Tuesday, July 2, 2013

The Incoming Head of the American Economic Association is a Climate Freak

In 1993, William Nordhaus, the president-elect of the American Economic Association, wrote in the Journal of Economic Perspectives  that:
climate models resemble large macreconomic models in their ability to answer virtually any question that modelers care to ask. However, the reliability of climate models for global climate changes is unproven, and climate modelers do not expect to be able to forecast regional climates accurately in the foreseeable future.  
I remind you he is talking about macroeconomic models, which failed to warn Long Term Capital Management about its dangerous bond portfolio, which failed to warn bankers and traders about the subprime mortgage crisis and which failed to warn in advance about the Great Recession.

That said, Nordhaus does appear to hold the view that climate models are less accurate than econometric models. He is probably correct. As I pointed out yesterday, serious scientists continue to believe that much more research and analysis must be conducted to understand the impacts of various factors on climate.

Yet, Nordhaus, after seeming to recognize that climate models work about as well as the Fed's housing models, called, in the same paper, for a carbon tax. I repeat, he called for this tax after stating that climate models are not accurate enough to know how carbon and other factors, in this complex witches brew, impacts the climate!

It doesn't appear that his thinking has changed much since the 1993 paper. This October, he has a book coming out: The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warmer World.

According to David Warsh, Nordhaus will  warn in the new book that we "are gambling with the future of the planet, though there is still time to back out by adopting a global system of carbon taxes."

I didn't think the AEA could move in a worse direction than its crazed econometric modeling, under Nordhaus, though, it appears that improper economic methodology will be merged with incomplete climatology research. This will benefit no one but crony climatologist operators and those who provide mad science to justify their hocu pocus.  Should be a total waste and quite an interesting year at the AEA.

1 comment:

  1. USA has their won legislation that ended the use of gold certificates, paper currency that could be redeemed for gold on demand. I can only assume that these items have gone that way. Everyone knows if you want to sell gold in NYC there is someone willing to take it off of your ears or fingers.

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