William Nordhaus: The Economics of Climate Change

In this informal talk, William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and author of two widely used models of the economics of climate change, makes the case for using markets to mitigate the issue of global climate change by putting a price on pollution.

[NNTP]

6:00 skip long drawn out intro of death

[C_R_O_M________]

"It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future!" - Danish proverb. That goes for all the modelling involved that predict extinctions and catastrophes.

[davidhilderman]

So in general agriculture productivity, with adaption is a net benefit. This lecture was done prior to satelite data analysis of world leaf cover. The earth has increased in leaf cover by 18 million square kilometers since 1982. 70% of this increase is due to faster plant growth and better drought resistance due to more atmospheric CO2.

[jodalinkus]

Brilliant the power of Adam Smiths ideas reverberating this hard. Very impressive to witness it lay foundation for a remarkable power house of ideas and knowledge of the dismal science in a commonwealth country.

[dafun]

The interpretation of data depends on the selected dataset at the outset. Different interpretations can arise when choosing longer or shorter time periods.

Given that the Earth is 5 billion years old, why limit the selection to a period of 800, 000 years? There have been much larger carbon peaks before this period.

Clearly, we are facing a selection bias, which means that choosing a specific period intentionally to support a particular hypothesis or conclusion can introduce bias.

[meerkat]

50:04 - He never answered the guy's question about what should be done with the government revenue collected by the tax. I have a hunch this was deliberate because the answer reveals a lot about one's underlying political ideology.

[miblish]

lazy camera work, references to slides never shown.

[allofus]

Strange. Paleo carbon is measured in thousand parts not hundreds

[weekendworrier]

Renewables cannot replace fossil fuels with the current oversized, wasteful system as it is and people just expect more of the same.

[davidhilderman]

The Canadian government unveiled their plan to have $170 per ton carbon tax by 2030. I checked my last electricity bill. If we were living were in Alberta or Saskatchewan were most electricity is coal, our bill would increase $544 per month.

[viablerenewable]

To transfer from fossil fuels to renewable Green Energy one has to create durable wealth that keeps all the benefits of what it replaces. One has to acknowledge how broke the governments àre, therefore we can't expect them to foot the bill. The scenario to have the required wealth to subsidize the manufacturing and installation of renewable Green Energy infrastructure is based on desert land flowing with Milk and Honey. We know since environmentalists don't prioritize humans; they will be the main group against this solution. With Peter Thiel saying in his book "Zero to One" you have to offer a contrarian scenario solution to the previous one offered where they say renewable energy is directly economically viable to get the Gold out of Green Energy. An observant conservative "C" student is offering sequencing the order of usage to get byproducts to subsidize the manufacturing and installation of required infrastructure.

[ActivistMMT]

The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change
Steve Keen, 2021

ABSTRACT

Forecasts by economists of the economic damage from climate change have been notably sanguine, compared to warnings by scientists about damage to the biosphere. This is because economists made their own predictions of damages, using three spurious methods: assuming that about 90% of GDP will be unaffected by climate change, because it happens indoors; using the
relationship between temperature and GDP today as a proxy for the impact of global warming over time; and using surveys that diluted extreme
warnings from scientists with optimistic expectations from economists. Nordhaus has misrepresented the scientific literature to justify the using a
smooth function to describe the damage to GDP from climate change. Correcting for these errors makes it feasible that the economic damages from
climate change are at least an order of magnitude worse than forecast by economists, and may be so great as to threaten the survival of human civilization.

[FranzDörig]

Listen: negative System- Feedback is always stable.. go please and lern those rules in that math.

[matthauslill]

I am sorry to say this, but Nordhaus is unconvincing and extremely boring.
As all IPCC boy scouts.

[rd]

here we have an economist of great repute talking about science and potential risks over many scales and areas with which he has no more clue than a stoned college kid.

[IExpectedBSJustNotThisMuchBS]

Like the US is going to allow migration to the US as the result of climate change. The way people respond to foreigners and how that will impact to adaptation has to also be taken into account. So often we behave as if we believe humans act rationally (e.g., we'll adapt when it comes to agriculture). Nordhaus today, with the Trump administration in place, sadly knows that this is not the case. The extinctions that will happen are reason enough to work hard to turn this around for anyone who's not a psychopath.

[PAWN]

Carbon tax is much of the solution of climate change and revenue. Nice seminar and warms from India.

[joemercuri]

It is funny to watch very smart people speak eloquently about how important it is to do something now!! however they are basing an action that will cost real people real money based on computer models!! When they can prove to me that the computer models are correct (which they haven't been able to do since their inception) than i will start to listen. These academics have been talking to each other in their own circles for too long that they are starting to believe their own bullshit as fact.