Tolgate

Certainly found a scandal here Tim!

"Tol admitted that the study used a discount rate that fell gradually from 5% whereas all the competing proposals used a 3% rate."

So Tol was using the Treasury's (UK that is) Green Book recommended rates? Market rates for the near future (some decades) and then falling to account for our human propensity to hyperbolic discounting? What horrors, eh?

"This inherent bias caused the bottom ranking."

That's something which it is necessary to prove, not assert. I very seriously doubt whether that change in discount rates made say, climate change mitigation policies, more cost effective in increasing aggregate human utility (which is roughly what Lomborg's studies were trying to decide) than trying to deal with malaria with bednets (one of the higher ranked proposals wasn't it?) or HIV (another?)

Don't forget, Stern used a much lower than 3% discount rate and it's still not obvious that all mitigation attempts are better than adaptation.

"For this purpose, welfare effects were calculated in local economy terms, with deaths for example being costed at a certain multiple of local per-capita GDP. Thus a single European saved from winter influenza, probable - in actuarial terms - to be elderly and infirm, outweighed not one but many Africans dying - likely in the prime of life - due to global warming."

Again, entirely standard practice. For such economic studies do not attempt to measure some "true" or anvarying value. They attempt to measure the values that people actually put on things as shown by their actions. "Should" life be regarded as cheaper in a poor country? That's a moral question: it's undoubtedly true that we all act (including those people in poor countries) as if life is cheaper in poor countries. Which is what the economist is attempting to measure in such studies.

I wouldn't even dream of trying to defend Plimer but the GWPF as "secretive"? Seriously?

I couldn't find out much about the author of this piece online other than the obvious fact that he doesn't like Tol very much (many of the online references are to his comments at Tol's blog).

He certainly doesn't understand the nuts and bolts of the economic points with which he's trying to criticise Tol.

The unequal weighting of human life is of course despicable - but it is also common practice. Even if they were to ignore economics and use a measure such as the disability-adjusted life year, Africans will still, in general, be underestimated due to lower life expectancies (unless the model is sophisticated enough to account for the fact that low life expectancies are mainly a product of high infant mortality).

I suppose this means that unadjusted mortality figures are the only reliable measure - although it would be nice to see them separated from other causes of death. And that's where it gets sticky, of course, since climate change is far more likely to reduce the length of peoples' lives than simply kill them outright. And causes of death - disease and malnutrition - may be the same in either case.

Tim Worstall: Are you being deliberately obtuse? The discount rate is an arbitrary assumption. Using a completely different discount rate merely makes it impossible to compare the results with the other studies. Can you not read? "the project specifications dictated 3%"

The argument about what is the correct or most likely discount rate is entirely separate, and trying to conflate the two issues is just stupid. (And I'm not letting Adrian Kelleher off the hook for blurring the argument, either.)

I don't have a problem with economists valuing different lives more than others. I mean, it's distasteful, but the economist must model human behaviour realistically, so I wouldn't fault them there. But I think what I've learned from the first two comments is that economists don't use life tables in assessing value. Wow! That's awful. I understand that the future is difficult to predict, but one would think that some useful work has gone into studying the relevant demographics.

> the GWPF as "secretive"? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. What other adjective can one give to a stubborn refusal to disclose their funding sources, a stubborn refusal to disclose their 'investigation' methods, and a stubborn refusal to disclose their 'investigation' data? But I digress.

> Astrophysicist Michael Ashley described [Plimer's] book Heaven and Earth as "scientifically worthless" in The Australian.

But... but... but... Plimer is a Professor! A Professor! Take that, warmists! And he'll be travelling to Canada for a luncheon with the Friends of Science!

> Dr. Ian Plimer, professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and a good friend of Christopher Monckton has agreed to address a spring luncheon sponsored by The Friends. [...]

> Arrangements for the spring luncheon will be scheduled pending the finalization of Plimer's plans to visit Canada.

Yeah, I know, you socialist warmists are all jealous. But that's only because, unlike all you fat potato-couch jihadist pinkos, Herr Professor Plimer is able to create value and wealth through productive activity!

The two climate change proposals were ranked against numerous development and human welfare issues and came in 29th and 30th out of 30.

Putting aside the validity of the study, the existence of some other human development or welfare issue that delivers more bang for the buck than mitigating climate change has nothing to do with whether or not we should mitigate climate change.

This line of reasoning would only be valid if there were some finite pool of money going to good causes that could never increase. But that's not the case. We spend a pittance on foreign aid and development, and massive amounts on frivolous consumer goods. It's a simple thing to increase the size of the pie. Money used to mitigate climate change doesn't have to come from starving African children, unless someone's silly cost/benefit analysis concludes that African children are less important than stuff like F-22s, Q-ray bracelets, or potato chips.

If conservative/libertarian opponents of carbon mitigation really care about the effects of HIV or malaria in Africa, then they should simply advocate that we spend more money on those things. Strangely enough, I don't often see that.

Well said Area Man.

If they really were going to do NPV they'd have to rank all of the usages of resources, including the private ones by some utility measure and place them alongside all of the goods and then work their way down from most pressing to least pressing until the resources available were exhausted. That sounds like socialist humanism to me!

Of course, such a process could scarcily escape massive arbitrariness because utility, especially future utility is highly subjective and one never can know for sure how well a system will perform in returning it. Of course, human societies are dynamic and so the guesswork about what would happen would change the data you'd use for evaluation. Map that onto the assumption by those in charge of the lion's share of resources that lives in the first world count for more than lives everywhere else and the whole thing could get very ugly very quickly.

Wow, a whole 8 paragraphs from Worstall, in the first comment and all. Now, what does that tell you, eh?

@Frank
Note that it is illegal under UK law for a charity to disclose the identity of its benefactors.

@Tim L
Mr Kelleherâs discussion of the discount rate is incorrect. The FUND model is routinely run with every discount rate imaginable (Anthoff et al. 2009b;Guo et al. 2006;Tol 1999). Valuation of mortality risks is according to best practice (Aldy and Viscusi 2007;Viscusi and Aldy 2003), while the implicit inequities are routinely corrected (Anthoff et al. 2009a;Anthoff and Tol 2010;Azar and Sterner 1996;Fankhauser et al. 1997;Fankhauser et al. 1998).

Aldy, J.E. and W.K.Viscusi (2007), 'Age Differences in the Value of Statistical Life: Revealed Preference Evidence', Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 1, (2), pp. 241-260.

Anthoff, D., C.J.Hepburn, and R.S.J.Tol (2009a), 'Equity weighting and the marginal damage costs of climate change', Ecological Economics, 68, (3), pp. 836-849.

Anthoff, D. and R.S.J.Tol (2010), 'On international equity weights and national decision making on climate change', Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 60, (1), pp. 14-20.

Anthoff, D., R.S.J.Tol, and G.W.Yohe (2009b), 'Risk Aversion, Time Preference, and the Social Cost of Carbon', Environmental Research Letters, 4, (2-2), 1-7.

Azar, C. and T.Sterner (1996), 'Discounting and Distributional Considerations in the Context of Global Warming', Ecological Economics, 19, 169-184.

Fankhauser, S., R.S.J.Tol, and D.W.Pearce (1997), 'The Aggregation of Climate Change Damages: A Welfare Theoretic Approach', Environmental and Resource Economics, 10, (3), 249-266.

Fankhauser, S., R.S.J.Tol, and D.W.Pearce (1998), 'Extensions and Alternatives to Climate Change Impact Valuation: On the Critique of IPCC Working Group III's Impact Estimates', Environment and Development Economics, 3, 59-81.

Guo, J., C.J.Hepburn, R.S.J.Tol, and D.Anthoff (2006), 'Discounting and the Social Cost of Climate Change: A Closer Look at Uncertainty', Environmental Science & Policy, 9, 205-216.

Tol, R.S.J. (1999), 'Time Discounting and Optimal Control of Climate Change -- An Application of FUND', Climatic Change, 41, (3-4), 351-362.

Viscusi, W.K. and J.E.Aldy (2003), 'The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World', Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 27, (1), 5-76.

Well, GWPF:
1) Run by social anthropoligist Benny Peiser, who was a senior lecturer at School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, although GWPF bio omits that in favor of Buckingham only. I don't know if he's still attached to LJMU or has departed. I am pleased to know that CCnet is "the world's leading climate policy network."

The Wikipedia page mentions Velikovsky although I couldn't find that paper easily. I'm sure Deltoid readers remember Benny.

2) It has a fascinating Advisory Board.

3) GWPF's choice of Andrew Montford as an investigator is problematic, given that in his book The Hockey Stick Illusion:

a) Montford twice quoted David Deming from the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE), which I think might be more usefully called a Dog Astrology Journal. Hence, this is not a good start for HWQDAJ (He Who Quotes Dog Astrology Journal). More information can be found on the issue containing Deming's article can be found @ Rabbett Run. it is truly delightful. It's right there with Wegman and black helicopters, although in different directions. But this is merely absurd, whereas...

b) This archived Wikipedia *talk* section explains how Montford either:

* Showed massive incompetence, like inability to read English about a major point.
OR
*Committed a clear falsification in an effort to tar Jon Overpeck with emailing something for which the only evidence presented was climategate email in which Jon wrote that he did not.

SO, what do people think? Merely incompetence, or deliberate falsification? Of late, I've been calibrating falsification for another report so I'm interested in comments. Sadly, Montford is not an academic, and his publisher likes interesting titles so may not care. (I see Carter is there.)

(The Wikipedia post caused a frenzied effort to delete it from a *talk* page, kindly defended by The Stoat.)

Richard, you haven't explained why you think that Kelleher's discussion of the discount rate is incorrect. Kelleher did not say that FUND could only be run with one discount rate -- in fact he implied the opposite.

Also, please provide a citation for your claim that GWPF is legally prohibited from being transparent about its funding.

Tol:

> Note that it is illegal under UK law for a charity to disclose the identity of its benefactors.

What a weak excuse. The GWPF can't even try to get permission from the funders to disclose their identities?

John Mashey is a fine one to complain about Peiser
with his own certifiably insane claims here that Wegman plagiarized Ray Bradley, when Wegman clearly sets out to refute Bradley's hockey stick, and in no way seeks to appropriate Bradley's deeply flawed work as if it was his own.

Richard Toll is right of course. Setting the discount rate at close to 0% like Stern and Garnaut means that investments which cannot pass tests at 3-5% are adopted in preference to those that can, which means impoverishment for all of us.

@Tim
I responded to the sentence "Tol excused himself by saying that re-writing the model to use the 3% discount rate was too difficult" which is remarkable as we have done this routinely for almost 20 years.

"This line of reasoning would only be valid if there were some finite pool of money"

There is. It's called "global GDP".

"This line of reasoning would only be valid if there were some finite pool of money"

There is. It's called "global GDP".

I can't find anything on the charity commissions website about disclosing benefactors. Is your claim based upon information law stuff rather than charity law?

OK, then, Richard, if it is so easy to adjust the discount rate in your model, then why did you use a different discount rate for AGW related issues compared to the others? Or is that claim wrong, too?

Fred Knell: care to explain that if Wegman considered Bradley's work so flawed that large parts of Bradley's textbook were copied (without attribution), with small changes introduced in key areas, changing the meaning, and even introducing obvious errors?

It's not like there are no other textbooks on the issue of paleoclimatology that Wegman could have copied...

Even funnier is that several plagiarism experts have already pointed out that to them the case was quite clear: plagiarism. What's your background to dismiss the plagiarism claim? And do you have an explanation as to why the SNA also contained large parts of copied text without attribution? Ah, that's right, that little element is often conveniently left out when McIntyre or Watts try to defend the Wegman report.

Sorry Richard, you are not being clear. If you are saying that that wasn't your excuse, you should tell us what you did say. And you have not responded at all to the central point -- that a different discount rate was used from that in the specification.

Tim W quotes Area Man:

> "This line of reasoning would only be valid if there were some finite pool of money"

What Area Man actually wrote:

>This line of reasoning would only be valid if there were some finite pool of money going to good causes that could never increase.

@Tim
Sorry for not being clear: I did not say or write this to either Mr Fog or Mr Kelleher, and it is not true.

Tim Worstall, it is stated quite clearly in the article that Toll's analysis of the proposals to combat global warming used a 5% discout rate, falling to a 3% rate, while all other proposals used (as specified) a 3% rate. Over 10 years, a 5% discount rate will estimate future benefits ast being 19% less than estimates based on a 3% discount rate; over 50 years it values them 65% lower. The bias introduced by Toll may not be that large, depending at the rate at which his discount rate declined, but it may be larger. In any event, the bias is clearly sufficiently large to distort any rankings of the proposals.

@Tom
Your source is a fifth-hand, inaccurate account.

Richard, then you should do something about your wiki page, because the accusations all trace to there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol

And given that you wrote part of your own wiki entry,I would havbe to assume what I am looking at is accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Tol

Richard, you still have not responded to the central point.

Richard Tol: Did you write this?

"On the discount rate: I do not know what the other papers used. We used a consistent discount rate â all calculations, and all reporting was done with the same discount rate. The models that we use would require extensive recalibration for a different discount rate ... As we used dynamic optimization models fitted to observations, we had to stick to the discount rate we had. As the rest of the Copenhagen Consensus used simpler methods, they should have used our discount rate."

#28 is a quote from here:

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/CopCons2008.htm

...which traces to a no-longer available comment on Pielke Jr's old blog.

So let's go to the source: [Tol wrote](http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=4526#comment-10872):

>On the discount rate: I do not know what the other papers used. We used a consistent discount rate â all calculations, and all reporting was done with the same discount rate. The models that we use would require extensive recalibration for a different discount rate.

[and Fog replied](http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=4526#comment-10873):

>Concerning discount rates: I got the impression that the organisers of the Copenhagen Consensus conference instructed experts to make calculations with 6 % and with 3 %. Is that correct ? You may then have felt that 6 % would be too much for the climate issue which has a very long time perspective, and chosen instead to use 5 %, declining gradually to 4 %. However, the result of that is that other issues have been treated with other discount rates, which means that the calculated benefit/cost ratios are not comparable. That is certainly a problem for the whole ranking procedure. Furthermore, it is confusing that the other issues were treated with two discount rates, but that, in the end, the ranking was made according to the results obtained with 3 %. This leads to the absurd situation that in the end, at the final ranking, your projects, and the project formulated by Chris Green, have been treated with discount rates HIGHER than the other projects, which means that the ranking procedure has become greatly flawed. And, as you state, there is no easy method to convert results obtained with one discount rate to a situation with another discount rate, because the models would require extensive recalibration.

