Online Content

1. Fiddaman, Thomas, "Formulation Experiments with a Simple Climate/ Economy Model"

Type:
Document
Date Created:
1995
Collection:
System Dynamic Society Records
Collecting Area:
University Archives
Collection ID:
ua435
Parent Record(s):
23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, 6214ef14bd960d7be5cd8a816a71dc52, and 12420ec6bd5f758d2b4dea59aabd75a9
Thumbnail Path Ss:
/downloads/bg257z227?file=thumbnail
System Modified Dtsi:
2020-01-02T18:53:25Z
Description:
Much of the science and policy debate around global climate change has focused on models. Most models focus is a single aspect of climate change- atmospheric physics and chemistry, macroeconomic effects of abatement policies, or impacts on land cover from changing temperature and rainfall for example. Only a few models attempts to make climate change fully endogenous by including both the influence of human activities on climate and the impact of climate change on human activity. The best-known climate-economy model is William Nordhaus' DICE model. The model is a conventional macroeconomics Ramsey growth model with simple carbon and temperature subsystems added. These create a negative feedback loop which tends to reduce economic output due to climate impacts on economic activity. Experiments with the model suggest that only limited effort should be addressed to carbon dioxide emissions abatement. While the DICE model meets some of the exogenous, such as the growth of population and emissions reduction technology. Output is generated by optimization, rather than by simulation with explicit decision rules. This paper explores the impact of structural changes to the model specification that attempts to bring it closer to the system dynamics paradigm. The impact of exogenous population and the technology drives is explored. Carbon flows are made more explicit, to demonstrate the importance of sink constraints and temperature feedbacks to the carbon cycle. A path dependent energy sector with endogenous technology is tested. Bounded rational decision rules are substituted for optimization. These tests generally yield results suggesting substantially higher abatement levels than Nordhaus concludes are necessary.