Talk:Economic analysis of climate change

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Section sizes Section size for Economic analysis of climate change (52 sections) Section name Byte count Prose size (words) Header Total Header Total (Top) 7,324 7,324 348 348 Purposes 6,585 6,585 175 175 Types of economic models 782 4,147 80 330 Process-based models 95 95 0 0 Structural models 27 1,947 0 115 Computable general equilibrium models 107 107 0 0 Aggregate cost-benefit models 1,813 1,813 115 115 Statistical (econometric) methods 1,323 1,323 135 135 Analytical frameworks 29 34,461 0 1,795 Cost–benefit analysis 10,613 11,587 414 500 Damage functions 974 974 86 86 Cost-effectiveness analysis 4,907 4,907 336 336 Scenario-based assessments 4,038 4,038 286 286 Risk management 8,109 13,900 354 673 Iterative risk management 4,432 4,432 213 213 Portfolio analysis 1,359 1,359 106 106 Costs of climate impacts 32 34,278 0 1,781 At the global level 13,047 15,993 614 747 High emissions scenarios 2,946 2,946 133 133 Underestimation of economic impacts 4,291 4,291 194 194 By region 3,154 3,154 312 312 By sector 1,635 6,484 53 333 Health and productivity 4,041 4,041 257 257 Agriculture 117 117 0 0 Industry 691 691 23 23 Impacts on living costs 2,875 2,875 73 73 Utility of aggregated assessment 1,449 1,449 122 122 Costs of mitigation 1,129 11,191 24 360 Global costs of mitigation 4,005 4,005 308 308 Regional costs of mitigation 1,780 1,780 15 15 Sharing of mitigation costs 4,277 4,277 13 13 Costs of adaptation 103 103 0 0 Challenges and debates 29 17,827 0 1,054 Efficiency and equity 8,639 8,639 597 597 Insurance and markets 2,503 2,503 193 193 Effects of economic growth and degrowth scenarios on emissions 6,656 6,656 264 264 Economics of climate change mitigation 3,986 44,809 91 2,337 Policies and approaches to reduce emissions 85 16,812 0 645 Price signals 3,270 3,270 194 194 Structural market reforms 2,383 2,383 232 232 Degrowth 11,074 11,074 219 219 Assessing costs and benefits 35 17,817 0 1,475 GDP 838 838 108 108 Baselines 1,336 1,336 179 179 Ancillary impacts 903 903 72 72 Flexibility 1,708 1,708 88 88 Discount rates 12,997 12,997 1,028 1,028 Economic barriers to addressing climate change mitigation 6,194 6,194 126 126 See also 442 442 0 0 References 30 6,389 0 0 Sources 6,359 6,359 0 0 External links 871 871 0 0 Total 168,427 168,427 8,180 8,180

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 15 September 2025 for a period of one week.

Summary of edits made Jan-April 2024 and possible further improvements

There was quite a lot of new text, updating to IPCC AR6 and restructuring of the article following its merger with economic impacts article

1. improved the lead to better reflect and balance content
2. improved, more comprehensive purposes section
3. types of economic models following IPCC + new section on statistical models
4. analytical frameworks is more balanced in describing methods other than CBA
5. Costs of impacts of climate change is better structured into global estimates, regional and sectoral.
6. the global section was improved with information on the 'what' and the 'how' of these estimates and updated with AR6 findings
7. new separate sections detailing the costs of adaptation and mitigation measures excerpting from those sub- articles
8. reorgansing text in section on challenges and debates, and updating some which go back quite a long way

Possible further improvements are :

1. regional and sectoral estimates of economic impacts - main sectors and affected regions, including links to relevant articles still needs work and updating from old sources
2. Risk management method - I think this should be more focussed on the - iterative risk management concept that is embedded in IPCC work
3. additional analytical frameworks/methods to be added could be Real options analysis, multi-criteria analysis
4. there is quite a big reliance on excerpts from other articles which is not ideal
5. very few studies of climate change are integrated into main articles covering the economic frameworks here eg CBA, CEA

Richarit (talk) 16:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Richarit, thanks a lot for this useful summary and your work on this article! Do you have time for any of the possible improvements that you listed here, or is that more for others? Regarding the number of excerpts, I agree with you that it was quite a high number (five). This prompted me to remove the excerpt on social cost of carbon.

