{"id":6671,"date":"2019-07-04T06:02:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T06:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themint.kinsta.cloud\/?p=6671"},"modified":"2022-03-29T05:06:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T05:06:56","slug":"nordhauss-nobel-prize-is-safe-but-the-world-isnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/nordhauss-nobel-prize-is-safe-but-the-world-isnt\/","title":{"rendered":"Nordhaus\u2019s Nobel Prize is safe but the World isn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

An economic analysis that won the highest of accolades and spawned influential followers has sharpened the threat from climate change, says Steve Keen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the provisions of the Nobel Prize is that once awarded, it can never be revoked. This has led to some embarrassing gaffes with perhaps the worst to date being the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918. That went to Fritz Haber, who, as well as inventing what became an essential process in the manufacturing of fertilizer, had personally \u201csupervised the first major chlorine gas attack at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915, which killed thousands of Allied troops,\u201d (Karl Ritter, 2016 Five decisions that made the Nobel Prizes look bad<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Writing for news agency AFP in 2015, journalist, Hugues Honore, reported a comment from Swedish chemist, Inger Ingmanson, who wrote a book about Haber\u2019s prize: \u201cAfter Germany\u2019s defeat in the war, he didn\u2019t expect to win a prize. He was more afraid of a court martial.\u201d<\/p>\n

So William Nordhaus\u2019s Nobel Prize in Economics\u201cfor integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis\u201d is safe. But the world isn\u2019t. When future generations look back to try to determine why humanity delayed taking action against climate change for so long, Nordhaus\u2019s Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (<\/u>DICE) model <\/a>will be regarded as one of the prime suspects.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t make this claim lightly. I have attacked mainstream economists in the past for making absurd assumptions in their models1<\/sup>, but Nordhaus\u2019s transgressions are in a different, and lower, league altogether. His assertion that his \u201cdamage function\u201d \u2013 a key component of his model \u2013 is consistent with the research of climate scientists, is incorrect, and he calibrates this function using data that has nothing to do with climate change itself.<\/p>\n

And these errors are not merely of academic interest because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses his model (and very similar models used by other economists following his approach) to advise governments about the economic impact of global warming.<\/p>\n

By provably ignoring the dangers of abrupt climate change, and by trivialising the impact of the higher temperatures that climate change will cause, Nordhaus (and his fellow mainstream climate economists) have seriously delayed action to avert severe damage from climate change.
\nThe pivotal problem with his research is not the one often mentioned by critics \u2014 that he applies a high discount rate to future damages from climate change. Instead, the problem is the function he uses to estimate damages attributable to global warming in the first place: his so-called \u201cdamage function\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is a simple quadratic: he asserts that an increase in the average global temperature over pre-industrial levels of, for example, 4\u00b0C, will reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by a constant, multiplied by 16 (the square of the temperature increase), compared to what GDP would have been in the complete absence of global warming.<\/p>\n

The constant itself is tiny. In his latest model, the coefficient he used is 0.227%2<\/sup>. Since his damage function is literally nothing other than this constant multiplied by the change in temperature squared, he asserts that GDP has been reduced by 0.227% by the 1\u00b0C of warming we have already experienced, that a 2\u00b0C temperature increase will reduce GDP by four times as much (just over 0.9%), a 3\u00b0C increase by nine times as much (just over 2%), and that a 6\u00b0C increase would reduce GDP by 36 times as much (just over 8%) \u2014 see figure 1.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These are trivial changes in GDP, and by implication, in human welfare, caused by global warming. If it were true, there would be nothing to worry about. A 3.6% fall in GDP in one year is a very serious recession. But since, on Nordhaus\u2019s calculations, it will take until 2140 to reach 4\u00b0C above pre-industrial levels (see figure 2), GDP growth over that period would have faded by a trivial 0.03% a year.<\/p>\n

A sustained fall of 3.6% in GDP indefinitely every year from 2140 would add up to a lot as the centuries wear on. But this is where Nordhaus\u2019s high discount rate comes in: it reduces today\u2019s net present value of these falls to effectively zero.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nClimate scientists, meanwhile, are truly panicked about a 2\u00b0C increase over pre-industrial levels. A recent paper, jointly authored by 16 climate scientists, asserted that global warming must be kept to 2\u00b0C or below, because of the risk that \u201ca 2 \u00b0C warming could activate important tipping elements, raising the temperature further to activate other tipping elements in a domino-like cascade that could take the Earth\u2019s system to even higher temperatures\u201d.4<\/sup><\/p>\n