And Tol [replied](http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=4526#comment-10876):

>Kaare: Agreed on the discount rate. As we used dynamic optimization models fitted to observations, we had to stick to the discount rate we had. As the rest of the Copenhagen Consensus used simpler methods, they should have used our discount rate.

I think Kelleher's account is an accurate summary of this.

[webcite of Prometheus discussion linked above](http://www.webcitation.org/5vbjaIh33).

Don't forget that Lawson is a barrister. No doubt he's in a good position to advise whether charities are allowed to divulge the identity of donors, but the identity of the donors must be known for accounting puropses. I'd also like to see them define what they mean by "significant".

My question is whether the GWPF is actually following its own charitable objects:

TO ADVANCE THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF GLOBAL WARMING AND OF ITS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES, AND ALSO OF THE MEASURES TAKEN OR PROPOSED TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE TO IT, INCLUDING BY MEANS OF THE DISSEMINATION OF THE RESULTS OF THE STUDY OF, AND RESEARCH INTO
A THE SCIENCES RELEVANT TO GLOBAL WARMING
B ITS IMPACT UPON THE ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMIES AND SOCIETY
C AND THE ABOVE-MENTIONED MEASURES

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ (enter 1131448 in the search field)

For instance:
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/2086-gwpf-calls-for-independent-inquiry-…

1. Has the Met Office changed its view, or its calculations, following the harsh winters of 2008, 2009 and 2010?

There was a week of extreme snowfall in Feb 2009, last winter, and the first month of this current winter. Prior to those the winters were mild. What kinds of standard do the GWPF hold to make such a glaring mistake?

Other GWPF illogical reasonings for basically attacking science (meteorology in this case) comes in the form of an homage to the Gish Gallop: 'GWPF Calls For Independent Inquiry Into Met Office's Winter Advice'...

1. Why did the Met Office publish estimates in late October showing a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter? What was the scientific basis of this probabilistic estimate?

2. Has the October prediction by the Met Office that this winter would be mild affected planning for this winter? If so, what is the best estimate of how much this has cost the country?

* Winter is only halfway through, and I have to say the sun is beaming brightly through my window here in England. In fact it's been mild for a couple of weeks now.
* The Met Office warned the authorities that the run up to Christmas would be very bad, which they did last October.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/04/met-office-delayed-big-freeze-…

But I fail to see how such a comparatively (to climate) short-term UK Met Office weather forecasts are within the GWPF's remit given their objects above which specifically state they advise/educate/blah-blah on climate and global warming. Weather is neither global warming nor climate, nor does the Met Office's weather forecasts for this winter have any bearing on the subject in any way whatsoever. They even use different models. Surely this is a disservice to their donors who must have donated under the assumption that the GWPF will educate and advise on climate, not weather?

Fred Pearce made a salient point about the GWPF's job description for Assistant Director last March:

I have two thoughts on this job ad. I'm no HR expert, but might it not have benefited from an extra criterion? Something along the lines of: "Good understanding of climate science."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/09/global-warming-p…

I also see a search on Benny Peiser at LJMU's website comes up with a single result about an asteroid, from November 2005. A bit weird, isn't it?

@Tim
Thanks for the link to Fog's work. There is no reference to FUND there.

Richard, and your point is?

Richard Tol, my discussion may be based on fifth hand sources, but the quotes posted @30 strongly suggest that they are accurate. It is, however, open to you to correct impression that they create by stating here the discount rate used by you, and the discount rates used for analysing other projects for the Copenhaggen Concensus.

It has been pointed out above that you are evading making a clear statement about whether all used the same discount rates or not. As that is obviously the relevant issue here, your failure to correct the record makes a very poor impression.

Tom Curtis:

"Over 10 years, a 5% discount rate will estimate future benefits ast being 19% less than estimates based on a 3% discount rate; over 50 years it values them 65% lower. The bias introduced by Toll may not be that large, depending at the rate at which his discount rate declined, but it may be larger. In any event, the bias is clearly sufficiently large to distort any rankings of the proposals."

I wouldn't say I was overly convinced by that last line. I've just had a look at (for the first time) the paper under discussion and with the 5% falling to 4% discount rate we get benefit/cost ratios of ranging from 0.9 to 6.6 to one.....see the paper for the discussions of how that range is constructed.

From over here:

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/CopCons2008.htm

we get the following:

"Higher ranks are given to treatments of malaria (benefit/cost 20:1), child diseases (benefit/cost 20:1), and heart diseases (benefit/cost 25:1). However, in these cases, a discount rate of 3 % was used."

Now I agree that my mathematics isn't all that good but 0.9 is certainly more than 65% different from 20:1...indeed, I think I'm right in saying that the difference between 6.6 and 20 is more than 65%.

I've no particular dog in this particular fight and I agree that I'm just taking the figures you are presenting and comparing them, fleetingly, with some of the others under discussion. But at first pass it certainly looks to me as if the difference in discount rates makes a difference to the numbers for mitigation, yes, but not a sufficient difference to make a difference to the rankings (and I agree, I've not looked up all of the cost/benefit ratios for all of the solutions).

First, re discount rates: Tol long ago pointed out that Stern was wrong not to have used his own then employer's (HM Treasury) ordained rate for public sector project appraisal when he opted for 0.1% instead of its 3%. Actually the Treasury rate should have been higher, at cost of borrowing plus appropriate margin for risk etc. as in the private sector.

Secondly, the ineffable Marco said "Fred Knell: care to explain that if Wegman considered Bradley's work so flawed that large parts of Bradley's textbook were copied (without attribution [sic]), with small changes introduced in key areas, changing the meaning, and even introducing obvious errors?".

As others have noted, Wegman was commissioned by the House Committee to review the hockey stick of Mann Bradley & Hughes on one hand and of the McIntyre & McKitrick rebuttal on the other, and suggest which was the more valid.

In doing that review for the House Committee, Wegman summarised the work of both MBH and of the 2 Mc's, largely using their own respective words. At no point did he claim authorship of either version of the hockey stick. That is the minimum requirement for a charge of plagiarism to stick, namely claiming to be author of another's work. The reason Mashey is confined to a lunatic asylum, soon to be joined by Marco if it knew where to find him, is that he cannot grasp the difference between plagiarism and summary in the context for the latter of fair comment and critique.

Mashey's lunacy is most evident in his meticulous demonstration that Wegman summarised Bradley with 99% accuracy, but without at any point admitting that Wegman never claimed Bradley's work was his own.

The reason GMU has yet to make a finding on Bradley's puerile complaint is that it cannot understand what he and Mashey are on about, and neither can I unless Mashey can document where Wegman actually claims to be the real author of MBH 1998 and other stuff by Bradley.

Marco, where and when did Wegman claim to be the onlie begetter of the hockey stick? And I think you should tell us how many times Wegman cited MBH and Bradley. Take care, Wegman is in the public domain.

@Tim
Mr Kelleher misrepresents Mr Fog's work.

@Tom
This thread is about Mr Kelleher's article in Village Magazine.

Richard Tol: If Lomborg misrepresented your work wrt. discount rate, I think you have an ethical obligation to speak out.

At no point did he claim authorship of either version of the hockey stick.

It's not the hockey stick Wegman has been accused of plagiarising. You might want to familiarise yourself with the actual allegations before declaring them to be false.

MichaelM: "It's not the hockey stick Wegman has been accused of plagiarising. You might want to familiarise yourself with the actual allegations before declaring them to be false".

Really? What was Wegman commissioned to review if not the hockey stick? Did Bradley not contribute to MBH 1998? Was his prior work not germane to MBH 1998? And again, where, when did Wegman present Bradley's work as his own? in what journal or book do we find Bradley reprinted under Wegman's name? Is it not the case that Bradley's book is cited 6 times in Wegman's first few pages?

36 wrote:

"But at first pass it certainly looks to me as if the difference in discount rates makes a difference to the numbers for mitigation, yes, but not a sufficient difference to make a difference to the rankings (and I agree, I've not looked up all of the cost/benefit ratios for all of the solutions)."

Dig further through that link and you find:

"If the climate- and non-climate projects had been calculated with the same rate of interest, investment in climate technology would rank higher than vitamin A supplementation. Lomborgs explaining away does not shake that. Thus it must also be maintained that the project calculations are not comparable and that the ranking in Copenhagen Consensus is not worth the paper it is printed on."

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/Faadebate2008.htm

So it looks to me that Fog made an attempt to work out the math.

And Richard, you say Kelleher misrepresented Fog but, sorry, I'm not seeing this. Could you elaborate.

MichaelM again: actually MBH 1998 and 1999 are cited 10 times on Wegman page 1 (BTW, B stands for Bradley). And although you would never guess it from MichaelM, the Wegman Report was all about the hockey stick (see p.5).

Section 2.1 of Wegman is titled "Background on Paleoclimate Temperature Reconstruction". In para 1. it says "Table 1 found in Bradley (1999)illustrates the wide variety of ... natural phenonmena that may be used as proxies". It adds, "Table 2 found in Bradley (1999)...summarizes a variety of proxies...".

Then Wegman's Table 1 ends "after Bradley (1999)"... and so on.

Over the years I have taught at or been associated with various universities, sadly, all too many of whose students from 3rd world countries resorted to their host country peers (even teachers, often for sexual favours) to write their essays/theses (or copied their peers' work).They never frankly admitted their sources, unlike Wegman above.

Mashey and Michael: where is the plagiarism in Wegman's Table 1 "after Bradley (1999)"? Or on page 14: "see Bradley (1999) for a discussion of the fitting and calibration process..." If Wegman is plagiarising he is not very good at it with his frequent references to Bradley!

Fred Knell: quite the revisionism you try there!

The whole plagiarism issue is about the Wegman report containing a description of the input data for paleoclimatic reconstructions. Those were directly copied from Bradley's textbook (which is NOT, I repeat, NOT the same as MBH) on paleoclimatology. But rather than making a direct copy, which would to a very minor extent support your contention, changes were made in some places, introducing errors. Either you copy the text directly with proper attribution, or you truly summarise it in your own words, which does not include copying large sections and making some small changes here and there. The latter IS plagiarism. In fact, the ORI defines one aspect of plagiarism as follows: "Substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work means the unattributed verbatim or nearly verbatim copying of sentences and paragraphs which materially mislead the ordinary reader regarding the contributions of the author." By not indicating that they copied so many parts of several textbooks (*), they suggested that this text was their own intellectual property.

(*) It is interesting to note here that you, AGAIN, ignore the Social Network Analysis section, for which the Wegman report also contains large copies of near verbatim copying of paragraphs without proper attribution, something repeated in a publication by Wegman.

Also, why do you think Elsevier has been involved in the accusation? You think they do not know what plagiarism is? Do you think the experts on plagiarism who looked at the case, as reported here:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climat…
do not know what plagiarism is? Care to tell us what YOUR background and expertise is to make such large claims?

Marco: you have lost the plot; in my last which crossed with yours I gave you Wegman's explicit citations of Bradley's textbook (1999, he also cited Bradley & Eddy 1991). Not only that, like Mashey you are unable to distinguish between a Report commssioned to evaluate some authors' works, including those of Bradley, with a paper reprinting Bradley under Wegman's name. Wegman never has done the latter, he was commissioned to do the former.

I also gave my background as an academic over many years, albeit with other experience in between times.

Tim Worstall, it is probably well that you do not claim to be so good at maths. If you reduce the value of a 20:1 benefit to cost ratio by 65%, it becomes a 7:1 cost benefit ratio. That places the upper end of the paper in question in the same ball park as the much higher ranked (according to Lomborg) treatment of malaria. Treated fairly, then, it would not have been the highest ranked issue, but it would almost certainly not been the lowest ranked issued.

The other global warming paper considered (Green's) in fact conducted analysis at a 4% and a 3% discount rate. Lomborg ranked it on the 4% discount rate (with a benefit cost ratio of 16:1), but had he used the 3% discount rate as was used for all other issues except those directly concerned with global warming, it would have had a cost benefit ratio of 28.5/1.

Richard Toll, the title of the post is "Tollgate" That makes it fairly clear what issue is under discussion here. I think it becomes very clear that the reason you are avoiding answering a very straightforward and germaine question is that the answer reveals a deliberate biasing of the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 conclusions against tackling climate change.

@Tom
I'm no part of the Copenhagen Consensus. I'm just one of their expert witnesses. I have nothing to do with their rankings, neither results nor methods.

Richard Tol: So you have no idea what discount rate was used for the rankings? Why didn't you say so right away? Aren't you worried about the possible misrepresentation of your work?

@Rocco
We published a fairly critical paper in Climate Change Economics on the treatment of climate change in the Copenhagen Consensus. Geoff Blanford and Gary Yohe separately published more accessible critiques.

Fred, if we ever discussed before, I more than likely pointed out that there was NO reference to the large sections of text that Wegman (and co, I think Wegman himself did very little of the actual 'writing') copied and slightly altered in some places.

If I copy, without quotation marks, 5 paragraphs of somebody else's work, and then put one reference to that work at the end of those 5 paragraphs, it is inappropriate attribution. And a commissioned report is not unlike a scholarly work, especially if you claim it to be a scientific evaluation of scientific work. Unless you are telling us that such a commissioned work is not about the science, but political in nature, and thus can spit on all academic traditions and practices. Which would explain why plagiarism is merely one of many problematic issues of the Wegman report.

And if Wegman "evaluated" Bradley's work, where IS the evaluation of Bradley's textbook from which they copied? Where is the discussion of Bradley's textbook (with due reference to that textbook as Bradley's work) in the context of McIntyre and McKittrick's criticism of MBH? It isn't there.

And why do you continuously ignore the plagiarism in the SNA section? Doesn't quite fit in your claims of Wegman merely evaluating MBH's work, perhaps?

