chris swart wrote:

reading the work of economist Ross McKitrick, and then the critiques of his work by climatologists, should indeed go a long way to convincing people that expert scientists do indeed have more to say than economists on climatology.

Oh, without a single doubt. To me - even a cosmologist like Hawking (though he may only have perused a climate science paper) has 10,000 times more right to comment on the global warming science, than say McKitttrick. Economists are amongst the most clueless inhabitants of the planet, and their "science" is itself a mockery.

Economics never has been a science, it only adopts some scientific window dressing, a few of the methods (mostly statistics) and some jargon. But no serious empiricist would regard it as "science" - hence there can't be any "science of inequality". That is gibberish.

Economics has no true objects of inquiry - say like physics - nor does it offer any consistent, theoretical models that don't rely on statistical artifacts. Nor does it make quality predictions based on said models, say like atomic physics. (Prediction of specific spectra - emission or absorption- using the Schrodinger equation, and the correct energy eigenvalues for the atom chosen).

The illustrious economists - in their foolish "modelling" - are prepared to ignore (as in dismiss from consideration) an entire raft of variables associated with what they call "externalities". How very convenient!

Alas, that'd be like us (astrophysicists) just studying the Sun and ignoring the solar wind. "Oh it's just an externality - not really relevant to the dynamics of the Sun itself" But without knowing about the solar wind, we wouldn't discern the ambient plasma flows, and how these interact with the magnetosphere- to produce the aurorae for instance. Nor would we be able to show how the V-, S- electric potential drops in aurorae relate to similar ones for solar flares. (cf. J.R. Kan and S.I. Akasofu in Solar Physics, Vol. 84, p. 153.)

These glaring and inexcusable omissions as ecosystem global monetary values, were assayed for one particular year in the study Putting a Price Tag on Nature's Bounty, Science, Vol. 276, p. 1029):

Ecosystem Area (10^6 HA), Global Value (trillions)

Open Ocean ------ 33,200 ---- 8.4

Coastal ----------- 3, 102 -----12.6

Tropical Forest ------1, 900 ----- 3.8

Other Forests ------- 2,955 -----0.9

Grasslands ------------3,898 -----0.9

Wetlands --------- 330 -------4.9

Lakes and Rivers ------ 200 ------ 1.7

Cropland -----------1,400 --------0.1

---------

Total Worth $33.3 Trillion

According to lead author of the study, Robert Costanza, who directs the Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Maryland.

Until economists incorporate such "externalities" in terms of assessing costs, they are fooling themselves that they have any real science. And if they don't incorporate these "externalities" then what they are "tweaking" in their alleged models isn't even real. (Rather, some idealization that is fabricated in some ivory tower and disconnected from blood and sweat economics)

This exclusion of natural capital, because it is claimed to be 'unquantifiable' - means that that economics cannot possibly be objective - since it's omitting the basis of many of the resources consumed or polluted for the use of so-called production capacity.

But if one isn't aware of the total costs of production, one can't possibly set a genuine price on goods, and that alone demolishes the pet concept of "law of supply & demand" (which is certainly unlike any Newtonian law of physics!) so many economists exalt.

Not to mention severely undermining any rational assessment of inflation.

It’s somewhat analogous to a corporation like Enron hiding liabilities in offshore accounts, and re-naming them “assets". It temporarily helps their bottom line - but sheds no objective light on the underlying process! It would also be like a dumb solar physicist claiming he can't "measure" the energy released by a solar flare on the Sun - because it's 93 million miles away. (Never mind the satellite capture of the associated 1-8 Angstrom x-ray flux allows a really good measurement to be made, by integrating the area under the peak emissions over time t).

Granted, economists do have a pale imitation of science. And who knows - maybe in a few hundred years they'll join the full club. After their objects of inquiry and methodology acquire greater maturity.

Final note, I have a thermodynamics qualification test I send to every talking head or nattering nabob I see carping about global warming. I tell them to take it, send it back to me, and I will grade it. I tell them if they can't score at least 60% they have NO business writing about global warming or any subject remotely to do with thermodynamics. Up to now, three have failed, and five never sent the test back.