Skip to main content
Climate
Search

Main navigation

  • Climate 101
    • What We Know
    • What Can Be Done
    • Climate Primer
  • Explore
    • Podcast
    • Explainers
    • Climate Questions
    • For Educators
  • MIT Action
    • News
    • Events
    • Resources
  • Search
MIT

Main navigation

  • Climate 101
    • What We Know
    • What Can Be Done
    • Climate Primer
  • Explore
    • Podcast
    • Explainers
    • Climate Questions
    • For Educators
  • MIT Action
    • News
    • Events
    • Resources
  • Search
PostFebruary 14, 2019

What are the policy implications of a dramatic range of climate damage estimates?

"Dramatic climate disruption and massive economic losses are coming in just a few decades, not centuries, if we continue along our present path of inaction" notes Frank Ackerman (Synapse Energy Economics & former lecturer at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning), citing an ever increasing body of academic reports and articles.

Why, despite ominously large foreshadowing of the lifetime damages per ton of carbo dioxide, is there such deep uncertainty and a wide scale of value for those damages?

In Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton? Ackerman explores the models used to project future costs, their reliability, and what uncertainty means for climate policy. Read Ackerman's full posts, part one - part two.

by Department of Urban Studies and Planning MIT
Topics
Finance & Economics
Energy
Government & Policy

Related Posts

PostAugust 6, 2026

A new way to watch heat move through electronics

MIT News
To measure how heat moves through materials, MIT researchers use laser pulses (red) to heat a sample while ultrafast X-rays (purple) penetrate multiple material layers and measure changes as heat dissipates.
PostAugust 4, 2026

Solving the solvent problem

MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
A machine-learning-guided pipeline enables researchers to generate solvent candidate pools on demand, narrow the selections down, and experimentally test the most promising electrolyte recipes. These scanning electron microscopy images show the morphology of sodium-metal deposits obtained from three different electrolyte candidates.
PostAugust 3, 2026

Social Problems of Nuclear Energy

MIT OCW
Photo of two large cooling towers emitting some steam.
PostAugust 3, 2026

CS3 Lecture Series: Fundamentals of Climate Science and Policy

MIT OCW
Photo of session attendees watching a speaker's talk.

MIT Climate Knowledge in Your Inbox

 
 

MIT Groups Log In

Log In

Footer

  • About
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility
  • Contact
MIT Climate Project
MIT
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • Simplecast
Communicator Award Winner
Communicator Award Winner