Transcript - Global Warming Briefing

June 13, 1997    Global Warming - Program Agenda - click here

BURNETT  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
QUESTION 		Thank you, John. I'd like to thank all the panelists for a moment. [applause]

And now we have a very brief time for questions and answers. Please identify yourself as you ask questions, and I'll recognize.

What about a letter signed by more than 2000 members of the economists who said that the treaty wouldn't be economically harmful - indeed, it would have net economic benefits in the long run?

TRISKO 		I'll take the first part of it. The survey result of 2,000 economists that was widely reported in the press, they didn't report that, in fact, the majority, the vast majority of members of the American Economic Association who were approached to sign on to that survey questionnaire declined to do so, so the 2,000 represent, if you will, a minority point of view. But recognizing the political play that that resulted in, Cecil Roberts, the international president of the United Mine Workers Union, wrote to the organization in San Francisco that sponsored the survey asking if they could provide any study that supported the principal conclusion, namely, that emissions could be reduced essentially without cost to the economy. Mr. Roberts indicated if there were such a study, he would be most interested in having the opportunity to review it. No such study was provided. It's an opinion survey.

Burnett  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Adler 		If I can follow up a bit. In fact, it's not just that a majority refused to sign. Only 12 percent of the membership, some consensus, agreed with that statement. And in fact, of the 24 studies that have been released studying the economic impacts -- 24 -- not one has come to that same conclusion.  
 
If I could make additional comments. I think it's important that we look at that statement to read the fine print very closely. It doesn't say we can meet our targets at no cost. It says somewhere out there are things we can do that can reduce emissions at no cost. I could certainly think of a few. There are certain types of subsidy programs which I would argue cutting that spending would do -- it would not only reduce emissions, but would also be of benefit to the economy, but it wouldn't do anything near stabilize emissions at 1990 levels.

I'll give you an example; of even those that signed, Gary Yeo, who was cited earlier, signed that statement. He believes yes, if we do something, we should probably do it in a market driven way, and yes, I could come up with some things somewhere that would have some downward effect on emissions that aren't going to cost anything. But he still believes that meeting the targets will at best case scenario be a replay of the 1970s energy crisis, and I would refer you to the study that he did for the American Council for Capital Formation. He is an example of one of the signatories to that statement. So even among the signatories of that statement, there is a belief that meeting the objective of the treaty is still going to impose a tremendous amount of pain.

In terms of the Department of Energy study, I'm someone that believes ...... put a little bit too much faith in economic models, and believing that just as models of the climate can't always deal with every variable, a lot of times models of the economy have that problem. I think when you're looking at industry -- looking at impact on various industrial sectors, it is important to consult with those who know those industries best, and I think that tends not to be the regulators, but tends to be the regulated community. And if you look at the content of that study and the way it was constructed in terms of the Department of Energy study, in terms of working groups of specialists on each industry talking about how energy intensive that industry was -- those industries are, where the primary competition is, what the trends in those industries are in terms of increased capacity in this country versus other countries, I think that is very illuminating in terms of what types of trends we could expect, and the study makes it very clear that its numerical estimates as opposed to the estimates of trends are speculative. But I think the trends it points to and suggest what happened are still quite accurate and hard to quarrel with.

Burnett  
 
 
Harlan Watson, Staff Director of the House Subcommittee on Science, Energy and the Environment 		I think we've got time for one more question. Let me look to the back first.

Dr. Balling, How do you answer critics concerning the funding of research by industry biasing science and do you know of any scientist who's career has been threatened because his or her findings disagreed with the current administration's views?

BALLING 		I never come here but this issue doesn't come up about this funding business. I mean, it is true that Ross Gelfsven makes the argument that there are some scientists who have been funded by some group other than the federal government and somehow those scientists have been very effective at defusing some sense of urgency from the climate group. And what I always say to that is that it is true that our group has received funding from industry, and it's equally true that our group has received much more funding from, the federal government. And it's true that our university built a research park to encourage an interaction between science and industry.

