Joe Romm is a smart angry man. He throws some new punches at my Climatopolis.
After ripping Matt for not reading the climate science literature, Romm states:
I suppose I’ll have to do a separate post on this, but global warming will almost certainly become the hugest imaginable deal for the North Atlantic economies within a quarter century. Indeed, the way it’s looking now, by the 2030s, if not sooner, all of the major economies of the world will be focusing all of their economic policy desperately on adaptation and mitigation.
Almost certainly? Within 25 years? All of their economic policy? My opinion is if your major criticism is for someone to read the climate science literature then you should base your forecasts in more scientific language, recognizing uncertainties, caveats and etc.
I'm in general agreement with Matt that market economies will reduce the costs of adaption (Matt's tone is that people living in cities will adapt so much that the adaptation costs are very low ["cities will thrive"]-- I disagree but that must wait until ...). And that, I think, is his major point (... my official review; I fell asleep last night with 4 more pages to read). Romm seems to get too caught up in, what I think Matt would agree are, Matt's logical speculations, not "almost certainly" forecasts, about what might happen 25 to 100 years from now.
One quibble with Matt:
Recently, Joe Romm censored a comment I posted on his blog. That impressed me! The Internet isn't supposed to be the Soviet Union.
The criticism would carry more weight if your blog allowed comments.
