Impact of climate change

Bruce, James P.

doi:10.1038/377472a0

Cited by 23 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…In AR2, however, they made their presence felt. The social cost chapter (Pearce et al, 1996) attracted worldwide attention and controversy (Bruce, 1995, Masood, 1995, Masood and Ochert, 1995, Meyer, 1995a,b, Nature, 1995, Pearce, 1995a,b,c, Courtney, 1996, Grubb, 1996, Fankhauser, 1997, Tol, 1997, Fankhauser et al, 1998. Economists routinely value risks to human health based on people's willingness to pay to reduce such risks, and willingness to pay is constrained by ability to pay.…”

Section: Optimal Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The IPCC and the challenge of ex post policy evaluation}

Tol

2023

Preprint

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The IPCC started at a time when climate policy was an aspiration for the future. The research assessed in the early IPCC reports was necessarily about potential climate policies, always stylized and often optimized. The IPCC has continued on this path, even though there is now a considerable literature studying actual climate policy, in all its infuriating detail, warts and all. Four case studies suggest that the IPCC, in its current form, will not be able to successfully switch from ex ante to ex post policy evaluation. This transition is key as AR7 will most likely have to confront the failure to meet the 1.5K target. The four cases are as follows. (1) The scenarios first build and later endorsed by the IPCC all project a peaceful future with steady if not rapid economic growth everywhere, more closely resembling political manifestos than facts on the ground. (2) Successive IPCC reports have studiously avoided discussing the voluminous literature suggesting that political targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction are far from optimal, although a central part of that work was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2018. (3) IPCC AR5 found it impossible to acknowledge that the international climate policy negotiations from COP1 (Berlin) to COP19 (Warsaw) were bound to fail, just months before the radical overhaul at COP20 (Lima) proved that point. (4) IPCC AR6 by and large omitted the nascent literature on ex post climate policy evaluation. Together, these cases suggest that the IPCC finds self-criticism difficult and is too close to policy makers to criticize past and current policy mistakes. One solution would be to move control over the IPCC to the national authorities on research and higher education. JEL codes: D04, H43, H87, Q54

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Section: Optimal Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The IPCC and the challenge of ex post policy evaluation}

Tol

2023

Preprint

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“…2 After the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC, there was also a flap about, inter alia, PPP exchange rates; see Bruce (1995Bruce ( , 1996, Courtney (1996), Fankhauser and Tol (1995, Grubb (1996), Masood (1995), Masood and Ochert (1995), Meyer (1995a,b), Meyer and Cooper (1995), Nature (1995), O'Riordan (1997), D. , F. Pearce (1995a,b), Sundaraman (1995), and Tol (1997). 3 Note that besides purchasing power parity exchange rate, there is also the purchasing power parity theory, which holds that the purchasing power parity exchange rate would converge to unity.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exchange Rates and Climate Change: An Application of Fund

Tol

2006

Climatic Change

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As economic and emissions scenarios assume convergence of per capita incomes, they are sensitivity to the exchange rate used for international comparison. Particularly, developing countries are project to grow slower with a purchasing power exchange rate than with a market exchange rate. Different exchange rates may lead to scenarios with very different per capita incomes. However, these scenarios also assume convergence of energy intensities, which at least partly offsets the income effect, so that scenarios with different exchange rates would differ less in greenhouse gas emissions. Differences become smaller still if atmospheric concentrations and global warming is considered. However, differences become larger again if one considers the costs of meeting a certain stabilisation target, as the gap between baseline and target is more sensitive to the exchange rate used than the baseline itself. Differences also grow larger if one looks at climate change impacts, which are determined not just by climate change but also by development. The sensitivity to the exchange rate is purely due to imperfect data, imperfect statistical analysis of data, a crude spatial resolution, and imperfect models.

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“…VOSL was evidently sanctioned by the peer reviewers, it was fiercely criticized when it became public knowledge (Douthwaite, 1995;Lean, 1995;Wysham, 1994). The authors and IPCC officials (see Bruce, 1995) tried to explain that VOSL does not purport to represent the value of individual lives, simply aggregate individual WTP to avoid risk of death, but it was precisely this reduction in VOSL figures of the value of individual human lives to a question of individual WTP that critics found so offensive. Many called for the complete withdrawal of the chapter from the IPCC report unless Pearce and the other authors agreed to change their VOSL figures (Masood, 1995;Meyer, 1995a), which they refused to do.…”

Section: Have Insistedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Figuring the Costs of Climate Change: An Assessment and Critique

Demeritt

Rothman

1999

Environ Plan A

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In this paper we examine the evidence for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimate that the costs of global climate change will be on the order of 1.5-2.0% of world gross domestic product (GDP). Although this estimate is widely and authoritatively repeated, it rests on a handful of preliminary studies, chiefly of the United States and performed by a select group of economists. We examine the methods and assumptions of these studies and consider the social and political commitments built into their analytical techniques. We conclude that the prevailing methods of economic damage assessment and valuation provide a highly conservative estimate of the potential costs and risks of future climate change. We suggest that the IPCC scientific assessment process has been organized in such a way as to foreclose public debate about the moral and political judgments built into the technical details of its reports. p

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Impact of climate change

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

The IPCC and the challenge of ex post policy evaluation}

The IPCC and the challenge of ex post policy evaluation}

Exchange Rates and Climate Change: An Application of Fund

Figuring the Costs of Climate Change: An Assessment and Critique

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