A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change

The economic benefits of reducing CO(2) emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO(2) emissions reductions on atmospheric CO(2) appear to be short rather than long lasting. The costs of CO(2) emissions reductions are very much higher than usually estimated because of technological and implementation problems recently identified. Geoengineering such as solar radiation management is a controversial alternative to CO(2) emissions reductions that offers opportunities to greatly decrease these large costs, change global temperatures with far greater assurance of success, and eliminate the possibility of low probability, high consequence risks of rising temperatures, but has been largely ignored by economists. CO(2) emissions reductions are economically unattractive since the very modest benefits remaining after the corrections for the above effects are quite unlikely to economically justify the much higher costs unless much lower cost geoengineering is used. The risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming appears to be so low that it is not currently worth doing anything to try to control it, including geoengineering.