Tol, R

==

cited by lomborg in congr test origin of small % BS

Tol,!Richard!S.!J.!2012.!“A!Cost–benefit!Analysis!of!the!EU!20/20/2020!Package.” Energy*Policy,!Special!Section:!Fuel!Poverty!Comes!of!Age:! Commemorating!21!Years!of!Research!and!Policy,!49!(October):!288–95.! doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2012.06.018.

400PP REPORT ~ CWG?!

Richard S.J. Tol is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and Vrije Universiteit

Amsterdam, specializing in environmental and climate economics. He earned his M.Sc. in

Econometrics and Operations Research (1992) and Ph.D. in Economics (1997) from Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam. Tol has contributed to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report as a

Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group II. His research focuses on the economic impacts

of climate change and cost-benefit analyses of climate policy. He is a member of the Academia

Europaea and a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society and listed among the top 100

economists in the world

heritage BS:

A common claim among proponents of action on climate change is that the overwhelming majority of climatologists agree on global warming science. One commonly cited statistic is that 97 percent of climatologists agree on global warming. This 97 percent number is recited and embellished by politicians and environmental activist organizations pushing to decarbonize America and the world’s energy sector. In a 2014 commencement speech at Boston College, Secretary of StateJohn Kerry said, “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.”[[2]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn2) This is, in fact, not the case.

The figure comes from a 2013 Cook et al. study in Environmental Research Letters that examines the abstracts of nearly 12,000 academic papers on climate change and global warming between 1991–2011. Of those papers, 66.4 percent expressed no opinion on anthropogenic warming, 32.6 percent “endorsed” anthropogenic warming, 0.7 percent rejected anthropogenic warming, and 0.3 percent were unsure of the cause.[[3]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn3) Of the 33.6 percent expressing an opinion on man-made global warming, “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”[[4]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn4) Importantly, the claim says nothing about urgency or danger.

Cook’s paper was the subject of much criticism. Richard Tol, a professor at the University of Sussex, warned that “[t]his claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low.”[[5]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn5)David R. Legates,former director of University of Delaware’s Center for Climatic Research, along with three other researchers, analyzed the same set of papers in the Cook study. They found that a mere 0.3 percent of all papers, or 1 percent of the 4,014 papers expressing an opinion on the matter, claim that the majority of warming since 1950 is man-made.[[6]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn6)

Further, the Cook et al. study is misleading as to what there is consensus on and glosses over major points of uncertainty and disagreement in the scientific community.To be clear, Cook et al. do not attempt to quantify how much global warming is man-made, or even say that man-made emissions contribute to the majority of global warming. The specific or even generalized amount of warming caused by anthropogenic emissions, according to Cook’s study, is undetermined. Furthermore, the search terms Cook used to aggregate the climate papers excluderesearch papers from climate “skeptics,” such as MIT atmospheric physicist and former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor Dr. Richard Lindzen.[[7]](https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-state-climate-science-no-justification-extreme-policies#_ftn7)

The 97 percent statistic is nothing more than a false talking point; no overwhelming consensus exists among climatologists on the magnitude of future warming or on the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Biases in Climate Research.There is increasing concern that climate science and scientific reviews are no longer truly independent. The state of climate science should be concerning to everyone, regardless of where scientific evidence leads and how policymakers choose to act on scientific knowledge.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/12/marc-morano-s-climate-hustle-documentary-ready-paris-premiere-same-old-denial-myths

==

http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-tol

desmog

Credentials

• M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1992
• Ph.D. Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1997

Source: [1]

 Background

Professor Richard Tol is an economist, academic and an advisor to the climate denial organisation the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Tol claims to specialise in assessing the economic implications of climate change impacts and policy approaches. His analysis suggests economic impacts from climate change are negligible and possibly beneficial, at least until the latter part of the 21st century.

Tol has also worked closely with the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a US-registered think tank founded by Danish political scientist Dr Bjorn Lomborg.

Tol is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Sussex, and a Professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU University Amsterdam.

Tol has been involved in writing United NationsIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports in various capacities as an author (contributing, lead, principal, and convening) for the working groups looking at the physical science, the impacts and the ways to mitigate climate change.  [1] , [2] , [3]

Richard Tol was previously a research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, the Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University and an Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.” [1]

According to his own Twitter biography, Richard Tol is the “scholar most-cited by Stern Review.” One profile of Tol describes him as a “Climate economist, unafraid to fight.” [4] , [5]

Since about June 2013, Tol has been engaged in a public fight with the authors of a popular scientific journal paper which found that 97 per cent of climate change studies carried out since 1991 agreed that global warming was mostly caused by human activity.

Tol nevertheless agrees a scientific consensus on global warming exists, but argues over the methodology used to arrive at the 97% figure.

Stance on Climate Change

“Humans are a tough and adaptable species. People live on the equator and in the Arctic, in the desert and in the rainforest. We survived ice ages with primitive technologies. The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable.” [6]

“From a selfish point of view I’d put my money into adaptation. We can adapt without having to seek cooperation from India and China. We would have much greater control over it.” [2]

Key Quotes

“The impact of climate change is relatively small. The average impact on welfare is equivalent to losing a few per cent of income. That is, the impact of a century worth of climate change is comparable to the impact of one or two years of economic growth.” [8]

“It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them.” [10]

Key Deeds

March 2015

Tol launches a further attack on a paper by John Cook, climate change communications fellow at the University of Queensland, which appeared in the journal Environmental Research Letters and found that 97 per cent of scientific research published on global warming endorsed the view that it was primarily caused by humans. Writing in The Australian newspaper Tol repeated points previously debunked by Cook and his fellow authors.

Tol claimed:

If you want to believe climate researchers are incompetent, biased and secretive, Cook’s paper is an excellent case in point.

In a response, also published inThe Australian, Cook wrote:

Every criticism of our research has avoided the fact that the actual scientists who authored the scientific papers independently confirmed the 97 per cent consensus. This includes a piece in these pages by Richard Tol. He attacks our research using analysis that has been shown to be flawed, as explained shortly; and while arguing against our abstract ratings, his critique has no rebuttal to the self-ratings that also found 97 per cent agreement. An obsession with minutiae that do not affect the final result while ignoring the broader picture is common by those denying the consensus on climate change.

March 2015

From mid 2014 until January 2015, Tol issued a series of complaints against UK-based newspaper The Guardian over six stories which featured him. Tol initially referred his complaints to the UK's Press Complaints Commission, but over the course of the complaints being dealt with, the PCC was disbanded to be replaced by a new body.

In evidence given to the:{ US House Science Committee:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: in May 2014, Told claimed that “staff of the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Guardian now routinely tell lies about me and my work”. Tol's reference to the LSE relates to a public row Tol had been engaged in with Bob Ward, the communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Ward had published some of his criticisms of Tol's work in The Guardian.  Other Guardian bloggers, including scientists John Abraham, Skeptical Science blogger Dana Nuccitelli and DeSmogBlog contributor Graham Readfearn had also written articles critical of Tol or his work.