All that's irrelevant. It happens that in the greenhouse debate, we have these journals like the science magazine that Jonathan held up. In everything we do in our laboratory, we put through peer review, and we don't make any press statement about what we found until the article has been accepted for publication in a major professional journal. We play by the rules. And I argue this is a sanitizing agent that prevents us from putting something out that's funded by industry that somehow warps the truth. I've even argued that we may undergo a tougher review because we always place an acknowledgment to the funding source, and I assure you that if I have five experts in my field who have to review my articles and they see that this was funded by British Coal, I assure you that it was held to a higher standard.

So I think Ross is a bit off base with this argument that industry funding, which in fact is trivial compared to government funding, has had this enormous impact. I can't for the life of me believe that somehow my argument is so good that I have defused the conclusions of 2,000 people. I'm not that good, and I acknowledge that. And these other issues about has an administration somehow warped the entire issue by controlling so many federal dollars and having the federal dollars be the driving force, I'd say no. I really do believe that the scientists are working toward the facts, and that so far there has been a very large allocation of federal money for climate change research, and I know of no credible scientist who is being shut out of the system for some point of view they have on climate change...[audio break]..

BURNETT  
 
Adler 		I will take one more question.

First of all, I would argue that if we're going to look at the cost and benefits of global climate change, we should not try and convert everything to a single metric. I think we should put all the costs we can measure, economic and otherwise, put them on one side and the benefits to us, because we are talking about different metrics, and I think that is valuable to do.

I think one thing that we have to remember is that nothing that is on the table in terms of the current treaty does anything to significantly alter the output of global climate models, and I think that that's important because until someone comes forward and says okay, we're going to have a treaty that is going to result in reductions that result in stabilization, we're talking about costs without that benefit.

I would then argue, and this brings us back to the economist statement -- Dr. William Nordhaus and Dale Jorgenson are two of the leading economists that signed the "Redefining Progress letter, that when they were at AEI earlier this year, pointed out that most of the costs of global warming are not in terms of economic cost, particularly in the developed world, and that particularly it's not clear that we're going to see things like an increase in hurricanes impose significant economic costs. It's not clear that we're going to see significant disruptions in agriculture, at least in the developed world, and in the developing world there are many strategies that could mitigate that, that are far less expensive than trying to reduce CO2 emissions.

I think we do need to look at both sides of the equation, but I would be very wary of any study that attempted to boil everything down into a single metric and say the total sum of global warming policy is plus or minus this, and that we've looked at the costs on one side and benefits on the other.

TRISKO 		Let me comment on that. When the administration went back to the drawing board following the June '96 workshop and solicited comments from interested parties on the design of their new analysis, we urged that the administration include in its assessment the global climate change related benefits associated with the proposed alternatives. Those that lend themselves to numerical quantification's, and I'm not talking about hurricanes or disease. I'm saying run the model to determine what the change of this -- what the impact of these proposals would be on future atmospheric concentrations, on future temperature, on global sea level change, and like those elements that are quantifiable through the existing models.

Our understanding is that the administration does not intend to do so. We would assume that is because, as Jonathan correctly stated, there will be no global environmental benefit that quantitatively can be ascribed to an annex-1 emission limitation, because concentrations will continue to increase. But by the same token, addressing the second component of your question, that is, the expected clean air related benefits of the reduction of carbon emissions, basically what you're talking about here is an administration that is talking out of both sides of its mouth, on the one hand, proposing through the Clean Air Act new fine particulate and ozone standards that it attributes billions of dollars of health-related benefits to, which by the way, largely come from expected reductions in coal utilization. Doing that on the one hand on the Clean Air Act, counting up those benefits and then suggesting that an unrelated global climate related program which achieves a similar objective, that it would be appropriate to ascribe those benefits to that as well, to us very simply comes down to two words: it's double counting. You can have it one place or the other, you can't have it both.

BURNETT 		We really have to cut it off. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for attending.

END