Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

climate change is going to cause some economic damage

A letter in Nature says climate change is going to cause economic damage, and meeting the UN’s emissions targets would reduce that damage. Here’s the abstract, and the article itself is open access.

 International climate change agreements typically specify global warming thresholds as policy targets1, but the relative economic benefits of achieving these temperature targets remain poorly understood2,3. Uncertainties include the spatial pattern of temperature change, how global and regional economic output will respond to these changes in temperature, and the willingness of societies to trade present for future consumption. Here we combine historical evidence4 with national-level climate5 and socioeconomic6 projections to quantify the economic damages associated with the United Nations (UN) targets of 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming, and those associated with current UN national-level mitigation commitments (which together approach 3 °C warming7). We find that by the end of this century, there is a more than 75% chance that limiting warming to 1.5 °C would reduce economic damages relative to 2 °C, and a more than 60% chance that the accumulated global benefits will exceed US$20 trillion under a 3% discount rate (2010 US dollars). We also estimate that 71% of countries—representing 90% of the global population—have a more than 75% chance of experiencing reduced economic damages at 1.5 °C, with poorer countries benefiting most. Our results could understate the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 °C if unprecedented extreme outcomes, such as large-scale sea level rise8, occur for warming of 2 °C but not for warming of 1.5 °C. Inclusion of other unquantified sources of uncertainty, such as uncertainty in secular growth rates beyond that contained in existing socioeconomic scenarios, could also result in less precise impact estimates. We find considerably greater reductions in global economic output beyond 2 °C. Relative to a world that did not warm beyond 2000–2010 levels, we project 15%–25% reductions in per capita output by 2100 for the 2.5–3 °C of global warming implied by current national commitments7, and reductions of more than 30% for 4 °C warming. Our results therefore suggest that achieving the 1.5 °C target is likely to reduce aggregate damages and lessen global inequality, and that failing to meet the 2 °C target is likely to increase economic damages substantially.

My head gets just a little twisted around thinking of reduced damages. This means the economy, and presumably our grandchildren’s quality of life, will be worse than it could have been if we started making an effort and investment now. But this doesn’t tell us if they will be absolutely better or worse off in a “future baseline” scenario compared to now, just that they will be worse off relative to that future baseline if we don’t take action than if we do. I think the various (very eye catching) graphs in this paper probably contain the answers to these questions, but I didn’t get it after an admittedly short few minutes staring at them, and I admit I didn’t read every word in the paper.

The other thing here is that we are taking a given climate scenario (1.5 or 3 degrees C warming for example), and talking about the benefits of those two future scenarios against each other. What I don’t see is the cost to the current generation if we choose to make this sacrifice, or even if it is a sacrifice at all. What investment would we have to make to achieve 1.5 vs. 3 degrees, and are there alternative investments we could make that could have a bigger payoff. I am not arguing against climate action, I am just questioning how this paper is communicating about costs and benefits in the present and in the future.

Trump may bail out obsolete coal-fired power plants

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is about to subsidize obsolete, inefficient, and polluting coal-fired power plants. Remember the Republican sound bite about “picking winners and losers”? Hypocrites.

The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks…

The Energy Department would be relying partly on the Federal Power Act — the so-called Section 202 authority — that lets the administration order guaranteed profits for power plants that can store large amounts of fuel on site. And the Energy Department would be tapping the 68-year-old Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era statute once invoked by President Harry Truman to help the steel industry…

The issue is a priority for some of the president’s top supporters, including coal moguls Robert E. Murray and Joseph Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, who donated a million dollars to the president’s inauguration. The move would be one of the most direct efforts by Trump to make good on campaign promises to revive the nation’s shrinking coal industry…

May 2018 in Review

Most frightening stories:

Most hopeful stories:

  • There are some new ideas for detecting the potential for rapid ecological change or collapse of ecosystems.
  • Psychedelics might produce similar benefits to meditation.
  • Microgrids, renewables combined with the latest generation of batteries, are being tested in Puerto Rico.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

flat earth

I thought the flat earth thing was just sort of a joke. Apparently not. People believe it, and the way they convince themselves and dismiss any evidence to the contrary is instructive. If people can believe this because it seems to them like “common sense”, they can very easily convince themselves not to try to grasp and understand the more complex science and system interactions that govern so much of our lives.

cognitive bias

This open access article has a nice summary of cognitive bias research.

Black swans, cognition, and the power of learning from failure

Failure carries undeniable stigma and is difficult to confront for individuals, teams, and organizations. Disciplines such as commercial and military aviation, medicine, and business have long histories of grappling with it, beginning with the recognition that failure is inevitable in every human endeavor. Although conservation may arguably be more complex, conservation professionals can draw on the research and experience of these other disciplines to institutionalize activities and attitudes that foster learning from failure, whether they are minor setbacks or major disasters. Understanding the role of individual cognitive biases, team psychological safety, and organizational willingness to support critical self‐examination all contribute to creating a cultural shift in conservation to one that is open to the learning opportunity that failure provides. This new approach to managing failure is a necessary next step in the evolution of conservation effectiveness.

how about a war tax?

Part of the reason the U.S. public accepts continuous war as normal is that we don’t realize how much we are paying for it. The idea of a war tax sounds politically crazy, but is is? It used to be pretty standard. Congress would declare war, ordinary people would be drafted and taxed, and people would generally be supportive but expect the war to end and things to go back to the way they were.

