Gary Yohe

Wesleyan University · Department of Economics

Modeling is a critical part of crafting adaptive and mitigative responses to existential threats like the COVID-19 coronavirus and climate change. The United Nations, in its efforts to promote 17 Sustainable Development Goals, has recognized both sources of risk as cross-cutting themes in part because both expose the wide list of social and economi...

The text and associated Supplemental Materials contribute internally consistent and therefore entirely comparable regional, temporal, and sectoral risk profiles to a growing literature on regional economic vulnerability to climate change. A large collection of maps populated with graphs of Monte-Carlo simulation results support a communication devi...

Recent advancements in the availability of models and data to characterize the economic impacts of climate change have improved our ability to project both the physical impacts and economic effects of climate change across economic sectors of the United States. These advancements have in turn provided an opportunity to estimate these impacts across...

As states, cities, tribes, and private interests cope with climate damages and seek to increase preparedness and resilience, they will need to navigate myriad choices and options available to them. Making these choices in ways that identify pathways for climate action that support their development objectives will require constructive public dialog...

Full- text available through the IPCC website: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

Trajectories of policy-driven transient temperatures are reported here for four different maximum temperature targets through 2100 and a “no-policy” baseline because it is they, and their associated manifestations in other impact and risk dimensions, that natural and human and natural systems see in real time as their common future unfolds. It foll...

The reasons for concern framework communicates scientific understanding about risks in relation to varying levels of climate change. The framework, now a cornerstone of the IPCC assessments, aggregates global risks into five categories as a function of global mean temperature change. We review the framework's conceptual basis and the risk judgments...

Uneven patterns in the rate of climate change have profound implications for adaptation. Assuming a linear or monotonic increase in global or regional temperatures can lead to inefficient planning processes that underestimate the magnitude, pattern, and timing of the risks faced by human and natural systems, which could exaggerate future impacts an...

Resilience has moved from being a peripheral ecological concept to a central goal, in the development discourse. While the concept has become popular, operationalizing resilience has been difficult. Many frameworks have been proposed to operationalize resilience but no common framework has been agreed upon. The present article demonstrates a step b...

The Setting This chapter describes the information basis for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of IPCC Working Group II (WGII) and the rationale for its structure. As the starting point of WGII AR5, the chapter begins with an analysis of how the literature for the assessment has developed through time and proceeds with an overview of how the framin...

Introduction This chapter synthesizes the scientific literature on the detection and attribution of observed changes in natural and human systems in response to observed recent climate change. For policy makers and the public, detection and attribution of observed impacts will be a key element to determine the necessity and degree of mitigation and...

Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007a) focused their attention on adaptation and vulnerability in their contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. Societies notice many of the impacts of climate change by detecting increasingly intense and/or more frequent extreme weather events and attributing the...

Increases in the frequency and intensity of some climate extremes—especially heat waves, coastal flooding, and inland precipitation--are projected to challenge the Northeast’s environmental, social, and economic systems. This will increase the vulnerability of residents, especially its most disadvantaged populations. Vital infrastructure will be in...

Human interference with the climate system is occurring. [WGI AR5 2.2, 6.3, 10.3-6, 10.9] Climate change poses risks for human and natural systems (Figure TS.1). The assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) evaluates how patterns of risks and potential...

science and assessment sometimes focus too strongly on avoiding false-positive errors, when false-negative errors may be just as important. In final form 5 January 2014 ©2014 American Meteorological Society T he concept of risk has been identified as a fundamental framing to the analysis of what to do about anthropogenic climate change, unani-mousl...

Climate change will generally increase the risk of negative consequences to forests and associated biosocial systems. Risk management identifies risks, estimating their probability of occurrence and magnitude of impact. A risk framework provides a means to quantify what is known, identify where uncertainties exist, and help resource managers develo...

Anthropogenic climate change has triggered impacts on natural and human systems world-wide, yet the formal scientific method of detection and attribution has been only insufficiently described. Detection and attribution of impacts of climate change is a fundamentally cross-disciplinary issue, involving concepts, terms, and standards spanning the va...

