Note that the Takakura paper was not cherry picked as shown in the chart below from the IPCC
The big outlier in green is Burke, but the structural modelling studies that add up the costs of climate change in different sectors tend to put the costs of climate change at <10%.
I don’t think a criticism of Nordhaus’ model is a criticism of Takakura’s model. They are quite different. I agree that the Nordhaus stuff is very flawed. Unfortunately, I think that because of these flaws, people have written off the whole of climate economics, which on the whole produces similar findings to Nordhaus, and not all of which is flawed. I checked their references, and Takakura uses up to date literature on all of the impact mechanisms.
I agree that they don’t cover indirect risks. I would view the literature as a good estimate of the direct costs of climate change, which are less than 10% of GDP. It is still a useful corrective to views like Lynas and others that due to the direct effects on agriculture and the like, the chance of civilisational collapse is at 3C is like 30%.
To be clear, they are not measuring costs that would show up in GDP statistics. They are measuring the welfare costs of climate change expressed in monetised terms, so including effects on health, output and so on.
I take the ding on the AI/ML growth analogy.
If the claim is that the indirect risks of 3C are large enough to destabilise civilisation because displacement would lead to nuclear war or something then we can argue the toss on that one (perhaps now?). But if the claim is that the direct costs are sufficient to destroy civilisation, as Lynas and others seem to think, I just think that is just clearly wrong
Hi James, thanks for this.
Note that the Takakura paper was not cherry picked as shown in the chart below from the IPCC
The big outlier in green is Burke, but the structural modelling studies that add up the costs of climate change in different sectors tend to put the costs of climate change at <10%.
I don’t think a criticism of Nordhaus’ model is a criticism of Takakura’s model. They are quite different. I agree that the Nordhaus stuff is very flawed. Unfortunately, I think that because of these flaws, people have written off the whole of climate economics, which on the whole produces similar findings to Nordhaus, and not all of which is flawed. I checked their references, and Takakura uses up to date literature on all of the impact mechanisms.
I agree that they don’t cover indirect risks. I would view the literature as a good estimate of the direct costs of climate change, which are less than 10% of GDP. It is still a useful corrective to views like Lynas and others that due to the direct effects on agriculture and the like, the chance of civilisational collapse is at 3C is like 30%.
To be clear, they are not measuring costs that would show up in GDP statistics. They are measuring the welfare costs of climate change expressed in monetised terms, so including effects on health, output and so on.
I take the ding on the AI/ML growth analogy.
If the claim is that the indirect risks of 3C are large enough to destabilise civilisation because displacement would lead to nuclear war or something then we can argue the toss on that one (perhaps now?). But if the claim is that the direct costs are sufficient to destroy civilisation, as Lynas and others seem to think, I just think that is just clearly wrong