September 4, 2008

Yohe and Lomborg "shake hands", sort of

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In my posts (here and here) about the Yohe/Lomborg dust-up, I deliberately avoided larger questions about the role economics has played over the past few decades in framing  the debate and in justifying a delayed policy response - that larger topic could easily be a book and I actually have other things to do at the moment. The point was, that even if one fully accepts the tenets of neo-classical economics and cost-benefit analysis, and all of the shaky assumptions that come with it, Lomborg's arguments are crap, and dangerously misleading because he misrepresents the trade-offs and ignores the qualifications. Even though Gary Yohe and Bjorn Lomborg "shook hands" this week, the points they agree on seem rather thin, and Lomborg seems to have conceded a key point, in agreeing "that adaptation, CO2-cuts and R&D in some combination are all necessary to tackle global warming", though he has elsewhere supported a modest carbon tax. Roger Pielke's defense of Lomborg makes no sense but he gets kudos for getting all of the above to chime in on his comment  threads, where this was all hashed out in greater detail.

Yohe also makes it clear that Lomborg was able to reach the conclusion that the "constrained 'mitigation alone' option failed the cost-benefit test" because of artificial constraints on the design of the study, and by ignoring numerous inconvenient qualifications that are far from buried in the report by Yohe, Tol, Richels and Blanford. Given that they recognized the implications of these constraints, getting a stupid answer should not have come as any more of a surprise than Katrina, so it isn't clear why they even bothered, A take home message for both economists and climate scientists, is that in science for policy, there are no disinterested bystanders - one needs to be aware of how findings will be used in the policy arena. It also makes the case for me that "framing" - a topic on which there has been a lot of ink in the science blogs, needs to be considered in the design stage of the research, and not merely in how the results are presented.

That said, it is also important to consider the appropriateness of CBA itself as a basis for climate policies, given that it only compares the values of gradual incremental changes to a business-as-usual scenario. It should be clear to anyone who has studied a watershed, or disasters, or history, that most changes, not only those associated with climate impacts, occur in conjunction with extreme and often catastrophic even if predictable events. And unless they listen to scientists, this is also when people have an opportunity to learn and reconsider what their values even are. In other words, if Katrina surprised anyone, it was probably only because it didn't fit the analytical framework normally used to justify public policy decisions. Stephen Colbert put this into plain English when he asked Lomborg “How can you say [a 4.7 C rise in temperature] won’t be a problem if it has never happened? (He didn't answer that but he is invited to do so here on the comment thread.)

Lomborg's pattern of ignoring inconvenient qualifications is far from unusual. Even though those we will call the conventional economists generally acknowledge the limitations of CBA and throw in all of the qualifications, and do now make the case for at least some policy intervention, the line of reasoning inherent in CBA has generally been relied on to justify delay in adopting policies that address climate change, just as it is relied on by Lomborg as a mantle of authority. What is unusual is the amount of media attention Lomborg has received, as the "voice of the reasonable middle", even from people who should know better.

In all of this, science has been little more than a backdrop. I've been planning to blog a set of papers that Eli Rabbett linked to a few months ago regarding the historical context, and will have much more to say eventually. In the meantime, Eli pulled out a relevant quote in a comment he left on my last post on this topic, which makes that case that, instead of refuting scientific evidence that global warming was an immediate concern, the economic framework simply made it practically irrelevant for policy. The paper is From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge by Oreskes, Conway and Matthew Shindell, where they discuss the preparation of an NAS report published in 1983, that never should have made it through peer review:

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:22 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

August 25, 2008

More economists weigh in on The Lomborg

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In follow-up to the last post -  now both Gary Yohe, and Richard Tol, both co-authors of an economics paper that Lomborg cited, incorrectly, in an article in the Guardian, and that is also the foundation for his "Copenhagen Consensus", conclude that he is misrepresenting their work and deliberately confusing things. For details, see the comment thread on Pielke's post. So Lomborg has no legs to stand on. In theory, that means he is history. But I expect he will continue to repeat what he has been saying, as long as there is anyone listening.

