What Steven Landsburg doesn’t understand about climate change

In response to the recent announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, Slate economist Steven Landsburg has written an ill-informed hit piece on Al Gore. “Save the Earth in Six Hard Questions: What Al Gore doesn’t understand about climate change” argues that “there’s nothing particularly peaceable about Gore’s rhetorical approach,” and that anyone who doesn’t talk about climate change in purely economic terms is full of hot air. In fact, Gore understands what Landsburg doesn’t: The realities of catastrophic global warming can render economic analysis largely moot.

Landsburg poses six questions to get at what he sees as the central issue