The scattering problems from electromagnetic absorbers can be greatly simplified using the transmission line approximations (TLA) and effective medium theory. This method has been widely used for the absorber design because of its very simple calculation and intuitional approach, while numerical analysis needs the tremendous computation requirements, This paper examined the accuracy and limitations originated by the intrinsic approximation limits of TLA by comparison with FEM results for various absorber design examples. It was found that the TLA result is valid when λ $geq$ 2p, where λ is the wavelength of the interested upper frequency and p is the distance between two periodic cone arrays. Therefore, the electromagnetic absorbers having high material properties and big base-area commonly do not meet this condition, and the electromagnetic scattering from those absorbers must be evaluated by the numerical analysis in those cases.