Yesterday the economist Lord Nicholas Stern testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee.

Free from the perils of cross examination, he then went and gave a speech at the Center for Global Development. There, in addition to doubling the cost of global warming from his previous, rather confidently announced estimate — proving far too much, one might think, about the utility of his opinion — he also engaged in fairly typical alarmist rhetoric. As reported by Greenwire:

“I remain impressed by the degree of understanding of many people of responsibility in the United States. At the same time, I was impressed by the extraordinary scientific denial of some of them.”

Ah, yes, we hear it all the time, mostly on the playground . . . and in the discourse over catastrophic man-made global warming: People who disagree with you are stupid, venal, unqualified to judge, or in "denial" of your prophesying about the future.

Oddly, the global-warming alarmist industry was silent. You see, flashing back to late last year, when Sen. James Inhofe released a list of (now over 500) scientists who had recently published work contradicting, or otherwise breaking with, the alarmist thesis, we heard:

“ ‘Padded’ would be an extremely generous description of this list of ‘prominent scientists.’ Some would use the word ‘laughable’. . . . For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?” [emphasis added], Climate Progress, 12/21/07.

Yeah. Let’s ask Rajendra Pachauri, the man who shared the stage with Al Gore to accept a Nobel Prize on behalf of the IPCC. He's been styled as the IPCC’s chief “climatologist” (New York Times and USA Today), and the UN’s “chief climate scientist” (AP). But no: he’s an economist, too. Who cares what they think about climate science?

The typical reply from campus audiences to this little data point is that science shouldn’t be left to economists or the courts. They are soon discomfited by the fact —which I am always happy to point out — that two of climate alarmism's most vocal public champions are economists. Ultimately, this is followed by an implicit claim that it shouldn’t even be the province of the hard sciences because, after all, there are so many scientists whose literacy in the chemistry, physics, and other aspects of the realm pales compared to the outlier, the economist Lord Nicholas Stern.

Heaven forbid we leave it to politicians . . . unless they agree with the economists Pachauri and Stern, that is. Otherwise, it seems, the ultimate authority is with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and five Norwegians.  Source