YHK - yet another hacker news clone

William Nordhaus has died

36 points ilreb 3 hours ago 7 comments

SupremumLimit 1 hour ago | parent

This is a guy who claimed that 3.5 degrees of global warming was "optimal". He was absolutely delusional and built his models on preposterous assumptions. He did a vast amount of damage to the world by providing false justifications for climate denial and inaction on climate change. The fossil fuel companies must have loved him.

"when Nordhaus looked at the effects of 6 C warming, he did not forecast horror. Instead, we should expect “damages” of between 8.5 percent and 12.5 percent of world GDP over the course of the 21st century. Writing in the Economic Journal, Stern set Nordhaus straight in the harshest terms: “We could see deaths on a huge scale, migration of billions of people, and severe conflicts around the world,” he wrote. “It is profoundly implausible that numbers around 10 percent of GDP offer a sensible description of the kind of disruption and catastrophe that 6 C of warming could cause.”"

It says a lot about economics that he received accolades.

https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-winning-economics-of...

https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-high-priest-of-ecomoderni...

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-nobel-eco...

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/misguided-nordh...

p1esk 24 minutes ago | parent

Why did he believe what he claimed? Did he have any arguments to back it up?

parasubvert 22 minutes ago | parent

Nordhaus was not a climate denier by any stretch of the imagination. The man founded climate economics, and advocated for carbon taxes very early!

He is deserving of critique for being far too conservative in his approach, yes, but it's not like the biggest damagers of the environment are doing less because William Nordhaus told them to do less. Trump and populist right aren't ripping up the EPA, the Inflation Reduction Act, etc. because of Nordhaus. They ripped up the policies because they deny climate change entirely. Would adopting more aggressive measures in the 80s made things better? Possibly, but I think people over estimate the political will vs. the technological shifts needed to eliminate fossil fuels.

Only now is it obvious we are going to rapidly, exponentially, move to solar globally because the cost savings are undeniable, regardless of what deniers may want. And, contrary to your Berman link above, energy transitions are NOT a myth. They were not evenly distributed, but they were quietly, regionally happening (the UK, and California, for example). Now it's reached a tipping point, and going global.

https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/global-solar-capacity...

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/20/the-exponential...

mempko 49 minutes ago | parent

This man has done significant damage to the climate movement. His economic analysis is awful yet very influential because policy makers read it and thought "you know what, it's ok, not so bad, lets keep going".

It's immeasurable how much damage his "research" has caused.

parasubvert 35 minutes ago | parent

Nordhaus co-wrote the standard economics textbook taught globally, endogenous technological change is an exemplary growth theory that (with Paul Romer) was deserving of the Nobel, and was an early proponent of carbon taxes and created many of the tools used in environmental economics.

I mean, he's absolutely deserving of critique, even harsh critique, but you're going to have try harder than "his analysis is awful" and he caused "immeasurable damage" when he co-created the movement.

TheWrongGuy 17 minutes ago | parent

Winner of the fake Nobel