The recent coronavirus outbreak (i.e., nCovID-19; Fig. 1) has caused global panic, along with widespread travel bans, home quarantines and country-wide lockdowns. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared nCoVID-19 as a pandemic as of March 11th, 2020 (WHO, 2020). To tackle this global health crisis, scientists are attempting to synthesize a vaccine, while countries are trying to mitigate the n ...[Read More]
Dear “climate sceptic”, do you have a fire insurance? – Climate policy under uncertainty
One often hears that ambitious climate policy might be premature while climate change is still “uncertain”. This sounds like a fair argument: The amount of global warming per doubling CO2 is not well constrained, and the amount of economic damage per degree of warming even less. But is this uncertainty a sound excuse to wait and see? Uncertainty, risk aversion, and insurance If you knew the ...[Read More]
Habits in numerical model construction
Numerical models are omnipresent in climate research. Constructed to understand the past, to forecast future climate and to gain new knowledge on natural processes and interactions, they enable the simulation of experiments at otherwise unreachable time and spatial scales. These instruments have long been considered to be fed – let even determined – by either theories or observations alone. ...[Read More]
God does not play DICE – but Bill Nordhaus does! What can models tell us about the economics of climate change?
Climate change has been described as “the biggest market failure in human history”[1]. Although fuel is costly, emitting the by-product CO2 is for free; yet it causes damages to society. In other words, those who benefit, by using the atmosphere as waste dump, do not pay the full costs, i.e. the adverse effects climate change has on societies on a global scale. Can this market failure be cured? Sh ...[Read More]