The Guardian launched an internal inuiry to deal with Tol's complaints about the six stories and published its findings in March 2015. The Guardian rejected all Tol's complaints in relation to five of the stories, but said that the word “riddled” should be replaced with the words “a number of” in one of the stories. After the finding, Tol continued to describe The Guardian as conducting a “smear campaign”.

July 9, 2014

Tol delivers a speech at an event held organised by UK climate denial group Repeal the Act and held in a room at theUK's House of Commons thanks to support from Northern Ireland MP Sammy Wilson, who does not accept that human activities can change the climate.

The meeting was attended by a number of climate sceptic MPs and figures, including independent weather “forecaster” Piers Corbyn, who also believes the science linking CO2 to climate change is “delusional nonsense”.

A report from the meeting, published on DeSmogBlog, found Tol accepted as “fair” a suggestion that rising sea levels might be mainly driven by the sun or natural processes.

June, 2014

The journal Energy Policy publishes a paper from Richard Tol attacking a finding that 97 per cent of climate change studies agreed global warming was mostly human caused. Tol claimed the finding, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL), “does not stand”.

A DeSmogBlog report found that Tol had first pledged to attack the ERL paper almost a year earlier. His paper was rejected by at least three journals, including ERL, where Tol sent several drafts of his paper before it was finally rejected.

Reviewers who saw earlier drafts said Tol had identified “no serious flaws” in the ERL paper and made some claims that were “not supported by the author’s analyses”.

The original authors, led by John Cook, of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland and founder of the Skeptical Science website, analysed Tol's paper and said they had found he had made 24 errors.

The authors pointed out that Tol agreed that a scientific consensus on the cause of climate change existed and that when correcting Tol's alleged error, his own analysis provided an almost identical percentage (97.2 per cent) to their own.

May 2014

Two academic journals issue corrections to two papers by Tol which had both argued that global economic impacts from climate change would be positive if warming remained at around 1C, with longer term economic impacts of warming also being low.

In the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Tol wrote that “gremlins intervened in the preparation of my paper”. Retraction Watch reported how Tol had dropped minus signs from some of his analysis of other papers referenced in his original.

Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, analysed Tol's “gremlins” for theWashington Post and found further issues, in particular with the conclusions Tol had drawn from his own work.

Both studies helped shape the conclusions of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Working Group Two chapter covering economic impacts of climate change.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, wrote in The Guardian that a sentence in that chapter suggesting climate change could be “beneficial” under moderate warming had been dropped becuase it had been based on “faulty data” from studies by Tol.

May, 2014

Tol appears as a witness on a Republican-controlled HouseCommittee on Science, Space, and Technology hearing to “evaluate” the processes behind the IPCC's fifth round of reports into the science and impacts of climate change.

In his written evidence, Tol alleged that IPCC authors were “selected on concern as well as competence” and that the reports suffered from an “alarmist bias”. Tol also claimed that The Guardian newspaper “routinely tell lies about me and my work” - an attack which appeared to be based on a number of articles the newspaper had published critical of Tol's work.

When giving oral evidence, Tol also attacked research which had found that 97 per cent of science papers published since 1991 agreed that humans were a main cause of global warming.  Tol said:

The 97 per cent estimate is bandied about by almost everybody. I had a close look at what this study really did and as far as I can see the study just crumbles when you touch it. None of the statements in the papers is supported by any data that is actually in the papers. It is pretty clear that most of the science agrees that climate change is real and most likely human made, but this 97 per cent is essentially pulled from thin air – it’s not based on any credible research whatsoever.

April, 2014

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, writes a detailed analysis of Tol's published work relating to the economic impacts of climate change. Ward identifies a number of errors which had the effect of lowering the economic costs of climate change in two of Tol's journal papers.

In an article in the UK newspaper The Mail on Sunday, Tol accused Ward of conducting a “smear campaign” against him.

March, 2014

It is revealed that Richard:{ Tol:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: had, the previous September, withdrawn as a co-author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “Summary for Policymakers” report after accusing the group of being too alarmist.

March 18, 2013

Richard Tol publishes an article in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control titled, “Targets for global climate policy: An overview,” shared by Tol and Bjørn Lomborg on Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That? webpage. Tol’s piece is considered by some “as a definitive summary of what economics has to say about climate change.” [9]

The article became “a central building block” in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Report, Chapter 10, Working Group 2 report, “with some of its numbers appearing in the Working Group 2 Summary for Policymakers.” [9] HUH? oh, reverse chrono

October, 2011

Economist Frank Ackerman co-authors a working paper published by his employer the Stockholm Environment Institute, an independent environmental research isntitute funded by the Swedish Government, analysing and criticising aspects of a economic model co-developed by Richard Tol.

The working paper is published the following year in the journal Ecological Economics. The journal also publishes a response from Tol.

Tol goes to extreme lengths to have the working paper and, later, the peer reviewed paper, withdrawn.  Tol writes to Ackerman's employers (SEI) and when Ackerman moves jobs, Tol writes to his new employer.

At a dedicated webpage covering the Tol Controversy, Ackerman details how Tol also wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of Stockholm University, the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Swedish Minister of Environment, and the Minister of Education.

In some letters, Tol accuses Ackerman of “libel” and “defamation”. Despite Tol's extensive complaints, no actual legal action was taken by Tol.

Commenting on the affair, Ackerman writes:

He has written to my employers and publishers, accusing me of libel for writing this technical article. This is a false accusation of a serious offense, no longer just an academic disagreement. It has gone far beyond the bounds of acceptable debate.

2007

Richard Tol is a “shared winner” of the Nobel Peace Price with Al Gore and other IPCC members. [1] , [5]

 Affiliations

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, various authoring responsibilities since 1994

• Global Warming Policy Foundation, Academic Advisory Council
• Copenhagen Consensus Project

Source: [2] , [7]

 Publications

According to Skeptical Science, “there are no peer-reviewed climate papers by Richard Tol” however, Professor Tol has published extensively on economic issues related to climate change and climate and energy policy. [11]

View a list of Richard Tol’s published work on Google Scholar.

 Resources

1. “Prof Richard Tol,” Department of Economics, University of Sussex. Archived August 8, 2014.
2. “Richard Tol Dons Cloak of Climate Denial,” DeSmogBlog, July 14, 2014.
3. “Prof. dr. R.S.J. Tol,” Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University. Archived August 8, 2014.
4. “Twitter Biography,” Richard Tol. Archived August 8, 2014.
5. “Richard Tol - Climate economist, unafraid to fight,” Road to Paris. Archived August 8, 2014.
6. Marlo Lewis. ”“The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable” — Prof. Richard Tol,” GlobalWarming.org, April 1, 2014. Archived August 8, 2014.
7. “Richard Tol,” Wikipedia.
8. “Why Worry About Climate Change?,” Richard Tol, January 1, 2009.
9. “Richard Tol on climate policy - A critical view of an overview,” Dr. Frank Ackerman, July 21, 2014. Archived August 12, 2014.
10. “IPCC author brands upcoming report 'alarmist',” The Guardian, March 28, 2014. Archived August 12, 2014.
11. “Peer-reviewed skeptic papers by Richard Tol,” Skeptical Science. Archived August 12, 2014

TAGS:

global warming denier database

Copenhagen Consensus Center

GWPF

global warming policy foundation

Richard Tol

climate change

climate deniers

IPCC

==

The American Interest

Appeared in: Volume 10, Number 3

Published on: December 10, 2014

OPACITIES

Hot Stuff, Cold Logic

RICHARD TOL

Politically correct climate change orthodoxy has completely destroyed our ability to think rationally about the environment.

