Science ignoring costs

One of the big irritations of current science is the absolute authority of the ecologists. Their authority is absolute. No one is allowed to say "but..." This really hurts because many of the solutions they require - absolutely requires - are very expensive - expensive in direct costs and in slowing our economy. The proposals to drastically reduce CO2 emissions will require the US to shrink our economy as the cost of thousands of jobs per year and billions of dollars of lost production. The scientists do their analysis ignorant of costs. John Tierney of the New York Times is now on the science beat. He has an excellent article on

Economists versus Ecologists:

[Scientists ] claim to be taking in the big picture, to be foreseeing great trends over the next century, but they’re missing one of the most valuable lessons from the past half century: when it comes to getting the big picture right, when it comes to preparing for environmental catastrophes, economists have a better track record than the scientists who specialize in analyzing environmental trends.

He catches the econuts in action rewriting history:

Dr. Holdren began his critique [of The Skeptical Environmentalist] by complaining that Dr. Lomborg was “asking the wrong question” because environmentalists had known for decades that there was no danger of energy being in short supply. This struck me as as odd bit of revisionist history, given both the “energy crisis” rhetoric of the 1970s and Dr. Holdren’s own bet that resources would become more scarce.