Global Climate Decisions Under Uncertainty

Abstract

No matter what one’s views on global climate change, it is easy to agree that there is great uncertainty and that our models should reflect that uncertainty. The technical difficulty is that uncertainty can lead to an enormous increase in dimensionality. In this chapter, we will explore an alternative approach to dealing with the problem of dimensionality in large multiregion, multiperiod models, where the regions are aggregated so that we solve a “one-world” model in the later time periods, because discounting limits the importance of distant-future uncertainties for near-future decisions.