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I think the vibes have fully shifted on climate change damage estimates. Tyler Cowen posted this morning with a terse:
He's referring to this paper and this thread about it. They perform an empirical review of previous major estimates, focusing on replicating them and analyzing the methodology. One thing I found interesting is that they distinguished between damage estimates, themselves, and applications of damage estimates, like SCC. They say that the latter have already been show to be irreducibly uncertain, though even if the damage->SCC pathway was not irreducibly uncertain, they are arguing that since the damage estimates, themselves, are irreducibly uncertain, so too would be things like SCC.
They spell out multiple factors that create identification challenges and show how small changes to the inputs of prior models can result in huge changes in the outputs, in strange and unstable ways. They don't necessarily think prior authors did anything actively bad or malicious in their approach, just that the entire endeavor is probably doomed from the start:
Their tweet thread has the typical disclaimer needed to get out in front of the typical objections one would immediately hear upon taking such a position:
I feel a bit vindicated by the vibe change, because I had been arguing something similar a full decade ago at the old old old place, pretty much on my lonesome. Obviously, I didn't have the exact set of empirical critiques that these authors present today, but I feel like it's a good example of where you can have very strong theoretical knowledge in a related/relevant area (timescale-separated dynamical systems) that leads to a correct intuition along the lines of, "I don't actually have to know the details of the methods they're using (though I did look at several back in the day); I can't imagine they could possibly accomplish what they're setting out to accomplish, just because of the nature of the type of system they're working with."
Is anyone actually doing this? Are the evil UN bureaucrats taking the first derivative of their GDP(GHG) model to determine how much CO2 the world gets to emit? Have they invented psycho-history?
Only the stupid and partisans claim that climate change is either non-existent/harmless or will wipe out humanity. Only very stupid, partisan economists claim that they can predict the effect of a certain mean temperature change on the global GDP within a percent.
I can do the same:
Humans make decisions under uncertainty all the time. Sure, it would help to know "if I hesitate, the robber will shoot a 9mm JHP through my left eye" for certain instead of being unsure if the gun is even loaded, if the robber has the willingness to kill and so on. But even a rough estimate of the damages (he will probably shoot someone, but is unlikely to reach a double digit body count) is usually enough to narrow down courses of action.
There are some risks which seem far-fetched. "By 2030, OnlyFans will have amassed enough porn to cause Slaneesh to manifest on Earth and destroy the future of humanity" seems not something I would even dignify with a probability. By contrast, "Climate change in the next 100 years will significantly contribute to the early deaths of at least 100M people" seems likely. "If LLMs can be scaled up to ASI, they will be unaligned" seems also very plausible.
Of course, Donald Trump has made an excellent case for reducing our dependency on fossil fuel which is entirely orthogonal to climate change. Yes, sure, most alternative forms of mobility also depend on global supply chains, e.g. for lithium batteries. I would claim that this is a higher order effect, though. If the price of oil explodes, an ICE car is just a dwelling which is too small for comfort. An electric car will still work for years before the lack of replacement batteries would immobilize it.
Deadlines have been kicking in for Washington state's climate bill, CETA, and power prices are rising as a result. They've gone up about 30% the past year, and the biggest utility, PSE, is requesting another 30% increase over the next few years. The bill required that we close the only coal plant in the state and that utilities no longer import coal-fired electricity from outside of the state. The law would have denied PSE the rate to pass on the cost of maintaining its transmission lines to generating facilities in Montana if they weren't compliant, so PSE had to make a big capital outlay to fund its own windfarms, as well as buy power from other existing wind farms.
We also have our "cap and invest" carbon tax that drives energy prices higher.
By 2030 CETA will make it mandatory that electricity generation in the state be carbon neutral. By 2045 it will be illegal to have any carbon-fired electricity generation.
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Only if the power is on, and in most of Europe that still requires Russian gas. Renewables aren't up to the task, and may not be for several more decades (if ever).
In what alternate reality?
Most of Europe is very much not dependent on Russian gas for generating electricity, particularly for electricity that is at least somewhat time flexible.
Yeah, we're dependant on north African, middle eastern and American gas.
Of course, everything is relative: we use less than half as much natural gas for our electricity generation as America does for instance.
Norway is actually the #1 supplier to EU.
I'm aware. I listed non non-eea sources.
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