Economists’ erroneous estimates of damages from climate change

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You might be interested in this paper.

First, as already remarked in, it is possible to generate much more aggressive policy recommendations within the DICE paradigm: all that is needed are realistic damage function specifications, as well as the possibility of damages affecting more than just economic output. Second, and in our view most importantly, the unique-equilibrium nature of the DICE model is incapable of generating economic collapse as a solution, no matter how extreme the damages are from climate change.

This critique is apparently not captured in the literature surrounding SCC.

see in particular the publications of the USA’s Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, which use DICE, PAGE and FUND to calculate the SCC, and whose academic references are dominated by economics papers, rather than the scientific literature on climate change.

Given the failings in the economic literature detailed in this paper, this situation cannot be allowed to continue. Where economics has failed, science should prevail.

Can someone more familiar with models respond or discuss the criticism raised in that paper?

Should Mimi consider inviting these authors to create a different model that addresses the criticisms?

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The purpose of this forum is to support Mimi users with technical questions, and we will direct discussion of critiques like that mentioned above to other venues. Per your last point, any author, economist of otherwise, is more than welcome, and encouraged, to leverage Mimi for their research and inquiries and we will provide technical support via this community. It is open source and we encourage more authors to engage!

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I was under the impression that questions like “Do the models Mimi implements actually predict what they are supposed to predict?” or “What avenues would be interesting to explore when modifying DICE using Mimi?” would be covered but apparently

is restricted technical support for using Mimi only.

I appreciate that. What would those other venues would that be?

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I don’t have a generic answer to this, it really depends on each individual model and how the authors of that model interact with others.