks to reduce emissions by 25% from 1990 levels, which is equivalent to a 37% reduction from 2005 levels. The previous government promised a 15% reduction from 2005 levels. From the FT:

Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s incoming prime minister, has vowed to stick by his Democratic party's manifesto goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and has promised to draw up a “Hatoyama Initiative” laying out how rich nations should support the developing countries build low-carbon economies.

In an election manifesto issued before the DPJ toppled the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party in last month's historic general election, the decade-old opposition said it would aim to cut emissions of the gases blamed for global warming by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

The goal is much more ambitious than the interim target of an 8 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels announced in June by Taro Aso, Japan’s LDP prime minister.

It is also opposed by Japanese business groups, which say the oil-import-dependent nation is already highly energy efficient and that further emission reduction gains will be hard to come by and could further undermine an economy already suffering chronic low growth.

But the DPJ has added on a caveat that wasn't part of their campaign promises:

The incoming prime minister stressed that the goal would be contingent on other nations making strong commitments to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

He said industrialised nations would offer “financial and technological support” to developing countries and that as soon as he took office he would “begin studying” concrete steps to be brought together as the Hatoyama Initiative for international co-operation on the issues.

The FT explains the obvious:

The DPJ, which has given little detail of how it will curb greenhouse gas emissions, is also likely to face substantial practical and political obstacles in putting policies in place to meet its carbon-cutting goal.

I have written a paper (that is now awaiting re-review following a revision) on Japanese emissions reduction targets. In it I argue that the LDP's Mamizu climate policy was likely too ambitious. Clearly, the “Hatoyama Initiative” is yet another "magical solution."

To get on a list to receive the final version of this paper once (hopefully soon) accepted just drop me an email.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., (in review). Mamizu Climate Policy: An Evaluation of Japanese Carbon Emissions Reduction Targets, Environmental Research Letters.

Climate Forecasts "Out of Kilter"

Fred Pearce reports from the 3rd World Climate Conference:

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

"People will say this is global warming disappearing," he told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference.

"I am not one of the sceptics," insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. "However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

And there is more:

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.

Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic. "The oceans are key to decadal natural variability," he said.

Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.

In candid mood, climate scientists avoided blaming nature for their faltering predictions, however. "Model biases are also still a serious problem. We have a long way to go to get them right. They are hurting our forecasts," said Tim Stockdale of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK.

The world may badly want reliable forecasts of future climate. But such predictions are proving as elusive as the perfect weather forecast.

A Few Reactions to 'The First 300 Days"

The symposium last week at the CU Law School on the climate and energy policies of the Obama Administration was very well attended. I had a fun time and learned a lot from my fellow panelists, Mark Squillace was especially sharp in his comments. I understand that it was recorded and as soon as it appears I'll provide a link.

Meantime, Sharon Friedman attended and graciously sent in these reactions:

Thanks to everyone involved in the panel. It was informative, lively and the speakers kept on time! Great work!

Here’s a couple of things I heard that I think deserve more discussion:

Suffocating in Piles of $, Good for Science/Technology and/or Climate Change?

People in climate change and renewable technologies may be getting too much money to spend wisely. Perhaps a phased- in approach or simply more management (Manhattan project- like?) could be a more successful way of spending tax dollars. One person told a story of only one out of 1700 proposals being any good for some DOE grants. I have to wonder if today our response to the need for the atomic bomb would be to put Fermi and Oppenheimer on a panel reviewing grant proposals.

The other observation made by a panelist was something along the lines of “Getting lots of money now is bad because it might not be continued.” (I didn’t really understand this, I think what is meant is that by dumping money now a lot of scientific projects will get established, and people will get jobs only to lose them later..but this sounds like all economic stimulus projects would have the same problem. Maybe I missed something.)

Congress or Agencies Better to Develop Approach to Climate Regulation?

Some people think Congress “should “ be able to do better with legislation on climate than EPA regulations. In my experience, with technical issues, Congress can make deals at the end of the day that don’t really make technical sense. In my experience, this is less likely to happen with agencies (who at the end of the day can say, it’s just not worth doing – the best deal we can get doesn’t meet our purpose in doing this regulation.) It seems to me that when Congress gets involved there is a lot more momentum generated, ultimately that leads to making some kind of deal. But that’s just me. This might be a good project for a graduate student.. do a couple of case studies of technical regulatory issues and see who did the best job- Congress or agencies, and explore possible reasons.

Need for Funds for Adaptation Research

A couple times it was mentioned that there was a need for funds for adaptation (research or actual adaptation is not clear). My observation is that each discipline involved in adaptation (water resources, emergency management, etc.) has shifted some or much of their research funding to considerations of climate adaptation. In some geographic areas there are at least three separate downscaling efforts directed toward adaptation. Perhaps we need to be clearer about what we mean by adaptation research, explore what people are already doing and see what else needs to be done before we conclude there is not enough, or there is. I think many of the adaptation fields (wildlife biology, plant breeding) may be invisible to the Science Establishment but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing research right now on specifically those topics. If it isn’t funded by NOAA, NSF or DOE, it seems like it doesn’t exist, in some science circles. My observation is also that the adapters I know are doing a lot more analysis and strategizing than academics might know about.

EPA Better than Agriculture to Work on Agriculture and Forestry Offsets?

People who work in Agriculture understand farms and forests. So why would we hire a bunch of new people who do not understand farms and forests to learn about them and do offsets? Because they are more independent, I suppose. Using the same logic (those who know about things are unavoidably tainted by self-interest) we should have non-scientists running the science agency budgets). Just sayin’.

Energy R&D in Lomborg's Exercise

Lomborg's five economists ranked energy R&D as its second highest priority. They also ranked a carbon tax, of any magnitude as the lowest priority. I thought it would be worth seeing how Isabel Galiana nand Chris Green actually framed energy R&D for the panel in relation to a carbon tax in their excellent paper (here in PDF):

Our proposed approach to mitigation has technology leading carbon pricing. As explained in section IV, carbon pricing plays two roles: first, the role of funding R&D and technology change; and second, committing to the slow but steady increase in the carbon price, thereby signaling adoption of on-the-shelf, ready to deploy, and scalable energy technologies. Thus, in our approach, technology and mitigation are linked via carbon pricing. But they are not linked via today’s carbon price, but rather via tomorrow’s carbon price. In our approach, carbon pricing initially plays a largely passive and ancillary, albeit important, role. But as time passes, carbon pricing plays a more active role by sending a “forward price signal” as a result of commitments to its slow but steady rise.

Thus it is not correct to interpret our approach as emphasizing R&D but not mitigation. The two are inextricably intertwined. Also it is not correct to say that we all but ignore carbon pricing. Indeed, carbon pricing plays two important roles, one financial, one signaling. Moreover, a carbon price that starts at $5.00/t CO2 in 2010, and doubles every 10 years, reaches $80/t CO2 in 2050.

Thus, the energy R&D strategy proposed by Galiana and Green actually includes a carbon tax as a necessary element of the proposal for capitalizing on the energy R&D. Galiana and Green do turn the role of a carbon tax on its head from most proposals, by arguing for a low tax to start and rising over time, but it is strage to see Lomborg's economists cleave the teax from the R&D proposal given that the R&D strategy that was proposed to them depened upon it.

The Galiana and Green paper is absolutely excellent and it alone makes Lomborg's exercise worthwhile. A shame though that the experts decided to pick cherries on this topic as well as on geoengineering.