And why do you continously ignore Elsevier's involvement in the matter, supporting Bradley's claims of plagiarism? Doesn't quite fit your claims of Wegman not plagiarising, perhaps?

And why do you continuously ignore that THREE plagiarism experts call it plagiarism? Doesn't quite fit your claims of Wegman not plagiarising, perhaps?

In the interest of staying at least somewhat on topic, perhaps the Immedtiately-preceding thread ("Wegman Update") would be better for the Wegman arguments.
I'm not sure how my calibration of GWPF ( which Tol advises) stirred up a Wegman discussion, although there is a weird, but slight connection.
(The WR relied heavily on a McI-McK PPT that featured the same quote from David Demibg, except ghat the JSE cite somehow became Science, oddly after a few weeks earlier version in Australia got it right.)

Richard, in that case I have no quarrel with you, though I am still puzzled about why you were not more forthcoming about the discount rates. I have found your paper critiqueing the Copenhagen Concensus here:
http://www.worldscinet.com/cce/01/0102/S201000781000011X.html

Unfortunately it is behind a pay wall. Can you clarify whether it discusses the discount rate issue?

@Tom
I'm not aware that there is an issue with the discount rate. We certainly do not discuss it in the paper.

Richard Tol: But in your response to Kaare Fog, you said that "they (other groups) should have used our discount rate."

Are you saying that it is not a problem if they didn't?

Dr Tol: please do everyone (including yourself) the favor of clearly stating what was said, what was done, and what relevant effect(s) resulted. Please also clarify the discrepancies that have been noted. This should reduce the number of questions being asked of you and the number of responses that you have to make. Your current approach of short, vague comments just seems to bring more questions about inconsistencies. Thank you.

Tim, Tol is not addressing the central point for a reason:

>*the result of that is that other issues have been treated with other discount rates, which means that the calculated benefit/cost ratios are not comparable. That is certainly a problem for the whole ranking procedure. Furthermore, it is confusing that the other issues were treated with two discount rates, but that, in the end, the ranking was made according to the results obtained with 3 %. This leads to the absurd situation...*

The reason is that it clear cut. So the face saving strategy is to try is be vague and tangential.

So Richard, don't recall your criticizing Lomborg loudly and publicly at the time that the Copenhagen Consensus was dominating the news. Does not appear that you dropped your friends a note not to get too involved with supporting the thing, from which some, not Eli to be sure, conclude that the heat is getting to you and you are trying to put up a post facto smoke screen.

I have a relatively easy question to ask: Richard, is it true that you did work for Ian Plimer?

He's always been a real poster boy for the delusion that devotion to market fundamentalism replaces brains and knowledge. Which gets people much further than it should.

And there's a name for his responses: the Gish Gallop.

Fred Knell.

You had better add myself to your list containing John Mashey, Marco, and any others whom you are accusing of insanity, because I fully support their interpretations of plagiarism, and dismiss your extremely lax one.

In fact, you should probably add to your list the entire scientific faculties of at least four Australian universities for which I have worked, or with which I have had close contact, as each of the aforementioned institutions has plagiarism policies that closely reflect Mashey's and Marco's definitions.

If you had ever presented your interpretation of plagiarism to any undergraduate class in any of the courses at these four universities, I suspect that you would have been invited for a little chat with the respective heads of departments, and in all likelihood also with committees responsible for the oversight of academic behaviour.

So, can someone convince me that any of these discount rates make sense? Predicting future GDP growth based on that seen over the last 100 years, without accounting for energy and especially the one-time boost from fossil fuels ...

is like:

seeing that a rocket accelerates on launch for 30 seconds, and predicting that it will achieve escape velocity, ignoring whether or not it has enough fuel to do so.

(To be convincing, it helps to have studied the IPCC and Stern, and maybe have looked at Nordhaus' DICE model code and be able to explain to me what's wrong with the general idea of Ayres&Warr that neoclassical Total Factor Productivity (Solow Residual) is mostly another name for work = efficiency* energy. See the last page of this.

I do not know they are right [but I have read their book; see first blurb, and we had Ayres over for dinner a few years ago, and he struck me as pretty sharp.
But of course, I'm no economist, and maybe the fact that he's a physicist-turned-economist makes his arguments appeal to me.

Of course, if they are right, GDP effectively goes down, which implies *negative* discount rates (horror!).

Richard Tol.

I will not have institutional access to any material by you for a day or so, so perhaps you might answer some questions for me here, instead.

At the top of this thread occurs this quote:

Tol claims his research showed a net benefit from global warming until mid-century, after which the effects turn sharply negative.

I am very curious about how it is that you've determined that there is a "net benefit from global warming until mid-century", and especially, whether this net benefit is simply a theoretical economic modelling, or if it includes a detailed scientific analysis of the biological/ecological sequelæ of global warming that have no immediate economic relevance to Western society. How far into the future do you project your analysis: particularly, how far and to what extent do you account for overall deleterious effects from changes to which you attribute benefit until the mid-21stcentury?

Further, if you project "net benefit" to the middle of the century, there must surely be an implicit acknowledgement in your modelling of a lag time for the warming effect of carbon emissions. What lag time do you incorporate: indeed, what other fundamental assumptions (viz, sensitivity, feedbacks, biological responses, and such) did you incorporate in your modelling? The lag time matter has relevance to the sharp negativity that you predict will occur, and the other parameters are no less important in an integration of effects, but I might explore this after you've clarified your model assumptions.

I'm not asking for an extended rehash of your methodology, but I am very keen to try to understand the overall basis upon which you determined that action to mitigate warming ranks so much lower than other actions.

[John Mashey](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3090498).

Heh, you've basically pre-empted one of my concerns underlying [my own questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3090520) above.

I sincerely hope that Richard Tol provides a little more detail of the assumptions in this analysis. If Jeff harvey's lurking on this thread, I'm sure that he'll be intensely interested too...

Ironic in its timing, if nothing else. Not many months removed from his public crusade against Dr. Stern and The Review, in the main for the latter's choice of discounting parameters, Professor Tol aides and abets an academic sounding charade that trades on (amongst a great many other things) absurd and unjustifiable discrepancies in discounting.

It is hardly surprising though. It would've been obvious to Dr. Tol to what ends his work would be put simply from structure of the Copenhagen Consensus, let alone the well documented (and profited from) anti-environmental policy jiihad of its organizer. Any honest social science could smell the flim flam from miles away.

It's not like farm subsidies or defense spending or other vast public expenditures that make up the bulk of global public spending were selected for comparison by the brain trust- no no no. Instead we have a bevy of projects set up to show that the most efficient projects involve benefits where no costs are borne. In other news, institutions would run more efficiently if they were staffed by altruists (when you consider the presupposition for behavioral dynamics in economic studies, this is also known as begging the question).

By contrast, many of the most important benefits of mitigation- foremost amongst them as insurance against the thick and potentially cataclysmic left hand tail of climate damages- are shared by all, not least by nations with the most wealth to lose, (not that this last is even recognized as a benefit by those such as Tol that prefer assuming away uncertainty to grappling with its disquieting and industry unfriendly implications).

In other words, these projects were not remotely comparable in their agency, which is just another way in which the deck was stacked by Lomborg, (adding the discount rate imbroglio to the others, e.g. the subjective choice of program size, the 'experts' whose 'expertise' drawn on, etc. etc. etc.). Dog bites man for those of us that follow such things.

Point being, Tol being the esteemed economist he fancies himself would know all that going in. He would know its implications for his results, and for the bottom line results of the industry friendly PR exercise also known as the Copenhagen Consensus. And he would know how those pre-cooked 'factoids' would be advertised to the public at large. And yet he enthusiastically participated. I would be tempted to draw inferences.

PS A social discount rate of 5% is utterly unsupportable in any case. Empirically. Theoretically. Unsupportable.
PPS Dr. Tol, please tell us what you knew, and when you knew it.

Majorajam | January 9, 2011 11:45 PM
"A social discount rate of 5% is utterly unsupportable in any case. Empirically. Theoretically. Unsupportable."

Not so. The present rate in Australia is well above 5% (the present cost of funds to the government).Unlike Stern & Garnaut, Tol knows that opportunity cost offinancing is the critical determinant of discount rates. If thisgovern

Sorry,I got cut off. If this government invests in say NBN knowing it will not return 5% while borrowing at 5%+ to finance its investment, it is subsidising NBN even more than already knew.

Fred, go look up what a social discount rate is. It is not the cost of funds.

@Rocco
We were the only one to use a Ramsey discount rate, but over the shorter life-times characteristic of the comparator problems, there is an equivalent consumption discount rate. Our discount rate is close to one of the two standard rate in CC08.

@Neven
I never met Ian Plimer and never worked with him (this is easily checked with Google). I'm not much impressed by his climate work.

@Eli
It is the prerogative of the senior author to engage in public debate, and that is what Gary Yohe did.

*Tol claims his research showed a net benefit from global warming until mid-century, after which the effects turn sharply negative*

If this statement is indeed true, then it shows that Richard Tol, like many other economists, lacks even a basic understanding of the 'natural' economy. Lomborg certainly expunges the effects of rapid warming on complex adaptive systems in his narrative for the same reason: his understanding of systems ecology is basically non-existent.

The effects of climate change at rates it is occurring now on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are exceedingly difficult to predict, given our understanding of these processes is at best rudimentary. I would like to know if Tol, or Lomborg, or any economist for that matter making such utterly absurd and rash predictions about the net effects of warming understand even basic ecology. My take is that most, and certainly not those pushing 'neoclassical' economics, don't. Fraying food webs, collapsing ecosystems, phenological mismatches, changes in the abiotic environment and emerging processes generated over highly variable spatial and temporal scales just do not fit in with their tidy little econometric models. Quite honestly, its embarrassing watching many of them make such rash predictions on the basis of such little knowledge about natural systems and human dependence on a range of services that emerge from them.

37: "The reason GMU has yet to make a finding on Bradley's puerile complaint is that it cannot understand what he and Mashey are on about"

Really?

It's taken them over nine months to fail to understand the complaint, and they /still/ haven't formally reached that conclusion?

Dear, oh dear...now, you'd really think that if that was true, the whole thing would have been done and dusted months and months ago, wouldn't you?

But instead...

> Don't forget that Lawson is a barrister. No doubt he's in a good position to advise whether charities are allowed to divulge the identity of donors

Uhm, lawyers and barristers know very little law. They know more law than almost anyone NOT a lawyer or barrister, but most of what they know is court procedure. NOT law.

And any lawyer will be able to find a reason for your desired outcome if you're willing to pay for it.

@Bernard J
The net positive economic impact of climate change in the first half of the 21st century is discussed in AR3 and AR4 of the IPCC.

The result (which is based on the work of a number of people) follows from the fact that the world economy is concentrated in the temperate zone. You only need to think back a few weeks to realize that cold can be very damaging.

> @Bernard J The net positive economic impact of climate change in the first half of the 21st century is discussed in AR3 and AR4 of the IPCC.

Isn't your thesis about the FUTURE, though?

> follows from the fact that the world economy is concentrated in the temperate zone.

Funny how all the resources are concentrated in the rest of the world...

Re. 73 Wow.

That may as well be, but it doesn't address the practical issues. I think Lawson would have more immediate access to the relevant texts on British charity law than anyone here, to be honest. Nobody has found anything to contradict Richard Tol's claim, and my own searches on the web seem to support him on this point. "Are charities allowed to divulge the identities of their donors?" is a yes or no answer, and the answer seems to be, "Yes, but only if they gave consent when making the donation." In other words, "No". There are actually good reasons for anonymous charitable donors remaining anonymous whether we like it or not, outside the narrow subject of climate. He may seem old and frail on TV, but Lawson is sharp as a pin and has the track record to prove it over decades of political and legal life. He even went so far as to declare he would like to make the donor names public to Parliament in testimony, but here in England the law appears to say that anonymous means anonymous, end of, and even if the GWPF declared it's now their policy to make donor identities public they would probably be prohibited from doing so, retrospectively.

I'm pretty sure, though, following Lawson's testimony to Parliament, that the GWPF could have immediately changed its policy on anonymity so that all future donations were made with the explicit agreement that names will be public. If total transparency is so desirable, then why didn't it just change the policy from then on? ;)

>*Funny how all the resources are concentrated in the rest of the world...*

Suffering poor people might make Tol's resources cost inflate slower than with vulnerable people on a sound footing.

>*Isn't your thesis about the FUTURE, though?*

WG2 assess cold relief out weighing harm of warming in some colder regions of the world for part of the current century. But Swathes of Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia suffer net harm. WG2 predicts clear net harm (including in many temperate zones) by the end of the century. And next century it gets worse.

Re Zibethicus | January 10, 2011 4:19 AM

who quoted me: "The reason GMU has yet to make a finding on Bradley's puerile complaint is that it cannot understand what he and Mashey are on about"

Then said :"Really? It's taken them over nine months to fail to understand the complaint, and they /still/ haven't formally reached that conclusion?"

I think GMU and Wegman could well have instituted legal proceedings against Bradley for defamation, but have chosen not to, as they unlike him, are decent people. In my early days in academe it was unthinkable that any academic would launch proceedings against one of his/her peers on the flimsy grounds put forward by Bradley (Mashey has no standing in this matter until his tosh sees peer-reviewed light of day, and it never will), and none ever did.

Bradley's honourable course of action was to publish a peer reviewed paper criticising the Wegman Report. Only a playground sneak does what he did - and GMU has clearly like Wegman refused to sink to his level.

Wegman meantime has grounds to sue for defamation, but honourable gentlemen do not do that to worthless scum like Bradley and Mashey.

As for Majorajam and the Rabbitt on social discount rates, they are out of their depth in that area, and know nothing of the subject. When you have read all of Tol's enormously impressive opera on that subject, get back to us.

Briefly, discounting is a method of weighing future benefits against current costs. If the rate is set at 0.1% as by Stern & Garnaut, that is saying governments even with US T-Bills as they now are (3 months) at 0.22% (but 3.47% for 10-year bonds, 5.68% in Australia) should borrow at that rate to finance projects whose benefits are only positive at 0.1%. Over 100 years the losses will be large, especially relative to the benefits from projects yielding say 5% that are crowded out when the discount rate is set at 0.1%. Tol made that point in his first comments on Stern.

