Testifying before Congress, Ph.D. statistician Kevin Dayaratna trashes the Obama era Interagency Working Group (IWG) estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) — a metric to quantify economic damages associated with carbon dioxide emissions used to justify increased government regulations.
DR. DAYARATNA: “There are a variety of issues with these SCCs– the IAMs (Integrated Assessment Models) associated with these SCCs. The most fundamental issue is that they are extremely sensitive to very, very reasonable changes in assumptions. As I was referring to using the time horizon to 300 years, if you shift that to 150 years, which is still unrealistic, you get a drastically different estimate of the SCC. The discount rate– if you use a 7 percent discount rate, as mandated by the OMB(Office of Management and Budget), under the FUND model you will get a negative Social Cost of Carbon. And, the policy implication there would be that we shouldn’t be taxing carbon dioxide emissions but subsidizing it.”
Hearing: At what cost? Examining the Social Cost of Carbon
Subcommittee on Environment
US House Science Committee
February 28, 2017
