This year’s Nobel Prize for economics went to two Game theorists: Robert J. Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Thomas C. Schelling of the University of Maryland. It is a bit of surprising because the 1994 Prize also went to John Nash and the other two game guys.

These two economists are kind of weirdoes. Mr. Aumann has been an ardent supporter for intelligent design and bible code cracking. He has helped his colleagues write bible coding papers for statistical science. He is a seriously religious person. Maybe he views himself as a Rabbi.

The Mr. Schelling is an applied person who translates mathematics to daily language. For this, he should be applauded. However, in today’s WSJ:

In his 1991 presidential address to the American Economics Association, Mr. Schelling, always the iconoclast, pointed out that even if the earth warmed by as much as 4.5 degrees Centigrade (climatologists now think it will be less), the effect on developed countries would hardly be noticeable and might be good: He pointed out that when people retire, they typically move to warmer climates. Although the effects on poor countries would be more serious, he noted, compensating them would be cheaper than investing $200 billion a year ($300 billion in today’s dollars) to slow global warming.

Is this view weird? Yes, it is true that most developed countries will benefit from global warming because they are in northern cold areas (forget about Australian). How about the tremendous cost of submerged cities such as New York?