Richard, thanks for your answer. I couldn't imagine you working with Plimer, so I obviously misread this piece:

While empirically-based criticism is central to science, Tol has shown no zeal in his dealings with Lomborg or with Ian Plimer, another scientific fraud alongside whom Tol acts as scientific advisor for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a secretive pressure group opposed to fossil-fuel restrictions.

In fact, this isn't true as you say you never had any dealings with Plimer. I didn't know you were scientific advisor to GWPF, though.

Fred Nnell is entertaining!

More jokes like this please Fred. What ever will you do if GMU cannot find away to wash away Wegman's plagerism?

On the social discount rate, I found [this an interesting read](http://www.pc.gov.au/research/visiting-researcher/cost-benefit-discount), it contains [this chapter](http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/96706/05-chapter3.pdf).

But when dealing with century timescales we run into several problems. We are at peak oil, we have developed much of our economic practice during a period of increasing consumption and radical population growth. This will not continue. Discount rates related to lending rates now have no validity for determining prices in a world of steady state economics, let alone if we drive this economy over the cliff with peak oil and ecological crisis.

*@Bernard J The net positive economic impact of climate change in the first half of the 21st century is discussed in AR3 and AR4 of the IPCC. The result (which is based on the work of a number of people) follows from the fact that the world economy is concentrated in the temperate zone. You only need to think back a few weeks to realize that cold can be very damaging*.

Pure and utter tosh (see also Knell's posts). The IPCC is only able to make very rough projections based on the empirical literature which itself is full of holes with respect to the effects of warming on the natural economy. In brief: we have only barely scatched the surface in our understanding of the factors that determine how ecosystems assemble and function (see work by Tilman, Naeem, Soule, Huston, Vitousek, Pimm, Pacala, Petchey, and many other scientists in which the debate is still ongoing). I wonder how much of this literature Richard Tol has read. Probably none of it. We know that humans are utterly dependent on the natural economy in delivering a range of supporting services. How these services emerge from natural systems and are maintained is still very poorly understood. This is because a stupendous array of biotic and abiotic processes are involved that make it impossible to extract simple linear generalizations. Then throw in climate warming, which is occurring at different rates in different places and at different temporal scales, and things become even more complicated. Certainly its plainly crazy to try and suggest that anyone or any body (including the IPCC) has even anything more than a vague idea what the consequences of climate change will be on communities, ecosystems and biomes in the coming century. The prognosis is not good, as I said in my last post. What I find supremely annoying is the utter hubris that many 'experts' express with respect to the costs and benefits of warming. Its a crap shoot. Certainly we can expect to see food webs breaking down as species within them respond differently. We know that it is likely that diversity begets stability and resilience in many systems, and that a loss in the diversity of these systems will lead to a breakdown in the way they funca s ittion. But, given that ecosystems do not function linearly, we can expect, as it continues to warm, to approach and then pass critical 'tipping points' beyond which there will be quite dramatic changes (see work by Scheffer et al). Again, understanmding how close we are to these 'tipping points' is the subject of intensive research, but we have a long way to go. In effect, we have little idea what the medium-term consequences of regional warming will be, but there is every sign that there will be very nasty surprises in store.

Tol, Lomborg (and their followers here like Knell) appear to believe that we have worked out all of the finer details. They also appear to believe that humans are exempt from any constraints imposed by nature. Such a flippant comment about cold weather (above) in temperate zones barely deserves an answer. But the fact is that a range of anthropogenic assaults - of which climate change is an important one - are simplifying nature at an astounding rate. Technology cannot replace many supporting services that permit humans to exist and to persist, and even when it can, the costs are prohibitive. There are many examples of this I present at lectures on the subject of tha natural economy and human welfare.

I do not even want to go into the subject of power structures and how eliminating poverty in the south is hardly on the agenda of the developed world (and there is plenty of evidence for this). The fact is that western elites know that there are not enough resources to support 6 plus billion people consuming capital like the average North American or European (read comments over many years by the likes of Kennan, Kissinger, Brezinski and others and this should become clear). This explains why western planners habitually espouse concern over the threat posed by those in the south of 'breaking free' from the grip of western financial institutions, governments and corporations. But this belongs on another thread.

> I think Lawson would have more immediate access to the relevant texts on British charity law than anyone here, to be honest.

And only finite time to investigate. To bring OT, Tol has the immediate access to relevant information. Yet he's managed to fail to be accurate in his statements.

Access to the right information doesn't mean the output is accurate.

There is no *legal requirement* to keep donations secret.

There isn't a *legal requirement* to open them either.

But if you go proclaiming secrecy is bad in how funding of the met services goes ahead, you can't really expect people to take you seriously if you keep YOUR funding secret.

jakerman, for once you're right when you link to Mark Harrison who confirms everything I have said here about discounting.

Jeff Harvey: you are a colossal bore. Your last post repeats what you have been saying here ad nauseam for as long as anyone can remember. For example, your latest yet again says: "[Economists]also appear to believe that humans are exempt from any constraints imposed by nature."

We know how for millennia humans have overcome Nature's constraints. For we just like the Pharoahs are The Masters of Nature (except in Australia where we have surrendered to your alter ego, Bob Brown, who has successfully prevented us from fending off floods by building dams). Now go away and have a good sulk.

Fred Knell sounds suspiciously like a sock puppet, particularly in his pathetic swipe at Bob Brown. Hoping for a thread derailment perhaps?

Fred Knell,

Better to be a colossal bore than a colossal ignoramus, like you.

Your post shows clearly that you nothing diddley squat about natural systems (about anythinbg, actually). But that's probably because you are another Dunning-Kruger disciple. Full of arrgance and ignorance: a legend in your own mind.

If you can pry yourself away from the mirror, please tell me how exactly humans are going to replicate ecological services: for example, maintenance of soil and renewal of soil fertility, pest control, water purification, breakdown of wastes, seed dispersal, pollination etc. as they decline? Wingnuts like you ignore that fact that nature is littered with free subsidies that do not carry prices; as the seminal Costanza et al paper in Nature (1997) showed, these subsidies, if priced, woudl have been worth between 18 and 33 trillions dollars annually to the global economy. In other words more than the sum of all national GDPs at the time combined. But since you are clearly scientifically illiterate, I'd stick with your own self-adoration.

Moreover, I suppose clowns like you dismiss the importance of the 2006 Global Ecosystems Assessment, which painted a stark picture of human impacts across the biosphere, which, in case you didn't know, are many millions of times more significant than when the Egyptian civilization fluorished. And, in case you were wondering in part why the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome collapsed, look no farther than ecological overshoot: the local human populations decimated their regional ecological life-support systems, transforming once biotically rich regions into veritable biological deserts. The only difference is that now humans are doing it on a global scale.

Lastly, it is dinosaurs like you (and Tol, and Lomborg, and many other contrarians) who are endangered. Not only the vast majority of the scientific community stands behind my words, but also many enlightened economists (John Gowdy, Stefan Viedermann, Geoffrey Heal, et al.). If you wish to engage in an online debate about the importance of nature's services and the consequences of losing them on human civilization, I'd be glad to humiliate you.

Otherwise, please parade your ignorance elsewhere.

Re. 81 Wow: Read up on the UK's Data Protection Act, and [read this](http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Our_regulatory_activity/Counter_ter…)

>For we just like the Pharoahs are The Masters of Nature...

I'm sure this is what the Easter Islanders were saying right up until the end.

Jeff, that doesn't cover what you think it covers. After all the roll call of the Board Of Directors is likewise personally identifiable information.

Bestrides which, since these people are funding a charity (and therefore getting a tax break on their donations), there's a little less leeway for personal information to be held on donations. Added to which, the "charity" is proclaiming that secrecy of funding is why AGW is false. Yet they want to retain secrecy of their funding (which, under their lights, would make anti-AGW position they take false).

You ARE allowed to say you donate, you know. Even if there were laws stating you COULD NEVER say who you get the money from.

Nice to see the discussion finally moving to assumptions about the economics of climate change.

Tol stop prevaricating and anwser the damn question :P.

The thing to realize is that Tol's POV is by no means a fringe one within the profession. However, that doesn't mean that his work is representative by any means or that it hasn't been criticized by other economists. Ackerman for example notes that:

"One conclusion from the revised analysis is that FUND is an outlier among climate economics models...DICE and PAGE project modest but positive damages at low temperature changes, but FUND projects net benefits...to the world from warming until the world is almost 3oC (more than 5oF) hotter. That is, FUND believes the world will be better off as a result of the first several decades of global warming.

With a high enough discount rate, those decades of desirable warmth outweigh the far future when we move beyond 3oC; at a 5 percent discount rate, FUNDâs estimate of the SCC is negative!"

Personally, I don't have a problem with the many assumptions that Tol uses (i.e. valuing lives in richer countries more, ignoring risk aversion, etc.). What bothers me is that he isn't upfront about the ethical implications of these assumptions or the fact that his work puts the social cost of carbon at the very low end of the spectrum.

If people understood that the $6/tCO2e estimate stems from assumptions which say that we don't care about coloured people or the welfare of our children's children (discount rate) I suspect they would treat the results differently...

Luminous beauty,

An excellent example. To make such an arrogant and frankly stupid remark such as, "For we just like the Pharoahs are The Masters of Nature..." reveals a lot about the speaker of said words.

Look also at Biosphere II. A complete and utter failure to replicate even the most basic self-perpetuating ecosystem. Simon Levin says it perfectly when he writes, in *Fragile Dominion*: "They (ecological services) permit our survival but do not exist by virtue of permitting it, and so we need to ask how fragile nature's services are". Exactly. We already know that nature's capacity to support man is being diminished. The most pressing concern amonst systems ecologists is to determine at which points we will exceed critical thresholds ('tipping points') in the functioning of complex adaptive systems.

In my scientific career I have had to deal with enough anthropocentric cranks such as Robert Knell who ignorantly dismiss the importance of nature beyond its plunder and exploitation. Its just sad that some people still think this way. Most scientists certainly don't. Neoclassical economists are hundreds of years past their sell-by dates.

[John Mashey](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3090498)

Thanks for the link to Ayres & Warr. Scary stuff. On the hopeful side we have work by [Elinor Ostrom, et al.](http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=9739) which promises a substantive way of combining the uncertainties of ecosystem resilience and complexity with endogenous economic development, and a path beyond the false dichotomy commonly presented between global regulation and private property.

My question to Dr. Tol is: Has he read any of these authors and has it changed his thinking on any of these issues?

Alternatively, Jeff, that link isn't covering what I mean in post 81.

I guess it depends on the point of view.

Tol stop prevaricating and anwser the damn question :P.

Don't hold your breath, Marlowe :-). Tol's shifty evasiveness when confronted with truth has been seen before over at Eli's and at Tobis's.

1) This is a useful thread. It would be nice if Wegman arguments went to Wegman update rather than here.

2) Tim occasionally creates special threads for special posters. RealClimate is now doing 2 things to improve S/N ratios of normal threads:

a) Unforced Variations is a monthly thread for OT discussions, to which people can post ... and to which moderators move posts.

b) The Bore Hole is ... well, read it and see, if you can stand it.

3) Hopefully, people will experiment and eventually blog software will improve to make sensible moderation really easy, lest good blogs succomb to Gresham's Law (Internet version) and go the way of once-fine USENET groups.

We know that humans are utterly dependent on the natural economy in delivering a range of supporting services. How these services emerge from natural systems and are maintained is still very poorly understood. This is because a stupendous array of biotic and abiotic processes are involved that make it impossible to extract simple linear generalizations. Then throw in climate warming, which is occurring at different rates in different places and at different temporal scales, and things become even more complicated.

Think I heard a toilet flush Richard. Better strike out for a plunger as I'm not sure even one of those could swallow FUND whole.

Of course this isn't about this or other, as Jeff aptly puts it, flippant, presumptions of models like Richard Tol's, (including amongst other things assuming away disease vectors with the economic progress of tropical nations, assuming a negative direct effect on mortality of global warming as all the obese diabetics in the Western World survive more winters, assuming that heat stress poses no danger to the drinkign water resources of billions, assuming that ice sheet dynamics can safely be ignored because the doom-mongering IPCC doesn't venture to prognosticate there, assuming zero costs due to geopolitical conflict stemming from climate change, assuming that earth system climate sensitivity is, to some narrow range of probabilistically potential values, known, etc. etc. etc. etc.).

This is about fraud. So please Richard, answer the fargin question. As it appears you remain pure as the driven snow:

When did you know you were being set up by Mr. Lomborg to underwrite a fraudulent analysis, and what have you done about it?

While you're at it, perhaps you can explain to us whether you think it's appropriate to ignore massive discrepancies in agency when doing capital budgeting? Of course, the Lomborg Consensus didn't so much ignore these as cherry pick them, but we have to start somewhere.

Re 78: "Wegman meantime has grounds to sue for defamation, but honourable gentlemen do not do that to worthless scum like Bradley and Mashey."

Your sustained, vicious vituperation and increasingly desperate and flailing /ad homs/ do not in any way disguise the fact that you have resoundingly failed to answer the simple question I raised - namely, if things are as cut-and-dried in this matter as you claim, why has GMU not reached the same conclusions as you have and closed the matter long ago?

The fact that they have not done this, and instead done apparently little or nothing whatsoever, hardly supports your contention. On the contrary, it strongly suggests (at least to me) the dynamic inaction of a group of people who are well-and-truly over an oil barrel, as it were.

If they find against Wegman their Koch funding will surely be in question. But if they find /for/ him, under the circumstances, their academic integrity might well be called into question.

Solution? Do nothing at all, for as long as you can get away with it. It's not a real solution, but at least it buys precious time.

Intriguing to see the same sort of people who were hollering for burnings-at-the-stake before the 'Climategate' enquiries even started now bending in the diametrically opposite direction when it's the conduct of their own camp under scrutiny.

Now if you want to take this further, John Mashey has suggested that this goes to the latest Wegman thread and I think that's appropriate. I'll be happy to discuss the matter there.

