Béatrice Cointe
@beatricecointe.bsky.social
Solar-powered Science & Technology Studies researcher and IAM ethnographer at CSI - CNRS, Mines Paris-PSL.
"Well the world of research has gone berserk, too much paperwork" (Dylan 2006)
Soundtrack: t.ly/0V77d
Economics
38%
Environmental science
16%
Pinned
"In the midst of perpetual debates on most issues of the climate change problem, one refreshing exception is the consensus on our ignorance..."
(from the report on a 1993 Workshop on Integrative assessment of mitigation, impacts and adaptation to climate change)
(from the report on a 1993 Workshop on Integrative assessment of mitigation, impacts and adaptation to climate change)
I don’t know if that’s so strange. It's a tribute from his alma mater, not a journalism piece, and he was always held in very high regard by the economics profession. The criticism you mention may be loud here but it was not so widespread & I suspect it’s inaudible among mainstream economics.
And as much as I disagree with the approach with all the might of my STS training, I can understand how one could be convinced it was the way to go about addressing climate change.
(though we now know it does not work)
(though we now know it does not work)
The frustration demonstrated at that long ago workshop was actually a clash of values - not science, but Nordhaus was expert at subsuming the former in favor of the latter, and so the clash of values never got discussed.
I only know Nordhaus through his & others’ writings, but this talent of his is probably what I find most fascinating and intriguing about him. He was far from the only one doing this (I think it has been a, if not the, prominent way of discussing climate change), but he was exceptionally deft at it.
William Nordhaus, Nobel laureate who integrated economics and climate change, devoted Yale citizen
William Nordhaus ‘63, Sterling Professor of Economics who won a Nobel Prize in 2018 for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis, died Oct. 30 at age 85.
news.yale.edu
Bill Nordhaus has died.
Notable for being one of two surviving people who successfully predicted the last 50 years of climate change in the 1970s (Manabe being the other).
Both won (different) Nobel Prizes.
news.yale.edu/2026/10/31/w...
Notable for being one of two surviving people who successfully predicted the last 50 years of climate change in the 1970s (Manabe being the other).
Both won (different) Nobel Prizes.
news.yale.edu/2026/10/31/w...
William Nordhaus, Nobel laureate who integrated economics and climate change, devoted Yale citizen
William Nordhaus ‘63, Sterling Professor of Economics who won a Nobel Prize in 2018 for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis, died Oct. 30 at age 85.
news.yale.edu
RIP — a giant
news.yale.edu/2026/10/31/w...
news.yale.edu/2026/10/31/w...
Indeed they do not! and that’s reportedly why Reagan pushed for the IPCC (climate scientists were getting too loud about climate change and the US wanted some control over the message).
but climate science is expensive so it does definitely need government research funding in the first place.
but climate science is expensive so it does definitely need government research funding in the first place.