Nordhaus\u2019s damage function doesn\u2019t have a discontinuity, but what climate scientists are saying is that there is a discontinuity ahead. In this sense, Nordhaus\u2019s function is like describing a canoe trip along a river with a waterfall by the statement that height above sea level falls seven metres for every kilometre paddled. That could describe the river section of the journey very well, but it would be cold comfort once you went over the waterfall.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSociety may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How did Nordhaus justify using a smooth function to describe the impact of Global Warming, when climate scientists are saying that there are \u201ctipping elements\u201d in the Earth\u2019s climate? How can he deny that a \u201cdamage function\u201d must have a discontinuity? By, it seems, completely failing to understand climate research.<\/p>\n

In the manual for his DICE model, Nordhaus claims: \u201cThe current version assumes that damages are a quadratic function of temperature change and does not include sharp thresholds or tipping points, but this is consistent with the survey by Lenton et al.\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n

That is just plain wrong. Lenton\u2019s paper, clearly entitled, Tipping elements in the Earth\u2019s climate system<\/em>6<\/sup>, concluded:
\n\u201cSociety may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic climate change,\u201d (my emphasis).<\/p>\n

This is the exact opposite of what Nordhaus has claimed. Climate scientists have flatly rejected his function without a discontinuity. The gradual decline in GDP predicted by Nordhaus\u2019s model, and all the \u201cIntegrated Assessment Models\u201d produced by economists that are part of the IPCC\u2019s reports, are completely at odds with what the climate scientists \u2014 also writing for the IPCC \u2014 have concluded.<\/p>\n

Tim Lenton is a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, UK, where, to quote his university webpage \u201che and his group are focusing on \u2026 developing early warning of climate tipping points\u201d. His 2008 paper was a first step in identifying what components of the Earth\u2019s climate system might trigger runaway global warming. It provided a formal definition of a tipping point, and described components of the biosphere that could be pushed into a qualitatively different state by a sufficiently large increase in global temperature as \u201ctipping elements.\u201d Lenton says:
\n\u201cIn discussions of global change, the term tipping point has been used to describe a variety of phenomena\u2026 We offer a formal definition, introducing the term \u2018\u2018tipping element\u2019\u2019 to describe subsystems of the Earth system that are at least subcontinental in scale and can be switched\u2014under certain circumstances\u2014into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations. The tipping point is the corresponding critical point\u2014in forcing and a feature of the system\u2014at which the future state of the system is qualitatively altered.\u201d7<\/sup><\/p>\n

Lenton\u2019s survey considered only large components of the planet\u2019s climate (systems that were that of the order of 1,000km long), and which could be triggered by the increase in temperature expected this century. He concluded:
\n\u201cThe greatest (and clearest) threat is to the Arctic with summer sea-ice loss likely to occur long before (and potentially contribute to) GIS [Greenland Ice Sheet] melt. Tipping elements in the tropics, the boreal zone, and West Antarctica are surrounded by large uncertainty and, given their potential sensitivity, constitute candidates for surprising society. The archetypal example of a tipping element, the THC [Atlantic thermohaline circulation \u2013 part of which is the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe warmer than it otherwise would be] appears to be a less immediate threat, but the long-term fate of the THC under significant warming remains a source of concern.\u201d8<\/sup><\/p>\n

How on Earth did Nordhaus read this paper and think that it justified using a smooth function, rather than one with tipping points? I can\u2019t know of course,<\/p>\n

but I believe he either didn\u2019t read the paper at all or, at best, scanned it until he found a sentence that appeared to support the conclusion he wanted to reach, and then stopped. There is such a sentence, at the start of the paper\u2019s third paragraph: \u201cMany of the systems we consider do not yet have convincingly established tipping points.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n

Read out of context, that sentence could imply that the existence of tipping points hasn\u2019t been proven\u2014and that therefore a smooth function like a quadratic is fine. But everything else in the paper, including the sentences either side of that one, screams that a smooth function should not be used. Curiously, Nordhaus cites this paper in the DICE manual but does not quote from it. And the reference is not in his bibliography.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMany of the systems we consider do not yet have convincingly established tipping points.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s simple to show just how misleading a smooth function is by using one that is otherwise very similar to Nordhaus\u2019s, but does have a tipping point. This is a function which coincides with Nordhaus\u2019s prediction about the damage from 1\u00b0Cof global warming, cubes the difference between the actual temperature and the pre-industrial level, and divides this by a tipping point temperature minus the actual temperature.<\/p>\n