Among terrestrial environments, forests are not only the largest long-term sink of atmospheric carbon (C), but are also susceptible to global change themselves, with potential consequences including alterations of C cycles and potential C emission. To inform global change risk assessment of forest C across large spatial/temporal scales, this study...

Mitigation policies have traditionally been evaluated from the perspective of first-best worlds that have perfect foresight and full and immediate policy implementation. Adaptation assessments typically consider second-best worlds that incorporate the realities of market imperfections, institutional and informational constraints, delayed policy imp...

The selection of climate policies should be an exercise in risk management reflecting the many relevant sources of uncertainty. Studies of climate change and its impacts rarely yield consensus on the distribution of exposure, vulnerability, or possible outcomes. Hence policy analysis cannot effectively evaluate alternatives using standard approache...

We present an approach to assess and compare risk from climate change among multiple species through a risk matrix, in which managers can quickly prioritize for species that need to have strategies developed, evaluated further, or watched. We base the matrix upon earlier work towards the National Climate Assessment for potential damage to infrastru...

This postscript highlights questions that are particularly germane for thinking about how to use modern, state of the art investigations of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability to advance a broader decision-supporting research agenda. They are drawn from the fundamental conclusion from the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel o...

This paper offers some thoughts on the value added of new economic estimates of climate change damages. We begin with a warning to beware of analyses that are so narrow that they miss a good deal of the important economic ramifications of the full suite of manifestations of climate change. Our second set of comments focuses attention on one of the...

The inability to verify nations' reported progress towards emission-reduction commitments is a stumbling block in climate change negotiations. Narrowing uncertainties in the global carbon cycle could help overcome this obstacle.

While current rates of sea level rise and associated coastal flooding in the New York City region appear to be manageable by stakeholders responsible for communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, projections for sea level rise and associated flooding in the future, especially those associated with rapid icemelt of the Greenl...

At the request of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences convened a series of coordinated activities to provide advice on actions and strategies that the nation can take to respond to climate change. As part of this suite of activities, this study assessed, this study assessed how the nation can begin to adapt to the impacts of climate change....

decades; risks serious people the on which we rely. Because change community has informed decisions. et existing we call ence community to develop, implement, and sustain initiative with a singular mandate: to actively and share information climate risks potential the decision-makers public, nonprofi t sectors. Moreover, philanthropic endorse and p...

The effect of climate change on the frequency and intensity of droughts across the contiguous United States over the next century is assessed by applying Standardized Precipitation Indices and the Palmer Drought Severity Index to the full suite of 22 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change General Circulation Models for three IPCC-SRES emissions...

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Asian and global agriculture will be under significant pressure to meet the demands of rising populations, using finite and often degraded soil and water resources that are predicted to be further stressed by the impacts of climate change. In addition, agriculture and land use change are prominent sources of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. F...

The economics of adaptation to climate change relies heavily on comparisons of the benefits and costs of adaptation options that can range from changes in policy to implementing specific projects. Since these benefits are derived from damages avoided by any such adaptation, they are critically dependent on the specification of a baseline. The curre...

Convened by the National Research Council in response to a request from Congress, America's Climate Choices is a suite of five coordinated activities designed to study the serious and sweeping issues associated with global climate change, including the science and technology challenges involved, and provide advice on the most effective steps and th...

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change commits its parties to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that “would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” Authors of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2001a, b...

The economics of adaptation to climate change relies heavily on the ability to compare the benefits of adaptation options with their costs under potentially enormous uncertainty. This paper will compare benchmark estimates derived under assumptions of perfect economic efficiency supported by actuarially fair insurance with estimates derived under m...

Global environmental change and climate change are rapidly altering the world's socio-ecological systems and affecting human populations at multiple scales. Important manifestations of these changes are hazard and disaster events. The emerging fields of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction provide significant opportunities to avoid...

Multiple changes are occurring simultaneously around the globe at an increasing pace. Energy and resource scarcities have emerged or intensified. Different trade regimes have evolved. New communication and information technologies have exploded into daily life. New human health issues have appeared, and old health issues have, in some cases, been e...

