There’s an article in the New York Times pushing a something called “the five stages of climate grief” done by a professor at the University of Montana. This got me to thinking about the regular disaster forecasting that we see published in the media about what will happen due to climate change.
We’ve seen this sort of angst broadcast before, and it occurred to me that through history, a lot of “predictions of certainty” with roots in scientifically based forecasts have not come true. That being the case, here is the list I’ve compiled of famous quotes and consensus from “experts”.
Top Ten Science based predictions that didn’t come true:
10. “The earth’s crust does not move”– 19th through early 20th century accepted geological science. See Plate Tectonics
9. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
8. “That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988
7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
6. “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
5. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
4. “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
3. “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
2. “Stomach ulcers are caused by stress” — accepted medical diagnosis, until Dr. Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastric inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium.
1. “Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” — Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University in Time Magazine’s June 24th, 1975 article Another Ice Age?
So the next time you hear about worldwide crop failure, rising sea levels, species extinction, or “climate grief” you might want to remember that just being an expert, or even having a consensus of experts, doesn’t necessarily mean that a claim is true.
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[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
Hi Anthony,
I am a meteorologist who works in Montana. I have read many newspaper articles reporting on Dr. Running’s presentations concerning climate change. He calculates temperature trends using raw data from airports, without correcting them for instrument changes, moves, and UHI. Last July was the warmest July in Montana since 1936, but he used it as proof of AGW. Nevermind that statistical tests fail show any significant trend. The current drought itself is proof of AGW. Nevermind that the drought in the 1930s was worse.
I wouldn’t let my children hear him speak at school, unless I am there to challenge the basis of his arguments.
Isn’t it interesting what ended up not being true, in the end? And yet some people (scientismists) think they can trust everything that scientists say without taking an salt with it. Hogwash.
Virgil, my sympathies. It is sickening the kind of propaganda that passes for science these days.
The weather’s average has been going up and down in cycles since time immemorial. Environmentalists don’t want to show you that part. That’s why I think any “global warming” is happening naturally, with human input maybe as a catalyst just a bit in ultra-urban areas.
Natural? Quien sabe? It may be happening at a much lesser rate than measured. It may hardly be happening at all. We have been measuring encroaching heat sinks and continually increasing waste heat for the last two decades.
Over 6 out of 7 stations so far register a 1C+ warming bias. Over 2 out of 3 show a 2C+ warming bias.
But this was not true in 1975. The flies have conquered the flypaper. Thus the delta. And a heat sink (quite apart from the immediate offset) considerbaly exaggerates a small temperature increase.
Q. What do the IPCC and the SS Titanic have in common ?
A. Skeptics and one Iceberg.
The Times article said the following…
Dr. Running, 57, said high school students were an important audience for his message about climate change. “Our generation caused the problem,” he said, “and I want to talk to high schools because they are the generation that will solve the problem. And we can’t solve the problem without a free discussion.”
…I have lived in Montana since 1994 and significant parts of the state have been in drought since 1999. There is a paper published the Journal of Climate in 2007 written by Seager that calls this drought the “Turn of the Century” drought and he goes back in the Paleoclimatic record and finds analogs to the current drought using tree ring data. Droughts of the current duration and serverity have occurred before in Montana.
There is a similar paper in Earth-Science Reviews published in 2007 (Cook et al) that is a very comprehensive discussion of North American Drought over the last 1000 years. It is a must read for anyone in the West and Midwest, because it summarizes the impacts of severe multi-year drought on Indian populations in the past. We need to be prepared for when such events happen in the future.
Both papers point to persistant La Nina conditons in the Pacific as the culprit behind these decade long droughts across the West and Midwest. That explains a significant part of the drought that Montana is currently in.
In Dr. Running’s presentations, he spends no time explaining the fact that Montana is prone to drought…sometimes lasting over a decade. He gives the impression that the current drought is unusual, therefore, it is human-caused. I disagree that this drought is unusual and I referenced two journal articles that backs up my assertion. Dr. Running has to prove that the drought would not have occurred if greenhouse gases were at 1850 levels. That is no simple task for any group of scientists.
