Nobel Prize Winner William Nordhaus vs. the IPCC on Climate Change | Hacker News Reader

Nobel Prize Winner William Nordhaus vs. the IPCC on Climate Change

econlib.org

17 pointsthemodder66624 comments

The author is using the term "present-discounted value" to describe the deaths of millions of people and the extinction of a major portion of the species of the earths.

You may have to put a dollar value on that sort of stuff to do economic calculations, but you have to recognize that's what you're doing.

This looks like an attempt to hijack the cred of a Nobel prize winner for the benefit of pushing the agenda of one "Free Market Institute" based at Texas Tech, in Lubbock Texas, the heart of Texas oil country. I would take everything in this article with a large grain of salt. Especially the characterization of positive steps toward addressing climate change as "mitigations" -- one person's mitigation is another person's highly sustainable renewable energy source that will create jobs at time of sale and installation, and pay dividends for decades to come.

Read the article (or don't) and assail its contents (or don't). Ad hominem is fundamentally unproductive.

I did read it, and it is attempting to portray what it calls mitigations as strictly negatives with no benefits when in fact they have huge potential as engines of job growth and other positive effects such as long term reduction of pollution outside of just the CO2 being discussed.

I don't think pointing out the biased nature of the source is an ad-hominem. It's pretty standard critical analysis.

That's literally what ad hominem means...

This is false.

Ad hominem refers to dismissing an argument out of hand based on the source. In this case, people are willing to engage with the argument, but are additionally pointing out the bias inherent in the source. This is not ad hominem, just a bias warning.

I don't think ad hominem is necessarily dismissing an argument out of hand - it's ignoring the content of an argument in favor of countering the speaker.

Ad hominem isn't always irrelevant, but questioning a source's motivation instead of responding to the arguments they make seems to be ad hominem.

I kind of agree, but there's no doubt that there is an agenda, and it's worth considering that if you don't have the background to assess the objectivity of the article purely on its content. Knowing who profits is an enormously important data point. Every advertisement in existence is going to extol the virtue of their product. It's naive to think that someone who stands to benefit from you "buying" something is going to try to convince you not to.

I'm not an expert on this subject, but here are some thoughts I have.

> Both fans and critics of William Nordhaus’s computer model of the global economy and climate acknowledge that it is a crude approach that omits many crucial real-world considerations.

Does it factor in the famine and wars that will result from global warming?

> As Table 1 indicates, Nordhaus’s model—at least as of its 2007 calibration—estimated that such a policy goal would make humanity $14 trillion poorer compared to doing nothing at all about climate change.

I find this claim the most interesting, because the estimate is that humanity will be much poorer if we do something about climate change. The question is, what will be the distribution of these new riches? Who will be more poor, and who will be more rich? Do the poor starve and die (in say South America and Africa) while the rich make more money?

Do ten oil companies throughout the world get richer while everyone else gets poorer, or maybe even no change? This seems like a plausible outcome too. If the cost of producing food goes up dramatically, only those who are making dramatically more money will be richer.

To me, the article reads as more of an attack on Nordhaus than an attempt to hijack his cred.

Truly the dismal science.

How do you put a dollar cost on mass-extinction? It's ludicrous to even try.

If money matters more than lives (even if it's your own or a lot of people you might care enough), then he might be right.

If it doesn't, then he is wrong. Never cross a river that in average is 4 feet deep, nor suppose that an increase of the global yearly average of temperature of 2 degrees excludes the possibility of 55-60 ºC on very populated cities on some particular day in a near future. That probably will kill a lot of people, and cause a lot of health troubles to a lot more. And to make it worse, it won't be an isolated event, it will keep happening and getting worse, and not affecting just people.

If you see what he proposes as "it will be less expensive to kill a lot of people", he might be technically right. And very wrong.

Basically he says Carbon is contributing to GHG and climate change but claims that managing a 1.5C is more expensive than “going green”.

That is it would be long term cheaper to adapt to climate change than to reverse it (with the proviso that we tax the externalities of carbon.)

It’s an interesting proposition and perhaps it does have economic merit. Of course many people will dismiss it out of hand because it questions our present assumptions.

“According to its last update, published in early 2017, the Obama EPA reported that the SCC in 2030, using the standard 3% discount rate, would be $50 per ton.”

Does anybody know the context in which 3% is considered the “standard” discount rate? The choice of a specific discount rate reflects/implies a philosophical stance about the value of stuff in the future. I’m interested in how 3% is the value we’ve converged on.

William Nordhaus and his cost estimates are themselves controversial and by no means some kind of standard in the field of climate mitigation economics. For people who paid attention, this was brought up when he won his prize. [1]

I dare say the IPCC knows better than both Econlib and Nordhaus. There isn't much of an analysis here. They ignore the most obvious huge cost: the risk of reaching the tipping-point after which global warming would be unstoppable. They ignore the positive externalities of climate action, which are plenty in themselves. They ignore the fact that it is not possible to not act now and then suddenly put on the brakes on warming when we reach whatever target they deem appropriate.

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-cli...

The strange thing is that if there is such positive externalities for climate policies why don't rich countries that can afford to pay more for energy be more aggresive in reducing emissions? Even Germany, for instance, isn't spending as much as it could to reduce emissions. If reducing emissions are so important why aren't German business forced to purchase electricity at the market rate(with renewable subsidies builtin) the same way consumers are?

Complaining about growth in rich countries basically misses the mark. It isn't rich countries that are driving greenhouse emissions but developing countries that can't afford renewable energy wihtout cutting investment and thus growth. Less growth means that people in the present will be worse off as well and they have less resources to ameliorate the social consequences of a stagnant economy.

Of course, rich countries that cut growth will be less rich. That means all else being equal workers will be paid less(because they live in a less wealthy economy) and the lack of growth will cause similar (if more manageable) social impacts as in developing economies. Saying that you could still be 'happy' living in such a country misses the point entirely. You would never rationally believe such an outcome of being economically poorer shouldn't be avoided if at all possible.

It sounds a lot less important that he's a Nobel laureate when you realize he got the prize in economics and econlib is libertarian drivel.

Having won the Nobel Prize doesn't necessarily mean someone holds reasonable views in fields outside their immediate speciality.

1993 chemistry prize winner Kary Mullis supported AIDS denialists and expressed an interest in astrology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Personal_views

He won the Nobel Prize for his work in this specific sub-specialty. It's not outside his field.

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