cc: t.d.davies date: Wed Aug 23 10:07:28 2000 from: Mike Hulme subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL to: John Shepherd John, Not sure why you didn't get Tirpak's application - its on its way now. Although his application and CV are oddly presented, he has had relevant experience at both US EPA and the UNFCCC in Germany. Martin Parry and Tom Wigley speak highly of him - indeed, on that basis I alerted him to the position to see whether he was interested. About Gottinger ........... when he was applying I asked Terry, Jonathan and Kerry about him. Jonathan and Terry's replies are below. Kerry was vaguely aware of him and raised a Q. about his professional integrity. None of the three gave me the impression that we were onto someone good! The logistics of the day will not allow us to interview more than 3 candidates, so let's see if all three can make the 19th and keep Gottinger in the background. Mike **************************** Mike, I know of this man, but don't know him personally. He has done some interesting things, but my opinion is that I doubt if he is of the calibre we are looking for - what do you think, Terry? He is in the 'opposite camp' in that his economic modelling approach is theoretical - neoclassical as opposed to ours which is time series data analysis based. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as he is not arrogant (a common trait in economic modellers). Jonathan *************************** *************************** Dear Mike 1) I do not know him. I have looked up his work on the web, and if I have identified him correctly, he is a mathematical, neo-classical, game theory economist with interests in climate change and other environmental issues. Some text summarising a climate change study is copied from the web below to give you a flavour. Not much interdisciplinarity. Terry "Summary: Gottinger paper on endogenous model of climate change A major problem that is common to the existing research on climate change is the neglect of forces of the market mechanism. The existing estimates are obtained under the assumption of exogeneous economic activities. Clearly, such an assumption suppresses the feedback effects to economic activities of the predicted changes in climate. For example, one of the major worries in the studies on climate change is that higher global average temperature may have severe adverse effects on world agricultural production. However, of the productivity of agriculture falls as a result of the global warming, the relative price of agricultural commodities is expected to rise, which, under certain demand conditions, will drive down the production of the manufactured goods and hence the emissions of greenhouse gases. Taking this force into account, it is probable that existing models may have over-estimated the amount of future emissions of the greenhouse gases and their impacts on future climate. In order to model the dynamic interaction between economic activities and the climate system, a dynamic two-sector general equilibrium model is constructed. This paper attempts to answer the question "what are the possible scenarios that would arise from the interaction between economic activities and the climate system: would the world temperature reach a steady state? or would it be increasing forever? or something else?" The answer to the above question will also provide an answer to the following questions. The greenhouse effect is supposedly caused by economic activities.Will the market mechanism itself be able to correct this problem? In other words, will the forces of the price mechanism be sufficient to stop the trend of global warming? The model is constructed in such a way that the market has a built-in self-stabilizing mechanism that offsets rising temperature. The climate is also assumed stable. The interaction between the two stable systems, however, does not necessarily lead to a stable long-run equilibrium. It is shown that the characteristics of the equilibrium paths depends critically on the planet's cooling capability. The world economy and temperature will reach a staedy state as long as the rate at which the planet sheds heat is not too small. If this decay is too small, however, competitive equilibrium will, under certain conditions, lead to climatic cycles or even a climatic chaos. It is shown that under certain conditions the equilibrium law of motion of temperature displays sensitive dependencies on initial conditions." At 16:47 22/08/00 +0100, you wrote: Gentlemen Further to John Lawton & Brian's comments... if Tirpak is a possible candidate, can I have a copy of his CV etc, please ? Thanks for sending those for McIlveen & Gottinger. I'm not an economist, and don't know them at all. I wasn't impressed by McIlveen's application or his record (too little necessary detail, and basically many years as an operational economist for the Canadian Govt : no publications of any consequence) so I agree to discard him. However Gottinger looked much more interesting. Loads of apparently reputable and relevant publications in all sorts of relevant fields in economics and decision theory (and a broad range of interests too). Could we ask an economist whether he's any good : maybe someone from his year at Oxford (he lists Christopher Bliss as a referee : does anyone at UEA know him well enough to phone him and get a quick pen-picture ?)? I fear he may be at the mathematical end of the spectrum, but at this stage think he might be worth interviewing as a dark horse, unless we find that his personal qualities are all wrong.... but I would welcome some input from someone in his field (maybe the people at Cambridge or SPRU know him, even ??) Over to you. John