The rant against mainstream economics continues:
This series will have three recurring themes about Voodoo Economists aka Mainstream Economists who Opine on Weather (MEOWs):
- MEOW’s understanding of what global warming is doing to the planet now and what it is likely to do by 2100 on our current emissions path ranges from arrogantly incomplete to criminally ignorant. They really talk more about the weather than the climate.
- MEOW’s cost-benefit calculations [”if you add it all up”] are analytically unsound and qualify more as an opinion than a scientifically accurate statement.
- The right wing loves what the economics profession is saying and publishing on climate, which is why they quote and cite them so giddily.
...
Damages will far exceed the benefits, yes, but for MEOWs, that justifies only the most modest carbon price, as future posts will discuss. Ironically, or rather, tragically, if we listen to voodoo economists like Mendelsohn and Tol and Nor[d]haus, then global warming is all but certain to be the calamity that people say.
The bottom line is that non-scientist Mendelsohn has a knowledge of climate science and impacts that ranges from arrogantly incomplete to criminally ignorant. He has no business telling anybody that on our current emissions path it will not be a calamity. He simple has no clue.
The economics profession should throw him out for malpractice, but they won’t do that because, as Part 3 (and 4 and 5) will make all too painfully clear, his views are solidly in the mainstream of MEOWs. You just can’t teach an old cat new tricks.
Let's all don our blue blazers, brown shoes and poorly knotted ties and march on the offices of the Center for American Progress! No one, and I mean no one, gets away with that sort of dissing without some sort of futile defense against the "criminally ignorant" econ-haters on the nature and purpose of economic analysis.
In other words, no comment.
