All of DannyBressler's Comments + Replies

Hi Rhys, thanks for the question! Currently, this is just a proposal, and there is no one that I know of who is working on implementing it. But I hope that sharing the idea is useful to folks who may be interested in pursuing the idea or related ideas! Folks should reach out to me if they are interested in pursuing this idea (or taking some nugget of it to inform other ideas)! 

In similarly structured organizations, e.g., the IPCC, there are PhD researchers who are involved as chapter authors (I have a few friends from my PhD program who are IPCC authors). However, the more senior positions (e.g., chapter lead authors) tend to be more senior folks. 

I agree that what you’re saying could in principal be a problem, but I don’t think that’s how its actually played out in the case of the IPCC. I think there are many reasons why climate change is a politically polarized issue, and I personally don’t think that the IPCC played a material role in increasing polarization directly or indirectly (and IMO their impact went in the other direction for the reasons I outlined above).

Thanks for this comment! I am definitely in favor of country-level efforts to address GCRs and to produce reports like this one. The same way that the U.S. produces the National Climate Assessment despite there also being IPCC reports. In this case, I think those two efforts are more complimentary than cannibalistic. E.g., folks that work on the National Climate Assessment in the US often also work on the IPCC and doing the work of organizing/prepping for one helps with organizing/prepping for another. And having an international IPGCR effort may also enco... (read more)

FYI - OMB has extended the comment period deadline for Circular A-4 to June 20th https://twitter.com/jacklienke/status/1665818966818799617?s=20

However, the Circular A-94 comment deadline is still today.

A-4 comment submission link: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2022-0014-0001 

A-94 comment submission link: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2023-0011-0001 

I'm pretty late to the party here, but I want to say I really enjoyed the piece! Your piece came out only three weeks before the big draft overhaul to the way that the U.S. does benefit-cost analysis came out, which is in a document called Circular A-4. I think there is a lot I'd change around the choices in the analysis, particularly in light of the new draft A-4 Guidance (most of which goes in favor of putting more weight on catastrophes):

• The old A-4's use of a 7% discount rate on capital didn't make sense because the 7% includes other factors outside of

I think you're referring to the difference between Executive Order 12866 (from the Clinton Administration in 1993) and Executive Order 12291 (From the Reagan Administration in 1981). 

The Office of Management and Budget is only asking for comment on Circular A-4 and Circular A-94, not on Executive Order 12866, so I would not suggest making comments on that. 

Also, the administration released a new Executive Order 14094 on the same day that the A-4 and A-94 updates were released, which reaffirmed executive order 12866 but made some important changes... (read more)

Thank you for sharing! For those interested in this topic, I'd highly suggest making a public comment on the new drafts of Circular A-4 and Circular A-94. 

I think the public commenting instructions should be up on OMB's Federal Register page soon (it looks like tomorrow and the commenting period typically lasts 45-60 days): Federal Register :: Agencies - Management and Budget Office . 

Public comment is an important part of the regulatory process, and agencies actually do pay attention to what people say. In addition, comments that are supportive of the approach taken are equally as valuable as critical comments. 

No worries! I'm glad you found the paper useful and interesting!

The mortality cost of carbon is just the number of excess deaths from temperature-related mortality in units of excess deaths from emitting one metric ton of CO_2. So it's just excess deaths and nothing else. The social cost of carbon is the full monetized value of all climate impacts from emitting one ton of CO_2, which includes the monetized value of those excess deaths in addition to other sources of climate damages. You can see that before the model accounted for temperature-related mortal... (read more)

Thank you for this post on a very important topic! And thank you for the kind words on my Mortality Cost of Carbon paper. 

I think that, at least from the perspective of using my paper, the analysis is actually much simpler than what you do above.  Instead of using the 83 million cumulative 2020-2100 excess deaths, use the mortality cost of carbon itself: i.e. the number of lives saved per ton of carbon dioxide reduced, which is provided by the paper. So instead of the equation you show above, the equation now becomes:

Marginal Cost Per Life Saved ... (read more)

Yes, I think it is. There is a literature on whether nuclear assistance  and technology sharing for peaceful uses tends to promote or hinder nuclear proliferation, that I mention and cite a bit in my second CSIS piece.

