[1] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/david_friedman_9.ht...
Economists have performed many analyses on these and the conclusions indicate the consequences of climate change are much more mild that what the media, NGOs and politicians propagate. It's revolting that institutions have kept this scientific analysis away from the general population and have been feeding us political hysteria instead. The fact that even educated, rational, successful engineers in Hacker News are not aware of these data is another argument for why Twitter shouldn't be censoring ads in this political way.
What about the fact that there's a negative correlation between CO2 and nutrient density in crops?
What about tipping point events like reversing of Atlantic current, massive tundra methane releases, ocean acidification.
Given that there are so many unknowns about the extent of the nth-order effects of climate change (e.g. ecosystem collapse), I find it laughable that economists have a macro model that has any level of certainty to it. They can't even get relatively static situations correct, let alone literally world-changing ones.
Which economy? Certainly not the ones that are getting destroyed by "biggest ever recorded" tropical cyclones.
Maybe he meant Sweden finally being able to grow and export bananas?
The literature is mixed on whether climate change is really the cause on these recent natural disasters and, if it is, on how it impacts those disasters (e.g. reducing the frequency of the disasters, changing their location, etc).
> Maybe he meant Sweden finally being able to grow and export bananas?
Your example of Sweden is a rich country, but most of the increases in crop production would take place on developing countries - and that is a big deal for them.
Longer, harder, droughts, and then extreme water events that can’t retain much of the water causes other problems beyond just floods.
Economists have historically proven to be extremely inaccurate at predicting long term patterns. They also have a strong bias in favour of business, so always find “supporting evidence” for almost any choice creating immediate gains for business.
An easy measure is: has any major economic “study” ever supported raising taxes for businesses or the rich? Have they supported investing in employee welfare? Universal healthcare? Etc
In countries that have done this, and thus actually measured the outcomes, they have found things have improved for the majority of people.
In countries that have followed the “reduce taxes and services” to improve society we have for decades seen the exact opposite, and yet economists still claim that life will improve for people. Again, this is despite decades of direct contrary evidence.
Economics is a fiction, the only actual supported piece of economic theory is supply vs demand. That’s it.
When it comes to taxes it is actually quite ironic. People do behave like "rational" actors because the problem space is so small, they vote for lower taxes.
I think we should take a step back and adopt an economic system that treats money as a medium of exchange, not a tool to indebt people. Land as a medium of housing, not as a tool of segregation. Patents and copyright as a medium of innovation, not as a tool for crippling competition.
From what I can tell, none of that matters, people want to be the "king" and everyone else to be the "serfs", despite the fact that it is quite obvious that giving everyone the freedom to decide for themselves and utilizing the brains of billions of people is better than the brain of one.
It's the classic prisoners dilemma.
Yet we allow economics PhDs in central banks to set the price of our money.
In fact, I would argue that the success of capitalism relies purely on its ability to force people to invent things that would appear pointless from a first glance. Yes, all those stupid startups that are failing are there to win the technological progress lottery. Meanwhile other economic models won't play the lottery which has a significant cost over the short term and be happy in some local minima.