Climate change is sometimes called humanity’s biggest problem. Ban Ki-moon, Christine Lagarde, and John Kerry have all said as much recently. The mainstream Western media often discuss climate change in catastrophic, or even apocalyptic, terms. Indeed, if you take newspaper headlines seriously, the Fifth Assessment Report of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came accompanied by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; predictions of famine, pestilence, war, and death proliferated hither and yon. Conversely, when, on November 11, 2014, the United States and China inked an agreement on climate whose actual consequences are at best liable to be indistinct, banner headlines broke out, as though messianic times were nigh.

Assuming it falls somewhat short of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, how serious will the impact of climate change be really? How much do we know about these impacts? What are the implications for policy?

It’s helpful to recall here that climate change means a lot more than just different temperatures. It means more or less rain, snow, wind, and clouds in various places. It means different outcomes for plants, whether direct or, since plants compete for resources, indirect. It means changes for the animals that eat those plants. And this includes changes for everything that hitches a ride on those plants and animals, and hence changes for all sorts of pathogens. Nature, agriculture, forestry, and health will all be different in the future. The seas will rise as water expands and glacial ice melts, affecting coastlines and everyone and everything that resides there. Water supplies will be affected by changing rainfall patterns, but water demand will also be altered by changing temperatures. Energy demands will change, too; there may be less need to heat houses in winter and perhaps greater need to cool them in summer. Traffic, transport, building, recreation, and tourism, too, will all feel the impact of a changing climate.

For some, the mere fact of these impacts is reason enough for governments, businesses, and individuals to exert themselves to reduce greenhouse gases to minimize the change. That is strange logic, however. Change, after all, can be for the better or the worse, and at any rate it is inevitable; there has never been a lengthy period of climate stasis.

Just as there is no logical or scientific basis for thinking that climate change is new, there is no self-evident reason to assume that the climate of the past is “better” than the climate of the future. With just as little logic, we might assume that women’s rights, health care, or education were necessarily better in the past. Any such judgment also contradicts Hume’s Law and, perhaps worse, is grounded in a fallacious appeal to nature understood in a very slanted way. There is no prima facie reason to assume that any given past climate was better than the prospective one.There is no prima facie reason to assume that any given past climate was better than the prospective one. The climate of the 21st century may well be unprecedented in the history of human civilization; the number of people living in countries with free and fair elections is unprecedented, too. So what? “Unprecedented” is not a synonym for “bad.”

Others argue that the impacts of climate change are largely unknown but may be catastrophic. The precautionary principle thus enjoins that we should work hard, if not do our utmost, to avoid even the slim possibility of catastrophe. This logic works fine for one-sided risks: We ban carcinogenic material in toys because we do not want our kids to get cancer. Safe materials are only slightly more expensive, and there is no likely or even imaginable “upside” to children having cancer. Climate policy, on the other hand, is about balancing risks, and there are risks to climate policies as well as risks caused by climate change. Sharp increases in energy prices have caused devastating economic recessions in the past, for example. Cheap energy fueled the industrial revolution, and lack of access to reliable energy is one factor holding back economic growth in most developing countries. In the short run, we rely on fossil fuels to keep us warm and keep the lights on, to grow our food, and to purify our drinking water. So there is a cost to human well-being in constraining fossil fuel use.

What this means is that, instead of assuming the worst, we should study the impacts of climate change and seek to balance them against the negative effects of climate policy. This is what climatologists and economists actually have done for years, but their efforts have been overshadowed by the hysteria of the Greens and the Left, and the more subtle lobbying of companies yearning for renewables subsidies and other government hand-outs. It is especially important to maintain an objective attitude toward the tradeoff between possible dangers and the costs of policy, because estimating the impacts of climate change has proven to be remarkably hard. Past climate change is not much of a guide. The climate supposedly changed much less over the previous century than it is projected to do over the current one, but global mean surface air temperature has barely moved over the past two decades—and this is the period with the best data, in which almost all climate change impact studies have been done.

Besides, the faint signal of past climate change is drowned out by all the other things that have changed. If one tries to study the impacts of climate change on crops, for example, one must factor in the impact of new seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and a host of other confounding variables such as air pollution andatmospheric deposition of nutrients.If one is interested in commercial agriculture, one needs to consider subsidies and international trade. If one studies the impacts of climate change on health, one needs to control for progress in medical technology, different diets, changes in work and leisure, aging, migration, and so on and so forth. If one studies the impacts of sea-level rise, one needs to cope with subsidence and tectonic movements, changing land use, shifting priorities in coastal zone management, eutrophication, and more besides. The same is true for all past climate change impacts: Many things are changing, often much faster than the climate, and in ways that confound all unifactoral explanations potentially relevant to policy.

The same is true for the impacts of future climate change. The confounding factors will not go away. In academic papers, we typically do the scientifically respectable thing and change one variable at a time. Controlled experiments make great science—even if done in silico—and since we cannot observe the future, experiments with computer models are the only option available to study the impacts of climate change. Controlled experiments make for poor predictions, however. The future is not ceteris paribus. It’s ceteris imparibus. Change happens, pretty much all the time.

We know a lot about some of the impacts of climate change, such as those on agriculture, human health, and coastal zones. Other impacts are not as well understood even to the point of opacity, such as those on transport, production, and water resources. This partly reflects the differences in the complexity of the impact. Projections of future sea-level rise agree on the direction of the change and its order of magnitude. Projections of future rainfall, however, are all over the place. But our differential knowledge also reflects variations in attention. Academic incentives do not help. It is much easier to publish a paper in a good journal if it improves on a previous one. It is much easier to get funding if you have a track record on a particular subject. Papers or proposals that are genuinely new are often ill-regarded. This implies that some impacts of climate change have been extensively studied whereas other impacts have been largely ignored.

Impacts of climate change are so many and so diverse, varying over space, over time, between impacts, and across scenarios, that it makes no sense to speak of “the” impact of climate change. People have tended to produce two solutions for this problem. Some just write about their favorite impact (or perhaps about the impact that supports their political position), pretending that this impact is somehow representative of all other impacts. Others add up impacts. This exercise is just as fraught as adding up all those proverbial apples and oranges, but it at least reflects the sum total of our knowledge, and the inescapably subjective elements in aggregation are well understood. (Below I use human welfare to add up impacts.)

Understanding what the science of climate does and does not enable us to do readily in a policy vein is hard enough for some people. If one adds to that a requirement to know some basic economics, a good number of deeply concerned people appear to be rendered completely incapable of anything we should wish to bless with the term “thought.” And indeed, many an otherwise intelligent economist has lost his marbles when confronted with global warming.

In a barter economy, one needs to know the price of everything relative to everything else. How many eggs for a liter of milk? How many slices of bread for a liter of beer? How many iPads for a yacht? In a monetary economy, however, one needs to know the price of everything in money only. In a barter economy, there are n2-2n prices (with n being the number of goods and services for sale). In a monetary economy, there are only n prices. That is why, at some time in the deep past, many human civilizations of diverse origins independently invented money.

