Most people don’t understand what it means to be skeptical of experts. Skepticism should be one-sided, or should lead to one-sided actions, the one that is “wise” in the precautionary sense. If the majority of experts tell you water is poisonous, don’t exercise your skepticism by drinking. But if experts tell you water is “safe”, you are invited to be skeptic, or err on the side of skepticism. Likewise with climatic matters: we cannot affort to be skeptical of models, even if you knew they are wrong. This explains why you can be equally skeptical of both economic and climatic modelers, but distrust one class and trust another. We are fragile if we trust economists, and fragile if we distrust climate people.

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