Until the Vietnam War, American presidents regularly introduced war taxes, seemingly less worried about offending the people than about financing the war. In some cases, the government had to work to elicit fiscal sacrifice, for example, with a pro-tax Disney cartoon in 1943 that touted “Taxes to Beat the Axis” during World War II. In most cases, the taxes did not actually offend the people…

In 2009, during debates about the Afghanistan surge, House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey proposed a tax that would require homes with incomes between $30,000 and $150,000 to pay 1 percent on top of their existing taxes, and higher levels for the wealthier. Veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan would be exempt: “We’re just trying to keep in the forefront what the financial costs are.”

Indeed, a study of the costs of these wars showed that the public is blissfully disconnected. In 2014, I surveyed 350 Americans and asked them to estimate the costs of the Afghanistan war to that point. Responses ranged from a million dollars to “probably $10 trillion. A lot more than we can afford.” The typical response was “I have no idea — $100 million?” The real answer at that point was $686 billion. Americans cannot make sense of such enormous figures. They can, however, make sense of their own budgets, which is why the connection with taxes is so much tighter, and why individuals become invested in the conduct of the war when war taxes are levied. As both Tilly and Smith observed, the visibility and intrusiveness of taxes are exactly what make individuals scrutinize the service for which the resources are being used. In the case of war, it means paying more scrupulous attention to its duration, goals, and cost.

running out of bombs?

The military-industrial complex needs to engage in continuous war so it can be ready in case a war starts. Or so I interpret the logic. Is this part of some vast, hidden conspiracy? Well, no, apparently they put a report out about it periodically.

The Pentagon plans to invest more than $20 billion in munitions in its next budget. But whether the industrial base will be there to support such massive buys in the future is up in the air — at a time when America is expending munitions at increasingly intense rates.

The annual Industrial Capabilities report, put out by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, has concluded that the industrial base of the munitions sector is particularly strained, something the report blames on the start-and-stop nature of munitions procurement over the last 20 years, as well as the lack of new designs being internally developed…

All this is happening as the U.S. is expending munitions at a rapid rate. For instance, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concluded that 1,186 munitions were dropped in that country during the first quarter of 2018 ― the highest number recorded for the first three months of the year since tracking began in 2013; that number is also more than two and a half times the amount dropped in the first quarter of 2017.

Interesting, and I thought the Afghanistan war was more or less over. It seems like wars don’t really end any more, and the public now accepts ongoing regional wars as normal.

@RealObamaCareForecast

The Congressional Budget Office has a new forecast of the fate of Obama care over the next 10 years. And the verdict is…the system is not in a death spiral. Premiums are forecast to rise faster than inflation, which is bad, and the number of people without insurance is forecast to rise slightly, which is bad unless you believe for some reason that these people are not entitled to the same human rights you are entitled to, for whatever reason, but that system is “stable”, i.e. not in a “death spiral”

The paragraph below caught my eye for a couple reasons. First, Obama care is only 10% of all government health care expenditures. Medicare is also only about 10%, which is amazing and I suspect almost everyone has the wrong idea about that. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are a whopping 40%.  Subsidies for corporate health insurance are the remaining 40%.

Net federal subsidies for insured people in 2018 will total $685 billion.
That amount is projected to reach $1.2 trillion in 2028. Medicaid and the
Children’s Health Insurance Program account for about 40 percent of that
total, as do subsidies in the form of tax benefits for work-related insurance.
Medicare accounts for about 10 percent, as do subsidies for coverage
obtained through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act
or through the Basic Health Program.

So what surprises me is that we are covering the elderly pretty thoroughly and pretty cost-effectively, while coverage for the poor seems to be both inadequate and extremely cost inefficient. And certainly, the system of hidden tax subsidies for corporate workers is grossly inefficient. So why does the public put up with all this? First, old people love to complain but at the end of the day they are reasonably well taken care of at a reasonable price. Upper-middle-class professional workers receive high quality care and don’t realize how heavily-subsidized and cost-inefficient that care is. These two groups make up a lot of the swing voters. The majority of those swing voters have bought into the decades of neo-fascist propaganda that the poor are undeserving for one reason or another, and therefore their sense of natural human empathy is damped down. and the poor themselves are not politically mobilized. Big business in general might be just as happy for government to take the responsibility for health coverage off their shoulders, but they are not really disadvantaged financially by the present system so they don’t fight it. The big exception of course is the insurance/finance industry which benefits directly from the inefficiencies of the current system, and certainly is politically mobilized.

urban (redevelopment) and trees

Redevelopment of private property in urban areas is generally a good thing for the regional economy, as is renewal of public infrastructure. It can be good for people and the environment too, if there are well-thought-out and well-implemented policies in place to make sure that is the case. But when those policies are not in place, or when enlightened and well-intentioned policies founder on the rocks of change-resistant and dysfunctional institutions that are supposed to implement them, I think the default is that this is not the case. Case in point: Seattle is experiencing a redevelopment boom, and has set goals to increase its tree canopy, but the development boom has resulted in a loss of tree canopy. The city is considering measures to try to reverse that trend. I would like to see my city (Philadelphia), which is also experiencing a development boom and (anecdotally, at least, from what I see with my own eyes) also losing trees, take similar measures. But after seeing a number of enlightened and well-intentioned local policies founder on the rocks of poor implementation, my confidence in the city’s political and bureaucratic leadership at the moment is not particularly high.