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.
Ed Scott says:
What does the new Bolivian law mean? It means that tics that suck the blood, the choking sulphur pits of volcanic vents, the indestructible cockroach, the arid desert wastes and the bleak frigid spaces of the planet’s poles — everything from the locusts that despoil, to the great mountain ranges, the earth and all that is in it, are to have … rights. (About the other planets, Morales is silent.)
———————————————-
Ed is a slightly more florid version of Willis. Give him a break.
It might be useful to set halfway points in some of the predictions that float around – eg if a glacier was supposed to be gone by 2020, predicted in 1990, how is it travelling now? Predictions about droughts and floods in particular areas are a rich mine in that regard.
Taphonomic wrote: May I suggest that you dedicate this project to the memory of Julian Simon?
I would like to second the motion.
Anthony wrote this: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.
That prediction, as quoted, is about costs, not prices. A problem with coal is that not all the costs are covered by the price (the well-known problem of external costs), and there are disagreements about the total costs of electricity from coal, and what should be included. People die from coal mining accidents; people die or become sick, and crops and livestock die or become sick, from the air and water pollution that result from burning coal. When PV cells are manufactured using electricity from coal, then those costs need to be added to the costs of the electricity from PV cells, which increases the difficulty of estimating and comparing all the total costs. A thorough discussion of all the external costs of coal might be worthwhile, if you really want to evaluate whether that prediction has been disconfirmed. For what it’s worth, that isn’t a prediction about climate, so you might keep it out of the inventory that you are creating of failed climate predictions.
I don’t have time to run this down per Anthony’s format, but perhaps another reader can do the required documentation. This is a link I found on the ICECAP site today :
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2011/04/past-alarm-worlds-coral-40-gone-by-2010.html
Seems like exactly the sort of thing that should be in the “Fail” files.
Jimbo says:
Hi Mr Lynn,
Show me a Warmist blog that does this?
Jimbo, we all know WUWT is better than those. And really, it’s not like Anthony needs to hide THEIR data…
As for R. Davidson – should such come to pass, I think the “consensus” crowd will find it not quite so easy as they believe to shut the rest of us up.
Don’t forget the Gazillions of species extinctions caused by Global Warming.
Unfortunately no-one can ever point to even one extinction caused by cAGW.
Here’s a failed claim from 2002 broadcast on ABC (Australia)
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/archives/2002a_Monday22April2002.htm
The Claim:
“Across the world, coral reefs are turning into marine deserts. It’s estimated that more than a quarter have been lost and that 40 per cent could be gone by 2010. . .”
“Reporter Stephen McDonell tells how coral bleaching, driven by global warming, is wrecking reefs world-wide and how the Barrier Reef has, so far, emerged largely unscathed. It may not be so lucky in the years ahead.”
The Facts (reported in GWPF):
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/2839-the-endless-list-of-flase-alarms.html
“In 1997 the area of the world’s coral reefs was estimated to be 255,000km2. Reference.
If the prediction made on 4 Corners is to be believed, then in 2010 the area of the world’s coral reefs should be around 153,000km2.
Instead, in 2011, one year on from that alarming forecast, we find that the global area of coral reef is estimated to be 249,713km2. Reference.
This amounts to a change from 1997 figures of -2.1%. Given the unreported uncertainties, there has essentially been no change in global reef area over the past 10 years. Within error, essentially none of the reefs are missing in 2010. This ABC story turns out to be yet another beat up, designed to scare rather than inform.”
Then ABC repeats and extends the claim on Feb. 24, 2011:
“Study warns coral reefs could be gone by 2050”
“The world’s coral reefs could be wiped out by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to stop threats posed to the “rainforests of the sea” by everything from overfishing to global warming, a report has warned.”
“Warmer seas caused by global warming, ocean acidification blamed on carbon dioxide pollution, shipping, overfishing, coastal development and agricultural run-off all pose a threat to coral reefs, which hundreds of millions of people depend on for a living, says the report.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/24/3147422.htm
I fear the predictions will only be made farther into the future once this link becomes widely known. Also they will continue labelling floods and droughts etc as cagw-is-upon-us.