Tipping points reduce global consumption per capita by around ... 1.4 upon 6 °C warming, based on a second-order polynomial fit of the data - Dietz etal.(1). As Nobel laureate Solow said to Congress when criticizing economic models for failing to anticipate the "Great Recession," "Every proposition has to pass a smell test: Does it really make sense?" (2). The methods and conclusions in Dietz et al. (1) do not make sense. Earth last experienced 6 °C warming in the Eocene epoch, approx=40 million years ago (3). Asserting consumption would be just 1.4 lower with all tipping points breached, i.e., critical elements of the current climate destroyed-while also being much larger than today-is inconceivable, and impossible to reconcile with scientific literature (3-6). Dietz used the nonmarket damages function from the Model for Evaluating Regional and Global Effects (MERGE) of GHG reduction policies (7) as a "sensitivity check" (ref. 1, SI Appendix). MERGE does not include tipping points; how then can it provide a sensitivity check?
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