Heartening to see nobody that claims the title of "Climate Economist" involved. I completely agree that Robert Pindyck is the best climate economist. He's the leader of eviscerating criticism of "climate economics" models. Robert just scratched the surface though. Beneath the surface of the climate economics mud is more mud.
My opinion is that "climate economics" was specifically developed by William Nordhaus to be a fraud. There is no other explanation for the kinds of outrageous codswallop found in Nordhaus' work.
Really read this 500 word letter to PNAS that was all we were allowed to print. We wrote and submitted two papers of detailed original criticism totaling ~25,000 words. One to Royal Society and one to PNAS. Both were stonewalled by the "Climate Economics" cabal. The reviews were blithering babble.
William Nordhaus chose his acolytes well. These 5th rate minds who deliberately eschew understanding of climate science, physics, and logic are competent at one thing. They fight for themselves to maintain dominance and shut out any challengers. They guard their ability to blackball to keep their salaries and positions. They publish learned drivel.
Their job is to occupy the critical ground in economics Nordhaus named "Climate Economics" so that when legislators ask about costs, the answer is the h*rsesh*t Nordhaus created. And this favors coal, oil, and gas. William Nordhaus' work is the fossil fuel baron's weapon against Hansen's testimony to Congress all those years ago, testimony those fossil fuel barons knew was true. Nordhaus appears to have volunteered his services, I believe, correctly surmising they would make powerful patrons.
I'll say it. I believe William Nordhaus is a sociopath based on the evidence. The corpus of "Climate Economics" must be thrown out, and the acolytes who grew fat in their sinecures removed, root and branch, from the academy. They are a cancer in the academy, a crew whose mission is to betray the trust that the public places on the academy. A field created as a lie manned by those who exchange the pursuit of truth with courage for toeing a party line.