Not really ableist, just means someone who’s an absolute genius in one specific field but of mediocre intellect in all others.

My problem with the term here is that’s not what Nordhaus is in this context. He’s not a brilliant man out of his element, he’s intentionally crafting smoke and mirrors to rationalizing the continued cooking of the planet as a good thing. He’s obscuring the truth in order give the hands that feed him cover to keep up the status quo in their favor.

“Idiot savant” is a term that was used to describe people with autism who had significant problems with daily living but also talents in (mainly) mathematics or another field. I have no idea if it’s considered a slur now but I can’t imagine it being considered flattering.

Edit: After reading the article I’m amazed this guy has been given a Nobel prize (shows how much the economics prizes are worth, I guess). Since I started to take a serious interest in climate policy a few years ago the gold standard for maximum tolerable warming has been IPCC’s 1.5 C, so I’d imagine he’s been out of the mainstream for at least a little while, and it’s telling that even a World Bank (“The key to eliminating poverty is a system of economic growth where 90% of gains are captured by the already wealthy!”) economist doesn’t want to be associated with his views. Not an idiot savant, just a guy with credentials engaged in the standard practice of vibes-based models producing motivated reasoning to justify the status quo.

The climate endgame paper mentioned in the article is worth a read, but it’s also incredibly alarming. The one map I keep coming back to is the predicted 2070 29 C band in Africa and South Asia - in a nutshell, areas where over billion people live now are going to be facing an average annual temperature of 29 C/85 F, and that’s not going to be dry heat. Agricultural yields will be impacted. It’ll be impossible to do field except in the early morning and late evening during critical parts of the growing season. Pollen is notoriously sensitive to high temperatures and low pollen viability means low fruit/seed set. Assuming the accuracy of these predictions (all models are wrong, some models are useful), at some point between now and 2070, hundreds of millions of people are going to conclude that they can no longer support themselves and their families and are going to make a decision to relocate, and the impacts of that relocation are going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen, let alone prepared for. Court jesters like this Nordhaus schmuck need to get sent to the equator to farm for the rest of their natural lives.