If one knows the prices of the things one wishes to buy, and one knows one’s own budget, informed trade-offs become possible. Most of us have to make choices. We cannot go on expensive holidays, send our kids to posh schools, drive fancy cars, and quit work all at the same time. In our daily life, we constantly choose among things that are otherwise incomparable. We may choose to pay more for a product because it says on the tin that it is good for the environment. We may opt to buy products that we think are good for our health. The same is true in the public domain. We vote for politicians who promise to do more (or less) for environmental protection and health care. From this, we can deduce our willingness to pay for a better environment or a healthier life. We can then apply these “prices” to the impacts of climate change.[so b/c pols have done nothing, it's what we want?thus it's correct, just as mkt give us the correct price on ipads?]

Studies, assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest report, that have used such methods find that the initial, net impacts of climate change are small (about 1 percent of income) and may even be positive. Many people, including supposedly objective academics, find it hard to admit that climate change can have positive impacts. But, as already noted, warmer winters meanless money spent on heating. They also mean fewer people dying prematurely of cold. Carbon dioxide makes plants grow, and makes them more drought-tolerant, a boon particularly to poorer countries. In the short run, these positive impacts may well be larger than the negative impacts.

In the long run, however, negative impacts may surge ahead of positive ones. The positive impacts saturate quickly; one cannot save more on winter heating than one spends. The negative impacts do not saturate quickly; air conditioning bills will keep rising as summers get hotter. The long-run impacts are what matter most for policy. The climate responds only slowly to changes in emissions, and emissions respond only slowly to changes in policy. The climate of the next few decades is therefore largely beyond our control. It is only in the longer term that our choices affect climate change, and by then its impacts are likely to be negative on net. This implies that climate change is an economic problem, and that if economics could be rid of politics, greenhouse gas emissions should be taxed.

The economic case for emission reduction is thus remarkably simple and robust. We only need to argue that in the long run unabated climate change will do more harm than good. If so, we need to start moving away from using fossil fuels. The question is therefore not whether there is an economic case for climate policy; it’s how much emission reduction can be justified at given losses to social welfare. To answer that question, we need to understand the size of the impacts of climate change. The current evidence, weak and incomplete as it may be, as summarized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggests that moderate warming—say, what we might expect around the year 2075—would make the average person feel as if she had lost 0.2 to 2.0 percent of her income. In other words, a century worth of climate change is about as bad as losing a year of economic growth. In other words, a century worth of climate change is about as bad as losing a year of economic growth.

Larger climate change would have more profound impacts. Negative surprises are more likely than positive surprises. But even if we take this into account, a century of climate change is not worse than losing a decade of growth. So if, as Bjørn Lomborg has been at pains to point out, we “spend” the equivalent of a decade of growth or more trying to mitigate climate change, we will not have spent wisely.

Climate change is a problem, but at least as an economics problem, it is certainly not the biggest problem humankind faces. The euro crisis knocked off a third of the income of the people in Greece in five years’ time. Climate change does not even come close. And the people of Syria wish their problems were as trivial as those of the Greeks. Climate change is not even that large compared to other environmental problems. Urban air pollution kills millions of people per year in Asia. Indoor air pollution kills millions of people per year in Africa. The health problems related to climate change are unlikely to cause similar carnage before the end of the century.

The estimates of the total impact of climate change call for a modest tax on greenhouse gas emissions—or perhaps a cap-and-trade system with a generous allocation of emission permits. The best course of action is to slowly but surely move away from fossil fuels, and in that, as usual, both markets and the parameters governments invariably set for markets to function have roles to play.

Many disagree with this plan of action, of course, calling for a rapid retirement of fossil fuel use. Economically, their justification rests on assuming that we should care more about the future than we do in contexts other than climate change, that we should care more about small risks than we do, or that we should care more about poor people than we do. These justifications rest in politics or raw moral logic, not economics. Each of these arguments would affect not just climate policy but other areas, too. If one argues we should care more about the future, one argues not just for increased investment in greenhouse gas-emission reduction, but also, logically, in pensions, in education, in health care, and so on. If one argues we should be more wary of risk, one argues not only for increased investment in greenhouse gas-emission reduction, but also in road safety, in food safety, in meteorite detection, and whatnot. Ditto for concern about the poor.

Speaking of the poor: Poorer countries are notably more vulnerable to climate change than richer ones. They tend to have a larger share of their economic activity in areas that are directly exposed to the weather, particularly agriculture. Poorer countries often lack access to modern technology and institutions that can protect against the weather; for example, air conditioning, malaria medicine, crop insurance. Poorer countries may lack the ability, and sometimes the political will, to mobilize the resources for large-scale infrastructure—irrigation and coastal protection, for example.

Bangladesh and the Netherlands are two densely populated, low-lying countries at risk from flooding by river and sea. Bangladesh is generally seen to be very vulnerable to climate change, whereas most think that the Netherlands will be able to cope; the Netherlands is famous for thriving below sea level, after all. The Netherlands started its modern, large-scale dike building program only in 1850. Before that, dike building was local, primitive, and not very effective: The country was regularly plagued by devastating floods. In 1850, the Netherlands was only slightly richer than Bangladesh is now, but Bangladesh now of course has access to much better technology than the Netherlands did then.

However, the main difference between the Netherlands in 1850 and Bangladesh in 2014 is political. In response to the European Spring of 1848, the Netherlands adopted a new constitution in 1849 that introduced a powerful central government broadly representative of the population (or rather, the male Protestant part of the population). The new Dutch government promptly went after public enemy number one: floods.

Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and its political elite is more interested in partisan fights and self-enrichment than in the well-being of its citizens. Floods primarily hurt the poor, who live near the river and the coastal flats where land is cheap. There is no political reason to protect them; after all, floods are thought to be an act of Allah rather than a consequence of decisions made or not made by incompetent and indifferent politicians. As long as this is the case, Bangladesh will be vulnerable to climate change.

The disproportionate exposure to climate change of those most vulnerable is a good reason to be cautious about greenhouse gas emissions. The case has been exaggerated, however. It is peculiar to express great concern about the plight of the poor when it comes to climate but not in other policy domains.It is peculiar to express great concern about the plight of the poor when it comes to climate but not in other policy domains. Levels of charitable giving and official development aid suggest that we are actually not that bothered. Our trade and migration policies would even suggest that we like to see them suffer. More importantly, there are two ways to mitigate the excessive impact of climate change on the poor: Reduce climate change, and reduce poverty.

In the worst projections, climate change could cut crop yields in Africa by half. At present, subsistence farmers often get no more from their land than one-tenth of what is achieved at model farms working the same soil in the same climate. The immediate reason for the so-called yield gap is a lack of access to high-quality seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, tools, and things like that. The underlying causes include a lack of access to capital and product markets due to poor roads and insecure land tenure. Closing the yield gap would do more good sooner than climate change would do harm later. If one really wants to spend money to help farmers in Africa, one should invest in the land registryrather than in solar power.

