The revelation that the UN predicted 50 million climate refugees by 2010, it failed , and then the UN “disappeared” the evidence that they ever made such a prediction brightly illustrates a common theme to global warming aka climate change that has been repeated again and again.
Many times, these climate failures get a mention, and then fade into obscurity. When we try to find them later, search engines aren’t as useful or cooperative as we’d like. I want to change that by providing a central repository for such failed claims. I’ll make it a special page, part of our menu bar, with an icon link on the sidebar, suitable for placement on other websites. The Climate FAIL files page exists here.
To populate the page, as a starting seed resource, we have the excellent NumberWatch UK warm list, which lists all manner of claims about global warming, some contradictory, some silly, some serious. It is a good place to start.
Like with surfacestations.org, this project can benefit from crowd-sourcing the work. WUWT readers are already quite sharp-eyed, providing hundreds of items to our Tips & Notes section each month. I see this as simply a logical extension of what is already being done.
Here’s a good example, posted in Tips & Notes today:
Predicator says on 2011/04/16 at 9:10 am
I’ve been searching for those ‘by 2010′ things that didn’t exactly come true. Here’s one find:
Solar costs to match coal by 2010
http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=645
Monday, 9 April 2007
The cost of producing solar power will fall to that of coal-fired electricity by the end of the decade, according to a report by Europe’s Photon Consulting.
There, a perfect example of a testable prediction. That prediction can be easily documented as true/false today with available data at hand. Have at it folks.
I wish to make it clear that this new feature isn’t to be as free form as simply dropping a comment, as I don’t have time to research and chase down every claim, that’s where the crowd-sourcing comes in. I want each entry to be testable, and documented. Let’s use the scientific method, applied to claims made by figureheads, government, science and media.
For each entry, we’ll need the following:
- The claim itself – what was stated as factual or predicted? A clear unambiguous statement, such as “50 million climate refugees by 2010”
- Proof of the original claim – website, documents, photos, audio, video that clearly and unambiguously show the claim being made sometime in the past.
- A test of the of the claim, and the results – website, documents, photos, audio, video that clearly and unambiguously show the claim not coming true or not meeting the claim.
and /or
- Proof of change in the claim (if applicable) – often, when the claim fails to materialize, goalposts get moved, such as we saw with the “50 million climate refugees” story that was originally set with a due date of 2010, is now set for the year 2020.
All of this, once documented fully, will be added to the list. It will give a reference which can be used to debunk overhyped, modified on demand, or simply false claims that we see over and over again.
Some tools to help you are listed below
General purpose search engines
Obviously there’s Google, but Google has clearly made a recent change to algorithms that may not give the results you are looking for, here’s some alternates:
Obvious ones: Bing.com Yahoo.com Ask.com Aol Search
Some “not so obvious” ones:
http://www.dogpile.com/ http://www.yandex.com/
http://duckduckgo.com/ http://www.altavista.com/ http://startpage.com/
=======================================================
Specialty search engines
engine for scientific enquiries: http://www.scirus.com
Google scholar: http://scholar.google.com/
Gooble Books: http://books.google.com/
The Wayback Machine (finds old versions of websites)
Archive.org (even broader search to include audio, images, books)
=======================================================
Archiving tools
Webcite (makes a permanent copy of any web page, free)
Tinypic (free storage of screencaps and images)
Local website archive (free and paid versions, allows saving entire websites to disk)
=======================================================
I’ll add to this list as new ones are suggested in comments.
The new page on WUWT is Climate FAIL Files and is ready to be populated. Start your discussions here and if you have subjects to tackle, list them in comments. I’ll add them as we go.
Discussion will move to a new thread at some point, but let’s start here first.
Here’s how I propose to format the entries:
===============================================================
The Claim: 50 million climate refugees will be produced by climate change by the year 2010. Especially hard hit will be river delta areas, and low lying islands in the Carribean and Pacific. The UN 62nd General assembly in July 2008 said: …it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010.
The Test: Did population go down in these areas during that period, indicating climate refugees were on the move? The answer, no.