I highly doubt that Dr. Running will walk into a classroom and say “While I think human activities are responsible for most of the warming, here are the areas we don’t know much about and if these have more of an impact on climate than we thought, then I may be wrong about how much impact human activities have on our climate.” As the Times article states, his presentation is sponsored by the Sonoran Institute, an environmental group. It has the sound more of a political campaign instead of a scientific presentation.
While I agree with Roger Pielke Sr, that scientists researching climate change should be allowed to talk in public schools, however, after seeing Dr. Running’s powerpoint slides, I noticed that he didn’t spend much time teaching about Montana’s climate. In fact, he talks more about blocking the construction of coal plants, than about how climate works. I think it is understandable that parents who knew what Dr. Running was going to present started to express their conserns to the school board. If it was my children’s school, I would be taking the day off and attending the lecture and do my best to present the other side of the story.
Thats enough. Too long of a post.
Everybody remembers Eisenhower’s warning about the, “military-industrial complex,” shoot, it has become the siren call of some.
Few if any recall — and it is never repeated — the second warning he made in that very same speech:
The scientific-technological elite, Eisenhower truly was prescient. Read the speech, it could have been written today.
DKK
[…] Top Ten Science Based Predictions That Didn’t Come True. […]
Interesting! Thanks for sharing 🙂
[…] by crushliberalism on January 18, 2008 Here’s a great compilation by Anthony Watts, with my own disclaimer: I have not personally validated each and every one of these quotes. […]
I’ve been debating a “gentleman” on another site regarding AGW.
I gave him Anthony’s site and summarized sum of the problems that have been found.
His response.
These guys are scientists.
Scientists would never let their data get as bad as the data I presented showed.
Scientists would have mechanisms in place to detect problems and correct them.
Therefore.
The problems that I mentioned were small and isolated.
The data from the sensor network was good, and has been properly analyzed.
If I disagree, I must be anti-science.
I Like Ike.
Your post is not about the failure of science, but rather about the ability of science to advance our understanding of the world.
There was no ice age coming in 1975, but from 1940 to 1975 the natural effects of changing solar radiation resulted in a relative modest cooling trend which served to offset the roughly equivalent temperature rise resulting from the anthropogenic production of CO2.
These natural insolation effects are what has controlled the natural variations in global climate ‘since time immemorial’ as your rather blinkered commenter above would have it.
The point is that the scale of such natural variation is not equal to the job any longer of masking the effects of increasing carbon dioxide within the atmosphere. This rise is not a cyclical process, it is a one-way journey which is accelerating. The CO2 content of the atmosphere on this planet has risen by well over 20% since 1958.
The Montana weather on its own can’t tell us very much about global warming. The extent and volume of Arctic sea ice is a much better indicator, since we can readily observe the effect of rising global temperature over a much wider area without dispute about urbanisation since there are no cities on the Arctic ice.
Which is just as well. Last year saw the record disappearance of Arctic sea ice. The summer extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007 stood at 41% below the average summer minimum for the period from 1978-2000. A study based on data up to 2004 recently predicted that the Arctic would have no summer ice at all by 2013.
This is alarming but it is likely to occur even sooner. The 2007 minimum saw only 4.14 million km2 of summer sea ice remaining, against the 1978-2000 average of around 7 million km2 and was 1.19 million km2 (22%) below the previous record low of 5.3 million km2 which was only set in 2005.
The size of ice-free ocean which opened up between 2005 and 2007 was equivalent to the land area of Texas and California combined. Similar changes occurring within just the next three years would be enough to eradicate the ice cap by the end of summer altogether.
That’s no minor or local change. It’s when global warming becomes fact.
