Relatedly, I am probably going to spend the rest of my life encouraging people to remember that economic models—and subsequent analyses and policy—are only as good as their inputs, and the assumptions surrounding those inputs. They are not objective, despite what economists proclaim
See this great paper on how economic models are weapons to make climate action look bad. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The role of particular scientists in opposing policies to slow and halt global warming has been extensively documented. The role of economists, however, has received less attention. Here, I trace t...
Truly excellent book by Erica Thompson that speaks really well to this issue: Escape from Model Land www.ericathompson.co.uk/books/
...and I'd add that until we change our root value system from a sense of scarcity, separation and powerlessness, to one of agency, sufficiency and connection, we can do all we like with our models, but the 'extract/consume/destroy/pollute' model of the predatory capital death cult will continue
You're very polite. They are in fact fiddled to give desired outcomes!
Just saw the Lomborg on Maher clip using bad models to justify his BS, and was once again so infuriated that these economic models are left to flourish without much scrutiny in the public eye. A lot more people need to be angry about these!
Economists insist they are objective, and the establishment that uses them willingly believes in the assumptions because the mitigation rates would otherwise either affect the national and international financial systems, redistribute wealth, or create too much loss in the private sector.
Yes! Just spent the past 2 weeks showing students lots of model output around climate change mitigation and bioenergy while also trying to emphasize that they should make sure to question these models by understanding what they can and cannot do and how they are influenced by data and assumptions.
I just finished rereading Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’ Neil. She makes this point.
Wrapping up a large-scale energy systems modeling paper now. Very happy with the student's work, but continually floored by how many times we could've put thumbs on scales. Nearly invisible choices on model structure or input data can lead to vastly different results, storyline, takeaways.