GARBAGE! MIT Professor Says Obama's Climate Models Are Useless

One problem with the global warming Hoaxers is they rely on computer models and never put their heads out the window to see if its raining. Models are imperfect approximation of mother nature. Some are better than others, and according to Robert S. Pindyck of MIT the one the Obama administration is using to plan his energy policy is awful!

Pindyck has an immaculate pedigree, he is professor of economics and finance at MIT, has several decades’ experience publishing articles and books dealing with energy, and is a believer in the global warming hoax. In the guy is even a supporter of the climate tax-redistribution of income scam.

With a pedigree like that, you might expect Pindyck to be very complimentary about the computer models that the Obama Administration and other policymakers are using to justify the economics of anti-carbon measures. But as it turns out, Pindyck has written a new, peer-reviewed paper (forthcoming in theJournal of Economic Literature) that is absolutely scathing in its critique of such models. In this post I’ll highlight some of his points.

In the climate change policy debate, there are two types of computer models. One type refers to models of the Earth’s climate that are created as simplified simulations of the atmosphere, ocean, sun’s radiation, etc. that rely just on the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology. These are the computer models that people have in mind when they say things like, “Global temperatures have been basically flat for years, and yet the official models predicted more warming than has actually occurred.”

A plethora of integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate alternative abatement policies. These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome.  IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading

In the passive-aggressive world of climate change economics and university scholars the language above is the equivalent of a 4-letter word filed diatribe. The Obama administration uses the IAM-type of model.  According to the professor, these models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis because some of the data such as the discount rates are arbitrary, but the have a huge effect on the outcome.  

In other words it GIGO, Garbage In Garbage out, models such a the ones the progressives are using to force their hoax down our throat force the "modeler" to make too many assumptions based on opinion.

The point is, these models are so open-ended—they’re trying to model the entire climate system and global economy through the year 2300, for crying out loud—that the analyst has to pick and choose what items to include, and which to omit. If the economist wants the computer to spit out a big scary number, that’s not hard to accomplish.

Pindyck says these models rely on so much assumption that what comes out is what the modeler "wants to come out."  OH Gee he can't mean that! Our President, the man in charge of the most honest and transparent administration in history...using climate models that are easy to skew?

Read the full Report at the Institute for Energy Research.