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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

IMF economic forecasts are of little value, as everyone should have learned from 2008. Let's see what the IMF forecast in 2007...

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sores1...

forecast: "World growth to slow in 2008, but still expected to remain solid at 4¾ percent "

reality (Fed report 2013): "From peak to trough, US gross domestic product fell by 4.3 percent, making this the deepest recession since World War II."

If climate scientists made forecasts that were this ridiculously off base in the wrong direction, the whole field would be laughed out of the room. How is it that the neoclassical econometric modelers at the IMF aren't? It's more like astrology than science.

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It's complicated because the forecasts of the system themselves can have some effect on the system they're forecasting.

Because of people chasing alpha in the markets, any forecast with too much predictive power will tend to alter the system in ways that reduce its predictive power

It's like if predicting the weather could hurt the weather's feelings.

This legit got a laugh out of me. I'll be cursing at the clouds the next time it rains!

That's the difference between an open loop and a closed loop.

Do you think these forecasts would have been accurate if they had been kept secret?

So do the forecasts of climate scientists, and in many other fields, this not an excuse.

That is just not even close to a fair analogy.

You are right; climate scientists have it worse. Economists do not have an established cabal of special interests working to undermine them at every turn. An entire political party opposed to anything they say.

Public reception is a top concern for climate scientists.

Are you comparing their projection for the World GDP change in one year vs reality of one country over some extended period? I don't think your argument as strong as you believe.

World GDP Change in

2008 +2.1%

2009 -1.4%

2010 +4.5%

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2...

The IMF is as much a political organization as it is a financial one. With a HQ in Washington, DC they're certain to drink the same water as all the other political BS artists. They're also not going to toss the World Bank, the Central Banks, etc. under the bus.

The point is, there's a difference between proper forecasts and (what amounts to) propaganda.

Their job is to convince everyone that everything is OK, and we should all keep going to work, spending money and investing.

If even a small percentage of people stopped doing those things, it would all fall apart.

As long as the chairperson of the Federal Reserve doesn't say that the economy is fundamentaly sound[1], I think we'll be OK.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2007/03/01/fed-chief-economy-...

> If climate scientists made forecasts that were this ridiculously off base in the wrong direction, the whole field would be laughed out of the room. How is it that the neoclassical econometric modelers at the IMF aren't? It's more like astrology than science.

I have to say, this made me chuckle. Climate scientists have gone from warning us that we're entering an ice age, to warning us that the globe is warming too much. They've consistently gotten their forecasts wrong concerning rising sea levels, and their forecasts concerning when the world would end. It's pure alarmism, extremism, and is the cause for the increasing eco-terrorism we are seeing.

Anyone that would like a little more info can watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Yms_-vgbU

The ice age thing was never a majority opinion among scientists.

Scientists, quite literally, change their theories as more information becomes apparent. Frankly, you're better suited to blame mass media for the alarmism and extremism. "The global temperature increased 1ºC in the past 100 years" is a lot less likely to get those sweet, sweet ad revenue clicks than a headline like "Scientists say the Earth will be uninhabitable in 100 years".

Also, a philosopher cosplaying as a climate scientist may not be the best source for climate information. Until he starts having his statements and information peer-reviewed, it's nothing more than the philosophical musings of a man who, he himself, believes that the pinnacle of life is to feed the machine and consume, consume, consume.

That's nonsense - you're conflating the discovery of the main drivers behind the ice age cycles that began at the end of the Pliocene (~100,000 years per cycle over ~2 million years) with the discovery of the effects of human fossil fuel combustion.

Yes, we're past the historical warm maximum period of this cycle and we'd be steadily (and very slowly) heading into another ice age over the next 70,000 years or so - but again, fossil fuel combustion and the injection of mass amounts of fossil CO2 into the atmosphere have radically altered that trajectory. This is not hard to understand, unless you're deliberately trying not to.

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