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A challenge to economists

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Last fall, in a series of posts about what I dubbed The Lomborg I made the case that Lomborg was misusing Cost-Benefit Analysis to say that cuts in CO2 emissions will cost more than they are worth. I also added that "I hope we will hear from some environmental economists on this" - and also get statements from those experts listed as signing off on the " Copenhagen Consensus" – an expert group convened by Lomborg to rank priorities for addressing the major challenges of our time, based on their costs and benefits.

Not that I had anything to do with it but, shortly after that, Nature published a book review by Sir Partha Dasgupta – a well-known and respected economist, that reinforced my point. Which is that, even if you fully accept the tenets of neo-classical economics, Lomborg's arguments are basically crap. And that's without even going into the flaws in his argument about expected sea level rise (which has been repeatedly debunked but, without responding to any of his critics, Lomborg keeps repeating the same thing. This post is not a response to him but to all publications that have given him a platform.)

Now we also have some critical words from Gary Yohe – an economist who was a member of the IPCC, and also participated in Lomborg's “Copenhagen Consensus” project, for which he wrote the principal climate paper, on which Lomborg's conclusions are based. Responding to a Lomborg article in the Guardian, Yohe says:

But there's just one problem: 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.

Lomborg claims that our "bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs" and that "[g]lobal warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070." This is a deliberate distortion of our conclusions.

We did find that climate change will result in some benefits for developed countries, but only for modest climate change (up to global temperature increases of 2C - not the 4 degrees that Lomborg is discussing in his piece). But developed countries are relatively prepared to handle climate change's effects - they tend to be in colder areas, and they have the infrastructure to mitigate severe depletion of resources like fresh water and arable land.

That is precisely why our analysis concluded - and Lomborg ignores - that climate change will cause immediate losses for developing countries and the planet's most vulnerable, millions of whom are already facing challenges that climate change will exacerbate.

Downplaying the threat of climate change allows Lomborg to focus on his claim that "unlike even moderate CO2 cuts, which cost more than they do good, we should focus on investing in finding cheaper low-carbon energy." He attributes this finding to our analysis as well, but again he overlooks a key element of our work.

Of course the world needs to make significant investments in cheaper, low-carbon energy. But making those investments without also implementing a constraint on emissions would fail to address the problem. ...

To make things even more confusing, Roger Pielke in turn cherry picks Yohe's remarks to say that he doesn't see where Yohe's conclusions differ from how they are represented by Lomborg, citing the Yohe et al analysis which concludes “[g]lobal warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070.” But he ignores Yohe's qualification that that only applies to developed countries, and assumes temperature changes within two degrees by that time, rather than the four degree plausible scenario that Lomborg is reacting to, commented on in another Guardian article by Oliver Tickell. Since the expected temperature change by the end of the century under a business as usual scenario is 3.5 degrees, Roger can't figure out the discrepancy, but if you click the links, you will find that Oliver Tickell was responding to a recommendation made by Bob Watson, the former chair of the IPCC and now Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that the UK should plan for a 4 degree C change in temperature, which has a 20% chance of occurring by the end of the century.

As Lomborg notes, the IPCC projection is between 1.8 and 6, Celsius. The sea level rise projection is 18-59 centimeters. But he fails to note that the IPCC projections explicitly exclude consideration of "rapid dynamical changes in ice flow", or melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Lomborg's basic pattern is to simply pick conservative or mid-range estimates, without any justification, and to ignore the qualifications. But there are many good arguments as to why the IPCC analysis, and science in general, tend to err on the side of being conservative to begin with. And there is a good argument why even the economic damage estimates such as those presented by Yohe et al are likely to be a serious underestimate, as was explained by Paul Baer, in his discussion of The worth of an ice sheet. All worthy of further comment.

For now, I would simply like to challenge all economists is to get on the bandwagon, and make as big of a fuss about Lomborg as they did about an infamous paper that added up the “values” of ecosystem services to $33 trillion...

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 9, 2007

Between a hoax and a catastrophe

by Sylvia S Tognetti

The Lomborg, now brought to you by the Washington Post, still claims to be in the mythical middle ground, somewhere in between claims of climate change as catastrophe and hoax where he is looking to have "a sensible conversation" with honesty "about the shortcomings and costs of climate policies, as well as benefits." He could start by making honest and sensible arguments himself and perhaps by acknowledging and responding to his critics, but then he might not get space on the front page of the Outlook section in the Sunday Post - or on the Colbert Report. But at least Stephen nailed him (video link) - as much as could be done in the few minutes in which he appeared on the show. Meanwhile the Post continues to demonstrate why we should all be more skeptical about what we read in the papers.

