Re: [DIYbio] Is science more important than economics?

nope ... economics can be summed up in one sentence "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch". You are talking about what motivates people to create goods/services, to trade, and the various policies that result. If you can reduce people's behaviour down to equations, then you are oversimplifying homo rationalis. Climate change is another issues ... science creates simplified models of reality, and this is bounded by the lack of calibration data, resolution contrained by computer speed, and the limits of understanding nature. Where models have been verified by historical data, projecting them forwards have risks in lack of understanding of feedback loops. 

On the other hand, humans react very well to perceived or actual losses, as the incumbant energy companies protest carbon taxes, object to regulations which internalise social costs (eg acid rain) and point to all the stranded assets (shut in oil wells). What is harder to do is to champion the sunrise industries of greentech, the benefits of haze-free skies (which is not reflected in share prices) or paying the human cost of displaced refugees from rising seas.

On Saturday, 19 September 2015 01:28:27 UTC+8, Nathan McCorkle wrote:

Isn't economics a form of science?

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 5:27 PM, social econ <econand...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How important is science? How important is economics? Which one is more
> capable of dealing with climate change? What do you think and what do other
> people think?
>
>
> We are researchers from the University of Otago's Centre for Science
> Communication in New Zealand, and we are working to understand how
> practicing scientists with Masters or PhD degrees judge the relative
> importance of science and economics in solving major challenges such as
> climate change, food security, health, natural resource management, and
> environmental protection.
>
>
> We will be running a survey and we hope that you might fill it in. The
> survey should take no more than 15 minutes, is voluntary, anonymous, and has
> ethics approval from the University of Otago. The survey will be open until
> the 30th of September.
>
>
> The Survey is now open and available here:
> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L2FB6WP
>
>
> Yours, with thanks,
>
> Fabien Medvecky
>
> PhD University of Sydney
>
>
> Vicki Macknight
>
> PhD University of Melbourne
>
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--
-Nathan