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I’d like to hear what you think of the distributional skew of damages and adaptation. My intuition is that the globally wealthy will do mostly okay under the current trends but that net damages will skew to the poor.

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If the costs are estimated without taking account of adaption, it is incorrect. [Also it is not clear if the estimates are for cost that result from further increases in CO2 that w can do something about, or of future AND past emissions.] Nevertheless, for purposes of knowing how much cost to incur now to to reduce future CO2 and Methane emissions, the cost of adaptation are part the benefits of avoiding future emissions.

The paper was probably written and will be lauded out of the largely mistaken idea that people in general do not think climate change is harmful. I think people DO believe the climate change's harmful but too many believe it is not harmful e enough for them soon enough to bear the costs beig bandied about (even "degrowth") of avoiding it. This misperception arises both from over-estimating the size of the problem (which overestimate is fed by exaggerated "warnings") AND overestimating the comparatively low deadweight losses of least cost cost ways of reducing emissions, a tax on net emissions of CO2, an excise on first sale on fossil fuels in proportion to their carbon content.

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I coined the term Diminished Adaptive Capacity - DAC - which I explain in my book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future.

As conditions become more extreme - wind, rain drought, temperature, disease, Climate anxiety, supply chains and on and on the ability of humanity to adapt will diminish.

Do any models that include adaptation account for DAC?

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May 15·edited May 15

nice commentary, but adaptation is not for free either, and many parts of the world simply do not have the capacity to adapt. (look at Haiti vs Dominican Republic).

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Yes, they appear to neglect both a) investments in mitigation, which are part of the cost of positive net CO2 emissions although they reduce the total mitigated plus unmitigated damage and b) minimum cost policies like taxation of net emissions to discourage net emissions.

Maybe they will do a follow-up on how much greater would be the value of damage avoided than the deadweight loss of the tax on net emissions.

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In addition to your sensible points, I expect that this new report -- like all the previous ones -- tallies up projected costs but ignored benefits.

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