The Factual Context For Climate And Energy Policy - Highlighted Article

From: Hoover Institution - Tennenbaum Program for Fact-Based Policy

By: Steven E. Koonin

Date: September 26, 2024

The Factual Context For Climate And Energy Policy

Virtually all climate policy discussions assume that climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But any realistic policy must balance the hazards, risks, and benefits of a changing climate against the world’s growing demand for reliable, affordable, and clean energy. To strike that balance, climate policymakers will consider society’s values and priorities, its tolerance for risk, equities among generations and geographies, and the efficacy, costs, and collateral impacts of any policy. This paper reviews some of the scientific, techno-economic, and societal facts and circumstances that should inform those policy decisions and draws some straightforward conclusions from them.

CLIMATE IMPACTS

Projections of the impacts of future climate changes rely on assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions fed into large computer models of the ocean and atmosphere. Although those models can give a hazy picture of what lies before us at the global scale, their deficiencies on smaller scales are legion. For example, two senior climate researchers firmly within the scientific mainstream have said this:

For many key applications that require regional climate model output or for assessing large-scale changes from small-scale processes, we believe that the current generation of models is not fit for purpose.

That’s particularly important because adaptation measures depend upon regional model projections. One of the same senior researchers noted the following:

It is difficult, and in many places impossible, to scientifically advise societal efforts to adapt in the face of unavoidable warming. Our knowledge gaps are frightful because they make it impossible to assess the extent to which a given degree of warming poses existential threats. (continue reading)

The Factual Context For Climate And Energy Policy