Jim Manzi on Marty Weitzman

Arnold:

Thanks for your comments, and for reading my very long post.

I strongly agree with the thrust of your linked post. I provided a detailed response to some of Tyler's concerns about my argument in the comments section of his blog.

Best,

I read most of Arnold's essay.

It is the un-comfort zone of thick tailed distributions that we want to eliminate, like any good insurance estimator. If we had a year to year estimate of storm damage due to AGW, we are fine.
The rare disaster an act of god, until Weitzman gets better days.

In my opinion, I think that a jury could determine, from evidence, to within 30%, the portion of storm damage due to AGW.

Tyler is obviously right, but that hardly goes to the relevant question. Which would seem to be: "Will the net error be larger based upon government intervention in the market or in the absence of any such government intervention." And I would think any probability "public underworry" probably would counsel strongly in favor of government action, because it would moderate a market externality and reduce the size of its effect.