“Reach a copmpromise”? Between what and amongst whom? No-nothing ideologues vs, the entire universe of drideible climate scientists?

Economists with no training in climate science using the discredited tools of neoclassical theory vs. climatologists?

Fact vs. Fiction?

Sorry, dude, but compromise is appropriate only when the subject at hand is a matter of opinion or preference. The world will continue to warm, regardless of opinions or preferences.

So what kind of climate science are you trained in? And what kind of “implications” are you qualified to opine on?.

I also think your little bracketed mini retorts–like this, after my comment

JR: Except that don’t know — or want to know — the true costs, and don’t care about the true benefits.]

are not conducive to debate or discussion. Don’t you know that you have to convince other people and eventually reach compromise?
Duncan

[JR: Given how extensive my posts have been, your comment didn't strike me as part of a debate or discussion. You can't convince everybody, and after a quarter-century doing this, I've realized it's not productive to try. I try to persuade the persuadable. Who exactly are you asking me to compromise with? Deniers? Economists who don't understand climate science and who misapply cost-benefit analysis? You -- who have no stated opinion that I can see?

The primary purpose of this blog is to explain the state of climate science and what its implications are across the board, but especially with a focus on energy and politics. We have been compromising the climate for decades. Any more such compromising and 5°C to 7°C warming will be all but unstoppable.]

Here’s some more breaking news for you.

All our politicians are politicians.

Difference is, this time, we got one into the White House who is intellectually curious, a careful decision maker, and more interested in the welfare of people than in the welfare of corporations.

Another nice thing about Obama, as opposed to what we’ve suffered with during the last eight years, is that he is capable of “turning”. Obama lacks that characteristic of the insane.

Obama doesn’t keep doing the same old thing time and time again when it doesn’t work. He looks for new ways. He takes in new knowledge and adapts.

Won’t it be refreshing to be led by a politician who “turns”?

White can turn to black and vice versa.

At the completion of the economist’s presentations, Physics Nobel prize winner Murray Gell-Mann said something to effect of “Very interesting. But aren’t you constrained by reality in your field?”

Or, as Joan Robertson said, “Economists have run off to hide in thickets of Algebra, leaving the real problems to journalists.”

The discipline is riddled with what Whitehead called, the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

In a desperate attempt to make a social science as quantitative as a physical science, they severed the link between results that are meaningful in the real world, and embraced abstract unrealities which appear intellectually elegant but offer no insight.

As a discipline, it should largely be ignored when it comes to setting policy.

And he does seem to be ill-educated on some of the costs and benefits that he wants to balance. In addition to your examples, he apparently believes the canard that DDT was over-regulated, leading to many deaths from malaria in Africa. (This was debunked by Tim Lambert at Deltoid many times.)

But is he educable? I believe and hope so. Will he be open to policies that lead to improvements? That is actually his main claim. His recent book, “Nudge”, is all about crafting policies that guide people (rather than command them) to do the right thing. Can it work? That’s what he claims, so that’s how to “frame” things for him.

I heard him suggest to Amy Goodman, at Democracy Now, that Congress should demand that companies simply inventory and report their GHG emissions publicly. That would “nudge” them to reducing them. That’s his shtick, anyhow.