Economist Steve Keen debunks misleading studies on global warming impact
youtube.com
youtube.com
Apart from that, the gist of his critique seems to be that economists are using linear extrapolations and aren’t incorporating “tipping points” into their analysis. But its the climate scientists at the IPCC itself who have consistently declined to give tipping points and runaway effects significant weight. That’s true even in the latest 2022 IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6.... The strongest thing the executive summary says about “tipping points” is that certain ones “cannot be ruled out.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
He's right to question Nordhaus, but I don't think the rest of his stuff is particularly out of the mainstream of economics, though he quotes a kook on minerals, he still ends up with carbon pricing as the fix.
Also, IPCC scientists aren't dismissing tipping points, they're just hard to model and unnecessary, as even without them (for good and bad, e.g. cheap solar tipping points), dealing with climate change makes financial sense.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141014141710/http://www.econ.y...
Secondly, the damage function is a quadratic polynomial (see the parameters a1 and a2 in the formula). But that is an unreasonable assumption, as heating can induce exponential or logistic effects (or worse). More explanations about this by prof. Keen starting 14:42 in the video:
https://youtu.be/5LvyxH3O7kE?t=882
Take, for instance, a phase change. Water boils at 100°C extremely nonlinearly compared to temperature. In fact, in a stepwise manner.
Steve Keen is a (retired) Australian economist who has held some senior positions at institutions around the world.
He holds heterodoxical views on a number of economic topics and has predicted, several times, the collapse of the Australian economy due to the continued strong growth in the housing market.
Is he wrong about climate science? Not sure, but it's not his area of expertise. However I also suggest that the IPCC are not a trusted source (IMO) in this argument, especially given they are essentially a political tool rather than a scientific one.
I feel betrayed by the IPCC for treating these studies seriously. This is particularly of concern, since the IPCC was created specifically as a non-industry scientific body to help policymakers.
I apologize for further propagating the false sense of security in a previous Ask HN[1]. But I thank elviejo[2] for linking me to this video. I published it again, because I think it is the most important discussion of the century.
danukar, you deserve respect for so publicly questioning and then changing direction on your prior assumptions.
I tried to voice my concerns in /r/AskScience, but my post was not phrased in a sufficiently scientific manner. I asked why we ought to combat climate change, rather than scientifically answerable issues about the damage models.