John Christy and Kerry Emanuel on Climate Change

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2014

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talk with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change. Topics discussed include what we know and don't know about global warming, trends in extreme weather such as hurricanes, rising sea level, the likely change in temperature in the next hundred years. Both scientists also give their perspective on what policies might be put in place to reduce risk from climate change. This episode was recorded before a live audience at the College of Business Administration at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:08.0	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org where you can
0:13.7	subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's
0:18.4	conversation. You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've
0:22.7	ever done going back to 2006. Our email address is maladycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.3	Today is March 3rd 2014 and welcome to a special edition of Econ Talk, recorded live at the
0:39.2	College of Business Administration at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I want to thank the
0:43.9	Dean of the Business School of Karen St. John and the University for hosting this event. Our topic
0:48.9	for today is climate change and I'll be moderating a conversation in front of a live audience between
0:54.2	two scientists with different perspectives on the issue. Climate change reminds me a lot of
0:59.2	macroeconomics. We have a complex system of many causal factors and we're often interested in
1:04.8	the impact of one key variable. In macro it might be fiscal policy or monetary policy or change in
1:10.4	taxes with the climate we're interested in how temperature or rainfall or hurricanes respond
1:15.9	to human activity and in particular increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
1:20.4	Both the climate and the economy, they're experts on both sides of the issue who are highly
1:24.8	confident they understand how these complex systems work. Everyday citizens, those of us who are
1:29.9	not experts, we struggle with figuring out where the truth lies. How do we evaluate which
1:34.9	experts are credible? Who can we trust? Is that the wrong model? Is it possible for anyone to
1:40.8	figure out where the truth lies? And what I'm interested in discovering today is where there's
1:46.0	agreement, where there's disagreement and why does disagreement persist in this very important area
1:51.2	of public policy and science. Now to introduce our guests. John Christie is distinguished professor
1:57.2	and director of the Earth System Science Center here at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
	...

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