COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
For decades, climate change researchers and activists have used dramatic forecasts to attempt to influence public perception of the problem and as a call to action on climate change. These forecasts have frequently been for events that might be called “apocalyptic,” because they predict cataclysmic events resulting from climate change.
In a new paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Carnegie Mellon University’s David Rode and Paul Fischbeck argue that making such forecasts can be counterproductive. “Truly apocalyptic forecasts can only ever be observed in their failure–that is the world did not end as predicted,” says Rode, adjunct research faculty with the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, “and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”
Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.
Fischbeck noted, “from a forecasting perspective, the ‘problem’ is not only that all of the expired forecasts were wrong, but also that so many of them never admitted to any uncertainty about the date. About 43% of the forecasts in our dataset made no mention of uncertainty.”
In some cases, the forecasters were both explicit and certain. For example, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich and British environmental activist Prince Charles are serial failed forecasters, repeatedly expressing high degrees of certainty about apocalyptic climate events.
Rode commented “Ehrlich has made predictions of environmental collapse going back to 1970 that he has described as having ‘near certainty’. Prince Charles has similarly warned repeatedly of ‘irretrievable ecosystem collapse’ if actions were not taken, and when expired, repeated the prediction with a new definitive end date. Their predictions have repeatedly been apocalyptic and highly certain…and so far, they’ve also been wrong.”
The researchers noted that the average time horizon before a climate apocalypse for the 11 predictions made prior to 2000 was 22 years, while for the 68 predictions made after 2000, the average time horizon was 21 years. Despite the passage of time, little has changed–across a half a century of forecasts; the apocalypse is always about 20 years out.
Fischbeck continued, “It’s like the boy who repeatedly cried wolf. If I observe many successive forecast failures, I may be unwilling to take future forecasts seriously.
That’s a problem for climate science, say Rode and Fischbeck.
“The underlying science of climate change has many solid results,” says Fischbeck, “the problem is often the leap in connecting the prediction of climate events to the prediction of the consequences of those events.” Human efforts at adaptation and mitigation, together with the complexity of socio-physical systems, means that the prediction of sea level rise, for example, may not necessarily lead to apocalyptic flooding.
“By linking the climate event and the potential consequence for dramatic effect,” noted Rode, “a failure to observe the consequence may unfairly call into question the legitimacy of the science behind the climate event.”
With the new Biden administration making climate change policy a top priority, trust in scientific predictions about climate change is more crucial than ever, however scientists will have to be wary in qualifying their predictions. In measuring the proliferation the forecasts through search results, the authors found that forecasts that did not mention uncertainty in their apocalyptic date tended to be more visible (i.e., have more search results available). Making sensational predictions of the doom of humanity, while scientifically dubious, has still proven tempting for those wishing to grab headlines.
The trouble with this is that scientists, due to their training, tend to make more cautious statements and more often include references to uncertainty. Rode and Fischbeck found that while 81% of the forecasts made by scientists referenced uncertainty, less than half of the forecasts made by non-scientists did.
“This is not surprising,” said Rode, “but it is troubling when you consider that forecasts that reference uncertainty are less visible on the web. This results in the most visible voices often being the least qualified.”
Rode and Fischbeck argue that scientists must take extraordinary caution in communicating events of great consequence. When it comes to climate change, the authors advise “thinking small.” That is, focusing on making predictions that are less grandiose and shorter in term. “If you want people to believe big predictions, you first need to convince them that you can make little predictions,” says Rode.
Fischbeck added, “We need forecasts of a greater variety of climate variables, we need them made on a regular basis, and we need expert assessments of their uncertainties so people can better calibrate themselves to the accuracy of the forecaster.”
###
It won’t be too long before you see captions such as “97% of the general population don’t trust The Science!”
If they were actually paying attention, the general population would’ve dropped Climate Change when it was still Global Warming. But they aren’t paying attention. They’re being force fed Climate Change through just about every channel available, with no real counter point. It’s that old Big Lie story again.
A fable of a young lad calling WOLF comes to mind
As does a story of a young fowl and an acorn
Chicken Little is a better comparison, as there never will be a climate crisis.