Indeed, modernizing agriculture in Africa would also make it less vulnerable to climate change. African farming is particularly vulnerable, because isolated, undercapitalized farmers struggle to cope with any change, climatic or otherwise. Infectious diseases illustrate the same point. There were outbreaks of malaria in Murmansk until the 1920s. Sweden suffered malaria epidemics in the 1870s, and the disease was endemic in Stockholm. George Washington did not want the new capital to be built in the estuary of the Potomac because of the malaria risk. Nowadays, malaria only occasionally returns to these places by plane, and it rarely kills.

Largely as a consequence, malaria has become a tropical disease. Many fear that climate change would spread malaria because the parasite is more vigorous in hot weather and mosquitoes thrive in hotter and wetter places. However, in the rich world, habitat reduction, mosquito control, and medicine long ago tamed malaria. Mosquitoes need warm, still-standing water to breed. As we roofed houses, paved roads, and drained wetlands, their habitats disappeared. Clouds of DDT helped bring about the demise of the mosquito as well. Malaria medicine stops one from getting (seriously) ill, and from infecting others.

These things cost money. A dose of malaria medicine costs $100—small change in the United States but a fortune in South Sudan. Therefore, malaria is first and foremost a disease of poverty. We can spend our money on combatting greenhouse gas emissions, reducing malaria risks for future generations. We can also spend our money on insecticides and bed nets, reducing malaria risks today. We can also invest in medical research. A malaria vaccine holds the prospect of a world free of this awful disease, regardless of climate. If our resources were unlimited, we could do all things worthwhile. With a limited budget, we should focus on those investments with the greatest return.

These three examples—of coastal protection, agriculture, and malaria—show that development and vulnerability to climate change are closely intertwined. Slowing economic growth to reduce climate change may therefore do more harm than good. Concentrating the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in rich countries will not solve the climate problem. And slower growth in rich countries means less export from and investment in poor countries.

There is an even more direct link between climate policy and development. Cheap and abundant energy fueled the industrial revolution. Sudden increases in the price of oil caused many of the economic recessions since World War II. Lack of (reliable) electricity retards growth in poor countries, not just today through its effect on production, but also in the future, as electric light allows kids to do their homework after sunset.

A fifth of official development aid is now diverted to climate policy. Money that used to be spent on strengthening the rule of law, better education for girls, and improved health care, for instance, is now used to plug methane leaks and destroy hydrofluorocarbons. Some donors no longer support the use of coal, by far the cheapest way to generate electricity. Instead, poor people are offered intermittent wind power and biomass energy, which drives up the price of food. But the self-satisfaction environmentalists derive from these programs does not put food on poor peoples’ tables.

In sum, while climate change is a problem that must be tackled, we should not lose our sense of proportion or advocate solutions that would do more harm than good. Unfortunately, common sense is sometimes hard to find in the climate debate. Desmond Tutu recently compared climate change to apartheid.

1 Climate experts Michael Mann and Daniel Kammen compared it to the “gathering storm” of Nazism in Europe before World War II.2 That sort of nonsense just gets in the way of a rational discussion about what climate policy we should pursue, and how vigorously we should pursue it.

1Tutu, “We Fought Apartheid. Now Climate Change Is Our Global Enemy”, Guardian, September 20, 2014

2Mann and Kammen, “The Gathering Storm”, Huffington Post, September 19, 2014.

Richard Tol teaches economics at the University of Sussex and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a veteran of four assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

top 5 pielke 2014, mostly don't worry be happy?

==

Climate economist Richard Toll has a provocative op-ed in today’s Financial Times titled “Bogus prophesies of doom will not fix the climate.” Last week, Tol accused the IPCC of being too alarmist about global warming and asked to have his name withdrawn from its recently-released Working Group II report (WG2) on climate change impacts.

Public discourse on climate change would be much improved if every discussion — for example, Secy. of State John Kerry’s climate speech in Jakarta, Indonesia — began with a reading of Tol’s opening paragraph:

Humans are a tough and adaptable species. People live on the equator and in the Arctic, in the desert and in the rainforest. We survived ice ages with primitive technologies. The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable.

Even if one accepts WG2′s estimate that a “further warming of 2°C could cause loses equivalent to 0.2-2 per cent of world gross domestic product,” that is “about as bad as losing one year of economic growth” in half a century, Tol notes. In contrast, since the start of the Eurozone financial crisis, the income of the average Greek has fallen more than 20%. “Climate change is not, then, the biggest problem facing humankind.”

After noting that climate change is not even the biggest environmental problem (indoor air pollution has killed 260 million people — more than all the wars of the 20th century combined, Bjorn Lomborg estimates), Tol points out that the best protection from climate-related risk is economic growth and the institutions that facilitate it:

Climate change will make the disease [malaria] worse. Economic growth will make it go away.

In the worst case, climate change could cut crop yields in Africa in half. Yet yields would increase tenfold — in the same climate, on the same soil — if subsistence farmers started using crops and techniques pioneered on experimental farms. Climate change may be a big issue in Africa. But it is not nearly as important as lack of tenure, poor roads, roving warlords and so on.

Tol agrees with the IPCC that “We cannot let the planet grow warmer and warmer,” but solving that problem must wait until “carbon neutral technologies saturate the market,” which “will take decades at least.”

I don’t share Tol’s faith in the ability of government-directed “adaptation and development” to “improve lives.” But his contention that the IPCC’s “prophecies of doom” are false and divert public attention and resources from more urgent threats is spot on.

wiki

Richard S. J. Tol (born 2 December 1969, Hoorn, the Netherlands) is a professor of economics at the University of Sussex. He is also professor of the economics of climate change at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Academic career
• 2 Climate change
  • 2.1 Copenhagen Consensus
  • 2.2 Climate change and conflict

• 3 References
• 4 External links

Academic career

Tol obtained an MSc in Econometrics and Operations Research and a PhD in economics from the VU University Amsterdam in 1992 and 1997. In 1998, he contributed with some 19 other academics to a joint project of the United Nations Environment Programme at his home university.^[1] Tol collaborated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.^[2]

He regularly participates in studies of the Energy Modeling Forum, is an editor of *Energy Economics*, associate editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy, and Integrated Assessment. IDEAS/RePEc ranks him among the top 250 economists in the world.^[3]

Tol specialises in energy economics and environmental economics, with a particular interest in climate change, such as the economics of global warming. Previously, Tol was a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute. Before that, Tol was the Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change and director of the Center for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and board member of the Center for Marine and Climate Research at the University of Hamburg. Tol was a board member of the International Max Planck Research Schools on Earth System Modeling and Maritime Affairs and the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment.^[2] From 1998–2008 he was an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and from 2010–2011 an adjunct professor atTrinity College,

Dublin's Department of Economics.

