To be fair to @afneil I think he just has a broad based lack of understanding about time series, randomness and forecasting, as evidenced by his interjections on Brexit, so the silly remarks about snow and global warming are not as sinister as they seem.
Exhibit A: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03…
For anyone listening in after Andrew's devastating 'twat' remark after he blocked me, the interview shows he fails to understand several things [tbh many of those who don't encounter economics much similarly find these hard];
He is incredulous that a forecast could be wrong without the forecaster doing a bad job - fails to grasp the idea of randomness in a macroeconomy.
He doesn't know his econ history or macro very well, and fails to grasp that a lot of what the 364 economists were arguing about in 1981 was right. [Namely that a strongly counter cyclical fiscal policy was damaging. As indeed it was.]
He also struggles to grasp a primary school level explanation of the notion of comparing 2 conditional forecasts, to explain why we should pay attention to the long term econ analysis of Brexit.
That was understandable. It can sometimes be hard to think or digest others points on your feet quickly. But he doubled down on this subsequently on Twitter shortly afterwards.
The analogy was: we can't forecast your weight along way out, but we can confidently say that you will be fatter if you eat a lot of cakes than if you don't. Note the blank expression on his face as he listens!
Hard to know just how bad his global warming comments are. Could be same failure to understand randomness and other time series ideas. Even if he understands them, those comments would show a reckless lack of understanding about the effect of such remarks on others who don't.
Oh, I think I forgot the point that he seems unable to grasp that just because something goes wrong in an economy you don't ditch the entire discipline - eg we don't ditch health professionals because of a flu epidemic.
To make some rather obvious points about his climate goofs.... at risk of making my own here.... global warming is about lower frequency, ie longer term changes in climate. Short term fluctuations still happen, including cold snaps!
No-one claimed climate would warm monotonically [always go up iow]. And global warming was also associated with uneven climate dynamics across the globe. Not warming the same amount in the long term everywhere, or at the same speed.
And iirc the central idea also includes prediction of more extreme weather conditions of all kinds in many areas. For all these reasons, you don't conclude that snow means global warming is a suspect idea. As he appeared to.
