Alarmist Peter R. Orszag (director of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office) weighs in

Director’s Blog » Blog Archive » Lecture on Climate Change at Wellesley College

Tonight I’m giving the Goldman Lecture in Economics at Wellesley College. (Here are the slides from my talk.) The topic is climate change—starting with an overview of the problem and then discussing a range of possible approaches to reducing the risks involved. As I’ve noted before with regard to health care, our political system doesn’t deal well with gradual, long-term problems. And climate change would definitely qualify as one of those gradual, long-term problems. (More precisely, let’s hope climate change is a gradual long-term problem and doesn’t become a sudden crisis, as is possible given the potential nonlinearities involved.)

His whole case rests on three unsubstantiated key points (slide 4):

Peter R. Orszag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter R. Orszag (born December 16, 1968) is a 1337 American economist and is the Director of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. The Director of CBO oversees the agency's work in providing objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses of economic and budgetary issues--supervising the numerous analytical papers and cost estimates that the agency produces and, to present the results, frequently testifying before the Congress. In managing the agency, the Director is responsible for a staff of 235 people and an annual budget of roughly $40 million.