11 Comments
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Bill Allen's avatar

Bryan, you've previously posted you don't read the comments so when you ask for suggestions I have to wonder.... But, data is the key to understanding variability and nobody gives a better synopsis of good data than Hannah Ritchie (https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/).

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Dmitrii Zelenskii's avatar

Note that the post is cross-posted from Econlib, so the asking is from that era, too.

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Peter's avatar

Judith Curry has written extensively and published papers on the problem of uncertainty in Climate Science

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Chuck37's avatar

Well, if we're talking statistics, I'm pretty sure the expected benefit of every proposed carbon intervention is approximately zero, while the cost is known and very high. Few people even talk in terms of cost/benefit in any case. There is really no realistic scenario I have been made aware of where climate change is precipitous and catastrophic. This in contrast to other things much more likely such as terrorist utilization of AI, drones and/or bio-weapons. Then there's super volcanos and asteroid impacts, pandemics and so on...

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BWS92082's avatar

Prediction markets?

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Joe Potts's avatar

"... expect consensus ..."?

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General's avatar

Roger Pielke.

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Ian Fillmore's avatar

“Uncertainty” is an imprecise term. In addition to the notion of variance, there’s also the concept of tail risk. I read Tyler as saying he’s worried about tail risk or extreme events, which is not exactly the same thing as variance.

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DavesNotHere's avatar

Is there less uncertainty or variance in the estimates about the cost (including side-effects) of measures intended to reduce carbon emissions? If we produce too much CO2, we might change the environment catastrophically. If we make energy too costly, we might change the economy catastrophically, or start a major war. And that assumes that people will tolerate an artificial energy crisis. The measures that were proposed in the past were politically unpopular, and they barely proposed to put a dent in the problem.

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Ben L's avatar

I know this is a repost, but for discussion - luckily global warming action is overdetermined. That is, by taking any kind of reasonable cost benefit action on air pollution (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/air-pollution-redux.html ) you will "solve" global warming as a side effect. No need for any specific anti-carbon policies.

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