
JP Morgan economists warn of 'catastrophic' climate change - evo_9
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51581098
======
vzidex
Reminds me of the joke whose punchline is that if we transition to renewable
energy and go carbon-neutral we'll have gotten ourselves off of oil and its
related issues (spills, war, etc.) for nothing [1].

Even if you don't believe in climate change - which I do not think is a
reasonable position at this point - I would hope we can all agree that not
having to rely on oil any more is a good enough economic incentive for
everyone.

[1] [https://solar-power-now.com/what-if-we-create-a-better-
world...](https://solar-power-now.com/what-if-we-create-a-better-world-for-
nothing/)

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This totally ignores nuclear energy. If we are really in for "catastropic"
climate change, then one of the things you can do is quickly build crappy,
unsafe nuclear power plants. Even if you have a Chernobyl somewhere in the
world every 5 years, you are still probably better off than with catastrophic
climate change.

Basically, it is this thinking that makes a lot of people suspicious about
climate change. If all things that you would do to combat climate change are
things the progressives/environmentalists want to do anyway (increase taxes,
more government regulation of industry, more urbanization, more public
transportation, etc) and nothing that they would not want to do, people on the
other side of the political spectrum have their bs detector go off.

~~~
buzzkillington
There are a lot of people, like myself, who would love nothing more than
having 100% nuclear power and understand climate change.

Unfortunately the left is as anti-science as the right when it comes to their
sacred cows.

~~~
avmich
When one tries to analyze pros and contras of nuclear energy, he can get
conflicting data. Some say "overall modern nuclear beats handily anything",
other say "nuclear is good only if you omit externalities like problem of
spent fuel". Both sides provide data which supports their point of view,
without explaining the data of the other side. So it's hard to make a
reasonable judgement.

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TamDenholm
Despite this being an extremely serious statement and should be considered as
such, I feel this is also like stating the obvious. Like isn't this something
everyone is fully aware of, despite the human race as a whole not doing
anywhere near enough to combat it?

I'd like to hear less statements of "our house is on fire" and more "I'm
getting a bucket of water". Let's concentrate on the doing...

~~~
vzidex
I think you'd be surprised - I don't have any numbers off the top of my head,
but at my work there are at least 1 or two people on my team who don't believe
in climate change, don't believe it's caused by humans, or don't believe it'll
do anything bad.

And I work with fairly educated people! My team is all engineering, ranging
from undergrad to Ph.Ds

~~~
seibelj
I’m not skeptical of climate change but I am skeptical that it 100% leads to
disaster and the destruction of the earth / human race within 5 / 10 / 20 / 50
years. If the earth isn’t a hellscape within 15 years then scientists will
lose whatever credibility they still have with the public - yet another
institution that the public disregards. The shrill outrage and climate crisis
news pounded at us week after week, month after month means that scientists
better be right about this.

~~~
spurgu
Australia has looked a bit like hell recently hasn't it. Artic ice is at
record lows. Not sure about California droughts (I'm not American) but I'm
under the impression that they've been quite out of the ordinary.

Climate change deniers would just attribute that to randomness.

How much "actual" proof would be needed to convince the public that _we 're
there already_?

All of these things have set snowball effects into motion already.

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thinkingkong
Here's a fun thought experiment.

Let's just say we shifted our demand for lots of the climate change
contributors. From what I can gather the top contributors would be liquid
fuels, solid fuels, and gaseous fuels. Right off the bat we know we can cut
coal and shift to other technologies. But in the case where we want to shift
our liquid fuel consumption, things get tricky. For example, we might be able
to move our entire car fleet to electric, but we're still way far off from
doing that for planes. So at some point in the future, we'll still need jet
fuel, but we'll have reduced our demand for gasoline tremendously. They come
from the same source and happen as part of the same process.

So what happens when gasoline costs negative dollars?

~~~
cagenut
Your instincts are roughly correct, but in case you wanted a couple dozen
graphs to flesh it out you'll like this link:
[https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-
emis...](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-
emissions#co2-emissions-by-fuel)

Honestly its much less compliated than internet debate artists make it out to
be. #1 coal, #2 oil, #3 gas. Cement and agriculture/land-use are marginal
things we can worry about in 2040. For right now, its one two three. Coal,
oil, gas. Anyone derailing into other things is failing to quantify and
prioritize.