PS: On the basis of your compared postings here, I would have to say that your claims about "Mashey's lunacy" (37) might be better applied to he whom you confront in any mirror. Mashey seems to me to be infinitely less troubled than you do. You have my guarded sympathy.

Former Skeptic, [you provided](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3093540) an interesting link.

Tol works very hard to try and lable one of his opponetns as authoritarian (for the crime on wanting the public well educated, particularly on climate change).

Here is some of Tol's hard work:

>*Yes, Michael, you disrespect other people's opinions, and you want to make sure that they are powerless.*

But what was Tol attacking Michael for? For this:

Tol
>>*there is a small group of people who think that climate change is Armageddon, and who are burning is much coal as they can hoping to see the Second Coming during their earthly life time.*

MT
>The thing to do about small groups of crazy, evil people is to try to make sure they stay small and try to convince them to be less crazy or evil. If you think otherwise, you're the postmodernist

Tol
>*Yes, Michael, you disrespect other people's opinions, and you want to make sure that they are powerless.*

Tol is attempting to rebadge âauthoritarianismâ as someone who is not a moral relativist.

I guessed Tol now needs to come up with a new label for those who kill people for their political views and trample civil liberties, as to distinguish those from people who want a well educated public and do not respect every opinion as being equal.

By the way Tol, by definition are you âauthoritarianâ? I.e. Do you respect Nazi ideology? Or do you believe we should deal with antisocial groups like Nazi by trying to:

>* to make sure they stay small and try to convince them to be less crazy or evil*?

John Mashey @63, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but prospective GDP growth rates have no direct implications for the appropriate discount rate to use in cost benefit alaysis.

Discount rates are simply used to compare the value of costs and benefits at different points in time. A positive discount rate just means the future is given relatively less value than the present.

The higher the discount rate, the less the future is valued relative to the present.

For businesses, the use of a discount rate makes sense. It enables the comparison of a project with a given expected rate of return with alternative investments.

For a society, though, it is by no means as clear cut.

For environmental policies, the discount rate is at least as much a moral question as a technical one. And economics generally does not deal well with either interpersonal and intertemporal comparisons of utility on either count.

Garnaut's 2008 report has a [discussion of these issues in section 1.7 of the first chapter.](http://www.garnautreview.org.au/pdf/Garnaut_Chapter1.pdf)

Stern as well used a [lowish discount rate](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov…).

gaz: you may want to review the *rest* of Stern Chapter 2 that you cited, but also Chapter 2A, wherever that is.

Whether or not Stern is right, he clearly thinks GDP matters...

CH.2
p.9 (labeled 31) of PDF (p.35 in my copy of book):

"Typically, in the application of the theory of welfare economics to project and policy appraisal, an increment in future consumption is held to be worth less than an increment in present consumption, for two reasons. First, if consumption grows, people are better off in the future than they are now and an extra unit of consumption is generally taken to be worth less, the richer people are. Second, it is sometimes suggested that people prefer to have good things earlier rather than later â âpure time preferenceâ â based presumably in some part on an assessment of the chances of being alive to enjoy consumption later and in some part âimpatienceâ."

The first depends ~GDP (given all the caveats about what GDP really means) and the second is the time preference.

Chapter 2A is mostly about discounting. The book (p.54) says:
"Growing consumption is a reason for discounting. Similarly if consumption were falling the discount rate would be negative."

See also IPCC AR4 WG III on discount rates.

"Intuitively, as suggested by this formula, a larger growth in the economy should induce us to make less effort for the future. This is achieved by raising the discount rate. In an inter-generational framework, the parameter δ characterizes our ethical attitude towards future generations. Using this formula, the SAR recommended using a discount rate of 2-4%. It is fair to consider δ =0 and a growth rate of GDP per capita of 1-2% per year for developed countries and a higher rate for developing countries that anticipate larger growth rates. "

Again, I am not saying that IPCC or Stern are correct, merely that they both think future GDP matters to discoutn rate.

Now see IPCC AR4 WG III, GDP growth rates in the new literature.

"The SRES scenarios project a very wide range of global economic per-person growth rates from 1% (A2) to 3.1% (A1) to 2030, both based on MER. This range is somewhat wider than that covered by the USDOE (2004) high and low scenarios (1.2â2.5%). The central projections of USDOE, IEA and the World Bank all contain growth rates of around 1.5â1.9%, thus occurring in the middle of the range of the SRES scenarios. Other medium-term energy scenarios are also reported to have growth rates in this range (IEA, 2004)."

Now, if *per-person* GDP CAGR is projected to 2100, 90 years, we get the relative size of GDP/person in 2100AD:
1.01^90 => 2.4X
1.02^90 => 5.9X
1.03 => 14.3X
but just for (not fun) try
.99^90 => .4X
.98^90 => .16X
.97^90 => .06X

I once asked the Co-Chair of WG III, Bert Metz, where they got the numbers, and he confirmed that they basically used the standard numbers from folks like the World Bank, etc.
And basically, if you dig around in the standard numbers,

Ayres & Warr 9the book) p.224 says:
(if a hypothetical panel wer asked)
"'what average real growth rate to expect the US to enjoy during the 21sr century?' we think the answer would fall between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent per annum. But that is because virtually all economists assume that economic growth is automatic and costless, and that is it independent of energy price or availabllity."

SO: Stern & IPCC both think that future GDP matters to discount rate. Almost everybody seems to think GDP growth has little dependence on energy. If they are right, that US folks would be 2-6X richer in 2100. If Ayres&Warr are right, and energy is actually a big chunk of GDP growth, then GDP flattens, maybe mid-century.

So, the question I've raised is the extent to which people should be including negative discount rates in models. You make very different investments if you think GDP growth continues indefinitely than if you think otherwise.

> Wegman meantime has grounds to sue for defamation, but honourable gentlemen do not do that to worthless scum like Bradley and Mashey.

What does that have to do with Wegman?

He's no gentleman, he's a hired hitman. The reason why Wegman doesn't sue is because he has no grounds and, if he were to press suit, he would be unable to quash the facts he wants hidden.

NOTE: if you're being threatened with lawsuit by someone who is trying to silence you, it is better to let them sue you (if they will) because your testimony then becomes your defence and that can't be silenced.

Well, the lawyers have this habit of wanting money unless you can get some political front group to support you.

John is right- GDP growth is a core parameter of the Ramsey formulation of interest rates that Dr. Tol's FUND model employed, (actually per capita GDP, but given population growth trajectories, there's no longer much difference). Stern likewise used Ramsey interest rates, albeit with profoundly different parameter choices (which as Weitzman has illustrated is the first order driver of the results of models of this ilk).

GDP is a theoretical determinant of interest rates from two perspectives of which I'm aware. The one you'll hear from economists- the intertemporal substitution effect, i.e. people will be richer in the future, and transfer payments from the poor to the rich, (economists view savings through the prism of consumption forgone), create negative utility by the empirical/theoretical concave marginal utility of wealth. And the one you'll here from finance types: GDP growth is the aggregate of sales/revenue growth that forms the basis of asset returns. As the return to all assets in an economy must equal the growth rate in equilibrium, it follows that real interest rates and GDP growth are joined at the hip.

Tim Worstall is wrong about a great many things, and certainly about the justification for a declining discount rate. That is actually a function of uncertainty about the appropriate Ramsey parameters for risk aversion and the pure rate of time preference. Courtesy of the most powerful force in the universe, formalizing that uncertainty bends discount rates toward their lower bounds as they are compounded through time. I'm fairly sure this explains the declining discount rate employed by Tol.

One more thing: as it appears to be of interest to Worstall and several other deniers that have posted on this thread, real global interest rates weren't anywhere near 5% when this analysis was commissioned, and haven't been for well over a decade.

I'm with a few posters here though who've noted that Tol's laughingstock model is not the issue here, but the fact that he was either duped into creating a misleading analysis, or that he fraudulently presented his results as employing a discount rate of 3%. His despicable prevarication here would lead one to believe he was not the dupe, but rather an active participant in the conspiracy to hoodwink the public at large on an issue of terrific importance to their well being. If trying to persuade people through use of facts and reason is authoritarianism, one wonders how to describe the good professor's own behavior?

In fairness to Tol, Gary Yohe was the lead author not Tol. On the other hand, I suspect that if anyone was 'duped' it was likely Yohe, not Tol....

@Someone who calls himself Marlowe Johnson but really is someone else

I do not make a secret of the value judgements implicit in any attempt to quantify the seriousness of climate change. In fact, I have discussed these things repeatedly in op-eds published in daily newspapers. Indeed, you are so well-informed about these matters because we have been so open.

Climate change has different impacts for different times, for different people, for different species, for different places, and is very uncertain at that.

As soon as you say "the carbon tax should be such" or "the emissions target should be so", you have passed judgement on the importance of humans v other species, on likely and unlikely, on rich and poor, and on close and far.

thanks for stopping by Richard.

It's the difference between what you say in your academic work and the attitude you seem to display on blogs that I suppose I take issue with. Your academic work is indeed appropriately caveated. However, Jon Q public is much more likely to read the latter, and given your credentials give your POV more weight. Can you point me to the countless op-eds where you layout the usefulness of SCC exercices (e.g. valuing coloured folks less)?

Again, I don't have any problem with these assumptions when used as an academic exercise. Using it to inform policy matters is a different story altoghether. And it is precisely this kind of narrow utilitarian perspective that you seem so wedded that has led to 'post-normal' science. Thank you for that.

p.s. you can call me Fat Bastard if it makes you feel better :)

p.p.s. I fist learned about the normative aspects of climate change economics from Chris Greene at McGill in the mid-90s and from reading William Cline's work....I didn't have the pleasure of your wading through your stuff til later. :)

Richard Tol: You say "Our discount rate is close to one of the two standard rate in CC08." Could you tell us which one it is? The differences in discount rates used in other studies in CC08 seem to have a large impact on the benefit-cost ratio. Are you certain that if the other studies used your discount ratio, the rankings would remain unchanged?

@Rocco
We were closer to the higher discount rate.

@Not Marlowe
I repeat: I regularly publish about these things on blogs and in newspapers.

Marlowe asks for specifics:

>*Can you point me to the countless op-eds where you layout the usefulness of SCC exercices (e.g. valuing coloured folks less)?*

Tol declines:

>*@Not Marlowe I repeat: I regularly publish about these things on blogs and in newspapers.*

Who knows if Tols purposley evasive? Yet we see that Tol is persistantly vague.

Ask not for whom the Tol trolls, ask why he insists on tying himself up in knots.

Really now Richard, accusing others of being authoritarian for having an opinion that they think is right is trying to force your opinion on others which labels you as the world's first Discount Rate Nazi. It also demonstrates why your opinion on this is an idiotic oxymoron, which, Eli guesses, in Tol speak means that Eli is being authoritarian, except that Eli knows he is right and that Richard will never admit is, which means that. . . Oh, never mind.

Richard's defense is that he uses his model with all sorts of discount rates, but somehow, Eli knows not how, the ones that make it into the headlines are the ones with the high and unrealistic rates, the ones that make taking action on atmospheric carbon contamination look foolish, while the ones that he pushes when challenged are the lower ones. The choices are that Richard is a Pielke or there are a whole bunch of Lomborgs out there trying to make him look stupid. That is what Eli says is right, which makes him, what was that word. . . .

Richard Tol.

[Marlowe Johnson mentions the nature of your assumptions in terms of academic exercise vs actual application](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3099362), and I am keen to explore this in more detail. However, as others have pointed out, you appear to be evading certain questions, and I myself find that your responses have been vague and dissembling at the least.

Just to set the scene, Iâll reiterate [one of my questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3090520)

I'm not asking for an extended rehash of your methodology, but I am very keen to try to understand the overall basis upon which you determined that action to mitigate warming ranks so much lower than other actions.

You see, from what I can gather, youâre approaching this from a very standard economic perspective, based on a very materialist starting point. Thatâs fine if all youâre doing is speaking to business in the short-term, but the whole issue of climate change itself transcends considerations of business and investment growth.

[Eli](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3090666) mentions social âdiscount ratesâ, and I am curious to understand to what extent you include and exclude issues that fall under this banner, how you have valued them, and upon what criteria you did so. As an ecologist, I am also particularly interested in how you assessed biological/ecological costs, including but by no means restricted to biodiversity loss, ecosystem service/function/resilience damage, alterations in disease distribution, and potential changes to hydrological regimes.

Several people have pointed out factors that make estimations of discount rates [impossible to determine](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3092123) for periods not in the near future. What assumptions have you used in order to extend your application of discount rates as far as you do? Do these assumptions have any validity beyond your period of analysis? If not, why not? If not, what are the implications for decisions made based upon the discount rates that you chose?

[You say](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3091895):

@Bernard J The net positive economic impact of climate change in the first half of the 21st century is discussed in AR3 and AR4 of the IPCC.

The result (which is based on the work of a number of people) follows from the fact that the world economy is concentrated in the temperate zone. You only need to think back a few weeks to realize that cold can be very damaging.

To what extent do your analyses account for shiftings in climatic zones to 2050, and how these shiftings will impact on the distribution of human (whether Western or otherwise) activity? After all, you only need think back over the last several years to realise that heat and drought can be very damaging too...
[Marlowe Johnson](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3092931) observes that high discount rates under-value the costs to the far future, as well as too non-Western people and (implicitly) to the non-human biosphere.

Tell me, do you agree that the notion of the âbenefitâ of a positive discount rate is predicated on a consumptive, growing economy? [John Mashey](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3096862) presses explicitly on this point, and [Majorajam commented upon it too](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3097848), but I have not seen any description from you on this thread that formalises your own thoughts on this matter, and how this ties in with my questions above. In this vein, I'm especially interested to know what predicates of future economic activity you used in your modelling.

Even direct links to specific text would suffice, in order to enable us to assess what you regard as internalities and what you consider to be externalities, and thus to assess the credibility of your modelling in terms of these internalities and externalities. If you âdo not make a secret of [your] value judgements implicit in any attempt to quantify the seriousness of climate changeâ why will you not provide a working précis here? I am not going to trawl through the internet in an attempt to gather a representative selection of your thoughts from various [op-eds](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3099210), and nor should I have to, if you are prepared yourself to come here to defend your analyses on this thread.

