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From Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip) blog, who seems to have stumbled across an interview with the author of this video we recently highlighted at WUWT. Scott Adams writes:
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Fact Checking: Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters
I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher the other day. He had a professor on the show who said climate change can be fixed by making well-understood adjustments to how farmers raise cattle plus some other fairly ordinary changes. Apparently this is all explained in a documentary called Carbon Nation.
I’m skeptical of any claim so big and contrarian, but it does fit with The Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. Simply stated, my observation is that whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. Let’s run through some examples:
Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food as the population grew. Instead, humans improved their farming technology.
When I was a kid, it was generally assumed that the world would be destroyed by a global nuclear war. The world has been close to nuclear disaster a few times, but so far we’ve avoided all-out nuclear war.
The world was supposed to run out of oil by now, but instead we keep finding new ways to extract it from the ground. The United States has unexpectedly become a net provider of energy.
….
(he continues with more items in the list)
…
In California, predicted ongoing droughts were supposed decimate the state. Instead, it rained.
Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
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Full story here: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/fact_checking_adams_law_of_slowmoving_disasters/
WUWT readers surely can find some examples?
h/t to WUWT reader AJ
I suggest that so-called “slow moving disasters” weren’t avoided because they were foreseen, but because the natural tendency of markets is to increase productivity and this is due to profit making. A real foreseeable disaster occurs when public sentiment induces politicians to destroy the profit motive. Socialism is a slow moving disaster. Eliminating money (communism) is such a rapidly occurring disaster that it is quickly abandoned before too much damage is done. The real peril of socialism is that the damage is cumulative but bearable until it becomes so extensive that chaos must ensue.when the cascade event arrives.
Rising UK excess winter. It has been a disaster and we saw this coming 3 years ago with higher energy prices to tackle
global warmingclimate change. 🙁Sorry missed a word
“Rising UK excess winter deaths……”
Thomas Jefferson on the slow moving disaster of growing government:
John F Kennedy, April 29, 1962, at dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners.
“The United States has unexpectedly become a net provider of energy.”
Give me a break. The U.S. is still a big-time net energy importer and likely always will be.
Here’s an economist that predicted a world financial crisis after 1998. I don’t know if it counts though as it is triggered from Asia.
I partly agree with you but it depends on who is making the prediction and why? Elrich did not warn of mass starvation due to population increase because he wanted humanity to introduce better more efficient farming methods. He wanted us to do something about the rising number of people in the world. Look to motives sometimes.
Sam Adams, July 1776, on the removal of the anti-slavery clause from the Declaration of Independence. These are the backnotes from the Stone and Edwards musical 1776:
I think posterity forgives them for establishing Independence “under terms more favorable than a more generous God would ever permit.” But Sam Adams was prescient. The Civil War was a disaster he saw coming that we did not avert nor prevent.
It’s like saying wars in Europe during the Balkan wars. Most of Africa is not in famine. It is my understanding that since the start of the 21st century deaths from famine have been significantly reduced through better early warming systems. Also many famines are caused by wars and internal conflicts and not climate.
“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them. ”
– Calvin Coolidge
I spend too much time on global warming. ;O)
“early warming systems….. ”
should be:
“early warning systems….. “
“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
Yes.
The open borders-pro illegal immigration problem has been looming since at least 1986 when we had the last “permanent fix”. We are in grave danger of a one party system in the US with unknown millions ready to gain citizenship and the vote. Unlike the irrational GOP dreams, those who break the law to get here are not likely to support capitalism and our traditional guarantees of individual liberties and the rule of law. Rather, they are much more likely to vote for the far left and more big government. To make it global, they have the same problem in Europe and it will most likely spread.
ObamaCare has long been seen as a looming disaster, and that is proving true. According to the latest forecasts, everybody will pay more, get less healthcare at lower quality, and more elderly will die younger because of cuts in funding of the Medicare system. It remains to be seen how this widely anticipated disaster will be avoided.
Suggest a reading of ” Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” by McKay, Charles , originally published 1841.
End of the world themes are ever popular.
Substantial Meteor/comet strikes Tungaska 1908, Saudii Arabia 20,000 b.c, Metorite Crater 65,000 B.C. Inevitable but statistically unlikely in our lifetimes
Supervolanoes – Yellowstone quietly bubbling, Tenerife due to drop into the Atlantic Ocean…. some time.
Large scale devasating volcanoes – Krakatoa 1883, Mt Pelee 1902, Satorini c. 2,500.00 B.C. Vesuvius AD 79.
Economic bubbles and every time they say it is a new paradigm and couldn’t possibly happen again
1865, 1908, 1929, 1987 and the best one the 1999 dotcom ( when effectively a company based on a catchy domain name was worth more than a company with real estate, revenue stream and an established product), and the housing crash (sub-prime maket) in 2008. My own quote “Banking is capital, credit and interest. The rest is speculation.”
It may have helped humanity if these intellectual giants of finance has applied their brain power to the duality of quantum physics rather than think up convoluted Ponzi schemes and then promulgated as “Finanical Engineering”/ sarc off
Sceptical Science will most likely ask: Why should anyone listen to a cartoonist when it comes to climate science? /sarc
“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?”
the 1st world war (but they wanted it, sadly …)
Unfortunately, I disagree with Scott completely. What people and societal institutions do all the time is exactly the opposite of what he says: we/they fail to act on slow-moving disasters. Diamond in “Collapse” identifies many of these causing societies to fail. Empires fall with a lot of for-warning; the Roman Empire was in decline for some 300 years before Rome was overrun, and everyone could see it happening.
