Summary of Climate Change Policy Philosophy

[marcusmarcusrc]

The CBO director has posted a nice summary of the tenets of a good climate change policy:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=902

I appreciate the nod towards non-market solutions as well as price-based solutions (a common example of why more than just a price signal may be required is the "principal-agent" problem, where, for example, a landlord has no incentive to put in insulation because the tenant pays for the heat - or alternatively, in apartments like mine where utilities are included, I have no market incentive not to use excessive heat and or air conditioning because my landlord pays for it).

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to ask a climate-change science question.
Can you give me a ballpark best guess (as these things go - as precise as a global average could ever be) for ocean salinity, acidity, and temperature in 10-15 years?
can you point me to educated best guesses for this sort of thing?

(friend of rifmeister, posting anon from work, will login this evening)

[elbren]

this is me

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The real answer would involve digging data out of the CMIP3 archive... the quick and dirty answer is that global average temperatures are expected to go up about 0.2 degrees per decade for the next decade or two (and at a faster pace after that) (that was the estimate from the IPCC AR4 report in the projections chapter, I believe): the ocean surface will warm slightly less than that, and the ocean depths will warm much less than that... of course, there is uncertainty around that global 0.2 degree rate. As well as regional variation.

Ocean surface acidity will increase (my guess would be about 0.04 pH points per decade, given that we've increase about 0.1 pH points in the past century and ocean uptake of carbon is much higher now than it was in the past), but I don't actually know all that much about acidification.

Salinity, I _really_ know very little about. In the Arctic, salinity will decrease due to melting sea ice and increased river flow from melting glaciers. In areas without land or sea ice contributing fresh water, increased evaporation might make things slightly saltier?

[elbren]

Awesome! Exactly the resolution (quick and dirty) I was looking for. Thanks!