I believe that the
Law of Unintended Consequences
states otherwise
Especially if they try to geoengineer their way out of the non-crisis
Hi Spetcer86,
Well, “they” did pay attention and therefore the cabal behind the CAGW (through hot air everywhere) continued their policy by other means: covid-1984. Didn’t MS Bill say: ‘Fixing covid-1984 will be easy in comparison with the CAGW?’
They had to change “global warming” to “climate change” or they wouldn’t be able to blame extreme cold events on fossil fuels. With “climate change,” which is inevitable, no matter what happens they can blame humans and fossil fuels!
“They had to change “global warming” to “climate change””
The IPCC was established in the late 80s. If you hadn’t noticed, the CC stands for… So CC was in the mix all along.
Wait a minute. This whole global meltdown thing is true. I know it’s true because of the really cold worldwide weather (except for cities next to the ocean in Alaska). That’s all due to the really cold weather moving south because … Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. I know that’s true because I saw that brilliant Michael Mann say so on the news last week.
People are gullible fools. They’ll buy into the mostly junk science of climate change until it’s obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s all crap.
Anthony Fauci is doing his part to damage public confidence in Science.
I think Dr. Fauci has admitted to lying to the public at least one time and maybe two times.
Back when the Wuhan virus first emerged, Fauci was telling all of us that wearing a mask was not necessary. Later, he admitted that he said that because there was a shortage of masks at the time and they wanted to save what masks they had for the medical people and if they told everyone to wear masks, then the pubic would go out and buy them all up.
So Fauci told a political lie in a scientific scenario. It’s understandable that those in charge would have to save the masks for the medical people, but Fauci certainly harmed his credibility with this lie. There will always be a question about him in the future.
And then we find out that Dr. Fauci was successfully treating SARS-Cov-1 with Hydroxychloriquine back in 2003, and even wrote a paper about it, but when 2020 rolls around and another corona virus shows up, Fauci discredits the use of Hydroxychloriquine for use by Wuhan virus patients.
No doubt, many people would have lived had they been given this treatment.
Btw, I got my second shot of the Moderna vaccine for the Wuhan virus today.
Thanks, Mr. Trump, and all the others involved.
Not you, Joe.
The only aftereffect I have from the vaccination is a mildly sore arm at the injection point. Just like with the first injection.
Glad to hear you are protected.
Still waiting for an opportunity to get my vaccine.
Seems to be taking a long time.
Yes, the vaccine rollout seems to be having problems. Some States are doing a good job and some are not. This is to be expected as this is new to everyone. After this is over, we will have figured out a better system to handle circumstances like this.
I’m lucky, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) takes care of my medical needs and they seem to be a liitle better organized than most.
Some interesting rough numbers about the vaccine:
Tangentially: The Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health asserts that minorities should be given priority for the ‘vaccine’. Given that the vaccine is experimental, are they advocating for Tuskeegee all over again?
In any case, to avoid even the appearance of white privilege, I will defer vaccination until every member of every minority has been vaccinated first. How many virtue ‘likes’ do I get for that? Do I get more if I wear two or three masks? Can I have a new car instead?
Warm regards,
Yvgeniy
P.S. I haven’t included links here because that would probably get this flagged as ‘spam’ but the information above is relatively easy to find (for now… just sayin’).
The whole of Western society has dropped the ball when it comes to therapeutics for the Wuhan virus.
A real tragedy and scandal.
Well, who would have thought that? 🙂
“and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”
ROFLOL and then I picked myself up off the floor to copy the funniest thing about this article in the comment section.
You mean Underlying politics.
The science of global warming suffers for being overwhelmed by non-science, by lies, by BS, told by self-interested parties and rent seekers, most of them working for Universities and getting funding grants, or working for weather services affiliated with various governments.
It won’t get better until the people who ARE those self-interested bureaucrats lose their public funding, lose their opportunities to lecture us, and the UN structures of the mass of unscientific claptrap passing for science, are dismantled and destroyed.