The Proof: Population actually gained in some Carribean Islands for which 2010 census figures were available. Then when challenged on these figures, the UN tried to hide the original claim from view. See: The UN “disappears” 50 million climate refugees, then botches the disappearing attempt
The Change in claim: Now it is claimed that it will be 10 years into the future, and there will be 50 million refugees by the year 2020.
================================================================
OK, you know what to do.
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The Daily Bayonet has count down clocks in the side bar. http://dailybayonet.com/
Right now there is;
1156 day until Al Gore says the ice caps will be gone
260 days until 4.5 billion people are dead from AGW
627 days until Nissan sells 500,000 EV’s a year
3533 days until V Bites outsells McDonalds
Anthony, I think this has the potential to be a very useful resource. May I humbly suggest that before it gets too far down the road there is some thought put into creating categories that stories/claims can be categorized into. This will take a couple of extra minutes up front when stories/claims are documented, but will make the resource immensely more useful down the road.
There is a big difference between a claim made by a graduate student as part of a thesis and a claim put out by the IPCC or a large scientific organization. In addition, there is a difference between a claim made off the cuff to a reporter, one made orally at a conference, and one made in a peer reviewed paper. I think it would be very helpful to categorize the claims based on the strength/type of provenance, and this would also help to track back to the original sources. For example, if a claim shows up in a news report that is fine, but if it can then be tracked back to a published paper it makes the claim that much stronger.
In addition, there are claims about different things, and it might be useful to categorize them at least at a high level. For instance, the two claims you cite above are both quite interesting (50 million climate refugees and solar as cheap as coal), but potentially have very different audiences. Perhaps it would be possible to categorize claims based on the area covered: CAGW-caused natural disasters, renewable energy, resource scarcity, etc.
May I suggest that someone set up a website that archives screencaps of the pages? The website would also categorize such events for easy reference. For example, I just checked, climate-fail.com is available. I suggest http://www.name.com to register a domain name. If you go to http://www.nodaddy.com you will see that GoDaddy will pull down a website and give the owner little time to make a defense.
UK Met Office predictions are always a farce. I’m trying to find that prediction up to 2014 but that also seems to have disappeared. Something along lines of half the years up to 2014 being warmer than the warmest on record.
Warmists have learned from 1984 : put everything into the memory holes.
Hell, even in Canada we can see that the planet isn’t warming up. The Prairies (in the middle of the continent) are supposed to become a desert. But according to many locals (in Regina, Saskatchewan), it has gotten wetter since 2005…
Politicians and Patricians should be a separate category. Idiots like Boxer, Waxman, Prince Charles, etc should provide a wealth of info.
To be fair, you should also invite Warmistas to post claims that have been verified, ‘Alarmist Success’, if you will.
I don’t expect there will be many.
/Mr Lynn
Actual global temperature has been below IPCC’s 1980 predicted global warming trend. Since 2001 global temperature has been cooling instead of warming.
In 1980 IPCC Predicted 2 C/century warming. A1B SRES in the AR4:
By contrast, Don Easterbrook made a prediction in 2001 for a cooling trend due the shift from warm to cool PDO phase beginning about 2007 is now clearly showing up in the global cooling trend since 2001. e.g.
Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling
Lucia Liljegren compares global temperatures and trend uncertainties against IPCC models.
See Lucia’s Figure: The Blackboard April 16, 2011
Hadcrut3 versus Multi-modal mean
We should try to find it at the Source, with one or more Peoples real Names, titles and ‘officialness’.
New stories, web pages blogs etc. and the generic term ‘scientists’ will not be as effective as Actually Naming the Person or Persons that said it, then the students, other professors, other polititions and people in the un-biased media will Know who said it, when. Things like the minutes of the house of commons, offical pubilcations etc. would be nice to have.
I think that if we can ‘go to the source’ then actual list of Names might be smaller than many people would think.
Hey, I just noticed your new addition on WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/
A few years ago I started writing down predictions as I heard them on the TV, and saving articles from the newspaper. Its more of a “climate prediction watch” as it has long term forecasts, such as this one:
Written down on April 3, 2007:
2007 Hurricane Season: 17 storms 9 hurricanes
Get ready for drastic change, due to climate.
2050 – Non reliable snowmobile season, Extinct species, Impossible Rideau Canal skating.