Climate change

According to Tol "the impact of climate change is relatively small".^[4] He was also among the US Senate Republican Party's "list of scientists disputing man-made global warming claims", which stated that Tol "dismissed the idea that mankind must act now to prevent catastrophic global warming".^[5]

Tol characterises his position as arguing that the economic costs of climate policy should be kept in proportion to its benefits.^[6][7][8]

He argues against the 2 °C 'guardrail' target for limiting temperature rises.^[9] Tol does not advocate another target, but has recommended a carbon tax of $5/tC.^[10] He acknowledges that this level of taxation is too low to significantly discourage fossil fuel use but argues it would help to stimulate the development of fuel-saving technology and improve the competitiveness of renewable energy sources. He states that compliance may affect the coal and oil industries and the people they employ.

In an interview with Der Spiegel in 2005, he argued that temperature rises between 2–4 °C would also have advantages. North of a line drawn from Paris to Munich, people would benefit, e.g., from reduced energy bills. However, south of it, people would be overall "losers" of climate change.^[11]

In 2007, Tol predicted a reduction in annual economic growth by 0.4% in the Republic of Ireland if greenhouse gases were reduced by 3% per year.^[12]

Originally designated as a lead author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Tol said in March 2014 that he had withdrawn from the work with the report in September 2013, citing disagreement with the profile of the report which he considered too alarmist and putting too little emphasis on opportunities to adapt to climate changes.^[13]

Copenhagen Consensus

Bjørn Lomborg chose Tol to participate in his "Copenhagen Consensus" project in 2008. In 2008, Tol collaborated with Gary Yohe, Richard G. Richels and Geoffrey Blanford to prepare the "Challenge Paper" on global warming which examined three approaches devised by Lomborg for tackling the issue.^[14] The 3 results were then compared with 27 similar investigations, 3 each relating to 9 other 'challenges' in the areas of health and environment. Of the 30 policy alternatives that resulted, Lomborg's ranking procedure rated the 2 dealing with controlling emissions of greenhouse gases 29th and 30th in terms of cost effectiveness.

Kåre Fog pointed out that the benefits of emissions reduction were discounted at a higher rate than for any of the other proposals,^[15] stating "so there is an obvious reason why the climate issue always is ranked last" in Lomborg's environmental studies. Tol accepted that emissions reduction was accounted for differently from the competing proposals it was ranked against.^[16] Fog further criticised the study because, by using aggregate GDP to evaluate outcomes across regions of differing prosperity, it accorded people in wealthy countries more weight than those in poor countries purely because they are wealthier.

A "perspective paper" by Anil Markandya of the University of Bath on the Yohe/Tol study stated that "a short time period analysis is misleading" when all the costs are incurred during the period examined but benefits continue to accrue after its conclusion.^[17] He pointed out that the study "stops short of the most that can be supported on a cost benefit basis" and stated that "it does not seem reasonable" to rely solely on Tol's own FUND model when alternatives "reported in the peer-reviewed literature are also credible".

Gary Yohe later accused Lomborg of "deliberate distortion of our conclusions",^[18] adding that "as one of the authors of the Copenhagen Consensus Project's principal climate paper, I can say with certainty that Lomborg is misrepresenting our findings thanks to a highly selective memory". In a subsequent joint statement settling their differences, Lomborg and Yohe agreed that the "failure" of Lomborg's emissions reduction plan "could be traced to faulty design".^[19]

Lomborg awarded Tol a position on his Copenhagen Consensus panel again in 2009. According to Tol, "Lomborg successfully punches holes in climate hysteria" and "plays a useful role in the debate on climate policy".^[20]

Climate change and conflict

According to Tol, "it is not clear whether climate change would lead to conflict".^[21] Citing a lack of suitable methods for evaluating hypothetical conflicts numerically, he examines what he calls plausible scenarios, such as drought and migration in the Horn of Africa or an upsurge in terrorism.

Regarding terrorism, he says "it may well be that a Maldivian terrorist will try and blow up the headquarters of ExxonAramco".^[21] Regarding the Horn of Africa scenario, he acknowledges it might cause substantial human suffering but assesses the probability of this actually happening as unlikely. He concludes that "poor and exhausted people are unlikely to take up arms, and if they do, they are probably not very effective".^[21]

References

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Feenstra, J.F. (1998 print). *Handbook on Methods. for Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Strategies*. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol#cite_ref-deniers_2-1) Solomon, Lawrence (2010). The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud. United States: Richard Vigilante Books.ISBN 978-0-9800763-7-0., p. 20.
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Top 5% Authors on IDEAS/RePEc
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Tol, Richard (2009). "Why Worry About Climate Change?". ESRI Research Bulletin 2009/1/1. Dublin: ESRI.
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Minority Senate report
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Financial Times, Jan 17, 2008
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Financial Times, Jan 18, 2007
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ New Scientist, Dec 5, 2007
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Tol, Richard S. J. (January 2006 online; January 2007 print)."Europe's long-term climate target: A critical evaluation". Energy Policy (Elsevier) 35 (1): 424–432. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2005.12.003. Retrieved 2008-07-20.
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ R.S.J. Tol (2008), The Social Cost of Carbon: Trends, Outliers and Catastrophes, Economics the E-Journal, 2008–25
11. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Spiegel, Feb 21, 2005
12. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Irish Times, Dec 20, 2007
13. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ IPCC author brands upcoming climate report 'alarmist' The Guardian. 28 March 2014. Retrieved 29 March 2014
14. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Yohe, Gary; Tol, Richard (2008). "Copenhagen Consensus Challenge Paper 2008: Global Warming". Copenhagen.
15. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "index". Lomborg-errors.dk. Retrieved 2012-06-09.
16. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ [1]^{[dead link]}
17. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Markandya, Anil (2008). "Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Perspective Paper: Global Warming". Copenhagen.
18. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Yohe, Gary (2008-08-22). "Climate change is real, compelling and urgent". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-22.
19. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Lomborg, Björn (2008-09-01). "It's not about us". The Guardian(London). Retrieved 2010-05-22.
20. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "The Irish Economy » Blog Archive » Economics, voodoo, and climate policy". Irisheconomy.ie. 2010-04-30. Retrieved 2012-06-09.
21. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol#cite_ref-Tol5_21-1) ^c(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol#cite_ref-Tol5_21-2) Tol, RSJ (2008). "Why Worry About Climate Change? A Research Agenda". Environmental Values 17 (4): 437–470.doi:10.3197/096327108X368485.

External links

• Home page
• Scientific Commons
• Academia
• Dataverse
• ResearchGate

  ==

==

Testimony by Dr Richard S.J. Tol

to the hearing entitled

Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process for the Fifth Assessment Report

Committee on Science, Space and Technology

US House of Representatives

Thursday, May 29, 2014

It is an honour and pleasure to be here. My name is Richard Tol. I am a professor of

economics at the University of Sussex and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am a

research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute and CESifo. I am ranked among the Top 100

economists in the world by IDEAS/RePEc1

and among the 25 most cited climate researchers according to Google Scholar2

. I am an editor of Energy Economics, a top

field journal. I was one of the first to statistically show that the observed global warming

over the last one and a half century is caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in

the atmosphere.3

I used to advocate tradable permits, but having observed the EU ETS I

now favour a carbon tax. I helped the UK government set its levy on methane from

landfills, the Irish government design and set its carbon tax, and the US government set

its carbon price. I have been involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change since 1994, serving in various roles in all three working groups, most

recently as a Convening Lead Author in the economics chapter of Working Group II.

