Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

Climate, energy and economic development: Exploratory research Climate change poses one of the largest challenges to the global community. It is a real game-theoretic challenge because benefits of emissions-reduction are widely distributed in space and time, whereas costs are usually incurred locally. Further, estimating the net-present-value of benefits of actions taken today to reduce emission depends on assessing a large number of uncertainties including future emissions scenarios, adaptive measures, appropriate discount rates, and the precise nature of the objective. In contrast, costs of actions taken today are usually relatively easy to put in concrete monetary terms. We have engaged in a range of stylized studies which we consider to be a form of "reconnaissance science" – can we go out and explore some relatively uncharted territory and investigate whether good tractable research problems can be found there? It is not enough for a problem to be important. There has to be something concrete and feasible that researchers can do to make headway on this problem.

This talk will discuss several studies we have done or are doing that use quantitative analysis of stylized model results to try to draw qualitative conclusions about the real world. Some of these studies include issues like climate-driven migration, relative pace of economic development and climate change, GDP-dependence of climate damage, the interplay between mitigation and adaptation, economic consequences of energy innovation, and so on. We also do exploratory studies of physical systems, including work relevant to understanding the climate impact of contrails, or the relative value of biological vs geologic carbon storage. This talk will highlight a number of these studies and talk about the importance of engaging in exploratory research on important issues that may at first seem resistant to scientific research or technical analysis.