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I have had a long-standing complaint about certain habits of economists.
I insist that it is nonsensical to put numerical probabilities on the
occurrence of one time events, as is the habit of inhabitants of the
University of Chicago economists.
The intellectual support for this category of nonsense is something called
subjective probability - which is OK, as far as it goes. But when people
insist on differentiating subjective probability functions, which cannot
be subject to any kind of smoothness constraints, they are wandering into
fantasy land.
Regards,
Jack
On Sat, 5 Apr 2008, Richard Tarara wrote:
Since this topic has come up and because certain people are assuming that
anyone who is even slightly skeptical of the Global Warming
science/reports/PR is somehow 'seriously flawed' (to put it kindly), let me
outline a course of action on Global Warming that was presented on another
list but comes from an economist--one with deep Physics roots. This is my
version of his plan.
1) Layout the levels of Global Warming and their consequences--from very
mild to catastophic. Do the best we can to determine the relative
probablities of these.
2) Layout a plan of action to that would minimize the adverse effects at
each level.
3) Estimate what is would cost--all types of costs--to do each of these.
4) Determine where Global Warming ranks with other threats/concerns that
will compete for the time/labor/money available. [more on this below].
5) Now pick an appropriate plan of action--based on the probablities, the
priorities, and the available resources.