Figure 3 plots Nordhaus\u2019s function and two functions with tipping points, one at the 2\u00b0Cpoint chosen by climate scientists (Steffen et al. 2018)9<\/sup>as the danger point for the planet, the other at the 4\u00b0Clevel that Nordhaus sees as \u201coptimal\u201d for the planet. The difference between the stylised but realistic tipping point functions, and Nordhaus\u2019s unrealistic smooth function, are dramatic. Even if Nordhaus (and humanity) happens to be lucky, and the actual tipping point is twice as high as climate scientists fear it is, the 3\u00b0Cof warming that he predicts would only reduce GDP by 2% would instead reduce it by 18%. That is not some far-distant concern either: we are already at 1\u00b0Cwarming over pre-Industrial levels, and even Nordhaus predicts we will hit 3\u00b0Cof warming in 2070 (see figure 2). That\u2019s just five decades away, when today\u2019s Extinction Rebellion campaigners would hope to be entering retirement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If the climate scientists are right, and 2\u00b0Cis the tipping point, then even on Nordhaus\u2019s calculations (see figure 2), we have just 25 years to avoid catastrophic damage to both the biosphere and the economy. This doesn\u2019t mean that the economy will cease to exist in 2045, but that the rate of temperature increase will accelerate at or around that date, driven by qualitative changes in the biosphere in addition to heat retention via greenhouse gases, and that these qualitative changes could push the biosphere to, or past, temperatures that have previously caused mass extinctions<\/a>, and which will surely be incompatible with industrialised human society<\/a>(see figure 4 taken from Steffen 2018).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Not only has Nordhaus ignored these warnings by climate scientists, the only changes he has made to his damage function over the years have made it less<\/em>able to handle tipping points10\u00a0<\/sup>and reduced\u00a0<\/em>the already tiny coefficient he uses, from 0.35% in 1999, to 0.284% in 2008, 0.267% in 2013,11<\/sup>and 0.227% in 2018.12<\/sup><\/p>\n

This is the next mystery in DICE: how did Nordhaus get such tiny numbers for the impact of climate change in the first place? Here we have to delve into the source of the \u201cdata points\u201d to which DICE is fitted: the 14 dots on figure 1, which originate in a survey of economists\u2019 predictions about the impact of climate change by Dutch economist, Richard Tol.13<\/sup><\/p>\n

There are many weaknesses in these predictions, but without a doubt the worst is an assumption, behind at least five of them, that the relative effect of climate on income in different parts of the world today can be extrapolated to the effect of changes in climate on GDP across the whole planet over time. Under that assumption, temperature and income differences between, for example, Washington and Dallas, can be used to predict what will happen to global GDP if global temperatures rise by the gap between Washington and Dallas. In Tol\u2019s words, these data points are based on the assumption \u201cthat the observed variation of economic activity with climate over space holds over time as well.\u201d14 \u00a0<\/sup>He goes on to comment on specific studies:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Robert] Mendelsohn\u2019s work …\u00a0can be called the statistical approach. It is based on direct estimates of\u00a0the welfare impacts, using observed variations (across space within a single country)\u00a0in prices and expenditures to discern the effect of climate.\u00a0Mendelsohn assumes\u00a0that the observed variation of economic activity with climate over space holds over\u00a0time as well, and uses climate models to estimate the future effect of climate\u00a0change\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cLike Mendelsohn, Nordhaus and Maddison rely exclusively on observations, assuming that \u201cclimate\u201d is reflected in incomes and expenditures \u2014 and that the spatial pattern holds over time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nordhaus uses empirical estimates of the aggregate climate impact on income across the world (per grid cell), while [David] Maddison looks at patterns of aggregate household consumption (per country). Like Mendelsohn, Nordhaus and Maddison rely exclusively on observations, assuming that \u201cclimate\u201d is reflected in incomes and expenditures\u2014and that the spatial pattern holds over time.14<\/sup><\/p>\n

What does this mean? It means that these economists took data about the income and temperature levels in different parts of the USA today, performed regressions between them, and found a weak nonlinear relationship between income and temperature. Below an \u201coptimum\u201d average yearly temperature of 12\u00b0C15<\/sup>, increasing temperatures are correlated with increasing income; above that average temperature, rising temperatures are correlated with decreasing income.<\/p>\n