I just took another look at details about expected sea level rise in the IPCC report, which Lomborg clearly misrepresents, but see this post by Joseph Romm, who has already taken the time to sort it out - in that and in 3 earlier posts he links to. It would be nice if Lomborg included references for statements that seem like they are pulled either out of context or out of thin air itself, i.e., on what basis does he make the claim that the dramatic increase in Greenland's melting seems transitory? And who exactly is "scoffing" that the IPCC severely underestimated the rate at which glaciers are melting? But even suppose Lomborg were right in selecting an average value for expected mean sea level rise from what is clearly a conservative estimate for reasons that have to do with the scientific process - such as a reluctance to quantify processes not yet sufficiently understood, like the speed of ice flow at outlet glaciers and ice streams that have changed more rapidly than expected. What is of concern from a policy perspective are the impacts of Sea Level Rise for which average values aren't very helpful because they are driven by extreme but normally occurring events. As stated in the IPCC Technical Summary:

The greatest climate- and weather-related impacts of sea level are due to extremes on time scales of days and hours, associated with tropical cyclones and mid-latitude storms. Low atmospheric pressure and high winds produce large local sea level excursions called 'storm surges,' which are especially serious when they occur with high tide. Changes in the frequency of occurrence of these extreme sea levels  are affected both by changes in mean sea level and in the meteorological phenomena causing the extremes.

For more on scientific reticence, see this paper (pdf) by James Hansen and stay tuned for my review of Chris Mooney's book, Stormworld.

What I find particularly annoying are Lomborg's repeated accusations and mischaracterizations of the views of unnamed environmental groups or just plain "people." Environmental organizations and individual advocates, and scientists who also "want to put out the fire" are quite a diverse bunch who, unlike Lomborg - or Luntz, or even Nordhaus and Shellenburger, can disagree with each other in a number of ways without setting themselves apart from and attacking all "environmental groups" and who have been trying to have an honest and sensible conversation about how best to address the climate crisis in time to avoid a catastrophe. This conversation is hardly limited to the costs and benefits of the Kyoto Protocol. Addressed in a smart way, investments in reducing carbon emissions could have numerous other benefits - e.g., see: Barack Obama's energy plan, or Al Gore's call for a Global Marshall Plan (UN webcast - Al Gore's remarks don't start until approximately minute 35) which calls for addressing the climate crisis in ways that also fight poverty. Regarding costs and benefits, see also this post here on PNT by Paul Baer on The worth of an Ice Sheet - which makes the case that to determine what an ice-sheet is worth, we have to first determine what will be required to actually save it and what the trade-offs would actually be. Thanks to the Lomborgs and the Luntzs of the world, that conversation has barely begun. Given that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is beyond anyone's practical experience, any insistence that the costs are large relative to the benefits is pure hubris.

Update: Joe Romm dug up another paper and provides more details on the increase in ice discharge from Greenland outlet glaciers and changes in ice flow speed that have been observed. It also appears to be the paper Lomborg relied on to claim that "the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing." But that is hardly what the paper says. But go read Joe Romm's post. The Washington Post needs to publish some corrections.

2nd update: The Washington Post has not published corrections but they did publish an excellent rebuttal by Judith Curry, which should have been on the front page of the Sunday Outlook section, but at least it's in print. Hat tip again to Joe Romm.

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September 26, 2007

Economists (and others) weigh in on The Lomborg

by Sylvia S Tognetti

In a previous post about The Lomborg, in followup to a previous one, I had a bit of a disagreement with Michael Tobis, over whether Lomborg is just adhering to the principles and presumptions of conventional economics, and whether what he believes, or at least says he believes, is wrong - coherently or stupidly. While I fully agree with Tobis that values are embedded in scientific methods, and that there are limitations on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), my point was that Lomborg is misusing CBA. To which also I added: "I hope we will hear from some environmental economists on this" - and also get statements from those experts listed as signing off on his "Copenhagen Consensus." So far, no word that I know of from the latter, but Sir Partha Dasgupta - a well-known and respected environmental economist, backs up my point in a a book review published in Nature - the key quote:

Economics helps us to realize what we are able to say about matters that will reveal themselves only in the distant future. Simultaneously, it helps us to realize the limits of what we are able to say. That, too, is worth knowing, for limits on what we are able to say are not a reason for inaction. Lomborg’s seemingly persuasive economic calculations are a case of muddled concreteness.