Something about lime disease and a 20 C rise in temperatures in 100 years.
I was thinking you could add a separate section for predictions to watch.
While I was composing this comment, you have a new post about this new WUWT feature and I see from comments that some blogs have “count down clocks” for various alarmists predictions.
On second thought on prediction watching, isn’t the IPCC reports just chock full of such things? Your watch page, if you created one, would quickly become overwhelmed with items.
One trick on predictions using accelerating trends is that in the short term, its hard to tell a linear trend from an exponential trend near the tangent to the curve. But in time, the likelihood starts to reveal itself, so that even years before the final date one can tell how bonkers the prediction was.
Kilimanjaro ice cap
Prediction:
Lonnie Thompson Biography http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Sh-Z/Thompson-Lonnie.html#ixzz1Jk7h9kpd
Prediction failing:
Kilimanjaro regaining its snow cap
Gore motivates his little green shirts…
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/156445-al-gore-to-youth-battle-industry-lobbyists-to-turn-the-tide-on-climate
You sure that you have enough webspace for this?
RE: Solar costs to match coal by 2010
I don’t want to nitpick you, but if you look at the price of solar electric per watt from 1980 to today, there is a clear downward trend. –>> IF <<– the trend continues, solar will match coal in around 30 or so years. You are correct, the prediction of 2010 was flat out wrong. However, around 2040, it MIGHT be possible. This raises an interesting question of how to rate a prediction that gives the date as too soon, but it happens much later on.
I’ve been doing something similar myself on and off (tagged “Warble Gloaming Dates For Your Diary”) and off the top of my head I know that the first entry on my list is the James Hansen’s claim that the West Side Highway in New York would be drowned by the Hudson by now, as detailed right here on WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
I see that it’s also had the revisionist treatment and is now supposed to have been 40 years and due around 2030, but as you point out there it’s still pretty dubious since you’d expect to have seen a significant rise in the water level by now. Worthy of inclusion IMO, and you already have all the info here.
Also we have the specific claim by Dr David Viner in 2000 that British children will not know snow by 2005, give or take a year, which has been disproved by a succession of three or four pretty cold winters with plenty of snow.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
And in July 2009 David Attenborough claimed that the world’s tropical reefs faced “imminent destruction” and while it’s only been 18 months the word imminent implies that again we should have seen something happening by now.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1205087/Only-20-years-left-Sensational-pictures-Australias-Great-Barrier-Reef-bring-home-natural-treasure-look-lose.html
Of course that same article has another claim, by a marine scientist called Charlie Veron, that the Great Barrier Reef will be gone within 20 years, which is not what I’d call imminent but is certainly specific and worth remembering so we can check back in 2029.
We have a few due this decade too. Someone’s already mentioned The Goracle’s well publicised claim that the Arctic will be ice free in five years, which would be 2013.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/the-annotated-gore-climate-speech/
Though of course Pen Hadow reckons ten years:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6326446/Arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-a-decade-according-to-Pen-Hadow.html
Either way we won’t have too long to wait before those claims can be tested.
The only other ones I’d come across were fairly non-specific alarmism of the “only X years to get it all under control or everything’s screwed” variety by WWF (parroted by The Teletubbygraph’s Louise Gray, natch), the His Royal Strangeness the Prince of Fails (twice) and his mates from the 100 months mob, and of the UK’s Met Office. I have links if you want them but the lack of specifics seem to make them a bit vague for this.
Anthony, this is an excellent idea and many thanks for providing such a list and in such a prominent location.
Here’s the laundry list of horribles due to Global Warming taken from California’s notorious AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. There are no specific dates associated with any of these calamitous predictions, however. Note that none of these has yet come to pass, instead, sea levels are decreasing, snow pack is growing, and electrical supplies are quite ample.
