He was very often the smartest person in the room. But not, I think, the most correct.

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The frustration demonstrated at that long ago workshop was actually a clash of values - not science, but Nordhaus was expert at subsuming the former in favor of the latter, and so the clash of values never got discussed.

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At the time, I knew very little about the basis of economic modeling of climate change impacts and so I did not have anything substantive to add. In subsequent years I learnt a lot more, and started to see how very specific value systems get built into economic models from the ground up.

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But the funny thing is that while people in the discussion pushed back a lot, they generally pushed back on the result (not the methods) and so Nordhaus was easily able to deflect and outsmart the questioners. It was somewhat frustrating, but also impressive and instructive.

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I met him in the late 90s(?) at a workshop at LDEO (Columbia). He was (at the time) arguing that his economic modeling showed that (effectively) action to prevent climate change was not needed & that warming up to 2ºC or so would be beneficial. This message was not warmly received by the audience.

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