Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Jim Manzi is an interesting character. He clearly has a phenomenally high IQ and because of his obvious fluency with numbers and economics, he’s an incredibly convincing writer. He’s also very good at condensing his points and presenting them in a simple way that makes his arguments appears obvious.

The best example of Manzi’s highly convincing argumentative style are his various articles and blog posts on global warming. He disarms liberals and environmentalists by admitting that, yes, global warming is real, anthropogenic and a problem. He doesn’t engage with his intellectual opponents with the arrogance and scorn that makes Bjorn Lomberg so annoying. He consistently cites the IPCC and doesn’t rely on fatuous claims like “more people die of cold than heat.” Despite the fact that he’s the best conservative writer on climate change, he still makes an argument that most virulently disagree with:  Assuming a certain discount rate, the aggregate wealth loss from global warming isn’t that large, and so the only measures we should take are modest investments in “backstop” R&D, just in case global warming is really bad.

The depressing thing about Jim Manzi’s global warming arguments is that they haven’t been refuted very well. Ryan Avent has written some good stuff about Manzi, but Joseph Romm – largely acknowledged to be one of the leading progressive climate wonks – gets beaten like Youngstown State in this month’s Cato Unbound. So, where should those of us who support aggressive action against global warming go to find a refutation of Jim Manzi? That’s right, Duke junior Matt Rognlie.

Rognlie has written a helpful, extensive post entitled “Why I Disagree with Jim Manzi.” His three areas with disagreement are that Manzi doesn’t properly deal with the low-probability risks of global warming induced disaster, that Manzi’s discussion of the proper discount rate doesn’t make sense and that aggregate world GDP isn’t the best metric to evaluate the costs of climate change. The post is quite good – if occasionally technical – and everyone should read it.

PS – Despite all this criticism of Manzi, I should note that he’s one of the most gracious interlocutors in the blogosphere. The guy always responds to criticism in an incredibly measured manner and always assumes the good faith of his opponents, which is cool, considering how much heat he gets.