Economist.
Many people seem to think that cooling effect is a completely new finding. That is a bit misleading - for example, https://www.economist.com/business/2018/10/27/sulphur-emissions-rules-for-shipping-will-worsen-global-warming and https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/11/03/shipping-regulators-plan-to-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions are from 2018.
Still, over time it should become more likely to meet Bf, not less; there are more people in general, and more documentary filmmakers, adventurers, tourists, infrared cameras, planes etc
Except if they died out. However, someone should at some point also find bones.
Why do nuclear-energy fan articles often mention France as a positive example without discussing the drastic reduction of French nuclear power generation in 2022?
Yes, the statement that switching off coal-fired power plants etc. is only true at the margin. However, for the OP's question, it seems that the sign of "marginal social benefit - marginal social cost" seems crucial.
In the recent Econtalk podcast with Tyler Cowen, Cowen explicitly and strictly demands a mathematical model of AI risk, claiming something like that does not exist.
At the same time, he sees "Hayekian" arguments as a kind of benchmark. As far as I know, there is no mathematical benchmark model of the classical Hayek argument.
The same is true for Cowen's demand for loyalty to the US constitution. There is no mathematical model for that.
All claims and demands of Cowen are asymmetrical. The doomers are emotional, he says. The non-doomers are just reasonable.
Yes, I misremembered - but the CO2-based calculation is not driving the main results; instead, it is an extension calculated for one sector (electric power generation). See these two paragraphs from the introduction:
"We then turn to the estimation of damages by industry. We find that the ratio of GED/VA is greater than one for seven industries (stone quarrying, solid waste incineration, sewage treatment plants, oil- and coal-fired power plants, marinas, and petroleum-coal product manufacturing). This indicates that the air pollution damages from these industries are greater than their net contribution to output. Several other industries also have high GED/VA ratios. We also present the overall size of GED by industry. Five industries stand out as large air polluters: coal-fired power plants, crop production, truck transportation, livestock production, and highway- street-bridge construction.
In order to explore the robustness of our results to certain assumptions in the integrated assessment model, we conduct a sensitivity analysis. The analysis shows that the level of GED is sensitive to assumptions about the value of mortality risks, how this value varies by age, and the adult mortality dose-response function for particulate matter. A final analysis examines the fossil fuel electric generating industry in detail. It presents a more detailed calculation of GED for coal-fired power plants and it includes the impact of carbon dioxide (CO 2)."
The 184 bn $ (in 2011) do not include CO2 (see first paragraph of section B)
Concerning positive externalities: Yes, the authors note that this is not part of the calculation. But it is completely unclear what the relevance of this is. Every economic action may have a positive externality, but why exactly should this favor fossil energy sources in particular? And why should I assume these externalities to be so large that they are relevant=
One thing of which it might be helpful if powerful beings could learn it: "It's in general not okay to enforce your wishes on others. "
However, ethics is complicated and you will probably find many cases where enforcing your wishes on others is actually okay.
Moreover, if the learning dataset is humanity's behavior, then it's probably a problem that enforcing takes place all the time.
As far as I remember (but it is a while ago that I read that paper), the paper I linked to does not include CO2 externalities but focuses on the effects of local air pollution on the United States itself. So no, if anything the negative externalities derived in the paper are too low, and net value added would be even lower if climate change was taken into account. What is your criticism of how the benefits of the industries are calculated?
I have not read the book. Nonetheless, I would like to point out two things:
This reminds me of General Equilibrium Theory. This was once a fashionable field, were very smart people like Ken Arrow and Gérard Debreu proved the conditions for the existence of general equilibrium (demand = supply for all commodities at once). Some people then used the proofs to dismiss the idea of competitive equilibrium as an idea that could direct economic policy, because the conditions are extremely demanding and unrealistic. Others drew the opposite conclusion: Look, competitive markets are great (in theory), so actual markets are (probably) also great!