{"id":520531,"date":"2010-04-08T12:43:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22740"},"modified":"2010-04-08T12:43:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:43:49","slug":"must-read-krugman-piece-building-a-green-economy-we-know-how-to-limit-greenhouse-gas-emissions-we-have-a-good-sense-of-the-costs-%e2%80%94-and-they%e2%80%99re-manageable-all-we-need-now-is-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/520531","title":{"rendered":"Must-read Krugman piece: Building a Green Economy – “We know how to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. We have a good sense of the costs \u2014 and they\u2019re manageable. All we need now is the political will.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobelist Paul Krugman has a long piece<\/a> in the upcoming Sunday NY Times<\/em> Magazine, basically climate economics 101.<\/p>\n

It is nearly 8000 words, so while you should read the whole thing, I’ll post some of the highlights below.\u00a0 I’ll also throw some links to the scientific and economic literature that the NYT<\/em>, in its infinite wisdom\/stupidity, refuses to include.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The essay isn’t primarily about the science, but this is what Krugman has to say on that, starting with the opening paragraph:<\/p>\n

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If you listen<\/strong> to climate scientists \u2014 and despite the relentless campaign to discredit their work, you should \u2014 it is long past time to do something about emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If we continue with business as usual, they say, we are facing a rise in global temperatures that will be little short of apocalyptic. And to avoid that apocalypse, we have to wean our economy from the use of fossil fuels, coal above all….<\/p>\n

This is an article on climate economics, not climate science. But before we get to the economics, it\u2019s worth establishing three things about the state of the scientific debate.The first is that the planet is indeed warming. Weather fluctuates, and as a consequence it\u2019s easy enough to point to an unusually warm year in the recent past, note that it\u2019s cooler now and claim, \u201cSee, the planet is getting cooler, not warmer!\u201d But if you look at the evidence the right way \u00ad\u2014 taking averages over periods long enough to smooth out the fluctuations \u2014 the upward trend is unmistakable: each successive decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the one before.<\/p>\n

Second, climate models predicted this well in advance, even getting the magnitude of the temperature rise roughly right. While it\u2019s relatively easy to cook up an analysis that matches known data, it is much harder to create a model that accurately forecasts the future. So the fact that climate modelers more than 20 years ago successfully predicted the subsequent global warming gives them enormous credibility.<\/p>\n

Yet that\u2019s not the conclusion you might draw from the many media reports that have focused on matters like hacked e-mail and climate scientists\u2019 talking about a \u201ctrick\u201d to \u201chide\u201d an anomalous decline in one data series or expressing their wish to see papers by climate skeptics kept out of research reviews. The truth, however, is that the supposed scandals evaporate on closer examination, revealing only that climate researchers are human beings, too. Yes, scientists try to make their results stand out, but no data were suppressed. Yes, scientists dislike it when work that they think deliberately obfuscates the issues gets published. What else is new? Nothing suggests that there should not continue to be strong support for climate research.<\/p>\n

And this brings me to my third point: models based on this research indicate that if we continue adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as we have, we will eventually face drastic changes in the climate. Let\u2019s be clear. We\u2019re not talking about a few more hot days in the summer and a bit less snow in the winter; we\u2019re talking about massively disruptive events, like the transformation of the Southwestern United States into a permanent dust bowl over the next few decades.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, despite the high credibility of climate modelers, there is still tremendous uncertainty in their long-term forecasts. But as we will see shortly, uncertainty makes the case for action stronger, not weaker. So climate change demands action….<\/p>\n

At this point, the projections of climate change, assuming we continue business as usual, cluster around an estimate that average temperatures will be about 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher in 2100 than they were in 2000. That\u2019s a lot \u2014 equivalent to the difference in average temperatures between New York and central Mississippi. Such a huge change would have to be highly disruptive. And the troubles would not stop there: temperatures would continue to rise.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, changes in average temperature will by no means be the whole story. Precipitation patterns will change, with some regions getting much wetter and others much drier. Many modelers also predict more intense storms. Sea levels would rise, with the impact intensified by those storms: coastal flooding, already a major source of natural disasters, would become much more frequent and severe. And there might be drastic changes in the climate of some regions as ocean currents shift. It\u2019s always worth bearing in mind that London is at the same latitude as Labrador; without the Gulf Stream, Western Europe would be barely habitable.<\/p>\n

But there are at least two reasons to take sanguine assessments of the consequences of climate change with a grain of salt. One is that, as I have just pointed out, it\u2019s not just a matter of having warmer weather \u2014 many of the costs of climate change are likely to result from droughts, flooding and severe storms. The other is that while modern economies may be highly adaptable, the same may not be true of ecosystems. The last time the earth experienced warming at anything like the pace we now expect was during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 55 million years ago, when temperatures rose by about 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of around 20,000 years (which is a much slower rate than the current pace of warming). That increase was associated with mass extinctions, which, to put it mildly, probably would not be good for living standards….<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For what the science says we risk if we stay anywhere near our current path of unrestricted emissions, see:<\/p>\n