It is well-known that the discount rate is crucially important for estimating the social cost of carbon, a standard indicator for the seriousness of climate change and desirable level of climate policy. The Ramsey equation for the discount rate has three components: the pure rate of time preference, a measure of relative risk aversion, and the rate...

The Stern Review reported a social cost of carbon of over $300/tC, calling for ambitious climate policy. We here conduct a systematic sensitivity analysis of this result on two crucial parameters: the rate of pure time preference, and the rate of risk aversion. We show that the social cost of carbon lies anywhere in between 0 and $120 000/tC. Howev...

Using a simple model designed for transparency but nonetheless calibrated to support the much-quoted damage estimates of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, we demonstrate significant sensitivity of those results to assumptions about the pure rate of time preference, the time horizon, and the rates of risk and equity aversion used...

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [United Nations (1992) http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf. Accessed February 9, 2009] commits signatory nations to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that "would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the clima...

It is well-known that the discount rate is crucially important for estimating the social cost of carbon, a standard indicator for the seriousness of climate change and desirable level of climate policy. The Ramsey equation for the discount rate has three components: the pure rate of time preference, a measure of relative risk aversion, and the rate...

Export Date: 3 February 2009 Source: Scopus

The Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change (Stern et al. 2006a, b; Stern 2007)has been the catalyst of an enormous amount of discussion since its release in the fall of2006. Policy makers see it as an authoritative report that makes an economic case for rapidreduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Most economists have a different opinion of...

The High Aswan Dam converted a variable and uncertain flow of Nile river water into a predictable and controllable water supply stored in Lake Nasser. We use a computable general equilibrium model of the Egyptian economy to estimate the economic impact of the High Aswan Dam. We compare the actual 1997 economy to the 1997 economy as it would have be...

The two main flavours of integrated climate change assessment (formal cost benefit analysis and the precautionary approach to assessing danger- ous anthropogenic interference with the climate system) also reflect the major controversies in applying climate policy. In this assessment, we present an approach to using risk weighting that endeavours to...

Many analysts, (including Pizer [Chapter 25], Keller et al. [Chapter 28], Webster [Chapter 29] and Toth [Chapter 30] in this volume, as well as others like Nordhaus and Popp [1997], Tol [1998], Lempert and Schlesinger [2000], Keller et al. [2004] and Yohe et al. [2004]) have begun to frame the debate on climate change mitigation policy in terms of...

We discuss the implication of Weitzman's Dismal Theorem for climate policy and climate research.

This paper uses the likelihood of flooding along Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers in India to explore the hypothesis that adaptation and mitigation can be viewed as complements rather than sustitutes. For futures where climate change will produce smooth, monotonic and manageable effects, adopting a mitigation strategy is shown to increase the ability...

Scientific evidence accumulating over the past decade documents that climate change impacts are already being experienced in the US Northeast. Policy-makers and resource managers must now prepare for the impacts from climate change and support implementing such plans on the ground. In this paper we argue that climate change challenges the region to...

We review the explosion of commentary that has followed the release of the Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, and agree with most of what has been written. The Review is right when it argues on economic grounds for immediate intervention to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, but we feel that it is right for the wrong reasons. A persu...

Tol and Yohe point out that, in their reply [Vol. 8, No. 1] to Tol and Yohe’s review [Vol. 7, No. 4], the Stern team demonstrates the fragility of the numerical findings of the cost–benefit analysis in the Stern Review. At the same time, the Stern team puts less weight on cost–benefit analysis as a guide to policy making on climate change. To...

We study the effects of development and climate change on infectious diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Infant mortality and infectious disease are closely related, but there are better data for the former. In an international cross-section, per capita income, literacy, and absolute poverty significantly affect infant mortality. We use scenarios of th...

Using a simple model designed for transparency but nonetheless calibrated to support the much-quoted damage estimates of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, we demonstrate significant sensitivity of those results to assumptions about the pure rate of time preference, the time horizon, and the rates of risk and equity aversion used...