As individuals and as vote-creating governments, we spend debt dollars despite the obvious problem approaching. The CAGW believers would say that we are doing this now with our CO2 emissions; in principle I would agree.
We can plan for the vacation or the end of the project in six months. For two years, we are unsurprised when it takes another half to one year. Five Year Plans are notoriously unfilled by people, companies and governments, and ten-year plans, like CO2 emission reductions, mean that we need do nothing for at least two years but discuss, and within ten maybe change our minds entirely because even five years is code for “later”, itself a code-word for “probably never, for who can tell what the situation will be by then?”
What Scott speaks about is not “fixing” a slow-moving disaster before it happens. He speaks of a non-disaster: we didn’t “fix” a predicted up-coming famine, we simply improved food production during the normal course. Oil shortages were non-shortages: when we drilled, there was more. We didn’t fix or find anything. The problem was non-existent.
This is how the CAGW slow-moving disaster will be handled: it will turn out to be a non-disaster. The sun made us (mostly) warm up and will cause us to (mostly) cool down. Cloud cover will have a negative feedback effect on the remaining warming. The “problem” will be that CO2 warming is much, much less than natural variability and we learn we have no control over our global temperatures.
I wish we really did deal with slow-moving disasters. I would have sold all my stocks four years ago when I KNEW they were rising too fast and had to have a “correction” as we were told. And then I’d be writing this from a beach resort in the Caymans.
“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?”
————
Maybe not the general public but.. When Bush 1 started his Desert Storm war the left went bananas over their inability to stop it.. So they started their own equally important war to save the planet.. A economic civil war with our tax dollars in place of bullets..
Neither side willing to step down lead directly to the 2008 crash.. With more economic disaster to come..
Lets rework our economy (green) while we fight a series of the most expensive wars in the history of mankind.. Like economic disaster wasnt seen looming on the horizon..
I win the contest..
An obvious non-disaster is Paul Ehrlich’s prediction, abetted by John Holdren, of a population disaster. Instead (except wherever derailed by culture), cheap energy and prosperity brought voluntary birth control and the population stabilized. Meanwhile the green revolution brought more food per capita than ever.
Science yields the only positive-sum game and it promises an even better future.
WWII — but, with all due respect, while your cited reasons were contributing factors, Admad, I think another cause or two were the controlling ones. BTW, what a gracious response of yours to David (who also made a good point).
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thingodonta says:
April 20, 2013 at 5:18 am
“The climate change movement has elements of all the above except 6- no military involvement. ”
Along the lines of others’ responses to this, the Environazi laws are NOW enforceable by police power. As Friedrich Hayek warned, socialism ultimately and inevitably results in tyranny (firmly maintained by military might). Thingo, your overall essay was good!
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TWO IDEAS:
1) Copper was certain to run out and this caused quite a bit of hustle and bustle in the general public, but, scientists discovered silicon and disaster was averted. (I read of this in Peter Huber’s book, Hard Green).
2) (also, for the “Check back later” file): A CURRENT DISASTER IN THE MAKING — I’ll give Mark Steyn the credit for his long and valiant efforts to sound the trumpet of warning, here — Islamofascism or Islamic Jihad by birthrate will, if it continues at its present rate, almost certainly result in enough major states becoming the chaotic, violent, cruel, bastions of bellicosity that is an “Islamic State” that WORLDWIDE war and strife will result.
*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*
P.S. I AM PROUD OF WHAT THE U. S. MILITARY (and its allies) accomplished in LIBERATING IRAQ from Saddam Hussein (regardless of how the situation may have stagnated). And I think most Iraqis would give that part of my comment a BIG INK-STAINED THUMBS UP! [#:)]
Re: my 11:44 comment. Waaa! [#:(]
I’m in moderation AGAIN! (I was last night, too, at 9:16PM)
I remember an article from Popular Science magazine in the late 1970s. In the article, climate scientists were warning of “global cooling which would cause untold death and destruction. Now we have had the Al Gore scare-athon for several years. Things tend to work out. Temperatures tend to move toward the mean. And who has become a multimillionaire in the meantime? Mr. Inconvenience himself – Albert “Laughing All the Way to the Bank” Gore.
The 2008 economic crash.
I was warning from 2004 that the UK government was spending too much, and not on real investments that would provide a return, and the economy was hugely overheating (and only kept in check by cheap Chinese imports). I was told by the Sunday Times economic correspondent that I was nuts.
I expected a crash in 2006, and warned again, to be told by the Sunday Times that I was doubly nuts. Everything was fine, and the stock market would hit 8,000 in the next two years, and to put my money in it (I took my money out).
The wheels came of the economy in 2008.
.
Well personally I’m perfectly happy to accept (unlike some diehards) that the ozone depletion predicted in 1974 by Molina and Rowland had turned out to be worse than anticipated by the mid 1980s, and that the Montreal Protocol was a reasonable response to the problem.
Jonathon Grove:
Please explain “the problem” posed by the mis-named “ozone hole”.
Richard