Economic and Climate Models

"Economic and Climate Models" by Robert P. Murphy:

The "rigorous," peer-reviewed Keynesian economic models reached the zenith of their professional success in the 1950s and 1960s, and yet, in retrospect, many economists would now admit that they were fundamentally flawed and provided horrible policy recommendations. Despite the obvious differences between the disciplines, this sorry episode from the field of economics should counsel caution before we hand over even more power to the politicians due to the results of mainstream climate models.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that the climate models are demonstrably wrong .... To go back to economics, it is not as if Paul Samuelson made a mistake in his arithmetic and that's why the United States experienced stagflation .... But if you suspected that perhaps the very approach of the model was flawed, you wouldn't expect Paul Samuelson — the very person responsible for the mainstream approach — to engineer a paradigm shift.

It is true that science must start somewhere, and a bad model is better than no model. But this truism does not mean governments should expand their powers whenever the "best guess" says it would be a good idea. A wise student of history should also be able to say, "We really don't understand this very well yet."