[carapace]

There's only so much time in the day, and there's so much information, presented in so many ways, and it's so common for these sorts of things to be biased to the point of propaganda, that I've developed a heuristic that says (in this case) I shouldn't waste my time with this particular piece.

However,

> As someone who works professionally in statistics, I say this post is of higher quality than a large amount of even published research, especially in social science

...this makes me sit up and take notice. I'll go back and actually read the thing now.

- - - -

I got as far as the first paragraph:

> As an economist who writes on climate change policy, my usual stance is to stipulate the so-called “consensus” physical science (as codified for example in UN and US government reports), and show how the calls for massive carbon taxes and direct regulations still do not follow. For an example of this discrepancy that I often mention, William Nordhaus recently won the Nobel Prize for his work on climate change economics, and he calibrated his model to match what the UN’s IPCC said about various facts of physical science, such as the global temperature’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions, etc. Even so, Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work shows that governments doing nothing would be better for human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s latest goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Yeah, thoughtfully written crazy-talk waste-of-time bullshit. Like a wedding cake made out of Crisco, I'm sorry I even tasted it.

[mlthoughts2018]

It sure seems like you did not try to sincerely read it. That paragraph has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the post. It just reinforces that you seem to only consider opinions or arguments that start out from a position you already agree with, and are happy to dismiss things without reading them if you don’t.

[carapace]

> It sure seems like you did not try to sincerely read it.

I started out sincerely and I did dig a little further than I indicated, but the author failed another two heuristics already in the first paragraph. Specifically:

> my usual stance is to stipulate the so-called “consensus” physical science

I read a lot of fringe science (crackpots) for fun and to scan for up-and-coming new science/tech, and that's exactly the kind of sentence a crackpot writes. He uses "so-called" and scare quotes for the idea of consensus physical science. That's how crackpots talk. Not damning in itself, but a very bad sign.

Then:

> Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work shows that governments doing nothing would be better for human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s latest goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Now that is classic "black is white; up is down" inverted-logic propaganda. It's straight out of the playbook.

Even so, I clicked through to see wtf he's talking about [1], and he's got some table (Table 4 on [1]) and he says:

> The first row of the table shows what the DICE model—as of its 2007 calibration—estimated would happen if the governments of the world took no major action to arrest greenhouse gas emissions. There would be significant future environmental damages, which would have a present-discounted value of $22.55 trillion.

So, ouch, right? But then he says:

> In contrast, the second row shows what would happen if the governments implemented an optimal carbon tax. Because emissions would drop, future environmental damages would fall as well; that’s why the PDV of such damage would be only $17.31 trillion. However, even though the gross benefits of the optimal carbon tax would be some $5 trillion as a result (because of the reduction in environmental harms), these gross benefits would have to be offset by the drag on conventional economic growth, or what is called “abatement costs.” Those come in at a hefty $2.20 trillion (in PDV terms), so that the net benefits of even the optimal carbon tax would be “only” $3.07 trillion.

Notice that he's talking about economic benefits? "$5 trillion ... reduction in environmental harms" ... that's endangered species that didn't go extinct, forests and rivers and seas that aren't cut down or dried up or poisoned, fisheries that haven't collapsed. Ya feel?

So there it is. When he says "governments doing nothing would be better for human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s latest goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius" he actually means the welfare of the economy. The global ecology is still fucked to the tune of $22,550,000,000,000 in the do-nothing scenario.

Frankly, I find it absurd.

It's reminds me of that New Yorker cartoon, "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995?verso=true

So, already in the first paragraph, he's shown that he's a propagandist who values money over living things. And so, according to my own world view, I can safely discount anything he has to say on the subject. The saddest part is that I don't doubt that he's sincere and thinks of himself as a good person. (He's not twirling his mustache and cackling evilly, eh?) But I'm not going to waste my time reading his screed. As I said, there is too much other, higher-quality information in the world today, and only so much time to read it.

> That paragraph has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the post.

Then what is it doing there? Not to beat up on the guy but that's another strike against him as a writer, no?

> It just reinforces that you seem to only consider opinions or arguments that start out from a position you already agree with, and are happy to dismiss things without reading them if you don’t.

I can understand why it seemed that way but it's just not true. The fundamental rule of Information Theory says that the unpredictability of a message is a measure of its information content. I actually seek out information that contradicts or modifies my current models of the world. This article isn't that. (I mean, you can predict what he's going to say from the title alone. As I did, successfully.)

You said yourself that you don't agree with the conclusions of the article, so what exactly am I missing by skipping it? I mean I could spend that time reading up on statistics or something, eh?

In any event, well met, and have a Happy New Year.

[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus...