William Nordhaus, an economist who has been researching the implications of climate change for many years and in 2018 received a Nobel prize for his work, published an article in The New York Review of Books in 2012 titled “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong.” It was written as a response to an
I wonder how long the whole climate change fad will go on for, as many of the predictions in the popular media are both pretty outlandish and within timescales of my lifespan. A couple years ago I noticed concerns about underpopulation becoming more mainstream, and in certain high status circles they are quite popular. The decline in fertility is much more rapid that really anyone predicted with very tangible costs, I wonder if the next big fad actually decides to tackle a real problem, or what the underlying group dynamics are behind what becomes a high status fad and if they are all prone to going after non-issues.
Re-reading this again in June 2024: You are so, so right! Excellent piece. Appropriately, I ended up here due to engaging in comments on an article in the WSJ in which someone cited Nordhaus.
I think that a lefty could write a counter-piece focusing on two things:
1. All the possible "tipping points" we could hit that would create positive feedback on warming (melting sea ice, releasing trapped methane).
2. That academic research is funded by industry, not socialists. There is a long history of oil companies promoting "research" that they knew wasn't true, in order to foment FUD.
Very interesting. It's good to think there are moderating voices on the global warming side. And I agree that academia is no longer about the pursuit of provable truth, but rather now a sort of political view known as science, which has some positive implications (ethics for research) and some possibly negative implications (dissidents have a very difficult path to navigate.)
I wonder how long the whole climate change fad will go on for, as many of the predictions in the popular media are both pretty outlandish and within timescales of my lifespan. A couple years ago I noticed concerns about underpopulation becoming more mainstream, and in certain high status circles they are quite popular. The decline in fertility is much more rapid that really anyone predicted with very tangible costs, I wonder if the next big fad actually decides to tackle a real problem, or what the underlying group dynamics are behind what becomes a high status fad and if they are all prone to going after non-issues.
Re-reading this again in June 2024: You are so, so right! Excellent piece. Appropriately, I ended up here due to engaging in comments on an article in the WSJ in which someone cited Nordhaus.
Related article by a scientist cited by the IPCC report that notes shortcomings with the IPCC projections: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/the-ipcc-report-on-the-impacts-of-climate-change-is-depressing.
Thank for this.
I think that a lefty could write a counter-piece focusing on two things:
1. All the possible "tipping points" we could hit that would create positive feedback on warming (melting sea ice, releasing trapped methane).
2. That academic research is funded by industry, not socialists. There is a long history of oil companies promoting "research" that they knew wasn't true, in order to foment FUD.
Some academic research is funded by industry, but I think at present much more by the government.
What examples are there of oil companies promoting "research" that they knew wasn't true?
Very interesting. It's good to think there are moderating voices on the global warming side. And I agree that academia is no longer about the pursuit of provable truth, but rather now a sort of political view known as science, which has some positive implications (ethics for research) and some possibly negative implications (dissidents have a very difficult path to navigate.)