Climate Change Solution Proposed By Scientists Incorporates Game Theory

Many feel that U.N. climate talks don't quite breed an atmosphere of cooperation, nor bring about successful, binding carbon emissions targets.

Remember when WWF and Oxfam flushed Saudi Arabia's nameplate down the toilet at the U.N. Conference in Bonn, Germany last year? And many can't forget the disappointment felt after Copenhagen in December, 2009.

But now, sinking island nations and environmental groups might have a glimmer of hope. Scientists have come up with a solution that combines game theory with linear compensation, a social psychology model, reports Silicon Republic.

Linear compensation is a scalable method of rewards and punishments to help develop strategies that encourage all nations to truly participate in greenhouse gas mitigation programs. It is based on the rational thought of game theory that each country will act rationally in its own self-interest, reports Science Daily.

In their paper, "Paths To Climate Cooperation", authors Thomas Dietz and Jinhua Zhao comment on an earlier study by Jobst Heitzig, Kai Lessmann, and Yong Zou that says instead of imposing fixed punishments like the Kyoto Protocol, linear compensation calls for the punishment to be adjusted relative to how well other nations met the emissions goals.

The trio's study, Self-Enforcing Strategies To Deter Free-Riding In The Climate Change Mitigation Game And Other Repeated Public Good Games, was the first of its kind to apply linear compensation to climate change negotiations. The proposed strategy redistributes liabilities according to past compliance levels in a proportionate and timely way.

"A key feature of linear compensation is that if a nation fails to meet its treaty obligations, other nations punish it by reducing their own abatement," Zhao said in a press statement. "So each nation has leverage: its own abatement helps make other nations abate more. This is the beauty of the linear compensation mechanism."

Who knows? Perhaps this diplomatic riddle could now be solved at the next U.N. climate talks. The only roadblock is getting countries to commit to something that might punish them.

CORRECTION: This article previously said Thomas Dietz and Jinhua Zhao came up with linear compensation for climate change negotiations. However, the original authors to propose such a theory to be applied to negotiating international binding carbon emissions reduction targets came from Jobst Heitzig, Kai Lessmann, and Yong Zou in their paper Self-Enforcing Strategies To Deter Free-Riding In The Climate Change Mitigation Game And Other Repeated Public Good Games. This has now been updated to reflect that correction.

Comments

[HP-reader]

03:02 PM on 09/27/2011

We should gain more time in order to have more options and better chances to switch over to solar ... some day.
1. All SUVs above 100 h.p. to get extinguish.
2. To develop and to switch over to cleaner fuels (for the existing facilities & vehicles).
3. To develop fast growing plants (processing faster the CO2).
4. To rehabilitate the deserts (with artificial sheds and water pumps attached to solar panels).
5. The financial system to demolish four of its five storeys, and to delete some zeros of the currencies.
... in that direction.

[StephenBP]

08:31 AM on 09/20/2011

The intersection of increasing global temperature, increasing population, and decreasing supplies of fossil fuel are forces that will shape the future of humankind.
It does not take a huge increase in temperature to whack an entire region’s agricultural production efficiency. Similarly, it does not take a huge increase in rainfall to devastate low lying farm land. If you purchase your own food, you know that food prices are steadily and rapidly rising.
Politicians from oil and coal producing states generally have little choice but to take a stance against the scientists who are unveiling the effects of combustion waste gas on our planet. The media are typically so plagued with science illiteracy that their pronouncements are often completely wrong, and their linkage to sponsors like Exxon Mobil prevents many outlets from reporting new scientific findings that continually highlight the seriousness of human-caused global warming.
People who are afraid of facing facts and facing the future make up all sorts of palliatives to comfort themselves, but the fact of carbon dioxide being a global impediment to infrared escape means that we are increasing the equilibrium temperature of our planet in a huge in-process experiment, the unforeseen consequences of which are not likely to be good for the majority of humans.

[battlerooster14]

09:54 PM on 09/18/2011

Politicians and the media are eager to embrace the latest crisis

Climate changes during the twentieth century were often accompanied by widespread panic, only to be quickly forgotten when dire predictions failed to materialize. Intellectuals, the media, and political institutions find it profitable to capitalize on emergencies which focus public attention on the issues they champion. Often their predictions go far beyond the most alarmist of scientific bodies. Science writer David Appell, who has written for such publications as the New Scientist and Scientific American believes that global warming will “threaten fundamental food and water sources. It would lead to displacement of billions of people and huge waves of refugees, spawn terrorism and topple governments, spread disease across the globe.” It would be “would be chaos by any measure, far greater even than the sum total of chaos of the global wars of the 20th century.” This doomsday scenario hardly follows from the hesitant estimates of a 1.1 to 6.4°C temperature rise and 18 to 59 cm sea level rise by 2100 predicted in 2007 by the IPCC.

[Dallas Dunlap]

09:13 AM on 09/18/2011

The game theory guys are wrong. One country's free riding will simply be an excuse for other countries to give up trying.

[JScott]

02:22 AM on 09/18/2011

Could The Selfishness Of Nations Actually Save The World?

What's this a headline proposed by the Ayn Rand Institute?

C'mon journalists do a little journalistic investigating and see if there are some links there.

This may just be PR from them.

[robodawa]

06:53 PM on 09/17/2011

And who will enforce this? UN Peace keepers? Look at how good a job they did in Bosnia in the 90's. Next theory, please.

[battlerooster14]

09:55 PM on 09/18/2011

The 'Green' Police are comming to take us ... ;)

[lbsaltzman]

03:57 PM on 09/17/2011

Any solution that relies on human rationality is likely to fail. If we had approached global warming rationally we would have made significant progress by now. One has only to look at the bizarre conspiracy theories the global warming deniers routinely rant on about to realize that a significant number of people are incapable of responding rationally to scientific facts.

[Jim Milks]

10:32 PM on 09/17/2011

I'm also not sure if the proposed "punishment" is feasible. I mean, the "punishment" is that other nations reduce their own abatement of emissions? I think a global cap-and-trade system (similar to the SO2 cap-and-trade program here in the US) would work better.

[vetxcl]

01:59 PM on 09/17/2011

Yup, uhuh, sure, sure... Up in down. The grass is blue and the sky is green. Good luck using polluting more as leverage. Completely nuts! Please look up abatement.

[battlerooster14]

01:33 PM on 09/17/2011

Anthropocentric CO2 warming is BS as is sustainability. My training is in biochemistry and I am disgusted at what science has become.

[lbsaltzman]

03:54 PM on 09/17/2011

If you don't believe that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, you have a lot of science to learn other than biochemistry. Physics has understood greenhouse gases since the mid 19th century. It is not even remotely controversial that CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas.

[battlerooster14]

09:58 PM on 09/18/2011

Attempts to halt climate change are not only costly and futile, but ignore the benefits of a warmer climate

Adapting to a warmer climate has many costs, but many benefits as well. According to NASA satellite data, higher levels of CO2 have dramatically increased biomass production and biodiversity worldwide. Global warming may cause Africa to become more arid, but enormous territories in Siberia and Canada might finally be open to settlement, and new resources and shipping routes will become available.

The focus of environmental movements is usually on reversing anthropogenic causes of ecological change. Such attempts are not only futile, but ignore the large scale economic destruction caused by environmental restrictions on human productivity. Free societies and technological innovation have allowed human ingenuity bring about vast improvements in human life. This change has almost doubled the life expectancy and quadrupled the standard of living in the developed world – and is now transforming the developing world. Disrupting the global economy would have a snowball effect on future living standards, as well as retard future technologies will help us adapt to a constantly changing world.

A genuine cost-benefit analysis should weight the costs of wealth destruction and long term inhibition of technological progress against the highly uncertain costs of adjusting to environmental changes. Human beings have never passively resigned themselves to environmental changes, but adapted their society to make optimal use of their environment.

[niumarmion]

05:08 PM on 09/17/2011

Did you graduate from the University of Rush Limbaugh?

[battlerooster14]

01:08 PM on 09/17/2011

Yes thats just what we need..The "UN" to Lord over us and tell us what to do...Hogwash!

[TYRANNASAURUS]

12:04 PM on 09/17/2011

Could The Selfishness Of Nations Actually Save The World?

NO...........not if they don't get this over breeding thing under control and at this point it might be too late anyway.

[battlerooster14]

01:15 PM on 09/17/2011

So who decides selective Breeding.?!?!?..Sounds like Eugenics to me....

[TYRANNASAURUS]

04:11 PM on 09/17/2011

The laws of natural selection state that those who have access to food shall eat and multiple...those that don't shall starve and perish...the laws of nature never fail....it's the people that do..

[Binea]

12:04 PM on 09/17/2011

This relates to the climate in these ways..no war..less building war machines..less blood to feed the soil..better economy,which then allows us to put money into alternative energies,rather than nation building in countries that will end up supplying us with more oil
help us get Ron paul to be GOP nominee :)

[Binea]

12:01 PM on 09/17/2011

sounds like my strategy to end the wars and restore civil liberties :)
Libs and indies help get Ron Paul to be the GOP nominee..Ron Paul has been against these wars consistently,all all his reasons were spot on..so we Put Ron Paul the economist/citizen statesmen/antiwar/procivil liberties candidate against Obama..the one we THOUGHT would end the wasr and restore civil liberties..in this strategy Obama is forced to end the wars now..or Ron Paul will get elected and HE will end them
neigther "party" wins... ".we the little people of the world"..win

[Karen Roberts]

11:23 AM on 09/17/2011

Here is my dream for solving the climate crisis, for what it is worth. If we are going to do something, we have to do it as a world, not a country. We create gravity wells up there in the void, about three, balanced around the globe. This is so the gravity wont pull at the earth toward one. The gravity intersects at a point, that creates a area just within our biosphere, to float a platform or island. We put a heavy pollution factory up there whose smokestack goes up far enough to throws their 'carbon dioxide' emissions out into space. Now I believe we know the technology we just need to apply it. As far as energy they can use coal. As far as water they can create clouds under themselves and seed rain with dry ice. As far as getting up there, bring back the Zeppelin's. Now these islands will rise in set like our moon because the gravity wells will stay and same place while the earth revolves. Countries will just have to get use to these global islands floating overhead. We have the technology, lets use it.

[Jim Milks]

10:35 PM on 09/17/2011

And it's a vision that will stay a dream, especially since we don't really know the mechanism by which gravity works. That alone makes it impossible to create any gravity wells.

[tdietzvt]

09:37 AM on 09/17/2011

The paper discussed by Dietz and Zhao is only a commentary on the paper in the same issue by Heitzig et al that propose linC and show that it will work under a variety of circumstances. The press release for their pioneering work is:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/trittbrettfahrerei-ahnden-spieltheorie-zeigt-moeglichkeiten-fuer-klimaverhandler