September 05, 2019 1:32 PM ET
Climate economist Martin Weitzman died Aug. 27 from a suicide about a year after being passed over for a Nobel Prize, as he reportedly grew despondent about his ability to contribute to his field.
The Massachusetts medical examiner’s office ruled Wednesday afternoon that his death was a suicide by hanging. Along with being upset about being passed over, Weitzman’s colleagues said he left a note questioning whether he still had the mental capacity to contribute to his field, according to The New York Times. He was 77 years old.
Many climate researchers rely on such cost-benefit analysis to determine the extent of actions to take on climate change, but Weitzman is known for research showing that constructing such analyses downplays the possible risk from global warming, TheNYT reported.
His contribution was known as the Dismal Theorem. Weitzman wrote in the 2015 book “Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet” that the unknowns of climate change should scare academics as much if not more than what is known.
His analysis helped create the groundwork for cap-and-trade programs.(RELATED:Climate Academic Appears To Compare Global Warming Skeptics With The 9/11 Hijackers)
Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President and Climate Reality Project Chairman, gestures as he speaks at the COP24 UN Climate Change Conference 2018 in Katowice, Poland December 12, 2018. Agencja Gazeta/Grzegorz Celejewski/via REUTERS.
“Most everything we know tells us climate change is bad,” Weitzman and his co-author, Gernot Wagner, an economist at New York University, concluded in the book. “Most everything we don’t know tells us it’s probably much worse.”
Many of Weitzman’s colleagues believed he would win the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, but it was not to be. The prize went to two other economists, Paul Romer, an academic at New York University, and William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale University.
Things declined for Weitzman further after an economist pointed to a mistake in an unpublished paper he circulated to peers, TheNYT reported, citing his colleagues. Nobel Prize politics have become a bit of a sore spot for climate scientists. Penn State University professor Michael Mann has been criticized in the past for embellishing his credentials.
Mann has consistently been called out for falsely claiming to have co-won the Nobel Prize in 2007 with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore. That year’s prize went to the former vice president-turned-activist for promoting knowledge about climate change.
Mann said in his lawsuit in 2012 against conservative pundit Mark Steyn and National Review that he was a Nobel Laureate, but the Nobel committee has consistently rebuked this claim. Mann has never responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s response for comment about his claims about the prize.
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Suicide is a product of brain malfunction. That happens because of a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can be a result of depression which is a further symptom of chemical imbalance. It can also be a result of many physical conditions such as dementia and diabetes.
It is always a tragedy when someone takes the suicide route but this gentleman was striving for a positive outcome to his lifes work however deluded he had been by the Political corruption of the atmospheric sciences.
He should be mourned as a political victim however much we disagree with him. Some of the tightly focussed intellects do not have the time or ability to question the inputs that they are given. They take them on faith.
We ordinary mortals with broad spectrum brains pick up the clues to a scam more easily but are unable in many cases to formulate our response. There is a world of difference between having thoughts and “thinking” in the philosophical sense. My sympathies are with his family. It must be an awful time for them.
Sad, but….
If he truly believed that “…the unknowns of climate change should scare academics as much if not more than what is known” then he was right, in so far as he couldn’t contribute to his field.
That is not the reasoned language and thinking of a dispassionate academic researcher.
Nordhaus, who apparently did get a Prize, is said to have totally discredited Weitzman.
Projecting the unknowns of severe personal trauma on the entire human species, is the brittle defense such use with climate.
Someone busts that defense – get quickly out of the way!
“Most everything we don’t know tells us it’s probably much worse.”
You have to be either stupid or pretty depressed to come up with a line like that.
I do wonder if most of the big climate change alarmists are depressed and it is simply their depression we hear so loudly in the media.
Actually, experience tells us that the things we don’t know are probably (likely) to NOT be very dangerous. We’ve pretty well figured out what is dangerous so the remaining unknown dangers just don’t come around that often. Humans do a rotten job at evaluating risks. The statement is evidence of that.
A lonely and painful death by suicide is always tragic and sad. Rest in peace Martin Weitzman.
Climate science is too politicised and alarmist-polemical for there to be much chance of impartial reward of academic merit.
Finally…A death due to global warming!!!
“Most everything we know tells us climate change is bad,” bla bla bla
Another one that believed he lived in the best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire wrote Candide about those.
John Donne
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine
Et lux perpetua luceat eis:
Requiescat in pace.
Some people inhale too much “climate” glue and they just go nuts
He’s not the first
What did this guy know about Hillary Clinton or Prince Andrew ? 🙂
I share the sadness of many of the commentators above. I don’t care what his views were. He felt the pain of feeling unable to contribute any more, and it was unbearable for him. My sympathy goes out to his family and friends, and my he rest in peace.
My condolences to the 10’s of thousands of people who die prematurely and unnecessarily from
fuel poverty . Policies developed from failed climate models and cheer leader rent seekers .
Innocent people that’s who I feel sorry for .
BTW, was this Griff?
Just checking.