I don't have access to the full article but here is a link round up to blogs on which it has been extensively excerpted and commented on:

ResilienceScience/Garry Peterson, Partha Dasgupta on Lomborg's muddled concreteness

Economists View/Mark Thoma, "If The Uncertainties Are Not Small, Standard Cost–Benefit Analysis As Applied To The Economics Of Climate Change Becomes Incoherent"

Also linked to and commented on by Brad de Long, and by Felix Salmon at the Porfolio magazine blog, who rearticulates the argument in plain english, Megan McArdle/The Atlantic, and James Hrynyshyn/Island of Doubt. Unrelated to Dasgupta's review is one by Tyler Cowen/Marginal Revolution, and this one by a law professor Jonathan Adler in the National Review who, though generally favorable to the book, seems to agree with critics on a crucial point: that Lomborg "understates the degree of uncertainty inherent in climate-change policy"  and that this "counsel[s] against pretending cost-benefit analyses can be conducted with any degree of precision."  

Other noteworthy posts, not necessarily focusing on flawed application of economics, Climate Progress, Richard Littlemore/DeSmog, and Chris Mooney @DeSmog. Then there is this review by ecologist Tim Flannery in the Washington Post who, given Lomborg's assertion that the Stern report was not peer reviewed, wonders whether Lomborg's book was. It is being done now....

It is important to keep hammering away at this not so much to beat up on a dead horse as to take advantage of the opportunity to clarify what is a common misunderstanding and misleading misuse of economics in the policy arena, on both sides, regardless of whether those doing so have good intentions. Even more productive for policy purposes would be to focus on finding agreement on what the trade-offs actually are, and the range of possible outcomes that Lomborg conveniently ignores by using point estimates in the Mythical Middle.

Lastly, now that I am back, I watched the Colbert clip again and as always, he manages to articulate complex issues more concisely than anyone. After Lomborg dodges the question of how often  the expected 4.7 rise in temperature happens (if you accept the middle figure from a wider range of possible outcomes), Colbert asks a follow-up: "How can we say it won't be a problem if it has never happened?"

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:24 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 12, 2007

The Lomborg - nailed

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I had access to a high speed connection today so, in follow-up to the last post, here is the video clip of Stephen Colbert nailing The Lomborg:

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September 11, 2007

The Lomborg continued etc

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I'm blogging from a location where I can't get Comedy Central, and only have a dial-up connection, so I haven't been able to watch Stephen Colbert put The Lomborg in his place yet - but see David Roberts post, or go straight to Comedy Central. I may have more comments after I see it, in follow-up to this previous post. In related news that I can read, Michael Tobis has comments on a New York Times article that ponders whether Lomborg should be taken seriously. No. While it is news to me that he advocates a carbon tax, limiting coastal development and expanding wetlands, those aren't the reasons he has been given a megaphone. Even supposing he were intellectually serious and honest, and has a few of his lines right, if he doesn't understand the complexity, why is he getting the attention? For the moment, I'm not going to go there.

In unrelated news, in Italy (where I came to attend a family wedding etc....), Saturday was "V-day", short for "Vaffanculo Day," when, in response to a call from the comedian Beppe Grillo, using only his blog since he doesn't get on television much anymore, 300,000 people came to selected town squares to sign a petition for a law that would prohibit convicted criminals from being elected to public office, set term limits, and allow people to vote for the actual members of parliament instead of just for the party. Apparently there are about 25 former convicts now in office, cronies of the former prime minister, who also appeared on TV  that evening, saying it is imperative that this government fail so there can be another election in the spring... He still has not accepted defeat. From Pisa, this is Sylvia "Not Poggioli" reporting....

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August 29, 2007

The Lomborg

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Call me a skeptic - of anyone trying to claim the Middle Ground, right or left, journalist or politician. The extreme and illustrative case is what I now call The Lomborg which is essentially a variation of The Luntz, the end result of which is to drive book sales - or other forms of fame and fortune - though, as explained here, I'm not convinced that it will still work for winning elections - sometimes the rules of the game can be changed.

