As the last dregs of mainstream conservative denial of global warming disappear it is natural to turn our attention to the likely costs of global warming and the solutions we should pursue. Recently (thanks to The Volokh Conspiracy) I came across this article challenging the wisdom of doing anything to combat global warming and then today the same blog linked to this op-ed urging us to consider geoengineering solutions to global warming (like injecting sulfur into the atmosphere) when more prosaic solutions don’t act quickly enough to save species and environments.

Now the first article I linked is a perfect example of the harms of painting global warming as a warm and fuzzy liberal ecological cause. Clearly the writer of this article takes umbrage at this attitude and thus has an ax to grind against the idea of taking steps to avert global warming. But this doesn’t mean his points aren’t valid. Just because global warming is happening doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile to do something about it. We need some estimate of the harms and the costs.

The standard answer would have us believe that the costs are so great it would be utterly foolish to think it wasn’t worth fixing. Perhaps, but if the costs are this extreme doesn’t that mean we need to be taking geoengineering solutions seriously rather than waiting for the slow progress of international diplomacy? Sure, any form of geoengineering posses the risk of unforeseen consequences but so too does allowing the polar ice cap to melt. Frankly, I have no idea what the relative risks and harms under discussion are here and little confidence that what I hear from the media is unaffected by the pro-natural, anti-technology bias that often infects environmentalism. Most media I have seen on the subject treats the existence of global warming itself as the controversy and takes claims about what we should do if it exists for granted.

So here is the question: Does anyone know any good unbiased economic studies that have been done about the costs of global warming? What would be ideal is the same sort of economic consensus that we see among climate scientists about global warming itself. Naive attempts to estimate cost by simply calculating crop land lost or property that would be flooded don’t count. I’ve seen several such studies masquerading as cost benefit estimates about global warming but few bother to be as diligent in listing potential benefits as they are in listing harms and I haven’t seen any that appropriately consider the mitigation measures (levies, dikes, international aid) that would likely to be taken in response to global warming.

My gut instinct is to think that it’s unlikely that global warming is so costly as to require immediate drastic conservation efforts but not so drastic as to make research into geoengineering solutions very important. As a practical matter I understand why lobbying groups may not want to praise geoengineering solutions until we have working international controls on CO2 emissions but as an individual I’d like to know what actually makes sense. Ultimately though I really have no clue and don’t even know where I would look to get a clue.