2020 The failure of Integrated Assessment Models as a response to ‘climate emergency’ and ecological breakdown: the Emperor has no clothes
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1853958
In this brief commentary we provide some parallel points to complement Steve Keen’s paper in the recent Globalization’s special forum on ‘Economics and Climate Emergency’. Keen’s critique of climate and economy Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) is wide-ranging, but there is still scope to bring to the fore the general issues that help to make sense of the critique. Accordingly, we set out six key inadequacies of IAMs and argue towards the need for a different approach that is more realistic regarding the limits to growth.
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New paper by @salviasefi about lack of feedbacks between Earth & Human Systems in Integrated Assessment Models.
It is connected to the work of @ProfSteveKeen & papers by my colleagues and myself, e.g.,
https://t.co/DU2asvLf3T.
This new paper summarizes some of the key inadequacies of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs):
1. The rational expectations assumption.
2. Lack of real complexity.
3. ‘Integrated’ does not mean what you think it means.
4. The use of a ‘representative agent’ in the economic model.
5. The economic agent as consumer: discounts that shouldn’t count.
6. The economic agent as producer: the damage done by damage functions.
Explicit modeling of the Human System variables and dynamical mechanisms is crucial for producing realistic projections of the climate and environmental systems. These projections inform major regional and international policies.
Without a realistic representation of bidirectional feedbacks in Integrated Assessment Models, we might miss important signals that determine the fate of our planet and our species.
We need a new paradigm of models for @IPCC_CH and National Climate Assessment reports.