I have not read Lomborg's new book, Cool It (or the last one) - in this case, the narrative or "frame" speaks for itself. According to a review in Salon by Eban Goodstein, without offering any justification, and ignoring the potential range of variability and uncertainty, Lomborg prefers the "moderate" IPCC scenario, and, in an interview by Kevin Berger, says he is just trying to claim the Middle Ground. Paraphrasing: "Left wingers say yada yada, right wingers say yada yada, science [cherry-picked and taken out of context] says whatever supports my argument..." As director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center Lomborg is in the business of manufacturing consensus.

Not that I deny the fact that policy often requires some sort of a consensus and compromise but first you have to be clear about the trade-offs, about which Lomborg is clearly clueless even though tradeoffs form the core of his argument (see Goodstein). Otherwise, "consensus" is just a cover up for unresolved conflicts, and a way to position oneself above the fray, or in that narrow space in which cherry-picked conflicting views overlap - supposedly. Note also, The Luntz and The Lomborg reinforce each other - Luntz also now preaches consensus and labels those who advocate a change as hysterical. Lomborg uses the label doomsayers, and says their argument is one that says, "Hey, I'm much more important than everything else." It must be lucrative.

To Lomborg's credit, he does advocate public investments in clean energy technologies. Maybe that will make it harder for Inhofe to continue calling global warming a great hoax, or maybe Inhofe will just make Lomborg look reasonable. Meanwhile, Lomborg congratulates Gore for "getting the issue on the agenda and taking it away from the people who say it's a hoax" in the same breath in which he says Gore is exaggerating and is an alarmist. But Lomborg steers clear of supporting a cap or any other form of financial incentive that would create a demand for clean technologies, by raising the price of carbon emissions.There is indeed a trade-off here - his book sales come at the expense of the ability to respond to this dire threat, by undermining integrity in public discourse, as well as public trust in the hard-earned consensus found the hard way, in real scientific assessments.

As for trade-offs, PZ notes:

He also has a bad argument about relative spending: he suggests that spending on climate change would reduce spending on other pressing issues, like the fight against malaria. It's a bad choice. Malaria research is already underfunded — it's a third-world disease, don't you know, one that mainly affects those tropical countries, so the wealthy western nations typically don't prioritize it very highly. We don't take our big pots of money and allocate it into aliquots appropriate to the world's needs already, so for an economist to sit there and pretend that climate research is a drain on tropical disease research is comical. Especially since he seems unaware of how one feeds into the other. Hey, if the world warms up, tropical diseases will creep northward into Europe and North America, and then we'll be fighting the economic effects of both direct effects of climate change and new diseases.

But Lomborg is not an economist. His credentials for preaching the gospel of Cost-Benefit Analysis? Statistics and political science. I'm not an economist either but have been told that geography is a hunting license, and have learned enough economics to know that CBA is too easily and often misused - it only works when there is agreement about the policy objective, i.e., in the absence of value conflicts. I have nothing against the method per se, but roll my eyes when it is suggested that CBA, or The Market, should determine policy objectives (which is what Lomborg advocates - even though he denies this and says he is just offering a price list so the public can decide). When there are conflicting values and interests, to say, for example, that Kyoto is too costly, you have to be more specific, i.e., to who? Lomborg doesn't say - again, he just picks a middle figure from "main academic" macro-economic models, without questioning their assumptions. Perhaps those decreasing numbers of people who stand to gain from the status quo, value cheap labor, and believe this will somehow automatically create greater future prosperity?

Depending on what policies are adopted to reduce emissions and how it is done, the economy could, perhaps, be transformed into one that actually works by actually meeting human needs, which would make everyone better off. I may be delusional and am admittedly speculating a bit about the possibility of achieving that. But Goodstein cites a review by Robert Repetto, which concluded that energy efficiency could spur economic growth. To get beyond the cherry picking, we need to get more specific and start comparing actual scenarios that provide a more honest accounting for trade-offs between policy options, to find pathways from here to where we want to go, but will need some sort of consensus on where that is. That should also knock out the floor boards that sustain the wobbly frame on which Lomborg and Luntz are perched.

More at Island of Doubt

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