--- title: William Nordhaus has died | daily.dev description: William D. Nordhaus, Yale's Sterling Professor of Economics Emeritus, died October 30 at age 85 after a battle with glioblastoma. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/william-nordhaus-has-died-lrhu29nin twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: William Nordhaus has died | daily.dev og:description: William D. Nordhaus, Yale's Sterling Professor of Economics Emeritus, died October 30 at age 85 after a battle with glioblastoma. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/william-nordhaus-has-died-lrhu29nin og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LrhU29nIN.png og:image:alt: William Nordhaus has died og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # William Nordhaus has died **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary William D. Nordhaus, Yale's Sterling Professor of Economics Emeritus, died October 30 at age 85 after a battle with glioblastoma. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. His DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy) model examined interactions among carbon emissions, climate change and economic growth, and he used it to argue for carbon taxes as an efficient way to cut emissions. He began studying climate economics in the 1970s, served as Yale provost from 1986 to 1988, helped design Yale's internal carbon charge in 2014, and maintained the textbook 'Economics' through its 19th edition. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What did William Nordhaus win the Nobel Prize in Economics for? William Nordhaus won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. His key contribution was the DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy) model, which examines interactions among carbon emissions, climate change and economic growth, helping policymakers weigh the costs of climate damage against the costs of cutting emissions. _Readers tracking how economics informs climate policy can follow related research on daily.dev._ ### What is the DICE model in climate economics? The DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy) model is a framework developed by William Nordhaus that examines how carbon emissions, climate change and economic growth interact. Policymakers use it to estimate the economic costs of climate change, such as crop losses and rising sea levels, and to weigh those costs against the expense of reducing emissions, including setting an optimal carbon tax. _Developers exploring economic modeling tools can keep up with climate-economy research via daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 22 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-31). **TL;DR:** The discussion is dominated by sharp criticism of Nordhaus's climate-economics models (especially his downplaying of damages from warming), though a few commenters push back, crediting him as a founder of climate economics and an early carbon-tax advocate. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 15% mixed · 70% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue he founded climate economics and was an early, genuine advocate for carbon taxes rather than a denier. - His co-authored economics textbook and work on technological change are seen as legitimate, influential contributions. **The pushback** - Critics say his models absurdly assumed large shares of the economy (e.g. indoor activity, agriculture) were immune to climate damage. - Many argue his low damage estimates for severe warming gave policymakers false comfort and delayed action. - Some dispute the legitimacy of the Nobel in Economics itself, calling it political or 'fake'. - One commenter disputes the catastrophic-GDP-loss framing by pointing to historical precedent (the Great Depression) without mass mortality. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Commenters sharply clash between harsh condemnation of Nordhaus's climate models as dangerously wrong and defenders crediting him as a pioneer of climate economics. **Hottest debate:** Whether Nordhaus's optimistic damage estimates for severe warming constituted dangerous pseudo-science or legitimate, influential early climate economics. **Open questions** - Did Nordhaus's modeling assumptions meaningfully influence real-world policy inaction, or is that overstated? - How should the economics Nobel weigh models later seen as badly flawed? **Highlights** > This is a guy who claimed that 3.5 degrees of global warming was "optimal". He was absolutely delusional and built his models on preposterous assumptions. He did a vast amount of damage to the world by providing false justifications for climate denial and inaction on climate change. The fossil fuel companies must have loved him. "when Nordhaus looked at the effects of 6 C warming, he did not forecast horror. Instead, we should expect “damages” of between 8.5 percent and 12.5 percent of world GDP over the course of the 21st century. Writing in the Economic Journal, Stern set Nordhaus straight in the harshest terms: “We could see deaths on a huge scale, migration of billions of people, and severe conflicts around the world,” he wrote. “It is profoundly implausible that numbers around 10 percent of GDP offer a sensible description of the kind of disruption and catastrophe that 6 C of warming could cause.”" It says a lot about economics that he received accolades. https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-winning-economics-of... https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-high-priest-of-ecomoderni... https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-nobel-eco... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/misguided-nordh... > — [SupremumLimit on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319402) > This article goes over his methods and why they're ridiculous: "The fourth fatal error Nordhaus makes is the most farcical. In a 1991 paper that became a touchstone for all his later work, he assumed that, because 87 percent of GDP occurs in what he called “carefully controlled environments” — otherwise known as “indoors” — it will not be affected by climate. ... Ignorance of systems has its way of plowing forward, juggernaut-like. Nordhaus has opined that agriculture is “the part of the economy that is sensitive to climate change,” but because it accounts for just 3 per cent of national output, climate disruption of food production cannot produce a “very large effect on the U.S. economy.” " https://theecologist.org/2023/nov/01/when-idiot-savants-do-c... > — [Alwayshasbeeb on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50320484) > Nordhaus was not a climate denier by any stretch of the imagination. The man founded climate economics, and advocated for carbon taxes very early! He is deserving of critique for being far too conservative in his approach, yes, but it's not like the biggest damagers of the environment are doing less because William Nordhaus told them to do less. Trump and populist right aren't ripping up the EPA, the Inflation Reduction Act, etc. because of Nordhaus. They ripped up the policies because they deny climate change entirely. Would adopting more aggressive measures in the 80s made things better? Possibly, but I think people over estimate the political will vs. the technological shifts needed to eliminate fossil fuels. Only now is it obvious we are going to rapidly, exponentially, move to solar globally because the cost savings are undeniable, regardless of what deniers may want. And, contrary to your Berman link above, energy transitions are NOT a myth. They were not evenly distributed, but they were quietly, regionally happening (the UK, and California, for example). Now it's reached a tipping point, and going global. https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/global-solar-capacity... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/20/the-exponential... > — [parasubvert on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50320152) > Nordhaus co-wrote the standard economics textbook taught globally, endogenous technological change is an exemplary growth theory that (with Paul Romer) was deserving of the Nobel, and was an early proponent of carbon taxes and created many of the tools used in environmental economics. I mean, he's absolutely deserving of critique, even harsh critique, but you're going to have try harder than "his analysis is awful" and he caused "immeasurable damage" when he co-created the movement. > — [parasubvert on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50320005) > The US GDP shrank 29% from 1929 to 1933. International trade fell by 66% between 1929 and 1932. I don't recall hundreds of millions of people dying in the 1930s. US mortality rates declined during the 1930s. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends... World infant mortality rates generally declined during the 1930s. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/nfant-Mortality-Rates-18... > — [ahazred8ta on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321215) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318376) · 43 points · 22 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@springtofigh** · 0 upvotes > R.I.P 💔 ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Economists Robert E. 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