1.  One piece of info related to the NPT that might be helpful: The NPT does contain an article (article VI) in which the the P5  (the 5 current permanent members of the UN Security Council, who at the time the NPT was made were the only countries who had successfully tested nuclear weapons) as well as all of the parties agree to participate in good-faith negotiations to pursue nuclear disarmament, but it does not specify a time-table and the language is deliberately vague. I think the NPT has done a good job of doing what its main goal is and what

One other reason why I think that understanding the NPT is important for longtermists: As the world decarbonizes to address climate change (my other big area of research), nuclear electricity generation may increase substantially into more countries, and in particular to countries with lower levels of development/technology. It's crucial to know if the existing nonproliferation regime can ensure that this doesn't cause proliferation, and what sorts of investments must be made to ensure that nonproliferation regime continues to work.

This is a really good point!

I think you're right that the magnitude of the benefit from the program depends heavily on how many people end up choosing to use the mask, especially in situations where they are more likely to contract the disease. Individuals will ultimately make a personal decision based on trade-offs between the probability of contracting the virus, comfort, convenience, and even fashion.

I also think there is significant heterogeneity in terms of how people weigh these factors. I do think that there are a significant number of people who, n... (read more)

What I had in mind with this policy was that the government would contract directly with producers (using the defense production act where necessary) to procure enough N-95 respirators for everyone in the country, and the government would then distribute them to everyone. There would be some agreed upon price of procurement between the government and manufacturers that would be negotiated at the start of the process. If manufacturers want to produce more respirators than what they contracted for, they are welcome to do that and to sell it at a price they c... (read more)

Thanks, John! I really like your distinction between the type (1) and type (2) "pernicious moral hazard."

Yes I agree that the moral hazard I mention here would not be large enough to outweigh the benefits of the policy, putting it in the category of (1). My goal in that "potential issues" section was to think about the universe of potential issues that people could raise about the policy and address them. As you can tell, I don't currently think any of the issues are significant enough to make the policy not worth it. 

By the title, I thought this was going to be a discussion of the dangers of appeasing genocidal dictators (e.g. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3476200,00.html) ... clearly I was wrong!

FYI, I gave a presentation on my Mortality Cost of Carbon paper at the UCLA Climate Adaptation conference two days ago, available here: https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2688287/118B1E2E57B33A902FDE6CE95202DB34 This is a brief (~20 minutes) less technical overview of the paper. My presentation starts at 53:20.

Also, the other two speakers on the panel (Tamma Carleton and Ishan Nath) were both authors on the Climate Impact Lab paper that Louis had posted about earlier: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PATHShQoxQLHoZ7rE/linkpost-global-death-rate-from-ri... (read more)

FYI, Michael Greenstone (one of the authors of this study, the co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at University of Chicago) testified at a hearing in Congress on the health impacts of climate change a few weeks ago: https://youtu.be/N8nCZC0_yxU His opening statement is available in written form here: http://www.impactlab.org/news-insights/michael-greenstone-testifies-on-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change/

The copy you have is their 2019 version of the paper. The figure 9 I am referring to is their most recent 2020 NBER Working Paper version of the paper linked in the original post.

I agree that the RCPs, which were made in 2011, are outdated at this point. This is in large part because of the strong performance of renewable energy over the last decade. The RCPs at this point are still the standard emissions scenarios that are used in scientific papers, although I expect them to be updated in the near future when the next IPCC report comes out. Somewhere betw... (read more)

1) This hasn't been through peer review yet, but it's a project they've been working on for years, and this is at least the third iteration (first two iterations: https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Working-Paper-2.pdf https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_201851.pdf). They've presented this paper at many academic conferences where they get criticism and feedback from other experts (including one I've been to). Unfortunately, publication timelines are very long in economics, so NBER working papers a... (read more)

Below is one important point that I think is extremely difficult to know without being an active researcher in the field. Hauke hints at it in his footnote 6, but I want to expand on it since I think it is important to understand where the social cost of carbon estimates are coming from:

Ricke et al. 2018 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0282-y) are using a climate damage function that predicts much higher damages than the damage function that is used in the main integrated assessment models (IAMs) that predict the social cost of carbon (DICE, F... (read more)

I answer these questions and go over the methodology in detail in the video. A working paper will be coming soon, but for now all of the details are in the video.

I don't think there is much publicly available on this topic besides Koblentz's work (also check out his 2003 article in International Security). The "strategy of conflict" as it pertains to bioweapons is something we thought about, but we don't discuss it much in our paper. Some thoughts:

Historically bioweapons research has focused on diseases that are not transmissible person to person like Tularemia, Anthrax, Q Fever, and Botulism. If you dump a bunch of anthrax spores from an airplane over a city, you would kill a lot of people... (read more)

Glad to hear!