Both climate and coronavirus models continue to fail. Why do we still look at them for deciding public policy?
Our resident polymath Willis Eschenbach joins Anthony Watts to discuss the parallels of hysteria and failure surrounding climate models and the coronovirus model that effectively put the world on hold.
Problem is, it’s worse than the old computer programmers adage “garbage in/garbage” out this time. These models are affecting real lives.
Yes, first try to understand the past. A simple sounding task, but so many are too afraid to try.
About a month and a half ago there was a study saying that (a model had said that) the confinement had saved 3 million lives in Europe. I was surprised by how many people wanted to believe it.
A quick calculation at the time, considering the different onset times and the differences in population made me think that, if that was true, then in Brazil, with no confinement, we should see 2 million deaths, a month and a half later, which is… NOW.
Reality is that according to latest data there have been roughly 75 thousand deaths in Brazil. That’s a bit far from 2 million. Assuming that Bolsonaro may be hiding a big ammount of them, and that the number triples… that’s still off by an order of magnitude. It’s a lot, yes, but it is off by an order of magnitude. I really cannot understand why so much faith is put in models.
My study says 30 million bazillion gazzilion.
(Pinky to cheek!!)
Made a meme re: model as hand puppet which sums it up. No way to post an image here.
Is this permitted? Copy and paste, remove the spaces:
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