[You say](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3099210):

Climate change has different impacts for different times, for different people, for different species, for different places, and is very uncertain at that.

As soon as you say "the carbon tax should be such" or "the emissions target should be so", you have passed judgement on the importance of humans v other species, on likely and unlikely, on rich and poor, and on close and far.

Fine words, but please provide the bases upon which you make your analyses that are being used to inform future action on global warming. It would seem to me that your assumptions and choice of discount rates similarly âpasse[s] judgement on the importance of humans v other species, on likely and unlikely, on rich and poor, and on close and farâ, and yet you are not being clear about what these bases are.

OK, JM, we are now on the same page - GDP *per capita* underpins potential consumption per capita etc. Thank you.

This is probably not the place to go into this, but I'd just like to repeat my comment that economics generally does not deal well with either interpersonal and intertemporal comparisons of utility.

The assumption of declining marginal utility, especially in an intertemporal context, and especially when some actors in the drama have not been born yet (and do not therefore even get to participate in the decision), is just one example of the way value judgements get slipped into welfare economics when no-one's looking.

Gaz: yes, economics does not seem to deal well with those.
But the practical problem with those is that they often turn into ethics arguments whose resolution is difficult.

I simply point out that regardless of whether one wants the discount rate to be high (because one wants to ignore the future), or wants it to be low (to take better care of the future), or just wants GDP/person growth to be well-forcasted by the last century or two of (one-time fossil-fueled) growth, the idea that GDP/person grows indefinitely seems an extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence.

I would just be happier if I saw more runs that increased the energy/person for a few decades and then accounted for realistic effects of peak oil, and then peak gas. It seems all too possible for the GDP/person of 2100 to be lower, not higher, especially in places that use a lot of gas/oil
[It doesn't affect poor African farmers much: they don't have tractors and never will have gas/diesel-powered ones. Those who own 300-hp combines will need to have shifted off petroleum.]

After all, many people deal with this exact thing on a personal basis:

a) People in their 20s rarely save money for retirement, given that they are usually nowhere near peak earnings.

b) Later on, they are accumulating pension or retirement nest-egg during their high earning years.

c) When they (really) retire, salary goes to zero, and by then, there had better have been investments adequate to generate adequate cash.

Put another way, if money ~ energy, people need to be investing it while they have lots of it, to rework infrastucture and transport so that it still works later, when there may well not be as much spare available to invest.

Fast-cycle product businesses face this all the time, are rapid rates. Suppose you are shipping product N and it's making lots of money.

You can:
1) Pay everybody a lot, and have lots of parties.
In Silicon Valley, a lot of this happened during the Dot-com boom. OR

2) Knowing the product cycle wouldn't last forever, invest enough in R&D that product N+1 is ready to replace N at the right time.

If you wait too long, you may discover that it is TOO LATE, and you no longer have the capital to do the development to stay competitive. You may also be stuck with an inventory of stuff you need to sell at loss that is no longer the right thing.

Now you're in a death spiral and soon to "auger in."

So, I do not discount the ethics issues, but I would sure like to understand how GDP/person keeps growing as though fossil fuel were forever ... and it does have the best EROEI, which is why people use it.

Tol who works for the Irish Economic and Social Research Institute is also the subject of a critical article in the magazine Village. YOu will need to scroll about halfway down to get the Tol bits:

http://www.villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2011/01/our-deluded-esri/

"Tol, who refers to those concerned about what he calls the ânew religion of climate changeâ with labels like âfanaticsâ and âadherents of the Church of Gaiaâ, ..... Lomborg and Tol continue to make media appearances together and Lomborg cites Tolâs work in every article he writes.

When controversies about the Climate Research Unit and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauriâs TERI foundation arose in the media, Tol was quick to paint each in the darkest terms on the scantiest of evidence."

I challenged Tol on his blog to name those scientists who he considered held "religious" views on climate change, and the only two he came up with were Joe Romm and an Irish journalist, John Gibbons. With respect to Romm, I think his science days are behind him. Michael Mann, Jim Hansen and others can sigh with relief .. they have passed the Tol test.

Richard Tol: And the higher discount rate was the one used in the rankings?

@Toby
Thanks for that clarification. There are indeed people who make a religion out of climate change, but this is rare (unheard of?) among natural scientists.

@Not Marlowe
Sorry. I missed your request for specific references. You could have clicked on my name or used Google. Here's two:
http://www3.lastampa.it/ambiente/sezioni/ambiente/articolo/lstp/367812/

http://www.faz.net/IN/INtemplates/faznet/default.asp?tpl=common/zwische…{E7D4BB8D-5C61-95DF-749A-BA9B22F7FAE9}&rub={C5406E11-4228-4FB6-BB79-CE581A20766E}

not to be difficult Richard but are there any that are in english or french (don't speak italian) and that aren't behind a paywall?

never mind....found a link:

http://www.ae-info.org/ae/User/Tol_Richard/OtherInformation

Scanning through the print articles I didn't see anything about SCC or the assumptions that you've typically made (or avoided making). Mostly you seem to say:

1. ipcc wg2 and wg3 are bad, pachauri is the worst

2. ipcc is being an advocate. this is bad.

3. ireland shouldn't use subsidies to achieve its energy policy goals.

4. peat is bad.

While I agree mostly agree with 3 and wholeheartedly with 4, it seems to me that in making those statements you are yourself guilty of the crime that you accuse Pachauri of! Or am I missing something?

Very noble of you Dr. Tol. Your openness and honesty are as commendable as your signal contributions to the Copenhagen deception are despicable. Well, not really, but whatever makes you sleep at night.

Still, it is amazing to me how confused you are. Allow me to unpack this: You deride activism, and then abet and associate with activists- and not garden variety activists, but those whose prodigious track records of lies and distortion precede them.

You belittle the capacity of value judgments to guide policy, and then unburden yourself in the Deltoid confessional about the overwhelming degree to which your own subjective judgments rule the world of the (outlier) work you do. Hey, wasn't this supposed to account for the high-handed jihad against Dr. Stern following publication of the Stern Review?... yea.

You express skepticism about stated preferences and then deride scientists and environmental activists as elitists from your place of honor in the denialosphere. Or that Mr. Hyde's contribution?

You wax romantic about your openness immediately before and after inartfully dodging very clear questions about serious academic misconduct. Which you continue to stonewall. And yet have the brass cahones to play for hearts and minds in the comments thread.

I could go on. I won't. Seriously though, your very statements here about the boulders of salt with which we are supposed to take FUND results, (and I'll go ahead and assume that wasn't for my benefit, or we're talking byte loads of wasted bits), are just extraordinary given how willing you are to let that work be paraded around the public sphere by folks looking to assure people that we've got this climate change business under control. Staggering really. I'm at a loss for words. They should've sent a poet. All I can think of is Jeremy Grantham after Greenspan took to the FT to claim he had no regrets about anything, "what can you say to that?"

PS One more thing- I am particularly fond of how you keep mentioning that you're for a carbon tax. Robert Duval's character in Apocalypse Now was fond of giving wounded enemy soldiers/Vietnamese civilians water. It didn't make him a humanitarian.

Perhaps Lomborg has Richard to thank for his semblance of increasing understanding of science and economics. Of course the association has clear downside for Richard, Lomborg being a political scientist famous for not understanding enough about what it is he is saying to be guilty of what would otherwise have been scientific misconduct.

Richard's willingness to associate his name with Lomborg's is an implicit value judgment by him. Nothing Richard will go on to say, or his models project, should surprise anyone who already understands the Lomborg phenomenon.

"as it appears to be of interest to Worstall and several other deniers"

Sorry, but could you be more specific about whatever it is that I'm denying or a denier of?

I've written any number of times that my belief is that climate change is happening, that it's being caused by us humans, largely though our use of fossil fuels and yes, even that it's a problem, a problem we should do something about.

Given that my day job involves trying to extract the minerals which will make solid oxide fuel cells work I think it would be really rather odd if I didn't take such a view actually: especially since I've personally subsidised some of the work into such fuel cells.

Just because I disagree with some on what we should do about the problem doesn't make me a denier of anything as far as I can see.

Majorajam, Tim Worstall : I agree with Tim. The word denier denotes a specific group of rather unsavory characters and if people throw it around too much it will lose all meaning.

Richard Tol: Could you please answer the question? Do you know how much is the discount rate used in your study compatible with the rate used in the rankings?

Rocco: however, there are an awful lot of people who *say* they agree with all that but don't want anything done about it in reducing emissions and doing better with what we have.

Many times using the same techniques as "classical" deniers.

Additionally, it could be "Tim Worstall (and some other people who are deniers)" hence not calling Tim a "classical" denier.

In short, Tim: grow a pair and don't be such a wuss. Just realise that your rhetoric may have led someone to assume something you're not and explain the facts and stop playing the drama queen.

Tim,

I suppose the fact my use of 'denier' differs from others accounts for the misunderstanding. You see, the claims you've just made are claims that both Lomborg and Tol could make. As Richard is fond of reminding us, he is even for a carbon tax! (1¢ per 50 trillion gigatons may not sound like a lot, but it punches well above its weight in the rhetorical utility department). But I don't see that as differentiating Lomborg or Tol or you from Watts, Morano, Glenn Beck or Matt Drudge (and neither, frankly, do most deniers).

What really separates Lomborg and Tol, (and I would assume you, based on your kneejerk reaction from ignorance to this blog post), from Watts, Morano, Glenn Beck or Matt Drudge isn't a higher regard for evidence or truth or the scientific method, but rather a difference opinion about the best way to delude the public on this issue.

The latter realize how preposterous it is that there is a conspiracy of thousands of scientists to delude us all, and presumably take over the UN to set up a world socialist government, and are aren't comfortable slinging that particular brand of poo. They are however perfectly comfortable, as the record will reflect, with playing fast and loose with discount rates, citations and the complexity of scientific findings. Their interest is in the rhetorical war they are engaged in and in the benefits that accrue to them by pursuing it. Nothing else.

And it hurts me to have to write this, but a lie is a lie. Why then should I be forced to differentiate between them and the other brand of liars? This is not to say that it's not possible to be mislead on or to misjudge the issue, and you may very well fall into the latter category. Perhaps, as Rocco noted, I've jumped to a conclusion I shouldn't have. But it is impossible to approach this issue honestly, be qualified, be informed, and come to the conclusions Richard Tol or Bjorn Lomborg have (or at least the ones they express publicly). Their whole world revolves around the idea that we can predict to some degree of precision the outcome of the massive experiment we are running on something as fundamental to life as the climate of the only planet we have, and it is a sorry house of cards. A sorry pathetic house of cards.

It's also hypocritical of course. The overlap between the people who told us that after September 11th we could no longer tolerate the risk of arabs with weapons and thus must invade and bomb to the tune of trillions will, with a straight face, complain that the cost of insurance against cataclysmic climate outcomes is just too high to be able to justify.

These people are deniers. Deniers of the dissonant cognitions they must suppress to come to their ridiculous view of the world if nothing else.

Wow, Majorajam: All I'm saying is, denier is a strong word. Before using it, you should be extra careful not to read too much into three uninformed comments somebody made on a blog.

Perhaps, only perhaps mind you, Eli can clear some things up or not

> Wow, Majorajam: All I'm saying is, denier is a strong word.

Indeed it is.

So is lie. But when someone tells a mistruth, just because "lie" is a strong word, why can't it be used.

And lots of people complain bitterly about being called "denier" when they are most DEFINITELY a denier, it would be just as correct (your second and last sentence is, to a large extent, correct) for someone to be extra careful about complaining about the label.

Yes?

*Their whole world revolves around the idea that we can predict to some degree of precision the outcome of the massive experiment we are running on something as fundamental to life as the climate of the only planet we have, and it is a sorry house of cards*

This is perfectly and accurately put. The likes of Tol and Lomborg appear to think, as far as I can see, that all of the billions of complexities in the effects of warming on the material economy have been worked out and are well understood. They largely expunge the natural economy in their calculations, probably because of their lack of pedigree in the field of systems ecology, and insteac focus on pedantics. I say pedantics because it is, by now, well established that human welfare and prosperity is dependent on the natural economy in a wide array of direct and indirect services that emerge from nature. At the same time, nature is exceedingly complex - its virtually impossible to predict how a system functions under fairly stable conditions, and we are well aware that conditions which apply to one system do not necessarily apply to another. Throw a range of anthropogenic stresses into the mix, and things become even more complicated.

Against this background we are trying to predict the effects of uneven levels of climate change - occurring at vastly different scales in different biogeographical realms - on the stability and and functioning of complex adaptive systems. In truth, it is nothing less than a big experiment on our ecological life-support systems with no replications. And since the changes will be non-linear, we can expect surprises.

In summary, what we don't know about the effects of climate change on the biosphere far exceeds what we do know. For saying this, as a scientist with some expertise in the field I get ridiculed by a small but vocal army of ignorant contrarians who argue that humans are not constrained by any natural laws. In spite of vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, they wish to believe in the tooth fairy, and that human wisdom, ingenuity and technology will offset any limitations imposed by nature. This is dangerous talk. And when I find economists and statisticians - in other words people lacking any basic grounding in ecology - arguing that we've worked out all of the nuances in predicting the effects of climate change on human civilization (both costs and benefits) I can only shake my head in disbelief. It takes incredible hubris for anyone to argue that we can manage climate change and the global ecological commons given all of the vast number of unknowns. As I have said before, its a big crap shoot, with very nasty outcomes in store if we do not change course.

Wow: If you call someone a denier, they will complain no matter whether it is justified or not (obviously). That is why it is important to be able to point to a clear history of denial, otherwise the "debate" will probably revert to pointless name-calling.

Jeff Harvey : Actually, if you read some of the impacts work, they kind of admit they have no idea what the real impacts will be. The problem is that this uncertainty does not really make it into the final results (which makes sense, because it can not be estimated yet). Now, this wouldn't be all that much of an issue in a purely academic discussion, but here we have someone like Lomborg, who comes in, takes it as a done deal, and then goes around lecturing everyone on how irrational they are.

