AGW and Computer Model Corruption

In a perfect example of using rationalization over logic, the Obama administration will modify a computer model to get the “right” answer, rather than to accept the results of the computer output based on what are likely to be correct inputs.

Here’s the scam: the computer model that is used to model the economic effects of Obama-supported climate legislation produced an undesirable answer, specifically, that farmers would be financially better off in the future to plant trees rather than to plant food crops. The rationale behind this apparently is that trees sequester more CO2 than do food crops. According to the Washington Times,

"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.
The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation's incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture."

But this answer is not acceptable to the administration, so the programmers have been ordered to change the model. In other words, fudge in order to get the desirable answer. There is no move afoot to change the legislation, just the model of the legislation’s long term effects.

All of this ignores the AGW models that show that new forestation increases global warming, due to the darkening of the earth’s surface compared to non-forestation regions. This has been documented at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) website.

So again we have decisions being supported by falsified computer models, not decisions being based on science, much less fact. It is not the fact that crop land will decrease and food prices will rise that concerns the administration, it is the fact that the model shows that it will which is unacceptable.

Vilsack claims that these trees won’t be planted because farmers will receive carbon credits for free, which they can sell for additional income. But the model based on the legislation shows that 80% of the offset would not come through using “greener” farm methods, it would come from planting trees. Whether this offset even actually happens is pure speculation of course, because Cap and Trade is not a slam dunk, and because promises to farmers are generally the first thing to be eliminated in the nasty political process in DC. And it amounts to nothing but government manipulation of agriculture, just as they are manipulating the rest of the economy, top down. All we need now is a Five Year Plan, a la China and the USSR.