“SECTION 1. Division 25.5 (commencing with Section 38500) is added
to the [California] Health and Safety Code, to read:
DIVISION 25.5. CALIFORNIA GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS
ACT OF 2006
PART 1. GENERAL PROVISIONS
Chapter 1. Title of Division
38500. This division shall be known, and may be cited, as the
California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
Chapter 2. Findings and Declarations
38501. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Global warming poses a serious threat to the economic well-being,
public health, natural resources, and the environment of California. The
potential adverse impacts of global warming include the exacerbation of
air quality problems, a reduction in the quality and supply of water to the
state from the Sierra snowpack, a rise in sea levels resulting in the
displacement of thousands of coastal businesses and residences, damage to
marine ecosystems and the natural environment, and an increase in the
incidences of infectious diseases, asthma, and other human health-related
problems.
(b) Global warming will have detrimental effects on some of
California’s largest industries, including agriculture, wine, tourism, skiing,
recreational and commercial fishing, and forestry. It will also increase the
strain on electricity supplies necessary to meet the demand for summer
air-conditioning in the hottest parts of the state.”
Here’s the text, broken into the exact predictions:
1. the exacerbation of air quality problems,
2. a reduction in the quality and supply of water to the state from the Sierra snowpack,
3. a rise in sea levels resulting in the displacement of thousands of coastal businesses and residences,
4. damage to marine ecosystems,
5. damage to the natural environment, and
6. an increase in the incidences of
o infectious diseases,
o asthma, and
o other human health-related problems.
7. detrimental effects on some of California’s largest industries, including:
o agriculture,
o wine,
o tourism,
o skiing,
o recreational and commercial fishing, and
o forestry
8. increase the strain on electricity supplies necessary to meet the demand for summer air-conditioning in the hottest parts of the state.
web citation: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/ab_32_bill_20060927_chaptered.pdf
also in California Health & Safety Code, at 38501:
http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=hsc&group=38001-39000&file=38501
Hi Anthony, Thank you so much for this feature. I rummaged over this idea myself a few months ago, but didn’t take action. Well, the credit for actually doing something must all be yours. One necessary extra though is the credibility rating of the authority behind the claim: scientific (peer-reviewed, or by the central ‘team’ or an official climate body like NOAA or CSIRO etc.), or political (the UN, a national government, a president etc.). In other words, how devastating is it to the AGW claim that this prediction fails? I don’t think that we need go as far as Eric suggests above. People can categorise their interests for themselves; the central point of the show is to prove that AGW is either not scientific, or, if scientific, has been disproved. The central point of science is testability. Has the theory made a prediction that failed? That is what matters.
You are sure to be criticised for only looking at the negative. Well boo hoo, half the planet is sifting the sands of trivial factoids looking for the positive. But perhaps a side bar reserved for REALLY unexpected predictions that did come true (not rubbish like “more droughts” followed by a drought). I can’t think of any, but you never know. If any of the resident trolls think they can suggest some, we should be open to letting them put their case in the normal article blog and see how it stands up to scrutiny.
Thanks again!
Robb876 says:
April 16, 2011 at 7:03 pm
By 2012 you will be the most hated skeptic in America….
That’s testable! In 259 days.
Anthony, you might want to adjust that to “The Proof Of Falsification/Refutation” or “Falsification Proof” or even occasionally “Validation Proof” if one is to be scientifically neutral about it.
Great idea by the way. Had it myself but it’s likely much better here since you get the leverage of the crowd sourced brains.
Everyone’s crystal ball is cloudy, especially about the future.
I’m more interested in prediction success rate, rather than individual examples. So, like Mr Lynn above, I’d like to see successful predictions archived too.
That may be hard, since only gloom-and-doom predictions get enough publicity to be noticed. But somehow the world continues, so most of the gloom and doom never happens.
If this page is going to be around for a while, can you please spell island correctly in The Proof section: “Population actually gained in some Carribean Isalnd…” — John M Reynolds
[Fixed, thanx, ~dbs]
Hey contrarians, remember that over 97% of the experts (who know better than you) agree with the young people. They are not going to idly put up with your nonsense for much longer – the Civil Rights movement comparison is apt – it’s a moral issue.
[Thanks, fixed. ~dbs, mod.]
Bob Diaz says:
April 16, 2011 at 7:45 pm
Even if the cost of solar matched coal, you couldn’t install enough to make a dent in energy needs. To start, you need about 10,000 km^2 of PV or other solar. Good luck.
We will look forward to all the failed files.