Since much of the world\u2019s inhabited landmass has a lower average temperature than 12\u00b0C, several of these economists concluded that an increase in global temperature over pre-industrial levels would actually increase global GDP.16\u00a0<\/sup>For example the lowest point for a 2.5\u00b0C increase in figure 1 shows a negative damage \u2013 meaning an improvement \u2013 of 1% to GDP from a 2.5\u00b0C increase in temperature over pre-industrial levels (see also figure 5).<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nIn their words:
\n\u201cThe results indicate that there will be large benefits from warming in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. The benefits in this region almost offset losses throughout the tropics in the experimental results. The Soviet benefits account for two-thirds of the net global benefits in the cross-sectional results. The results also suggest that there will be large benefits in North America and small benefits in Western Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe critical factor that these benefiting countries have in common is that they are currently cool so that warming is helpful.\u201d17<\/sup>
\nIf anything, this assumption that income and temperature differences today can be used to predict the result of global warming over time is even more insane than Nordhaus\u2019s quadratic damage function itself. It is akin to assuming that the energy needed to move horizontally is equivalent to that needed to move vertically.<\/p>\n

More seriously, it ignores the key issue in global warming: the impact of retaining much more energy in the biosphere. Once past the tipping point \u2013\u00a0which these economists ignore also \u2013 the energy level of the entire biosphere will rise enormously.<\/p>\n

So while temperature and precipitation differs between places in the USA today, the amount of energy in the global atmosphere is unchanged. It may well be that incomes in parts of the world with average temperatures of 11\u00b0Ctoday are lower than in parts with average temperatures of 12.5\u00b0C today. But that tells you absolutely nothing about the impact on GDP of raising the temperature of the entire atmosphere of Earth by 1.5\u00b0C over time.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the global temperature range today is from minus 90\u00b0C in Antarctica to plus 70\u00b0C in the Middle East. If the temperature rises 1.5\u00b0C across the globe, the range will be from minus 68.5\u00b0C to plus 71.5\u00b0C. High temperatures that do not exist on the planet today will come into being; low temperatures that exist today will disappear. The impact this will have across the globe simply cannot be estimated by extrapolating from relationships between today\u2019s GDP and temperature ranges. The shift in the temperature range caused by global warming is simply ignored by the \u201cspatial pattern holds over time\u201d assumption.<\/p>\n

The Integrated Assessment Models designed by other economists, used by the IPCC to predict the economic consequences of global warming, are no better informed.<\/p>\n

They are the source of the IPCC\u2019s claims about the economic impact of climate change that trivialise the danger of extreme temperature changes. Examples include the 1996 IPCC Report claim that a 10\u00b0C increase in global temperature \u2014 well above levels that have caused mass extinctions in the past \u2014 would reduce GDP by a mere 6%19<\/sup>andanother from the latest IPCC report that a 2\u00b0C rise will reduce GDP by just 0.2-2%.20<\/sup><\/p>\n

These IPCC forecasts, derived directly from the work of Nordhaus, Tol and other mainstream economists, are so trivial that they are quoted and promoted by climate change deniers like Bjorn Lomborg. More importantly, these are the aspects of the IPCC\u2019s reports that are taken seriously by economic-growth-obsessed politicians, while the dire warnings of climate scientists are effectively ignored.<\/p>\n

Given how irredeemably bad the work of economists on the economic impacts of climate change has been, that assessment should be left to climate scientists like Steffen, Lenton and Garrett.21-24\u00a0<\/sup>They can be trusted to at least understand what global warming means.
\nAnd this is precisely what real climate scientists are saying but you have to read between the lines, which is possibly why economists like Nordhaus continue to ignore them. Here are Steffen and his 15 collaborators \u2014 including Lenton \u2014from August of last year:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cGiven how irredeemably bad the work of economists on the economic impacts of climate change has been, that assessment should be left to climate scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWith these trends likely to continue for the next several decades at least, the contemporary way of guiding development founded on theories, tools, and beliefs of gradual or incremental change, with a focus on economy efficiency, will likely not be adequate to cope with this trajectory. Thus, in addition to adaptation, increasing resilience will become a key strategy for navigating the future.\u201d25<\/sup><\/p>\n

