In response to my blog on global warming a friend gave me an
article from PNAS about the effects of global warming on California wine grapes
--- trouble for the zinfandels in 2100. PNAS is a publication of the National
Academy of Science.
I read the article and found it was based on two computer simulations of the atmosphere.
I was trained as an
economist and I ran a number of economic simulation models for the Bank of
America forty years ago when we took economic simulation seriously. Economists stopped taking simulation models
seriously for predicting economic futures very quickly when we found out they
were unreliable for even one year out.
Now I admit that economic simulations are much easier to do
than simulations of the atmosphere, which includes many unknowns such as water
vapor, ocean currents and solar output.
Why did we economists stop making economic forecasts of more than one year after we got used to computer simulations and scientists bravely make predictions for one hundred years based on the same math?
That is a rhetorical question. I can’t believe that scientists get any respect for such absurd behavior.