Current Analysis of Economic Costs

Although the following papers concern economic aspects, you are not going to hear about the dollar benefits and costs of activities to abate emissions of greenhouse gases. Rather, the panel will attempt to clarify a few aspects of the social benefits and costs. No one is able to provide definitive dollar estimates at this time. Among other difficulties, atmospheric scientists cannot tell us what would happen to global mean climate as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. There are no confident estimates of the extent of temperature change or whether precipitation will increase or decrease. Estimates of regional climate effects are little better than guesses. Furthermore, in order to calculate the economic implications of global climate change, economists would need to know about regional weather, not just regional climate.