This post provides a good example how some climate bloggers try to shut down debate over policy options by personalizing policy debates.


William Nordhaus, one of the leading economists who has worked on climate change, has a new book coming out, which is good news for anyone interested in the subject. His book was reviewed in The New York Review of books by Freeman Dyson.

But rather than take on the arguments made by Nordhaus, Real Climate and Joseph Romm attack Nordhaus’ arguments by proxy. They attack Freeman Dyson for invoking arguments raised by Nordhaus. In the process they ignore the substance of the issues and turn the issue into a referendum on an individual with whom they have policy differences. This tag-team smear job is becoming a bit too familiar.

In Nordhaus’ book he discusses five policy approaches, summarized by Freeman Dyson as follows:

Nordhaus examines five kinds of global-warming policy, with many runs of DICE for each kind. The first kind is business-as-usual, with no restriction of carbon dioxide emissions—in which case, he estimates damages to the environment amounting to some $23 trillion in current dollars by the year 2100. The second kind is the “optimal policy,” judged by Nordhaus to be the most cost-effective, with a worldwide tax on carbon emissions adjusted each year to give the maximum aggregate economic gain as calculated by DICE. The third kind is the Kyoto Protocol, in operation since 2005 with 175 participating countries, imposing fixed limits to the emissions of economically developed countries only. Nordhaus tests various versions of the Kyoto Protocol, with or without the participation of the United States.

The fourth kind of policy is labeled “ambitious” proposals, with two versions which Nordhaus calls “Stern” and “Gore.” “Stern” is the policy advocated by Sir Nicholas Stern in the Stern Review, an economic analysis of global-warming policy sponsored by the British government.[*] “Stern” imposes draconian limits on emissions, similar to the Kyoto limits but much stronger. “Gore” is a policy advocated by Al Gore, with emissions reduced drastically but gradually, the reductions reaching 90 percent of current levels before the year 2050. The fifth and last kind is called “low-cost backstop,” a policy based on a hypothetical low-cost technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or for producing energy without carbon dioxide emission, assuming that such a technology will become available at some specified future date. According to Nordhaus, this technology might include “low-cost solar power, geothermal energy, some nonintrusive climatic engineering, or genetically engineered carbon-eating trees.”

What do Real Climate and Joseph Romm do? Rather than engage the substance of the policy arguments, they go on the attack, with Real Climate using the term “b#ll&hit” and Romm “unmitigated disinformation.” Of course the policy issues that they don’t like — discount rates, cost estimates, air capture — all come from Nordhaus, not Dyson. But rather than engage the substance they viciously attack an individual.

The only apparently original view from Dyson that Real Climate takes issue with is when Dyson notes that (in a second book discussed in the review, by Ernesto Zedillo) chapters by Richard Lindzen and Stefan Rahmstorf (of Real Climate) are both unsatisfactory:

These two chapters give the reader a sad picture of climate science. Rahmstorf represents the majority of scientists who believe fervently that global warming is a grave danger. Lindzen represents the small minority who are skeptical. Their conversation is a dialogue of the deaf. The majority responds to the minority with open contempt.

A sad picture indeed.