If anything, the issues raised in this thread indicate that we should perhaps devote more attention to this area instead of some obscure points of paleoclimate statistics and the like.

Rocco,

Good points. When I debated Lomborg back in 2002, I got this impression as well. His strategy appeared to be "What we don't know, however large that may be, can be dismissed, so that we should focus on the knowns". As far as I remember, he even went so far as to tell the audience that the effects of climate change on natural ecosystems had already been calculated and was in the latest (at that time) IPCC draft. Of course, scientists with the relevant expertise would know that these estimates are exceedingly arbitrary, and perhaps even completely useless, given that our understanding of ecosystem functioning, even ignoring the various human-induced stresses to them, is very, very basic.

This is what annoys me about economnists, and especially those downplaying climate change and its effects. They try to give the impression that they have worked out all of the costs and benefits of warming in their tidy little econometric models, and ignore the vast uncertainties in the process. Its hardly surprising that most of them do not understand even basic ecology. To mask this, they make their models more and more refined, because models projecting outcomes to within a few decimal points give the indication to the lay reader that they are completely on top of the subject. The reality is that they aren't anywhere close to it, bearing in mind of of the many complexities that are barely understood, and their own lack of pedigree in any of the environmental sciences. I admire economists like Geoffrey Heal who decided to spend an extended period at Stanford University in the Department of Biological Sciences so that he could learn more about the natural economy and its importance in sustaining human civilization. More economists ought to do this.

> Wow: If you call someone a denier, they will complain no matter whether it is justified or not (obviously).

And if someone thinks you're acting denier-ish, then someone is going to call you a denier, whether it is justified or not (obviously).

@Rocco
As I noted before, I was not involved in the ranking of the projects in CC08. Why don't you look it up?

Gee Richard, did you also get a doctorate from the Karl Rove school of implausible deniability?

Maybe it's just me, but if my work were being paraded around in a highly public manner, bearing my name, and for the purpose of policy advocacy affecting billions of men, women and children, I might have the temerity to look into whether what is being peddled is supported by my work in the first place.

And if it wasn't I might have the temerity to very publically make a note of that, and call out the individual, individuals, or institutions that were distorting my work. I might not even continue to associate with the person who had so damaged my credibility and the public debate. But then *I* have some semblance of integrity. And a conscience.

Wow Rocco! In reference to Tim Worstall, my last post contained the line

Perhaps, as Rocco noted, I've jumped to a conclusion I shouldn't have.

If you had in mind a stiffer penance- public flogging?- I'm sorry to disappoint you. In any case, context in which 'denier' is so strong as to twist knickers is decidedly distinct from this one. Next time spare the sermon for sunday.

As to your sentiment that the economics of climate change are more worth looking into than the minutia of high-frequency climate reconstruction statistics, it's certainly right. But that's a pretty low bar. The reality is that there's not much mystery as to what happens when you relax the constraint that manifest uncertainty be assumed away. When you do that, and in light of the empirically *revealed* preferences of Richard's ostentatiously pious reverence, you're forced to accept a 'no doubter'-esque high return on mitigation spending. As Marty Weitzman's work capably illustrates.

This is due to the fact that it has been emphatically 'revealed' that people will spend a lot to avoid the left hand tail of outcomes (and the left hand tail in this instance, without a shred of hyperbole, is nothing less than cataclysm). As that eventuality gets thick with probability, as it clearly is in this case, it doesn't matter a lick what's going on in the remainder of the distribution. And that's a fact.

For my money the real action lies in how to organize that in a world where so many powerful interests are so deadset against cooperation in any emissions regime whatsoever. Where vastly complex trade, diplomacy and historical considerations make a workable agreement between developed and emerging countries so complex. Of these matters, the answers are anything but obvious.

In any case, with regard to the topic at hand, I would expect academics and policy makers to entertain discussions that accept these realities, not least those that grapple with implications for other issues that could be construed as bearing unacceptable risks to our civilization's existence as a going concern. Models such as Richard Tol's however, that as a rule assume away everything, are so trite as to forfeit any place at that table. Darts in the hands of Hellen Keller would have a better chance of finding home.

@ Tom Curtis, jakerman

Tol is a master at not answering the question and in general misdirection. His initial response on IrishEconomy.ie to questions about his association with the GWPF is a study in itself (there are, apparently, many "areas" of "disagreement" between Tol and the nutters in the GWPF according to Tol, but he alas declines to let us know what these may be) and his defence of Lomborg has been tortured ("he can afford to be more accurate now").

By the way, Tol's other preoccupation these days is in relentlessly promoting a Covanta incinerator project which the ESRI was (handsomely) commissioned by the collaborating local authority to study, which study alas [met an unfortunate end](http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0205/1224263813621.html) when some basic fact-checking was carried out (and not by the ESRI).

Our very own AEI. My, how Ireland has joined the big league these days.

@EWI
As you well know, the errors in that particular report have corrected, without affecting the main conclusions.

Richard Tol.

You been asked on a number of occasions now about the real-world bases and justifications for your modelling, and about the factors that you excluded from the same modelling. You've also had the fact of this repeated querying pointed out to now on a number of occasions.

Do you require a posting of all of the links, collectively, so that you can more easily review the questions put to you, and thus more easily and expeditiously answer them? If you're having some difficulty in attempting an addressing of this material, I am sure that we can all pitch in to help you to start from the basic concepts.

@Bernard
There is no point in explaining and discussing a hugely complex issues in comments on a blog.

A description of the model, the assumptions, and the code can be found at http://www.fund-model.org/ There is also a list of papers there, and another list at my home page (just click on my name).

I'm perfectly happy to discuss things point by point, initiated by a blog post that sets out the issue.

Maybe Tim will oblige.

Richard Tol: You know, sometimes, what you do not say is just as important, if not more, then what you do say. We're done here.

Wow: Yup.

Richard Tol:

@Bernard There is no point in explaining and discussing a hugely complex issues [sic] in comments on a blog.

Actually, I would think that a scientifically-oriented blog such as Deltoid would be the perfect medium in which to succinctly summarise and then to discuss the "hugely complex issues" underpinning your models' assumptions about the impacts of climate change.

All the more so if your assumptions are ecologically inadequate, because it is quite possible that your target audience in the journals where you publish could well miss the fact that you have over-simplified your modelling to the point of uselessness. It is in exactly a forum such as this where you might have a mix of expertise that can rapidly identify any critically important failings of your assumptions.

Of course, I can see that this might be undesirable in certain contexts as it might actually harm the both the ouput productivity and the policy consequences of your papers. Conversely, it might actually reinforce the validity of your work, and personally, if I were confident in my modelling I would want to disseminate and explain in as many fora as possible the bases of my calculations. Isn't that the reason for publishing in the first place?

A description of the model, the assumptions, and the code can be found at http://www.fund-model.org/ There is also a list of papers there, and another list at my home page (just click on my name).

See, the thing is, Richard Tol, that you are sending the reader on a long and tedious journey which really should not be necessary. Perhaps it is different in economics compared with science, but I would have expected that even a basic answer to my questions could have been nutted out in a page or so (several at the most if one is not efficent), in a form consisting really of no more than a list of the major ecological, climatological, socialogical and economic assumptions that are included, and another list of those parameters not included.

In my very personal opinion, your vagueness and hand-waving imply either a lack of confidence in your models, or an inability to concisely summarise your understanding of the scientific parameters underpinning them. Or both.

Seriously, is there nowhere in the literature - whether 'professional' or 'grey' - where the essential nuts and bolts* of your models are described in one concise précis? How do expect anyone to give any credence to such models if they are not easily assessible?

If this task is beyond the ken of one who has himself been publishing for more than a decade in the field, then it might be an interesting and an entertaining exercise to see who can first come up with such a summary on your behalf...

I guess if we can't do this the easy way then we will have to do it the hard way. It seems that the stone must be wrung in order obtain the blood. I'm already wading through your entertaining list of papers (perhaps entertaining isn't the most appropriate word...), although I must say I am quite prepared to cease and desist in my efforts if someone can provide a half decent reason for me to do so.

Some of the comments above are already persuading me of the futility of this exercise.

[* Snigger... "nuts and Bolts". There's at least the core of a good thread title in that phrase!]

@Bernard
Start reading my work. Pick an assumption to discuss. Convince Tim to start a thread, or start your own blog. I will engage under those conditions.

> Tol is a master at not answering the question and in general misdirection.

This is rather like being a master at not playing football. As long as you have no sense of shame, it's easy to be a master. It's only when you think you should be able to do better and try that you fail to be a master not-answering-the-question-er.

Here's an example:

> @Bernard Start reading my work. Pick an assumption to discuss

Which anyone with an oz of decency would have seen that the assumption of what discount rate to use has been raised multiple times in frequent succession.

A complete lack of ethics and a lack of honour to match means that he manages to not answer the question by bare-faced BS.

Monckton is good at this one (cf the "can anyone state the value of $something to three decimal places?" then getting the WRONG NUMBER: not a problem for this nut because he has no shame, no honour and no respect for anyone). Same here.

Bernard J and wow: when either of you can match Tol in breadth and depth of published peer-reviwed papers in the public domain, then, and only then, can you validly besmirch him the way you do. Instead of gross libels, when you actually can come up with a critique based on any of Tol's papers are you likely to make a contribution. What's so hard about that? He has provided links, many available free of charge from his CV at his various employers' sites.

Bernard, all you have ever done here or in your life is armwaving. Name any point of substance for improving the human condition you have ever advanced. If you were capable of that, you like Tol would be in the public domain. But you are not, hence your repose here in the last refuge of all true members of Lambert's First Church of Climate Change.

Fred Knell writes:

>*Bernard J and wow: when either of you can match Tol in breadth and depth of published peer-reviwed papers in the public domain, then, and only then, can you validly besmirch him the way you do.*

Do you take the same approach with Climate scientist Fred?

Or is your argument from authority just hypocritical?

Fred Knell,

I CAN match Richard Tol in publications (I have 103) and citations (1851) in peer-reviewed journals and I stand by the questions Bernard and Wow raise. Most improtabntly, how ecologically (in)adequate are the assumptions that are built into models predicting the effects of climate change? This is a crucial point, and I would like to see Richard address it.

I recall on a Deltoid thread a few years ago Richard downplaying the importance of nature (based on the seminal Costanza et al. study in Nature in 1997) in the material economy. The entire reason Costanza wrote the article was that he was sick and tired of economists dismissing the importance of nature in sustaining human civilization (e.g. nature is worth < 2% of GDP etc.). The fact is that natural systems underpin the material economy; in other words the material economy is a very small component of the natural economy. The article now has 1823 citations in 14 years, or more than 100 per year, making it one of the most cited papers in that time in any related field.

Since you appear to know absolutely nothing about this field, Fred Knell, it takes remrkable hubris for you to wade in with your gibberish.

jakerman: all my comments re Bernard and wow apply with even greater force to you, a black hole if ever there was one. Name anything constructive - just one - you have ever said, as opposed to gutter sniping. Richard Tol is one of the world's top ten economists by any measure, and on climate change he is for sure numero uno.

Knell,

By the way, Robert Costanza has 200 articles and 6,000 citations plus, which puts him in the big league. And he would ask the same questions that Bernard and I do.

Lastly, how on Earth can you, of all people, gauge the quality of a researcher or of their work? Because you agree with them? How many articles have you published in the empirical literature? What do you know about the effects of climate change and othert anthropogenic threats on communities, ecosystems, biomes, and on the services that emerge from them?

I can guess... Um... nil?

Jff H: h dr - " CN mtch Rchrd Tl n pblctns ( hv ) nd cttns () n pr-rvwd jrnls nd stnd b th qstns Brnrd nd Ww rs". Jff, y r f crs brllnt, bt n nmbr f pblctns nd cttns n th qvlnt f th Rdrs Dgst r f n cnsqnc. ntl y cn shw y hv dvncd mprcll vldtd (.. nn-cntrvrtd) hypthss, nd knw y nvr hv, jst stck t sd Dgst. Fr xmpl, y r rght whn y s "Th fct s tht ntrl systms ndrpn th mtrl cnm" bt qt wrng whn y dd "n thr wrds th mtrl cnm s vr smll cmpnnt f th ntrl cnm". T b spcfc, d rfr t Jhn Qggn's pc n th FR td, vlbl b nw t hs blg. f crs ll f r wlth nd wll-bng dpnd n th ntrl cnm, bt r hmn ngnt hs blt n tht t prdc fr mr thn t vr hs r cld n ts wn. D tll wht s th csh (GDP r GNP) vl tht yr "ntrl cnm" prdcs wtht n hmn ntrvntn whtsvr. r d y xpct s t blv yr pst hr ws sll th prdct f th nn-hmn cnm? Th trth s y r vn thckr n ll snss thn vn ww nd Brnrd

Dear Fred, no more trolling on this thread, please.

@Jeff Harvey
I am perfectly happy to discuss my work. However, I will not take responsibility for other people's work. And I will not summarize 20 years of research in a single comment to a thread about something else entirely.

If you want to start a thread on the ecological inadequacy of my research, I'd be happy to engage.

> Bernard J and wow: when either of you can match Tol in breadth and depth of published peer-reviwed papers in the public domain, then, and only then, can you validly besmirch him the way you do

Tell Watts that? How about Mad Lord Monckton? Fred Singer? Sen Inholfe?

Since when have any self-proclaimed skeptics (i.e. deniers) EVER cared about the breadth and depth of papers? Isn't it all proof of a conspiracy and how the widely publicised paper faked because it supports the consensus (except here the consensus is a financial one, not a physical or environmental one. Spot the opportunity for confirmation bias and fiscal pressure).