I find this one line in Dr. Running’s piece to be representative of the thinking of almost all who share his views:
Roads,
How about Antarctic sea ice? And did you know that the recent melting of Arctic sea ice had very little, if anything, to do with ambient air temperature (which was still well below freezing, therefore how could it melt due to that?) and mostly to do with ocean and wind currents. Just ask NASA.
And of course now the Arctic ice is already back with a vengeance, causing major problems in many northern Canadian waterways.
Sorry, but you haven’t presented any facts. Only regurgitated alarmism based on half-truths.
Roads…Isn’t the arctic ice extent higher than normal now? You can’t look at one short term climatic event (a record low ice extent last Sept) and use that as proof that humans are causing climate change.
Last year saw the record disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Roads, could you please clarify this statement. By “record”, do you mean since the beginning of satellite measurements in 1978, since the beginning of recorded history or since the earliest time that can be verified through temperature proxies?
And, if this really is a problem of epic proportions, what do you propose to do to reverse the trend?
Roads,
interesting that the refreeze of the Arctic is at a faster rate then ever before or does that count? and when the length of observation is only 26 years methinks your time scale is a tad on the short side
also the northwest passage was sailed around the turn of the last century…
Hey Roads, how’s the kool aid taste?
What explained the rapid increase in temperatures that occured 1910 to 1940 before anthro CO2 increases, hmmm?
How come you don’t mention the record increase in ice extent for Antarctica and that combined with the Arctic resulted in a +1,000,000 sq. km net increase for the two poles.
I guess you didn’t think that part was important.
Slavery despites the ideals of equality and the CO2-Greenhouse-Theology despites the laws of physical science.
http://www.schmanck.de/Klima.html
Temperatures are being monitored in various locations around the world. I was listening to the radio one day and the subject was about where the monitoring stations were located. It sounded like a large number of the stations were located near large sources of heat, such as chimneys, factories, aircraft exhaust areas, and other places where the temperatures recorded may be effected by the locations. I suppose a government agency pays leases for these locations.
It would be interesting to find out who owns or sub-leased the properties, where these monitoring stations are located, and how much of the lease is being funneled to certain insiders who may not be as interested in temperature monitoring accuracy as, perhaps, ill-gotten-booty.
<a href-“http://www.thetechbrief.com/2008/01/16/top-10-lives-businesses-and-reputations-ruined-due-to-facebook/” This is another great top 10!
Roads said (07:19:44) :
“The Montana weather on its own can’t tell us very much about global warming. The extent and volume of Arctic sea ice is a much better indicator, since we can readily observe the effect of rising global temperature over a much wider area without dispute about urbanisation since there are no cities on the Arctic ice.”
1. Compare the number of surface stations in Montana, to the number of surface stations in the Arctic.
2. Explain how the “extrapolation” of surface temps can accurately tell me the temp of a place 1200km away (that’s like reading a thermometer in Omaha, and extrapolating the temp in Death Valley).
3. We keep hearing the arguement that local conditions are not a good proxy of global (the U.S. is only 2% of the earth’s surface.) How much area does the arctic ocean have, and how can that area be an accurate proxy for global?
This must be the Dumbest list I have ever seen. Does the author have no idea how scientific progress happens? We start at ignorance then progress to understanding. Almost all the quotes are just cherry picked comments from a snap shot in time and were not generally accepted thinking for any significant period of time.
I am very concerned about the recent attacks on science these days. The internet while a wonderful tool for knowledge also gives ignorance a louder voice. It’s natural for people to be fearful of others of greater intelligence and maybe explains why someone like Bush was elected not once but twice. Yes SOME scientists can be dumb just like Presidents but it is not the norm.
Yes, Climate change like worldwide crop failure, rising sea levels, and species extinction are all really happening. I really love when people make comments about the natural cycle of global temperature change. No Shit! The question is not if the climate change is natural but if our CO2 emissions will make this cycle more extreme then normal. We can just ignore the signs and hope it will all work out I guess. The funny thing is if we do something about it and the scientists are wrong we just end up with a cleaner and healthier environment but if we do nothing and they are right well we humans had a long run.