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I recall hearing once that economists are people who would approach the study of horses by sitting in an office and thinking about what they would do if they were a horse.
If I needed advice about horses, I’d be more inclined to take it from a scientist who has been out in the fields and looked at horses, rather than an economist who thinks they know everything about horses because they spent an afternoon imagining what they would do if they were a horse.
Edit: I just had to share this snippet from the article. For those who don’t have time to read the whole thing, this really sums up the idiocy of the economist in question.
Nordhaus calculates GDP of a particular location as fundamentally related to the temperature of that place. So, if in 2023 it’s a certain temperature in London, and the GDP in London is such-and-such, it’s reasonable to assume that when latitudes north of London rise in temperature in the future, GDP will rise to be the same as London’s today.
Edit2:
Nordhaus has opined that agriculture is “the part of the economy that is sensitive to climate change,” but because it accounts for just 3 percent of national output, climate disruption of food production cannot produce a “very large effect on the U.S. economy.” It is unfortunate for his calculations that agriculture is the foundation on which the other 97 percent of GDP depends. Without food — strange that one needs to reiterate this — there is no economy, no society, no civilization. Yet Nordhaus treats agriculture as indifferently fungible.
Economics is the art of explaining why last years economic theory was wrong.
The bloke in the article is a moron.
Check out what the actual smart guys - the actuaries are saying:
Actuaries look at maths and risk and data and do it dispassionately so that businesses like insurance companies can make money.
The article covers the current state of understanding in climate change it examines the gaps in knowledge and looks at the various scenarios.
Their key takeaway with the uncertainties covered if nothing is done to radically change course?
“At what point do we expect 50% GDP destruction - somewhere between 2070 and 2090”
That’s not what idiot savant means. 🙄
I dunno, the dictionary definition of “idiot savant” includes this:
a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else
And that does seem like an adequate description of this type of economist.
Typically an idiot savant refers to someone who’s really talented in one particular area, but is otherwise impaired intellectually or socially. It’s a bit of an antiquated and ablist way to refer to savant syndrome. Usually the person in question has severe autism or some sort of neurodevelopmental disorder.
Point being the person in question is typically dealing with a disability, not just like somebody kinda stupid who knows about one thing.
Yeah, that definition is antequated and considered ableist, but the secondary definition in the dictionary is a more general term that refers to someone who is highly knowledgeable in one area while lacking understanding of many others, which does not have an ableist connotation and is still in usage in contexts like this article.
I mean, it seems to me that using it derogatorily is at least equally out of touch. It’s a weird term to be using at all, but it’s definitely a weird term to be using to insult someone.
I dunno, it makes sense to me? A savant is someone considered to be highly skilled, which generally comes with the assumption that they’re quite smart overall. Idiot savant (as separate from the “savant syndrome” definition) implies a savant who lacks that general level of intelligence, because they have focused so much on one subject area that they’ve sacrificed all understanding of any other subject area (most genuinely smart people have at least a baseline understanding of areas of study outside of their own). It may not be the most elegant way of describing such a person, but for an article headline, it’s short and to the point, conveying the right meaning in the fewest words possible.
In Germany we call that a fachidiot. A job idiot or profession idiot.
Germany honestly has the best words for everything. I love how you guys literally have a word for everything, including things we have to use a whole sentence for in English. 🙂
Do you know kummerspeck? It’s kinda like worrybacon, the pounds you put on after a bad period.
I did not know of kummerspeck, but it’s an awesome word! Brushing up on my German is definitely on my to-do list. Learned it at school many years ago, and I’m pretty rusty now, but I’ve always loved it.
Weltschmerz - world pain It’s when you feel this deep nonspecific pain for the world.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Start with your typical textbook for the dismal science — say, the definitive one by Paul Samuelson, co-written with Nordhaus, titled “Economics.” The book is considered “the standard-bearer” of “modern economics principles.” You’ll find in its pages a circular flow diagram that shows “households” and “firms” exchanging money and goods.
Such calculations do not account for extreme weather, vector-borne diseases, displacement and migration, international and local conflict, mass morbidity and mortality, biodiversity crash, state fragility, or food, fuel, and water shortages.
This sunny assessment comes as a surprise to James Hansen, father of climate science, who has calculated that a massive temperature differential between the poles and the equator would occur with an AMOC shutdown, producing superstorms of immense fury across the Atlantic Ocean.
According to Hansen, the last time Earth experienced those kinds of temperature differentials, during the interglacial Eemian era roughly 120,000 years ago, raging tempests deposited house-sized boulders on coastlines in Europe and the Caribbean.
Simon Dietz, at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his fellow economists James Rising, Thomas Stoerk, and Gernot Wagner have offered some of the most ignorant visions of our climate future, using Nordhausian math models.
Andrew Glikson, who teaches at Australian National University in Canberra and advises the IPCC, has written about the coming era of mass human death, what he calls the Plutocene, the natural successor to the Anthropocene.
Saved 94% of original text.
The bot has not done a great job here. It’s a very long (but worthwhile) read. Kind of incredibly depressing also.
