Science, Banking, and Computer Flim-flam

 The following article by Gregory Wrightstone appeared on PJMedia today:

Corruption of Climate Science Supported by Flawed Models

Oddly, this reminds me of the S&L failures in the 1980s. Most economists will tell you about rising interest rates due to inflation outpacing the income from long-term mortgages at lower fixed-rate interests. Fewer will tell you about the S&Ls attempts to recoup these losses with riskier loans. And fewer still will tell you what I know to be the case... these "riskier" loans didn't look risky to the S&L loan managers at the time due to the introduction of a new factor: Lotus 1-2-3. 

The electronic spreadsheet made it very easy for entrepreneurs to paint rosy pictures of their future earnings, which were easily swallowed because they were the result of "computer models". Computers were new, therefore magical, and their pronouncements were gospel even though they merely output the wishful thinking of the modelers.

Fifty years later, computer models are no less "magical" to the general population; even more so now that they are so complex that laymen have no hope of wrapping their heads around them. But they are no less the output of the wishful thinking of the modelers. And I say this as someone who spent his entire career designing software.