PieFedFlawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn
Powderhornwww.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/05/fla…
Who would have guessed?
Flawed economic models mean the accelerating impact of the climate crisis could lead to a global financial crash, experts warn.
Recovery would be far harder than after the 2008 financial crash, they said, as “we can’t bail out the Earth like we did the banks”.
As the world speeds towards 2C of global heating, the risks of extreme weather disasters and climate tipping points are increasing fast. But current economic models used by governments and financial institutions entirely miss such shocks, the researchers said, instead forecasting that steady economic growth will be slowed only by gradually rising average temperatures. This is because the models assume the future will behave like the past, despite the burning of fossil fuels pushing the climate system into uncharted territory.
Tipping points, such as the collapse of critical Atlantic currents or the Greenland ice sheet, would have global consequences for society. Some are thought to be at, or very close to, their tipping points but the timing is difficult to predict. Combined extreme weather disasters could wipe out national economies, the researchers, from the University of Exeter and financial thinktank Carbon Tracker Initiative, said.
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Wot. That was always what was going to happen.
Scientists have been told to hold back on the claims because they are to extreme to be accepted… everyone’s been fighting over the very unlikely best scenario and the greedy monsters cannot even let that be. We are doomed. Shame those responsible will enjoy the apocalypse more than their victims (everyone else).
Execute the luigi protocol please.
GreatWhite_Shark_EarthAndBeingsRightsPerson
No one will survive
It’s the ultimate way the stamp out the opposition
& everything in the process, including the people think are “good”.
What are you, ‘The Crazy Don’ & his administration or ‘reincarnation (even thought I do not believe in it) ‘Hilter’?
we can’t bail out the Earth like we did the banks.
diabetic_porcupineNo but we can genocide enough of the population that only the important ones survive in their bunkers
Even that will NOT work in case of the worse of ‘Global Warming’. not
HanrahanI’m reminded of this article
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/29/william-nordhaus-climate-economics/
To understand the gap between climate scientists and climate economists, one must first understand that most economists — the folks we call mainstream or neoclassical economists — have little knowledge of or interest in how things really work on planet Earth. The problem of their ecological benightedness starts as a matter of training at university, where a typical undergraduate course in economics prepares students for a lifetime of abject ignorance about the complex underpinnings of the thing called the “market.”
Any economic system that doesn’t have ecology as the base can only be rubbish
As early as 1991, a report from a commission on “graduate education in economics” warned that the university system in the United States was churning out “too many idiot savants,” economists “skilled in technique but innocent of real economic issues” — unable, that is, to look into the real nature of things.
Models are useless things for economic forecasting
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." — Ezra Solomon, professor of finance, Stanford University
Ignorance of systems has its way of plowing forward, juggernaut-like. Nordhaus has opined that agriculture is “the part of the economy that is sensitive to climate change,” but because it accounts for just 3 percent of national output, climate disruption of food production cannot produce a “very large effect on the U.S. economy.” It is unfortunate for his calculations that agriculture is the foundation on which the other 97 percent of GDP depends. Without food — strange that one needs to reiterate this — there is no economy, no society, no civilization. Yet Nordhaus treats agriculture as indifferently fungible.
If you have never seen these lectures by Economist Steve Keen, they are well worth watching.
This one he delivered at Nordhaus’ home university: https://youtu.be/QGfaqALkc40
A deep dive into the shockingly bad “economics” that was used to inform policy: https://youtu.be/aoFiw2jMy-0
(He eviscerates Nordhaus starting at 25-30min continuing.)
(At, 47min, he goes over Nordhaus’ Nobel prize lecture wherehe claims 4° of warming would be “optimal").
So, Nordhaus has to be one of the most interesting bastards of history. It seems like he came into prominance FIRST by publically attacking the Limits to Growth study.
The Limits to Growth study was the first major attempt to use a computer model to study the complex system that is the economy-environment. People had never really done computer models before this.
Nordhaus basically argued against this study and said that the market will solve the problems. But basically, if you do a deep dive on his argument, he failed to understand the computer model or the fact that it was a complex system. It kind of went over his head.
THEN, a few years later, he does his own extremely similar study using extremely similar methods and wins the Nobel Prize in Economics. Like at some point he grasped the idea of Limits to Growth, then totally rips off and plagiarizes their approach. He feeds in some junk data and makes his model prove that we live in a cornucopian economic world.
And THEN, people in policy positions listened to him.
Nordhaus is not just some economist, he’s actually evil.
Not the economy!
Another name for mass famine, and the resulting population crash.
Economic crashes are something we can relate to, unfortunately.
Not worldwide
We as a species, & all other Living Beings, would be lucky if that is all that happens, even it would be horrible.
Total economic collapse may actually be what it takes to save us as a species.
True
Better than a violent revolution to save it all, 100s of millions dead, just in The USA.
I’m not sure those are mutually exclusive.
The “well akshully” aside. I agree.
It is strongly possible you are right. I hope in BLANK you turn-out to be wrong.
With that being said, ‘The Global Warming’ will probably extinct All Living Earth & thus All Living Beings long before Feudalism (we are moving backwards into it) causes that.
What?
Internet trope of nerd/pedant correcting someone by starting off “well actually”.
I’ve been exposed to excessive internetting.
Sorry, I just never got down The Internet languages, because of my Short & Long Term Memory & Language Processing Challenges it hard enough with my indigenous language & BLANKING never learned how to type properly & tablet’s suggestions being submitted in place of what I am trying to type.