The thrust of the final sections of the article seemed to be that the expert opinion of climate scientists needs to be treated with caution, apparently on the generalised grounds that expert opinion per se doesn’t have all that good a record. And their conclusion that Americans will support policies to reduce carbon emissions “so long as the costs are reasonable and the benefits, both economic and environmental, are well-defined” seemed to me to beg the question. How do we assess what is reasonable until we know what is at stake? Do the authors accept what the scientific picture really is? We can’t insist that it fit relatively comfortably into the world we are familiar with. In fact it seems to me that in the light of what climate change threatens the costs are eminently reasonable and the benefits enormous. But I suspect Nordhaus and Shellenberger would sniff an element of the apocalyptic in my claiming so.

I admit to feeling apocalyptic about climate change, no matter how hard I try not to. The sober science of the IPCC does it for me, let alone the reputable studies since which firm up and advance elements which were unclear when the IPCC material was put together. Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem able to take a more sanguine view, which I don’t begrudge them. But I don’t see how they can treat it as normative

Makes an important point, that raising public conciousness leads to a backlash – the second half is especially good seeking to explain denial, the first half is providing evidence of the extent of denial.