Kling on Global Warming

Democrats’ Congressional leaders have committed to holding hearings twice weekly on climate change (nee global warming) until April. Given this emphasis, we’re working on a longer Idle Speculator piece that investigates the political economy of climate change, but in the meantime, we’ll provide links to some of the more interesting sources we come across. Be warned–the pieces we select will tend to focus on alternative perspectives that we perceive as having some value. In this way, we hope to bring some needed balance to the current debate over climate change, and this piece by economist Arnold Kling* meets our criteria. Among the salient points:

• Atmospheric CO2, like economic wealth, has accumulated at an exponential rate over the past century. However,  material well-being has increased to a far greater extent than average global temperatures. As Klingman puts it, "The global warming that has taken place so far is minor. The improvement in living standards that has taken place in the past one hundred years is enormous."
• What matters in climate change modelling is the future, i.e., the degree of warming we should expect over a certain period for a given level of greenhouse gases. While the IPCC’s "90% confidence" datapoint has received a great deal of media attention, this only refers to whether humans have played a role in the accumulation of atmospheric CO2. It does not tell us what the future will look like. Klingman points out that, like the disappointments associated with complex macroeconometric modelling in the 20th century, we do not have enough data or experience to design complex models that can predict future climate outcomes with any certainty: "Climate data looks to me suspiciously like macroeconomic data. The true information content probably is not sufficient to produce a reliable model for forecasting."
• The inescapable conclusion is that current climate predictions could be overly pessimistic, or not pessimistic enough, and dealing with this kind of ‘fat tailed’ uncertainty is not as straightforward as managing the risks associated with normal statistical distributions. Citing Martin Weitzman’s critique of The Stern Review, Kling points to the importance of considering tools that are better suited to uncertainty, such as climate engineering technologies and other "just in case" measures, as opposed to what, in our view, is a political engineering push whose only certain outcome will be to strengthen the position of select oligopolies.
• In his conclusion, Kling articulates a well-reasoned objection to charging ahead recklessly with climate change policy measures: "If we lack "just-in-case" mechanisms, then any approach that we take toward climate change risks making significant errors. We might sacrifice a lot of the world’s standard of living in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, only to discover that it was unnecessary, because global warming was not going to accelerate, regardless. Conversely, the reductions that we carry out might turn out to be insufficient."
• Finally, Klingman offers a badly needed admonition that addresses both the quantitative and qualitative shortcomings of the present debate: "It is possible to have a civilized, sensible discussion about the issue of global climate change. However, doing so requires speaking in the language of uncertainty, rather than moral righteousness."

* In the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Kling is associated with the Cato Institute and George Mason University, both ‘hotbeds’ of economic and political liberalism (heaven forbid). TCS Daily is a publication of Tech Central Station, which has received funding from Exxon Mobil, according to Sourcewach.org, funding that has attracted written scrutiny from Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, to wit: "’We are convinced that ExxonMobil’s long-standing support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics’ access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy,’ the letter said" (emphasis added–recall Klingman’s argument about the proper language for climate policy debate).