“Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of blogospheric chatter surrounding a cost-benefit analysis of Waxman-Markey done by Jim Manzi. I’m not going to link to the dozens of posts going back and forth about it, but suffice it to say that Manzi concludes that W-M isn’t a good deal. Over the next century, it’s going to cost us more in lost economic growth than it will benefit us in reduced global warming. I didn’t get involved in this conversation for a simple reason: I’ve been on both the producing and receiving end of too many cost benefit analyses to trust them. If you’re being relatively honest and if you’re dealing with fairly concrete, short-term issues, they’re useful tools, but even then it’s still the case that you can manufacture strikingly divergent conclusions by manipulating your assumptions and inputs by surprisingly small amounts.” (07/01/09)