Also as you point out coal is basically already solved, its purely a
combination of regulation and cost-curves of the alternatives. Oil can be 80%
solved using electrification today, and hopefully over the course of the next
20 years that turns into a 95% solved thing via improved batteries or fuel
cells or both.

The last 5% of oil is, as you point out, jet fuel. It is by far one of the
hardest pieces of the puzzle to solve. I think the short version is that the
price of air travel is going to have to double to both dramatically reduce
demand for it and to fund carbon-offset measures for what remains. Of course
you can never tell upper middle class people this, they lose their shit at the
thought of not being entitled to vacation and be tourists anywhere they want
as much as they want.

The third part, gas, is going to be harder than coal and oil because its so
damn cheap right now. We can speculate a lot about what could replace 50% of
it, but the other half is a lot tricker.

However, again, this is a prioritization and timeline constraint problem.
Solve coal NOW. Solve oil over the course of the next decade. Gas we'll circle
back and see what we can do in like 2035. We'll have our hands plenty full
solving for coal and oil now.

Its already completely technologically and economically feasible to get rid of
95% of coal, 80% of oil, and 50% of gas over the next 10 years in america and
20 in the overall world. That will reduce us from ~40Gt/year down to around
5Gt/year. _Then_ we figure out how to phase in negative-emissions tech.

~~~
OJFord
> I think the short version is that the price of air travel is going to have
> to double to both dramatically reduce demand for it and to fund carbon-
> offset measures for what remains. Of course you can never tell upper middle
> class people this, they lose their shit at the thought of not being entitled
> to vacation and be tourists anywhere they want as much as they want.

In Europe at least, I think the working and aspiring middle classes would be
harder hit. The low end of air travel has become ridiculously cheap really,
with pan-continental flights with Ryanair or whatever costing less than a
train across England.

Slap a flat-fee carbon tariff or even just higher duty on it and it'll be a
different market.

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david_draco
Shouldn't they make recommendations how to invest to reduce the economic fall-
out of climate change?

Mitigating climate change (by replacing ACs, finding alternatives to concrete,
adding a carbon tax) from the current +6° trajectory to +5° or +4° or +3° or
+2° has benefits for human health, cooling, crops, political stability, energy
production and many more, all associated with high costs in case of no
mitigation.

Why don't very large financial institutions that plan out for the next 20-40
years speak up?

~~~
tomrod
Lack of political will and discipline.

I know this area well and this group somewhat (no current affiliation with
them anymore). I think we are entering the adaption phase where forecasts lose
viability. Not because the science is wrong, but because the human element is
unpredictable without defined geography.

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timwaagh
I think this should be old news by now. Yes, climate change will cause
economic damage. And well, quite a big number, because it is well, rather
global in scale and this is economics, where numbers tend to be big anyways.
No, there is no solution to be bought off the rack. Even measures to migitate
economic damage will cause economic damage (and different actors will pay it).
The damage caused will be on a lot of levels, hard to measure and there is
nothing to be done about it. How much damage we dont know. will your business
be affected? probably. how much? we dont know. should you care? possibly, we
dont know. It is impossible to make decisions based on such vague assertions.

~~~
polotics
Maybe we could get some experts to quantify the costs and risks, then make a
decision based on that?

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m0zg
In 20-30 years when we have fusion, and essentially unlimited energy that
comes with it, all of the bickering here will look ridiculous.

In the meanwhile, here's what I think about this story specifically:
[https://dilbert.com/strip/2017-05-14](https://dilbert.com/strip/2017-05-14)

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alfiedotwtf
JP Morgan is out to make money... either someone paid them to write the
report, or they’ve gone heavily into renewables in the past few months and
this report is part of the pump.

~~~
polotics
You are right that this being a bank it is about money, but I think that you
miss the liabilities angle: JPM is also out to not lose money, and investors
that come back to them with newly worthless triple-A rated coal-industry bonds
need to have a retort ready: "you did not read our report!"

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busymom0
I shall wait until banks start offering deep discounts for properties at ocean
sides. This type of fear mongering is bad.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Well I don’t know about deep discounts but the housing market in Florida is
already changing because of climate change concerns. Historically black
neighborhoods on higher ground are gentrifying as developers see opportunity
diminish at sea level.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-ground-is-
be...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-ground-is-becoming-hot-
property-as-sea-level-rises/)

