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Andrew J. Hoffman, University of Michigan and Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, University of Michigan

(THE CONVERSATION) Yale economist William Nordhaus has devoted his life’s work to understanding the costs of climate change and advocating the use of a carbon tax to curb global warming.

It’s no small irony, then, that on the same day his research shared in the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a United Nations panel released its latest report on the mounting dangers of climate chan...