Articles by Joseph Romm

MIT and NBER (and Tol and Nordhaus) — right wing deniers love your work. Ask yourselves 'why?'

"Study Shows Global Warming Will Not Hurt U.S. Economy" -- That's the Heritage Foundation touting a new study by economists from MIT and the National Bureau of Economic Review.

This study, "Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century" [PDF] -- wildly mistitled and deeply flawed, as we will see -- is yet another value-subtracting contribution by the economics profession to climate policy.

What makes the paper especially noteworthy, however, is not merely the credentials of the authors, but that they thank such climate economist luminaries as William Nordhaus and Richard Tol for "helpful comments and suggestions." The only helpful comment and suggestion I can think of for this paper is, "Burn the damn thing and start over from scratch."

Heritage quotes the study:

Our main results show large, negative effects of higher temperatures on growth, but only in poor countries. In poorer countries, we estimate that a 1?C rise [sic -- the Heritage folks haven't mastered the ° symbol] in temperature in a given year reduced economic growth in that year by about 1.1 percentage points. In rich countries, changes in temperature had no discernable effect on growth. Changes in precipitation had no substantial effects on growth in either poor or rich countries. We find broadly consistent results across a wide range of alternative specifications.

Heritage then quotes a commentary on the study by right-wing blogger for U.S. News & World Report James Pethokoukis, "Sorry, Climate Change Wouldn't Hurt America's Economy." Pethokoukis also quotes from the study:

Despite these large, negative effects for poor countries, we find very little impact of long-run climate change on world GDP. This result follows from (a) the absence of estimated temperature effects in rich countries and (b) the fact that rich countries make up the bulk of world GDP. Moreover, if rich countries continue to grow at historical rates, their share of world GDP becomes more pronounced by 2099, so even a total collapse of output in poor countries has a relatively small impact on total world output.

(If these excerpts suggest to you that the study authors and the economist commenters are victims of some sort of collective mass hysteria, then you are a getting (a little) ahead of me ... but the fact that thoroughly-debunked denier Ross McKitrick is a commenter on this paper certainly suggests this entire effort is indefensible.)

Pethokoukis himself then offers a conclusion that, though amazing, is not utterly ridiculous given a narrow misreading of this absurdly narrow, easily-misread study:

Half of oil and gas CFOs say we are peaking

It's amazing enough that the normally staid International Energy Agency recently said we've run out of time. Now Business Wire reports:

According to a new survey by BDO Seidman, LLP, one of the nation's leading accounting and consulting organizations, 48 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) at U.S. oil and gas exploration and production companies agree that the world has reached its peak petroleum (liquid hydrocarbon) production rate or will reach it within the next few years, while another 52 percent disagree with that statement.

I think the headline is wrong, though:

Energy CFOs Are Split on World's Peak Petroleum Production Rate, According to BDO Seidman, LLP.

Chief Financial Officers at exploration and production companies are arguably the most cautious "show me the money" people in the entire energy business. The news is not that they are split. The news is that half think we are peaking or soon will.

The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target

A U.S. climate bill should set a target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That conclusion is based on the latest science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA, among others, but it also involves matters of timing and U.S. cap-and-trade design. To achieve its goals, domestic climate legislation should limit the use of both international and domestic offsets.

The United States has the technology and resources to reduce its emissions levels substantially below 1990 levels by 2020, and having already lost much of its credibility in the international community by failing to act, there is no time to lose in adoption of binding targets to avoid the risks of dangerous impacts of global warming.

That is the executive summary of a new report I have written for the Center for American Progress (Full report here [PDF]). I have changed my thinking on the 2020 target a bit in the past year for three reasons:

1. Scientific observations and analysis in 2007 and 2008 make clear the pace and threat of climate change has accelerated (see Nos. 8, 7, and 3 here).
2. We must try to keep open the option of going much lower than 450.
3. Politicians insist on effectively watering down their 2020 targets with rip-offsets.

The full report is reprinted below:

Coal industry front group touts benefits of strong emissions regulations

You may have thought the coal industry would never sing the praises of environmental regulations. But now that the clean coal carolers have moved on, the ACCCE (American Coalition for Clean Coal Euphemisms?) is singing a different tune.

In an analysis titled "77 Percent Cleaner," the ACCCE makes one of the strongest cases I have recently seen for EPA regulations:

Over the last 35 years, America's coal-based electricity providers have invested more than $50 billion in technologies to reduce emissions. Due to investments like these, our coal-based generating fleet is more than 77 percent cleaner on the basis of regulated emissions per unit of energy produced.

The calculations are based on five pollutants: carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. The data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reflects the environmental performance per unit of energy produced. That is, the relationship of emissions per billion kilowatt-hours. From 1970 to 2005, the value for that ratio fell from 30,510 short tons per billion kilowatt-hours to just 6,970 short tons per billion kilowatt-hours -- a reduction of 77.15 percent.

If the coal industry is publicly bragging about reducing regulated emissions, then it is obviously endorsing those regulations. And if the industry is bragging about the investments it had to make because of those regulations, then it is implicitly stating it is prepared to make further, large investments to achieve new regulatory requirements.

The ACCCE even includes a nice figure that makes the case for strong greenhouse regulations: