Trust me, I’m an expert

In current thinking about climate risk, the prevailing narrative is that because temperatures are trending into unprecedented territory, historical data is of no use in trying to assess the various ramifications, be they physical, financial or economic.  Instead, we need to gather forward-looking information which will allow us to better infer the behavior of complex systems in a world that does not yet exist.

These views are perfectly encapsulated in a recent Forbes article by Ron Dembo.  In it, he asks: “Could we have predicted last year’s record temperatures and potentially prepared for the effects of scorching heat, such as crop failure, drought, storms, fires and heat-related human deaths?  Yes – although not with historical data.”  He goes on to say that “without the benefit of a time machine, our next best method of gathering theoretical future data is tapping into the wisdom of subject matter experts.  In the case of predicting record temperatures, that means climate scientists, policymakers and researchers.”

Instead of building a time machine, he could just build a trend model and extrapolate it.