Kenneth Arrow on climate change and how times have changed

Sol and I had the good fortune to hear Kenneth Arrow speak last week. In addition to being one of the most famous economists ever (see Arrow-Debreu, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, etc.) Arrow has a special place in our hearts because he spent part of his early career in climatology, specifically doing weather forecasting for the US military during World War II. Which leads us to my favorite quote from last week's seminar, which was really more of an aside:

"I was a meteorologist as my military service during World War II, and we were TAUGHT that carbon dioxide was going to make the world warmer."

Like I always say: the simple reason why CO2 warms the climate has been known for over 150 years. It was uncontroversial until it implied that we needed to change our lifestyles.

*Update: for more fun from Ken Arrow, see this Andrew Gelman's post on Arrow's Other Theorem ("any result can only be published at most five times").