Annoying Economist of the Week

An economist and a climate scientist were driving a mountain road at night when the economist made the mistake of talking while chewing gum and drove off the cliff. As they plummeted into the abyss -

Climate Scientist: I don't see this ending well.
Economist: What are you talking about? It has been nothing but smooth air so far!

Steven Landsberg is a professor and house economist to Slate. His column on the occasion of Al Gore's Nobel managed to provoke your always and ever mild-mannered correspondent.

Save the Earth in Six Hard Questions
What Al Gore doesn't understand about climate change.

This was enough to set off my bullshit detectors. Let me summarize his six "hard questions" and my reactions:

1) How much does human activity affect the climate?

........Well OK, Steevoh - Al and cowinners got you covered here.

2). How much harm (or good!) is likely to come from that climate change?

.......Roger that. A hard question but one people are working hard to quantify.

3. How much do we—or should we—care about future generations?

This question is the occasion of a long, lame riff by the Stevester. I personally feel an obligation to leave a habitable planet to my children and grandchildren. I also would like it to have some of the beauty of nature left, for them and those beyond. Landsberg likes to talk about 400 or 1000 years, but that's more bullshit. AGW is happening now. California is burning. Western ski resorts are starting their season late and ending them early. The arctic ice is in record retreat.

4. How likely are those future generations to be around, anyway? If you think life on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid in 200 years, it makes little sense to worry about the climate 300 years from now.

At this point I am thinking stupidest man alive material. This is a hard question?

I will include the full text of the next one.

5. Just how rich are those future generations likely to be? If you expect economic growth to continue at the average annual rate of 2.3 percent, to which we've grown accustomed, then in 400 years, the average American will have an income of more than $1 million per day—and that's in the equivalent of today's dollars (i.e., after correcting for inflation). Does it really make sense for you and me to sacrifice for the benefit of those future gazillionaires?

Unlike the economist, I don't think free-fall or exponential growth can continue forever. The history of technology is mainly of short bursts of productivity increase followed by immizeration of the majority. There are lots of good reasons to think that the current growth cannot continue, expecially on a per capita basis - unless the number of people drastically declines.

6. How risk-averse are we?

How much do you want to roll the dice here? I have as strong impression that collectively, we are way too willing to sacrifice long term benefit for short term gain - Hello mortgage crisis!

If you get the impression that I think that two of his hard questions are exactly what the prize winners are addressing and four of them are borderline moronic, you've got me right.

A typical bit of his "wisdom" that drives me nuts is:

I'll make the extreme assumption that our environmental recklessness threatens to shave 1 percentage point off economic growth forever. Because of compounding, our disposable incomes will be reduced by 9.5 percent a decade from now and by 63 percent a century from now—perhaps because we'll spend 63 percent of our incomes relocating coastal cities.

Yes, Mr. Landsberg, if you make preposterously optimistic assumptions and think they are extreme, you might get a result that you like. If, on the other hand, you think that this ecological crisis is likely to be similar in effect to those of the past, you might make the slightly more extreme assumption that our environmental recklessness is likely to decrease the global GDP by 80%-100% (from the present value), and the risk looks a bit larger.