Uncertainty, Climate Change and the Global Economy
Authors:
von Below, D. and Persson, T.
Published in:
IIES Working paper
Date:
2009
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Uncertainty, Climate Change and the Global Economy (pdf, 530 kB)
Summary:
The paper illustrates how one may assess our comprehensive uncertainty about the various relations in the entire chain from human activity to climate change. Using a modified version of the RICE model of the global economy and climate, we perform Monte Carlo simulations, where full sets of parameters in the model´s most important equations are drawn randomly from pre-specified distributions, and present results in the forms of fan charts and histograms. Our results suggest that under a Business-As-Usual scenario, the median increase of global mean temperature in 2105 relative to 1900 will be around 3.7 °C. The 99 percent confidence interval ranges from 2.5 °C to 5.7 °C. Uncertainty about socio-economic drivers of climate change lie behind a non-trivial part of this uncertainty about global warming.
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2012-05-23 – 2012-05-23
Mistra-SWECIA Science seminar: The effects of different energy sources and technological progress on climate change
Fossil energy and technological progress are two important factors that potentially influence climate change. Today, the main source of energy is fossil energy, and its use generates CO2-emissions with global warming as result. Technological progress can however improve the energy efficiency and potentially lead to the implementation of alternative clean energy sources that may partially or fully...