An appropriate solution to any problem requires a good understanding of its

mechanisms, its consequences, and the consequences of any countermeasure. The

climate problem is so complex that at the moment only the USA can mount

sufficient expertise to cover the entire issue. The EU cannot. Maybe China can in 20

years’ time. Other countries than the USA need international collaboration on

scientific and policy advice through a body like the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change. A common understanding of the issues is probably also helpful for

the international climate negotiations although shared knowledge does not imply

agreement on desirable outcomes. I therefore favour reform of the IPCC rather than

its abolition.

I will focus my remarks on Working Group II of the IPCC because I know that one

best. Working Group II is on the impacts of climate change, on vulnerability and

adaptation. Researchers tend to study those impacts because they are concerned

about climate change.

1

http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html#pto90

2

http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:climate_change&af

ter_author=pOsLADa6__8J&astart=20

3 Tol and de Vos (1993), Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 48, 63-74.

Academics who research climate change out of curiosity but find less than alarming

things are ignored, unless they rise to prominence in which case they are harassed

and smeared. The hounding of Lennart Bengtsson is a recent example. Bengtsson is a

gentle 79 year old. He has won many awards in a long and distinguished career in

meteorology and climatology. He recently joined the advisory board of an educational

charity and felt forced to resign two weeks later. As an advisor, he was never responsible

for anything this charity did, let alone for the things it had done before he joined. For this,

he was insulted by his peers. A Texas A&M professor even suggested he is senile.4

Strangely, the climate “community” did not speak out when one of its own was elected

for the Green Party5

; nor does it protest against close ties between IPCC authors and the

Environmental Defence Fund6

, Friends of the Earth7

, Greenpeace8

or the World Wide

Fund for Nature9

. Other eminent meteorologists have been treated like Bengtsson was –

Curry, Lindzen, Pielke Sr. Pielke Jr has been mistreated too, merely for sticking to the

academic literature, as reflected by the IPCC, that there is no statistical evidence that the

impact of natural disaster has increased because of climate change. I have had my share

of abuse too. Staff of the London School of Economics10 and the Guardian11

now routinely tell lies about me and my work.

People volunteer to work for the IPCC because they worry about climate change.

An old friend was an author for an IPCC special report. He was surprised that his coauthors

were there for political reasons. In turn, they were surprised because he was there

out of intellectual curiosity how electricity systems could possible function with a high

penetration of non-dispatchable renewables.

Governments nominate academics to the IPCC – but we should be clear that it is

often the environment agencies that do the nominating. Different countries have

different arrangements, but it is rare that a government agency with a purely scientific

agenda takes the lead on IPCC matters. As a result, certain researchers are promoted at

the expense of more qualified colleagues. Other competent people are excluded because

their views do not match those of their government. Some authors do not have the right

skills or expertise, and are nominated on the strength of their connections only.

4

https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/statuses/467100118844321792

5

http://www.greenparty.bc.ca/elected_mla;

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/96725/BAS_EICKHOUT_home.html

6

http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/

7

http://www.up.ethz.ch/people/former/mmalte

8

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/public-events/archiv/greencyclesii/programme/16.5.2011/hare/hare-cv

9

http://www.biology.uq.edu.au/staff/hoegh-guldberg

10 http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/April/A-flawed-conversation-aboutthe-Stern-Review.aspx;

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/March/Errorsin-estimates-of-the-aggregate-economic-impacts-of-climate-change.aspx

11 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/apr/30/economics-clearneed-climate-action;

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/environment-climate-changedenier-global-warming;

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/15/ipcc-unclimate-reports-diluted-protect-fossil-fuel-interests;

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planetoz/2014/may/23/climate-mccarthyism-confected-outrage-checking-record-global-warming-policyfoundation

All this makes that the authors of the IPCC are selected on concern as well as

competence. In the wake of the Fourth Assessment Report, the InterAcademy Council

recommended that the IPCC be more transparent on the characteristics of the authors.12

Putting their CVs online would be a small effort. It would be useful to systematically

compare the academic performance of those selected, those nominated and those who

volunteered.

This selection bias shows in the Fifth Assessment Report of Working Group II. The

Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) talks about trends in crop yields, but omits the

most important of them all – technological change – which has pushed up crop yields

since times immemorial.

13 It shows the impacts of climate change on agriculture

assuming that farmers will not adjust their practices in the face of changed

circumstances – the far less dramatic impacts after adaptation are hidden in the main

report. It shows that the most vulnerable country would pay some ten percent of its

annual income towards coastal protection, but omits that the average country would

pay less than one-tenth of a percent14

– again, the lower, more relevant number is

buried in the report. It emphasizes the health impacts of increased heat stress but

downplays the health impacts of decreased cold stress – although the latter may well

be numerically more important.

15

This alarmist bias made me take my name of the Summary for Policy Makers in

September 2013. My views on the impacts of climate change are well known. I liked the

first draft of the Summary, which had as one of its key findings that the worst impacts of

climate change really are symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment. It was

just not credible that I would put my name to the final draft of the Summary, which its

overemphasis on risk. Unfortunately, news of me stepping down made headlines in

March 2014, giving the press an excuse to focus on the people involved rather than on the

structural deficits of the IPCC.

Problems are not limited to the Summary for Policy Makers. There is a large body of

work in the peace research literature that agrees that climate change is a minor,

contributory factor in violent conflict, if at all.16 There is a small body of work in the

environmental science literature that argues that climate change is a major cause of

violent conflict.17 The IPCC grants the two literatures parity of esteem.18

The SPM worries that climate change may trap more people in poverty. One chapter19

argues that this cannot be supported by the literature: There are a few weak papers

12 http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/

13 Ruttan (2002), Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16, 161-184.

14 Nicholls and Tol (2006), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, A361, 1073-1095.

15 McGeehin and Mirabelli (2002), Environmental Health Perspectives, 109, 185-189. Ye et al. (2012),

Environmental Health Perspectives, 120, 19-28.

16 Gleditsch (2012), Journal of Peace Research, 49, 3-9.

17 Hsiang et al. (2013), Science, 341, 6151.

18 IPCC WG2 AR5 Chapters 12 and 19.

19 IPCC WG2 AR5 Chapter 10

reaching opposite conclusions. Another chapter20 cites two papers21

– neither of which is

on poverty traps – and the SPM echoes its language on climate change and poverty traps.

There is section on emerging risks. The first paper on an issue is always dramatic. That is

the only way to get something onto the scientific agenda. Follow-up papers then poohpooh

the initial drama. This has been repeated pattern in the climate change impacts

literature from the 1980s onwards. The first papers on sea level rise, agriculture, health,

ocean currents, and ice caps were sharply at odds with later, much better informed

research.22 But the IPCC chose not to wait for those follow-up papers.

Working Group III is not without fault either. A little bit of emission reduction costs

little. But as targets get more stringent, costs escalate. Not so according to WG3: The

tables in the SPM and the underlying chapter suggest that very ambitious targets are only

slightly more expensive than ambitious targets, even though ambitious targets are far

more expensive than lenient targets. This surprising finding is a statistical fluke. Emission

reduction is easy according to some studies, which duly explore very ambitious targets.