They put it a lot more politely than I do. For me,Nordhaus\u2019s interventions on climate change have trivialised the dangers, and thereby helped delay critical action to prevent climate change. He and his fellow economists should be thrown out of the IPCC, and replaced by scientists who have a far better understanding of the dangers of unleashing that much more energy on our sensitive biosphere.<\/p>\n

Rather than \u201cintegrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis\u201d, as his Nobel citation puts it, Nordhaus has led humanity up the garden path towards a possible slaughterhouse. He will take his Nobel Prize to the grave, but we should leave his death march, now. Hopefully, before it\u2019s too late. Climate scientists themselves are calling for the approach economists take to the mitigation of climate change to be abandoned. It is time their call was heeded.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong>
\n1. Keen, S. (2011). Debunking economics: The naked emperor dethroned?<\/em>London, Zed Books.
\n2. Nordhaus, W. (2018). \u201cProjections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies.\u201d<\/a>American Economic Journal: Economic Policy<\/em>10(3): 333\u2013360.
\n3. Nordhaus, W. D. and P. Sztorc (2013). DICE 2013R: Introduction and User\u2019s Manual<\/a>: 12.
\n4. Steffen, W., J. Rockstr\u00f6m, et al. (2018). \u201cTrajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>115(33): 8254.
\n5. Nordhaus, W. D. and P. Sztorc (2013). DICE 2013R: Introduction and User\u2019s Manual<\/a>: 11.
\n6. Lenton, T. M., H. Held, et al. (2008). \u201cTipping elements in the Earth\u2019s climate system<\/a>.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>105(6): 1786-1793.
\n7. Lenton, T. M., H. Held, et al. (2008). \u201cTipping elements in the Earth\u2019s climate system<\/a>.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences <\/em>105(6): 1786.
\n8. Lenton, T. M., H. Held, et al. (2008). \u201cTipping elements in the Earth\u2019s climate system<\/a>.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>105(6): 1791-1792.
\n9. Steffen, W., J. Rockstr\u00f6m, et al. (2018). \u201cTrajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences <\/em>115(33): 8253.
\n10. Nordhaus, W. (2018). \u201cProjections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies.\u201d<\/a>American Economic Journal: Economic Policy<\/em>10(3): 338 footnote 3.
\n11. Nordhaus, W. D. and P. Sztorc (2013).DICE 2013R: Introduction and User\u2019s Manual<\/a>: 86, 91 and 97.
\n12. Nordhaus, W. (2018). \u201cProjections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies.\u201d<\/a>American Economic Journal: Economic Policy<\/em>10(3): 345.
\n13. Tol, R. S. J. (2009). \u201cThe Economic Effects of Climate Change.\u201d The Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em>23(2): 29\u201351.
\n14. Tol, R. S. J. (2009). \u201cThe Economic Effects of Climate Change.\u201d The Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em>23(2): 32.
\n15. Nordhaus, W. D. (2006). \u201cGeography and macroeconomics: New data and new findings.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America<\/em>103(10): 3510-3517.
\n16. Mendelsohn, R., M. Schlesinger, et al. (2000). \u201cComparing impacts across climate models.\u201d Integrated Assessment<\/em>1(1): 37-48.
\n17. Mendelsohn, R., M. Schlesinger, et al. (2000). \u201cComparing impacts across climate models.\u201d Integrated Assessment<\/em>1(1): 42.
\n18. Mendelsohn, R., M. Schlesinger, et al. (2000). \u201cComparing impacts across climate models.\u201d Integrated Assessment 1(1): 41.
\n19. Bruce, J. P., H. Lee, et al. (1996). Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change<\/em>, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
\n20. Field, C. B., V. R. Barros, et al. (2014). IPCC, 2014: Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/em>Cambridge, United Kingdom Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: 1-32.
\n21. Garrett, T. J. (2011). \u201cAre there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?\u201d Climatic Change<\/em>104(104): 437\u2013455.
\n22. Garrett, T. J. (2012). \u201cNo way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change.\u201d Earth System Dynamics<\/em>3: 1-17.
\n23. Garrett, T. J. (2014). \u201cLong-run evolution of the global economy: 1. Physical basis.\u201d Earth\u2019s Future<\/em>2: 127\u2013151.
\n24. Garrett, T. J. (2015). \u201cLong-run evolution of the global economy II: Hindcasts of innovation and growth.\u201d Earth System Dynamics<\/em>6: 655\u2013698.
\n25. Steffen, W., J. Rockstr\u00f6m, et al. (2018). \u201cTrajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>115(33): 8257.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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