How do you (and others) feel about the general article quality now, is it still a C class article, or has it gone up to B? (see here for an explanation of the grading system: WP:ASSESS). EMsmile (talk) 12:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:Text-source integrity of the article is extremely poor, so it's more C than B. I'm also tackling issues with close paraphrasing (usually just individual sentences copied with few words changes).

One question is how to deal with the two sections on mitigation costs. Cost of mitigation and economics of mitigation. They don't overlap too much, but it's unclear from the headings what would be found under them. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:18, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that it's unclear to laypersons what would be the difference between the sections on cost of mitigation and economics of mitigation. I think this came about as the content under economics of mitigation used to be a stand-alone article and was merged into this one. EMsmile (talk) 21:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 16 June 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved: Opposition is unanimous, early closure, request was withdrawn. (non-admin closure) HudecEmil (talk) 13:42, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Economic analysis of climate change → Economic effects of climate changeEconomic effects of climate change – Consistency with other pages such as Effects of climate change. Notability of the content more due to effects. HudecEmil (talk) 17:58, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I think the current title is pretty good, as this is not just about the economic effects of climate change. See previous move discuss above. Also see discussion about content and structure above (from 9 months ago). Changing the title to "Economic effects of climate change" would narrow down the scope of this article. EMsmile (talk) 09:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. This article includes analysis of mitigation and adaptation policies and scenarios, and information about costing and impementing these measures, so I think that the renaming proposal would not be suitable as making it too narrow scope Richarit (talk) 11:11, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per EMsmile. As suggested in previous move discuss above, it might be appropriate to expand the section Economic analysis of climate change#Costs of impacts of climate change into an article at Economic effects of climate change in summary style. Daask (talk) 18:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removed section on sensitivity analysis

I am taking this out as I regard it as outdated, overly detailed, not well sourced. Moving it to talk page in case someone wants to put it back in:

Sensitivity analysis allows assumptions to be changed in aggregate analysis to see what effect it has on results (Smith et al., 2001:943):^[1]

• Shape of the damage function: This relates impacts to the change in atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. There is little information on what the correct shape (e.g., linear or cubic) of this function is. Compared with a linear function, a cubic function shows relatively small damages for small increases in temperature, but more sharply increasing damages at greater temperatures.
• Rate of climate change: This is believed to be an important determinant of impacts, often because it affects the time available for adaptation.
• Discount rate and time horizon: Models used in aggregate studies suggest that the most severe impacts of climate change will occur in the future. Estimated impacts are therefore sensitive to the time horizon (how far a given study projects impacts into the future) and the discount rate (the value assigned to consumption in the future versus consumption today).
• Welfare criteria: Aggregate analysis is particularly sensitive to the weighting (i.e., relative importance) of impacts occurring in different regions and at different times. Studies by Fankhauser et al. (1997) and Azar (1999) found that greater concern over the distribution of impacts lead to more severe predictions of aggregate impacts.
• Uncertainty: Usually assessed through sensitivity analysis, but can also be viewed as a hedging problem. EMF (1997) found that deciding how to hedge depends on society's aversion to climate change risks, and the potential costs of insuring against these risks. EMsmile (talk) 13:57, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

1. Smith, J. B.; et al. (2001). "19. Vulnerability to Climate Change and Reasons for Concern: A Synthesis" (PDF). In McCarthy, J. J.; et al. (eds.). Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF). Cambridge, UK, and New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press. pp. 913–970. Retrieved 2022-01-19.

Planned update

I plan to take this article up to B level, with a focus on climate damages. I do research in this field, so want to be open about potential biases and one conflict of interest:

• I've published on postgrowth: [1], and am sympathetic to this minority point of view. I think it gets overemphasized however, so might condense relevant sections.
• I've written critically about Cost-Benefit Analysis before (e.g. [2]). I might reduce the emphasis on CBA, while also reducing emphasis on the current alternatives specified such as CEA.
• I work on the E3ME-FTT model. I don't plan to touch this text.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:47, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thank you. I once did a bit of work on this article (trying to work with content experts) but didn't get very far (as my experts abandoned me after an initial video call about this article...). It's got rather low pageviews but perhaps that's due to the article's poor quality, and the pageviews will go up once the quality is improved (and it's linked better from other articles). Thanks for tackling this article! EMsmile (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The low page views is why I don't plan to take it further than B-level. There's some general website design evidence that if you rewrite into plain English, you get more views, but I've not seen a change much in pageviews from improving WIkipedia articles myself. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 23:31, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]