The IPCC report, issued on 20 March 2023, is an invaluable synthesis of climate science; however, there is a fundamental issue with IPCC reports in general. They communicate climate science using language that is also used by mainstream economists, such as modelling, equilibrium, financial flows, market barriers, leverage, costs and budgets.
This shared lexicon unfortunately gives unwarranted credence to economists, who like to claim that a science/economics consensus exists, while their jargon and maths serve to elevate and insulate their discourse beyond the reach of non economists, including politicians who seem to overly rely on economists’ policy advice as if it is truth-based. In fact, the theoretical framework of mainstream economics is based on a false science of universal abstractions. The most ludicrous climate models have come from economists, such as William Nordhaus, whose cost/benefit analyses led him to claim that 3°C of warming would reduce global GDP by just 2.1%, shortly after he won the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
The IPCC should explicitly distance itself from the deceptive ‘science’ of conventional economics and declare support for the application of true social sciences to climate issues, including the heterodox schools of economics whose innovative ideas the economics academy blocks and belittles at every opportunity.
Heliocene 