That JPMorgan climatechangeisgonnakillusall report

Much fuss as it appears that JP Morgan has a report stating that climate change is going to wipe out human life upon this lovely planet:

The human race could cease to exist without massive worldwide action to tackle global warming, economists at JP Morgan have warned in a hard-hitting report on the "catastrophic" potential of climate change.

And:

The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.

The actual report is here.

Much of it is entirely reasonable. Discount rates are discussed, it is pointed out that any economic losses are counterfactual:

And fourth, these are counterfactual losses rather than actual losses. Nobody would have an income in 2100 lower than today in absolute terms, but rather lower than it would have been in the absence of climate change.

Sadly, they don’t go on to point out that if policies are adopted which reduce emissions by reducing economic growth then the losses will be larger - something many of the IPCC’s own models make clear.

They also point out, as with Stern, Nordhaus, the IMF etc, that if all of the predictions about emissions, their effect, temperature change are correct then the solution is a carbon tax. Anyone insisting that all the predictions are all correct and not agitating for a carbon tax is not taking the matter seriously - although that’s us, not the report.

However, there’s a gross mistake in the report. The assumption is:

Using their model and the IPCC Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5―broadly a business-as-usual emissions outlook …

Everything they say is based upon the idea that we’re following that RCP 8.5 path. Which we’re not. We’re not in current emissions and we’re not in future either. For to do so requires the use of coal in ever greater quantities, something that isn’t being done and isn’t going to be either - technologies that don’t use that ever more coal have already been developed and are being deployed.

In fact, the one thing we are absolutely certain about over climate change is that this emissions pathway isn’t going to be one that happens, it’s a gross over-estimate of the future. Thus any predictions based upon it are false.

There is also a more subtle point:

If no new policies are enacted relative to what was legislated as of the end of 2017, emissions would rise to 60GtCO2eq by 2030 and 70GtCO2eq by the end of the century (Figure 4, Business-as-usual (BAU) scenario).

No. This is to assume that technological changes - and thus variances in emissions - only come from legislative fiat. Yet this is not so. The most obvious example being fracking, which has distinctly reduced emissions by making natural gas significantly cheaper than coal for electricity generation in the places that it has been done at scale. You can add whatever effects you wish from those claims that wind, or solar, are price competitive as well.

The actual claim in the report is that something which isn’t going to happen would be dangerous. Which might even be true but it’s not a hugely useful addition to the debate for it’s not going to happen.