http://www.cei.org/pdf/1184.pdf
This paper has a much more negative slant on Montreal. It argues:
Firstly, while it is agreed that CFC's affect the ozone layer, the impact is so small, apart from Antarctica, that it is hard to distinguish from natural fluctuations.
Secondly, what's of concern isn't so much ozone, but increased UV-B radiation, and again there is little evidence of much of a trend.
And most importantly, UV-B radiation strongly depends on latitude. Thus even if there were a 10% increase in UV-B due to ozone depletion, this would represent the equivalent of moving 100 km closer to the equator.
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While I think that the issue was grossly overhyped, and that skin cancer incidence clearly has a lot more to do with excessive sunbathing by Brits vacationing in Spain than with CFC's, and while I am personally unconvinced about the cost effectiveness of Montreal,
it's still a minor issue compared with climate change. Montreal required different refrigerants to be utilised, and even on worst case cost estimates, had only a small economic impact.
In the case of climate change, we are talking about changing the world's energy systems and/or major behavioural changes.
Update: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/UVB/uvb_radiation4.html
There is a nice map showing how UV-B radiation varies over the globe. It's roughly a factor 50 between the poles and the equator.
While there are no good records for UV-B radiation trends, there are for ozone. These indicate a 4-5% decline between 35-60 degrees latitude (most of Europe and the US), and no decline over the tropics.
So, the decline to date over Europe and the US seems to be equivalent to moving South by around 50 km, and the tropics, which have by far the highest levels (and where according to another reference 30% of UV-B light gets to ground) have seen no change.
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4 comments:
I agree with the differences between Montreal and Kyoto wrt the scope of the problem and the impact of proposed changes.
I however have an interesting quote handy from Sallie Baliunas made in the early 90's about economic impact: she said about proposed changes to CFC usage that "a cost of up to one trillion dollars will rip through the US economy" if the protocal were implemented.
Same "scepticism" and dire predictions of corrective action then with ozone depletion as now with GW.
What is house resolution 291 all about?
Looking at the paper scanned in, it looks as if she is giving a figure of $100 billion, and then she quotes that house resolution without saying what the $2 trillion estimate is actually about exactly.
http://johnquiggin.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/baliunas_report.pdf
Without being able to track this down any further, I don't think this can be counted as a serious cost estimate. It might even be a typo.
I've sent her an email asking her to clarify.
Certainly 2 trillion is way out of line with even the most pessimistic numbers quoted by Ben Lieberman:
http://www.cei.org/pdf/1184.pdf
"Estimates vary greatly, depending on the assumptions made, but all
serious efforts concede costs in the tens of billions and perhaps into the low
hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, Environment Canada, the
Canadian government’s environmental agency, puts the global costs of
phasing out all ozone-depleting compounds from 1987-2060 at $235 billion
dollars.86 EPA’s Regulatory Impact Assessment estimates costs in the U.S.
under various scenarios in the $40 to $60 billion dollar range.87 DuPont has
estimated costs in the developed world of at approximately $40 billion
dollars.88 This author, in a 1994 study, placed the U.S. cost of the CFC
phaseout in the $45 to $100 billion dollar range.89"
Note that $100 billion over 20 years would not be large. That might be $100 per car and $100 per air conditioning unit and $50 per fridge, with most of the cost due to legacy equipment, and for new cars etc. it might now be less than $5 as a continuing cost.
2 trillion as a "short term" cost (what's "short term", 5 years?) would have been huge. The US economy was only 6 trillion in the early 90's. Over 5 years 2 trillion would be 400 billion per year, 7% of the economy at the time.
7% of the economy for phasing out refrigerants??? This is so ridiculous on the face of it, that I'd have some serious trouble believing that is really what Sallie Baliunas wanted to say.
Thanks for the detailed response. I would be very interested to know how she replies to you.
Do you have any retrospective numbers? ie estimates of what it actually did cost the economy (net) versus all predictions that were made at the time.
I've sent the email to her techcentralstation email address. She hasn't replied yet.
On your second point. I haven't found anything substantive (going beyond claims that early estimates were too high without anything specific).
The Environment Canada report seems to be the most comprehensive study on ozone depletion economics, but I haven't been able to get hold of it.
Global Environmental Change
Volume 13, Issue 1 , April 2003, Pages 43-49
A pro-active stratospheric ozone protection scenario
uses the same model and is pretty recent.
They still estimate costs of 235 billion (1997 Dollars). They make the claim that acting ten years earlier and incurring an extra 63 billion Dollars in cost would have been an even more optimal strategy than Montreal. They don't provide an estimate for the benefits of the extra expenditure.
It is also interesting that they note that some substitutes were cheaper than CFC's, notably flammable propellants for aersols. They acknowledge that quality concerns may have been the reason for their use, notably flammability, but don't attempt to put a value on that claiming that it should not materially affect the conclusions.
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