Richard,

You used the term 'ecological inadequacies', not me. My concern is that, like Bjorn Lomborg, you have not studied the field of systems ecology and thus that makes it very hard for you to appreciate the wide array of supporting services that enable our civilization to thrive and persist. These are well discussed in the empirical literature, and in my university lectures I provide 4 examples - the Catskill Mountain Watershed, palm oil pollinators, pest control services in the Caribbean, and the value of sustainable harvesting of tropical ecosystem goods - where supporting (or provisioning) ecosystem services have been valued. As I have pointed out many times, and as you well know, the value of supporting services are externalized in economic price-cost scenarios, meaning we have little idea of their value until they are added or lost. It is also important to point out that there are few technological substitutes for most ecosystem services, such as water purification, climate control, pollination, maintenance of soil fertility, and many others, and even where there are, they are often prohibitively expensive. The trouble is that too many people, like Fred Knell above, see the value of nature purely in terms of how humans can exploit and utilize it it. The biosphere as a life support system does not factor into many people's appreciation of our utter dependence on nature.

The crux of the matter is I would like to ask you how many ecologists and systems biologists you have discussed the effects of climate change with, how much of their work you have read, and how much your models of climate change effects take into account the threat it poses to supporting services. Have you attended any international conferences e.g. the annual ESA meeting, where these issues are discussed and debated? If you can also suggest some of your literarture that I should read that would enlighten me, I would be happy to do so.

I'd also be glad to engage in a discussion with you about what components of our ecological systems act as 'life support' and how climate change threatens them. If Tim creates and appropriate thread, I'd be happy to contibute to it.

An example of the breadth of the topic:

Type in the words 'climate change and biodiversity' into the Web of Science search engine and there are 2,765 hits; type in 'climate change and extinction' and there are 1374 hits; type in 'climatye change and ecosystem services' and there are 450 hits; type in 'climate change and ecosystem functioning' and there are 322 hits.

In other words there are a lot of studies. Many suggest dramatic declines in the populations of some species or interaction networks, or in the health and vitality of ecosystems in response to warming if it continues at current rates. And of course these processes will rebound on society to some extent. These are the effects that must be factored in.

I was cursorily glancing through your Copenhagen Conseusus article, Richard, entitled "An analysis of mitgation as a response to climate change"(2009) and on page 9 you wrote this: "The initial benefits rise partly because more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reduces 'water stress' in plants and makes them grow faster"(from Long et al., 2006, Science).

This is the kind of flippant argument, if I may say so, that needs a response. First, of all, I do not think that the intention of the author's article, entitled, "Food for Thought: Lower than expected crop yield simulation with rising C02 concentrations" was to promote the benefits of warming for increased plant growth rates. That aside, your statement completely ignores the fact that (1) the ecology and biochemistry of faster growing plants may change dramatically owing to higher C02 regimes and warmer temperatures; (2) that plant fitness is integrally correlated with interactions with local communities of pollinators and other organisms; (3) the effects of changes in plant biology on interactions with pathogens and herbivores, as well as there natural enemies; (4) the effects of warming on soil biota including both mutualists and antagonists.

I and several others here have dealt with the overly simple arguments that 'more C02 = bigger plants = net benefits" because these predictions ignore a avst array of often complex interactions in ecological communities that ultimately determine plant growth and fitness. Changes in N and C-based chemical plant defenses will have consequences across food chains that interact with plants. Changes in stoichiometry up the food chain will also occur, as a result of atmospheric changes in C02.

Under normal circumstances these changes might be minor, but these are not 'normal circumstances'. The rate of change of temperature and atmospheric C02 is certainly much higher than in tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, and is set against a backdrop of a suite of other human-induced changes in natural systems. The challenge is to link local-scale process with emergent properties at the scale of ecosystems and biomes. But simple remarks like 'plants will grow faster' ignores a wealth of complex non-linear processes that determine exactly how plants and the communities in which they grow will respond to warming and changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Many of the studies I cite are attempting to determine if it is possible to make simple linear extrapolations of climate warming on primary producers and higher trophic levels. This has been the focus of research by scientists like Rick Lindroth, and is the kind of topical research being discussed at conferences and workshops. Later this year I will be a keynote speaker at a workshop on plant-insect interactions, in which I will discuss invasive plants and insects, many of which are thriving in a warming world and which are a threat to native communities.

@Jeff
I know enough about ecology to know that I know very little about ecology -- while my models do not exhaust what little I do know.

Tell Watts that? How about Mad Lord Monckton? Fred Singer? Sen Inholfe?

Wow, all of those people use Real-Seeming Names. That's all the authority they need.

Fred Knell invites me:

>*Name anything constructive - just one - you have ever said*

I don't need to look very far Fred, just back to the [last post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3122609) were I provided the service of exposing both the fallacious nature of your argument and the hypocrisy of it.

Pity you didn't digest my point, and instead repeated your erroneous and inconsistent logic.

Tol writes:

>*I am perfectly happy to discuss my work. However, I will not take responsibility for other people's work.*

Richard this thread is on your work and its misuse. Who is taking responsibility for your work being misused in the Copenhagen Consensus ranking?

Do you dispute your work's misuse? Yohe says you ("you", as in Yohe's use of "we") [knowingly submitted](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/01/clearing-more-things-up.html) your work with higher discount rate in full knowledge that it was to be used in the Copenhagen Consensus ranking.

>*We chose 5% falling to 4% because it ran between the 3% and 6% choices that the rules offered.*

Do you share Yohe's interpretation? Did you misunderstand the ranking system being used?

You appear to know very little about reality Richard. Your estimate of the cost of losing 99% of the species on earth being $250 per head. Shall we call that the great FUND die off?

John Donnne, at this point, might well have said

...ask not for whom the Knell trolls, it's Tol for he

The bell is Tolling for Richard over at Eli's. And if anyone is wondering, [Eli's post](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/01/richard-tol.html) is well worth the read.

[P. Lewis ](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3125767) FTW!

Bernard, all you have ever done here or in your life is armwaving.

You have obviously never read my somewhat extensive corrections of Tim Curtin, one of my favourite scientific inepts. There is rather a large body of record-straightening just there. I also wasted quite a lot of time trying to elicit some semblance of a rational and objective thought process, in Wormtongue's skull, that might result in his garnering of an understanding of basic science and statistics. And there have been many drive-by trolls that have copped it, hopefully to their subsequent educational betterment, so I don't think that my time has been completely for naught.

As to what I do in my "life", you have not the merest glimmer of an idea about what I have achieved, so it is you, rather, who should stop waving his arms.

Name any point of substance for improving the human condition you have ever advanced. If you were capable of that, you like Tol would be in the public domain. But you are not, hence your repose here in the last refuge of all true members of Lambert's First Church of Climate Change.

What I do away from this blog is not at all relevant, as I am not using my works to make any point in the context of this thread, other than to the extent that my ecological understanding helps me to identify shortcomings in Tol's ecological conclusions. Similarly, if my more general scientific understanding helps me to identify Tol's general scientific shortcoming in his models, then it's relevant to that extent, but the outlining of it need not be paraded here as a 10 page CV.

What matters is whether any of the problems that I have with Tol's work are valid, and whether he is able to address them. To this end my background itself is irrelevant.

And for your information I am in the public domain. This is why I maintain my semi-anonymity here - I've suffered at the hands of your ilk in the past, and I have no need to incur the anger and harrassment of your sort again in the process of simply arriving at the truth of matters.

And what on earth do you mean, "gross libels"? If you're referring to:

In my very personal opinion, your vagueness and hand-waving imply either a lack of confidence in your models, or an inability to concisely summarise your understanding of the scientific parameters underpinning them. Or both.

then I'd love to have detailed how this constitutes "gross libel".

One thing that I think that you need to understand is that I am not actually trying to destroy Richard Tol. I am very interested to see how robust his modelling actually is (or isn't...), and whether it can be usefully improved. It is in Tol's interest to produce and to publish the most reliable modelling that he is able to, and if feedback here can improve his work, then he and everyone else here should welcome the scrutiny of its assumptions and its operating parameters.

@Eli
That is the discount rate we used in this particular study.

To writes:

>*@Eli That is the discount rate we used in this particular study.*

So you don't disagree with Eli's [gutting of your FUND model](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/01/richard-tol.html)?

Tim did not (yet) take up my offer, but Eli did:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/01/richard-tol.html

@Bernard
You did not libel me in any way.

I cannot succinctly summarise 20 years of research and 176 papers. You may think that is a failure on my part, but I would see that as a sign that my research has progressed over the years and my papers are not repetitive.

I'm happy to engage in discussions on specific parts of my research. Eli started the ball rolling on ecosystem valuation.

Bernard's reply to Richard, that a blog is a good medium for discussing the complexities, makes sense, but it is also somewhat similar to what is often said on "skeptic" blogs about climate scientists: "Come and let us tear your work apart; it can only improve as a result. Your refusal to do so will be seen as admitting the poor quality of your work".

It appeals to those on the same side of the fence, but looking at it from some distance also shows the inevitable problems. Climate scientists understandably are loath to disucss the ins and outs of their research at "skeptical" blogs, because with such animosity, what's there to gain?

I'm fully aware that all blogs are not created equal, but the point is how does the blog population view the respective researcher and vice versa. From that perspective, I think there is at least some equivalence.

Richard,

I appreciate your honesty. Saying that, why don't you contact me when you are next in Holland at the Vrije Universiteit so that we can sit down and discuss some of these ideas? This might even make a fruitful collaboration, as it is my opinion that ecologists and economsists ought to work together more closely.

I would also like to know if Eli is correct - did you make this estimate? *Your estimate of the cost of losing 99% of the species on earth being $250 per head*

Of course the cost would be more than that - it would be the extinction of the human species, no ifs or buts. Not only ecosystem services, but of course ecosystem functions hinge on the interplay involving trillions of individuals, billions of populations, millions of species and food webs. As we reduce diversityy, we reduce functional redundancy - whereby certain species fulfill critical roles - thus making systems more prone to collapse.

Richard, have you read any of the literature by Gretchen Daily and colleagues at Stanford University? I can certainly suggest some ecological literature where servcies are valuated.

> Climate scientists understandably are loath to disucss the ins and outs of their research at "skeptical" blogs, because with such animosity, what's there to gain?

The problem with putting more work in discussion on a denier blog is that the audience there DO NOT CARE about accuracy. I forget the quoter but "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas" is OK unless the person doesn't care about the quality. Because the best way to have lots of ideas is to have lots of BAD ones. You don't have to sweat comprehension then.

It's easier to say "the warming isn't from CO2, it's from the sun" than to explain why that's wrong.

It isn't the venue, it's the clientele.

And no "skeptic" would think of gainsaying the idiocies of another in their pursuit of denial of human effects on the climate.

> I cannot succinctly summarise 20 years of research and 176 papers.

Wow. You've been working on this one project for 20 years and made 176 papers doing it?!?!?!

Dick, in furtherance of your goal to NEVER answer a question, what do you say to the complaint against the climate scientists (re: investigation into CRU and the Hockey Stick(s)) that they need to have specialists in statistics to work on the statistics?

I would infer that you disagree since you don't seem to feel it necessary to have any specialists for the areas outside your own narrow research field.

> Wow, all of those people use Real-Seeming Names. That's all the authority they need.

> Posted by: pough

And the depth of the papers is the depth of those papers these intellectual minnows wipe their arses with?

Still doesn't help Fred since Sen Inholfe has ZERO papers in climate yet wants to put them in jail, dismissing the depth and breadth of the papers produced by these scientists and yet Fred doesn't care.

To Fred and Inholfe, the environment is THE ENEMY and MUST be destroyed.

Richard Tol.

I appreciate your reply at #166. Whilst I have been a little curt in places in the latter of my comments, I have tried to retain a semblance of politeness.

It's not a secret that I have grave reservations about the assumptions of your models, and conversely about the absence of other assumptions; however, I recognise that you are at least engaging to an extent. I hope that you might at some point consider how you might give a cogent summary of the inputs included in and excluded from your models, but one bridge at a time, I guess...

Bart, I do take [your point](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/tolgate.php#comment-3127016), although I think that the conspicuous difference here is that those challenging Richard Tol actually have an understanding of the disciplines of science from which Tol's assumptions are drawn. In the denialist versus science charades this level of engagement does not occur, at least from the side of thse who deny the physics of climatology.

Further, I would hope that boths sides in the discussion of Tol's work here would avoid the logical fallies, misrepresentations, distortions, and outright lying that characterises the babble that passes for denialist discussion on Blogs That Must Not Be Named.

@Jeff
Eli misread the equations. $250/person/year would be the cost of losing an additional species when 99% are lost already.

>*$250/person/year would be the cost of losing an additional species when 99% are lost already.*

Tol, how much does your models assume is the cost (WTP) for the loss of the first 99% of species?

Richard,

If the planet had already lost 99% of species, then its almost certain that we would be among them. In fact, my guess is that, in a sequence of extinction, humans would go well before many of the other 99%.

This is because the 99% figure would certainly include most pollinators, and perhaps many soil biota that perform critical functions in maintaining a healthy soil environment. Entire ecosystems would collapse as the primary producers disappear, and with them higher trophic levels dependent on them.

We can discuss this when I meet you in Amsterdam.

@Jakerman
The value is $50/rich person/year per species when there are 14,000,000 species. This goes up to $250/rp/yr per species when there are 140,000 species.

Note that $250 is by Eli. I did not check his math.

Tol, roughtly if we use $150 x 99% x 14 million we'd get approx $2Billion/person/in one year, or $50 million/person/year over 40 years.

Is that roughly what you say?

Richard,

Where do you get 14,000,000 species from? Is this an arbitrary figure? There may be 5 million or 80 million extant species, depending on whom you talk to.

And you must know that some are clearly more important than others. Where do ecosystem services fit into your models? On what criteria do you value a species?

@Jeff
14 mln is somewhere in the middle of the range of published estimates. I forget the exact source.

"The value is $50/rich person/year per species when there are 14,000,000 species. This goes up to $250/rp/yr per species when there are 140,000 species."

I find this interesting, especially when considering the cost put on invasive species to UK agriculture by Vila et al (2010) Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 8: 135â144* who state crop losses in the United Kingdom alone due to alien arthropods are ~ â¬2.8 billion (about $3.7 billion) per annum.

*http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/080083

I wonder if the same cost benefit analysis could be done to justify genocide. There is a HUGE flaw with humanity, if it doesn't see a problem with this line of reasoning. Doing something because it is RIGHT should overrule doing something because it is economically suitable.

I couldn't care less for the fate of a species which thinks like this.

People make me sick.