The Economics Of Global Warming

Those who want to read a scholarly, dispassionate examination of the alleged controversies over global warming, may wish to read an article by the Yale economist, William D. Nordhaus in the March 22 edition of the New York Review of Books. In his article, "Why The Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong," Nordhaus takes an economist's perspective in analyzing an article in the Wall Street Journal by sixteen scientists.

This isn't as strange as it may seem. GW skeptics often base their opposition to mitigation efforts on the alleged economic effect, as well as on statistical arguments. When you take on statistics, you are playing on an economist's home field.

I won't try to summarize Nordhaus' article, but I strongly recommend you at least take a look at his statistical graphs. Bottom line: the global warming trends of the past century track very closely with mathematical models that include greenhouse gas emissions as well as natural causes. For the past half century, the models that exclude greenhouse gas emissions do not track with actual rises in temperature.