Why Worry about Climate Change? A Research Agenda

By Richard S. J. Tol. 2008

112 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Estimates of the marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions suggest that, although climate change is a problem and some emission reduction is justified, very stringent abatement does not pass the cost-benefit test. However, current estimates of the economic impact of climate change are incomplete. Some of the missing impacts are likely to be positive and others negative, but overall the uncertainty seems to concentrate on the downside risks and current estimates of the damage costs may have a negative bias. The research effort on the economic impacts of climate change is minute and lacks diversity. This field of study should be strengthened, with a particular focus on the quantification of uncertainties; estimating missing impacts, estimating impacts in developing countries; interactions between impacts and higher-order effects; the valuation of biodiversity loss; the implications of extreme climate scenarios and violent conflict; and climate change in the very long term. I discuss these particular gaps in research, and speculate on possible sign and size of the impacts of climate change.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/702921bf1bdff50e898ef23c0e67b6b21bb85270

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

The economics (or lack thereof) of aerosol geoengineering (2009, background): “Estimates of current and future economic damages of climate change are still deeply uncertain (Keller et al. 2008b; Nordhaus 2008; Tol 2008b).”
The Economic Effects of Climate Change (2009, methodology): “For more detail, see Tol (2008c).”
Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change (2011, background): “By Laurens M. Bouwer 39january 2011aMErICan METEOrOLOGICaL SOCIETy | Hallegatte et al. 2007; Tol 2008) and therefore are hardly accounted for in cost–benefit analyses of global climate policy (Van den Bergh 2010).”
On International Equity Weights and National Decision Making on Climate Change (2010, methodology): “Following Tol (2006b), they were adjusted for PPP.”
The economic impact of substantial sea-level rise (2010, methodology): “…was up to 2-m per century, while the costs of sea-level rise increase due to greater damage and protection costs, an optimum response in a benefit-cost sense remains widespread protection of developed coastal areas, as identified in earlier analyses (Nicholls and Tol, 2006, Nicholls et al., 2008).”