This man has done significant damage to the climate movement. His economic analysis is awful yet very influential because policy makers read it and thought "you know what, it's ok, not so bad, lets keep going".
It's immeasurable how much damage his "research" has caused.
Nordhaus co-wrote the standard economics textbook taught globally, endogenous technological change is an exemplary growth theory that (with Paul Romer) was deserving of the Nobel, and was an early proponent of carbon taxes and created many of the tools used in environmental economics.
I mean, he's absolutely deserving of critique, even harsh critique, but you're going to have try harder than "his analysis is awful" and he caused "immeasurable damage" when he co-created the movement.
"Nordhaus co-wrote the standard economics textbook taught globally"
Which is tragic because it is a neoclassical fiction book misleading millions of students. Anyone who is really interested in the history of economic thought will avoid that book for anything other than being a reference of the theoretical position of the neoclassical synthesis.
No, Nordhaus was never the problem and policymakers have not been anywhere near as aggressive about climate change as he thought they should be. If everyone had listened to him, we'd be in much better shape. The climate movement's antipathy towards him is a narcissism-of-small-differences thing. The actual problem is that voters only want to address climate change if it can be done without inconveniencing them in any way, which it can't.
For further argument, see: https://www.slowboring.com/p/economists-arent-the-problem-on...
Nordhaus' riksbank price winning work justifies global temperature rise to +4°C as optimal. At that point the vast majority of humanity is going to die out with just some pockets surviving.
The reason is quite basic. Global temperature includes the oceans which make up 70% of earth's surface and have a higher storage capacity for heat. So a 4°C global temperature rise might be closer to an 8°C increase to your current local average temperatures and that's the normal days. If you have heat waves those might be +15°C or more.
At those temperatures, Americans and Europeans might need air conditioned buildings just to survive. Other places will require people to wear portable air conditioners.
Obviously you'll also need to move all agriculture indoors.
The “damage” is that he showed with reasonable assumptions that climate change might not be as damaging as some claim? And the research was good enough to win the Nobel prize? That’s why it is damaging?
Do the "reasonable assumptions" include stating that indoor economic activity is unaffected by climate change? Or that the US economy won't be affected because agriculture represents only 3% of GDP?
If that is the standard of argument good enough to win the economics "Nobel" prize all we can draw from this is how much of a politically motivated farce that prize is.
https://johnmjennings.com/the-nobel-prize-in-economics-isnt-...
yes because it's absolutely ridiculous, but because he's a well-known economist everyone listened to him and now we're in dire straits.