Showing papers by "Gary W. Yohe published in 1996"

The economic cost of greenhouse-induced sea-level rise for developed property in the United States

Abstract: Estimates of the true economic cost that might be attributed to greenhouse-induced sea-level rise on the developed coastline of the United States are offered for the range of trajectories that is now thought to be most likely. Along a 50-cm sea level rise trajectory (through 2100), for example, transient costs in 2065 (a year frequently anticipated for doubling of greenhouse-gas concentrations) are estimated to be roughly $70 million (undiscounted, but measured in constant 1990$). More generally and carefully cast in the appropriate context of protection decisions for developed property, the results reported here are nearly an order of magnitude lower than estimates published prior to 1994. They are based upon a calculus that reflects rising values for coastal property as the future unfolds, but also includes the cost-reducing potential of natural, market-based adaptation in anticipation of the threat of rising seas and/or the efficiency of discrete decisions to protect or not to protect small tracts of property that will be made when necessary and on the (then current) basis of their individual economic merit.

Near term mitigation policy for global change under uncertainty: Minimizing the expected cost of meeting unknown concentration thresholds

Abstract: An aggregate integrated assessment model is used to investigate the relative merits of hedging over the near term against the chance that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will be limited as a matter of global policy. Hedging strategies are evaluated given near term uncertainty about the targeted level of limited concentrationsand the trajectory of future carbon emissions. All uncertainty is resolved in the year 2020, and strategies that minimize the expected discounted value of the long term cost of abatement, including the extra cost of adjusting downstream to meet unexpected concentration limits along unanticipated emission trajectories, are identified. Even with uncertainties that span current wisdom on emission futures and restriction thresholds that run from 550 ppm through 850 ppm, the results offer support for at most modest abatement response over the next several decades to the threat of global change.

Exercises in hedging against extreme consequences of global change and the expected value of information

Abstract: This paper reports the implications for near-term global change policy of hedging against the extreme costs of low probability-high consequence events. Working with a full range of probabilistically weighted emissions trajectories and assuming complete resolution of uncertainty by the year 2020, the results support modest near-term carbon abatement policy that corresponds with a doubling of the efficient shadow price of carbon emissions. Assuming survey generated subjective likelihoods of extreme events, the efficient hedging shadow price can, for example, be as high as US$18 (US$1990) per tonne of carbon emitted by the year 2020 along the median emissions trajectory and US$28 per tonne along a 95th percentile trajectory.