Emission reduction is hard according to other studies; very ambitious targets are

prohibitively expensive and results not reported. The surprisingly low cost of meeting

very stringent emission reduction targets is the result of selection bias: as targets get more

stringent, an increasing number of expensive models are excluded. Oddly, the IPCC

made the same mistake in the Fourth Assessment Report, and was alerted to the error.23

I think that these mishaps reflect bias in the authors. The IPCC should therefore

investigate the attitudes of its authors and their academic performance and make

sure that, in the future, they are more representative of their peers.

If similar-minded people come together, they often reinforce each others’

prejudices.

The IPCC should deploy the methods developed in business management24 and

social psychology25 to guard against group think. These include a balanced

composition of peer groups, changing the compositing of groups, appointing devil’s

advocates, and inviting outside challengers. This requires active support from the IPCC

leadership. To the best of my knowledge, outside challengers are rare. Indeed, I know of

only one occasion. Peter Dixon, an Australian economist, told a group of IPCC authors

they got it all wrong: The cost savings due to induced technological change as reported

by the IPCC26 are an artefact of misspecified models. Sjak Smulders, a Dutch economist,

20 IPCC WG2 AR5 Chapter 13

21 Ahmed et al. (2009), Environmental Research Letters, 3, 034004; Hertel et al. (2010), Global

Environmental Change, 20, 577-585.

22 Tol (2008), Environmental Values, 17. 437-470.

23 Tavoni and Tol (2010), Climatic Change, 100, 769-778.

24 Eisenhardt et al. (2001), Harvard Business Review, 75, 77-85.

25 Postmes et al. (2001), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 918-930.

26 IPCC WG3 AR4 Chapter 11

said much the same at an IPCC workshop.27 Their advice was ignored and one of the

authors duly promoted to working group chair.

Not all IPCC authors are equal. Some hold positions of power in key chapters,

others subordinate positions in irrelevant chapters. The IPCC leadership has in the

past been very adept at putting troublesome authors in positions where they cannot

harm the cause.

That practice must end. This is best done by making sure that the leaders of the

IPCC –chairs, vice-chairs, heads of technical support units – are balanced and openminded.

The funding model of the IPCC is partly at fault. Multilateral organizations depend on

their sponsors, but most have their own budget. The IPCC relies mostly on contributions

in kind, and this hampers the IPCC’s ability to control the quality of the contributions.

The leaders of the IPCC steer its assessment reports, and dictate its media presence.

Working Group I conclude, in its latest assessment report, that the climate sensitivity –

the eventual warming for a given change in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse

gases – is lower than previously thought. This is great news for all those who worry about

climate change, but it somehow did not make it into the press release.

The IPCC releases a major report every six years or so. That is not frequent enough

to keep abreast of a fast-moving literature.

When preparations started for the Fifth Assessment Report, the world hadn’t warmed for

13 years. That is a bit odd, if the climate models are correct, but does not warrant a lot of

attention. By the time the report was finished, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years. That is

decidedly odd28, but hard to accommodate in a near-final draft that has been through

three rounds of review. After the report was finalized, but before it was published, a

number of papers appeared with hypotheses about the pause in warming.29 The Fifth

Assessment Report of Working Group I was out of date before it was released.

A report that is rare should make a big splash – and an ambitious team wants to

make a bigger splash than last time. It’s worse than we thought. We’re all gonna die

an even more horrible death than we thought six years ago.

Launching a big report in one go also means that IPCC authors will compete with

one another on whose chapter foresees the most terrible things. IPCC reports are

often two to three thousand pages long, but there are two or three main findings only.

Authors who want to see their long IPCC hours recognized should thus present their

impact as worse than the next one.

27 https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/supporting-material/expert-meeting-2005-01.pdf

28 Fyfe et al. (2013), Nature Climate Change, 3, 767-769.

29 http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21598610-slowdown-rising-temperatures-overpast-15-years-goes-being

The IPCC should abandon its big reports and convert to journal-style assessments

instead. That would reduce the pressure for media attention. It would allow the IPCC to

update its assessment as frequently as needed. It would also be easier to invite second

opinions and minority reports.

In learned journals, the editor guarantees that every paper is reviewed by experts.

IPCC editors do not approach referees. Rather, they hope that the right reviewers

will show up. Large parts of the IPCC reports are, therefore, not reviewed at all, or

not reviewed by field experts. In a journal, papers that are not good enough, are

rejected. In a journal, a promising paper is sent back for further revision – regardless of

deadlines. IPCC chapters are never turned down, and always finished on time. The IPCC

should move to journal style reviews and editors.

The IPCC is best seen as a natural monopoly.30 The IPCC cannot suppress supply to

raise prices – as the typical monopolist would – but it reveals other signs of monopolistic

behaviour. There is a lack of innovation – the First and Fifth Assessment Reports were

prepared in much the same way, and cover similar ground. There is little regard for

clients – the IPCC response to the scandals in the Third and Fourth Assessment Report

was haughty. And the IPCC uses its monopoly power to muscle into other fields – most

recently scholarships. Monopolies should be broken up, but natural monopolies –

where the costs of duplication are greater than the benefits of competition – should

be tightly regulated.

The clients of the IPCC, the environment agencies of the world, are often also its

regulators. It is time to end that cosy relationship. Let the IPCC be run by the National

Science Foundation and its counterparts in other countries and be overseen by the

National Academy and its counterparts. These organizations are not without their faults,

but at least their core mission is to do good science. The climate problem is serious

enough to deserve a serious international body to assess the state of knowledge.

After the Fourth Assessment Report, the InterAcademy Council suggested useful

reforms: More transparency in author selection, a registry of conflicts of interests,

stronger review editors, open peer review.31 Others suggested that the Bureau, which both

runs and oversees the IPCC, should be split.32 These recommendations were by and

large ignored because the recommendations came after preparations for the Fifth

Assessment Report had started; and because few countries supported IPCC reform.

Conflicts of interests are now registered, but neither verified nor disclosed. It should be

said, though, that the Fifth Assessment Report of IPCC Working Group II is a lot

better than the Fourth Assessment Report. The IPCC should continue in this direction.

30 Tol (2011), Climatic Change, 108, 827-839.

31 http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/

32 Tol (2011), Climatic Change, 108, 827-839.

The IPCC does useful things. The Fifth Assessment Report shows that the Stern

Review33 overestimated the impacts of climate change34 and underestimated the

impacts of climate policy35. This undermines the justification of the two degree

target of the EU, UN and the current administration of the USA. The Fifth

Assessment Report shows that double regulation – say subsidies next to tradable

permits – increases costs without further reducing emissions.36 This conclusion was

inadvertently dropped from the German translation37, which is unfortunate as

double regulation is widespread in Germany.

We need an organization that is not beholden to any government or any party to

anchor climate policy in reality as we understand it. A reformed IPCC can play that

role.

33 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

34 IPCC WG2 AR5 Chapter 10

35 IPCC WG2 AR5 Chapter 6

36 IPCC WG3 AR5 Chapter 15

37 http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128124861/Die-dreiste-Berichtsfaelschung-der-Klimatrickser.html

==.