Skip to main content
Climate
Search

Main navigation

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

Main navigation

  • Climate 101
    • What We Know
    • What Can Be Done
    • Climate Primer
  • Explore
    • Explainers
    • Ask MIT Climate
    • Podcast
    • 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

PodcastNovember 19, 2025

Energy storage is heating up

MIT Energy Initiative
PostNovember 14, 2025

PODCAST: Climate Reveal (Season 1, Episode 3) - Energy Essentials

MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy
Podcast: Climate Reveal
PostNovember 13, 2025

MIT/Harvard Roosevelt Project Releases Synthesis Report on U.S. Energy Tran...

MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
US flag with worker gloves
PostNovember 11, 2025

Geothermal Energy Networks: Transforming Our Thermal Energy System

MIT OCW
Illustration of different types of buildings connected together beneath the ground with a loop, having a long horizontal run and multiple vertical loops deeper into the ground.

MIT Climate News in Your Inbox

 
 

MIT Groups Log In

Log In

Footer

  • About
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility
  • Contact
MIT Climate Project
MIT
Communicator Award Winner
Communicator Award Winner