Articles by Andrew Dessler

How much will it really cost to address climate change?

One of the consistent claims made by those opposed to policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is that the cost will be prohibitive. I have always been somewhat suspicious of this claim, however. When I started graduate school in 1988, the Montreal Protocol had just been signed. It required industrialized countries to significantly reduce the production of chlorofluorocarbons within a decade or so (the exact schedule of production reduction depended on the particular molecule).

At the time, there were all sorts of apocalyptic claims being made about the costs and impacts of the Montreal Protocol: It will bankrupt us, it will force us to give up our refrigerators, millions of people in Africa will starve because of lack of access to refrigeration, etc.

In the end, none of this was true. The cost of compliance was so low, in fact, that I'll bet most of you didn't even realize it when our society switched over from chlorofluorocarbons to the replacement molecule, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, in the mid-'90s.

A few days ago, I came across a nice article from 2002 in The American Prospect by Eban Goodstein on this question of cost estimates:

IPCC likely too optimistic about recoverable coal

Anyone interested in the climate should watch this talk by Professor David Rutledge from Caltech. He makes the argument that there are a lot less recoverable fossil fuels than assumed by just about everyone, including the IPCC emissions scenarios. His conclusion is that even if we burn all the fossil fuels on the planet, atmospheric carbon dioxide will not exceed 500 ppm.

Is he right?  Perhaps, although his analysis considers only conventional fossil fuels and does not take into account unconventional oil sources like tar sands or shale. He also does not consider carbon cycle feedbacks that could also add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

If true, it's undoubtedly good news for the climate but potentially bad news for our society, since it means that we will be seeing the price of energy inexorably rising in the future as competition for remaining energy resources becomes more fierce.

My sense is that, while we can quibble about the numbers, it does seem likely that the IPCC emissions scenarios have overestimated recoverable coal reserves. This suggests that, at the very least, the highest emissions scenarios may be physically impossible to realize.

Climate change must be examined over decades, not years

There has been a lot of nonsense written about the lack of much if any warming over the last few years. It's not a new argument -- in fact, I blogged about it here -- but like an axe-wielding psycho from a cheap horror flick, it just keeps coming back.

At times like this, it is always useful to look at the data. The figure below shows the temperature anomalies (relative to the 1961-1991 average) from 1850 to 2007. The data are the Hadley HadCRUT3v analysis.

Similarities between the skin cancer and climate change ‘scams’

I was recently reading The New York Times and saw a fantastic ad:

Recent research indicates that the benefits of moderate exposure to sunlight outweigh the hypothetical risks. Surprisingly, there is no compelling scientific evidence that tanning causes melanoma. Scientists have proven, however, that exposure to all forms of ultraviolet light -- both indoors and out -- stimulates the natural production of vitamin D. And research has proven that vitamin D protects against heart disease and many types of cancer, in addition to providing other important health benefits.

If you go to their website, you can read all about it.

The similarities between the "skin cancer" scam and the "global warming" scam are all too clear. First, according to this website, there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer. Amazing. I thought the epidemiological data nailed that connection decades ago. Boy, was I wrong! This is similar to the fact that there is no evidence linking carbon-dioxide emissions with climate change.