The lies told by mass media outlets of course, will continue in perpetuity. That’s because the tendency to make all NEWS sound more sensational in order to draw attention to stories will perpetually reward media companies that tell such lies and exaggerations, at least in the short run. Has CBS stopped hating Republican presidents since the Dan Rather debacle? No, of course not. Has ABC (American version) ever thought, hey, our primary pundit actually WORKED for the Democratic president, so maybe he should be balanced by a similar personality that worked for a Republican administration. No, they do not. NPR, BBC, PBS, CBC, many other media outlets are funded in part by taxpayers and / or hold monopoly franchises, and yet intentionally squelch ideas not part of the official state narrative they promote. The answer here is to end the public funding for such media outlets, and make all corporations compete on a level playing field.
What could be more sensational than the biggest crime in history?
What story is bigger than people who are trying to destroy civilization as a side effect of a scheme to acquire political power and fleece taxpayers?
Than the miseducation of generations of youth?
What could be worse than people dying and wildlife being slaughtered and entire countries being bilked of trillions of dollars, entire generations of kids being told they are living on a dying planet and there is no hope and no future, and causing millions of them to literally commit suicide, in ways both slow and fast, all over a pack of lies?
JB is pretty sure that’s all just cultural, so don’t worry about it.
The second biggest crime in history Nicholas. It’s close, but second to the phony-socialism is really, really, and we mean really, really great for poor people crime.
Hmmm…you make a good point, I admit.
But I also think that if Global Warming Alarmism was an episode of “It Takes A Thief”, we would still be waiting for the first commercial break.
Maybe the show will get cancelled if enough of us change the channel?
That is why some budding “Woodward and Bernstein’s” will eventually glom onto the hustle.
Well they sure are taking their sweet time, aren’t they?
It may not be a race, but it aint a sit-in neither.
“The science of global warming suffers for being overwhelmed by non-science…”
Wait…what science of global warming?
Global warming is not a science.
Science is a method of sorting out facts from fantasy.
A way to elucidate objective reality.
It is not a fact set, or a list of ideas.
There are different branches of scientific inquiry, not different sciences, except as a manner of speaking.
CAGW caused by CO2 is not even a coherent hypothesis that can be concisely stated.
Everything about the warmista jackassery seems to be the precise opposite of what science actually is.
Then suddenly (dramatic chord) nothing happened !
But it happened suddenly – mark you,
Old Goon Show gag.
“By linking the climate event and the potential consequence for dramatic
effect,” noted Rode, “a failure to observe the consequence may unfairly
call into question the legitimacy of the science behind the climate event.
Pointing out the bullshit isn’t unfair.
Rode and Fischbeck argue that scientists must take extraordinary
caution in communicating events of great consequence. When it
comes to climate change, the authors advise “thinking small.”
That is, focusing on making predictions that are less grandiose and
shorter in term. “If you want people to believe big predictions, you
first need to convince them that you can make little predictions,”
says Rode.
Well, there’s this:
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements,
and make little mention of any doubts we may have… Each of us has to
decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider
“If you want people to believe big predictions, you first need to convince them that you can make little predictions,” says Rode.
And if you can’t make little predictions, you can convince them you don’t know what you are talking about.
““and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”
As well it should! Except the only “science” in CAGW is most accurately preceded by the words Cargo cult.
I believe Obama’s cargo cult science czar John Holdren, was a disciple of Paul Ehrlich.
As to moderating their doomsday fantasies, well that’s not happening, as they have only doubled down on the C in CAGW. While they may be bad at science, they are very good at “repeating a lie often enough that people eventually believe it.”
If their most important and well-publicised predictions are repeatedly wrong then they are not experts.,
And the underlying science can not be sound.
The authors know that. They are only worried that other people might be spotting it too.
From what I’ve seen of those touted as “experts”, being repeatedly wrong is one of the primary qualifications.
That CAGW causes deep freezes in Texas and Mexico, litters beaches in Massachusets with frozen-solid sharks, shatters cold records in Chicago, because of its polar vortexes, ignores the global warming idea of Polar Enhancement (warming 3 times faster than the global average). WUWT?
If the agw movement really wanted to be taken more seriously they would prohibit publication of any content that relied on the words –
could
might
may
should
can
if
“If you want people to believe big predictions, you first need to convince them that you can make little predictions”
Not so sure about that. People seem quite happy to believe the big predictions despite repeated failures of the little ones.
It should be noted, for those who were not aware; Dr. Stephen H. Schneider was one of the guys who put MM Global Cooling on the map … before he did a 180 degree flip flop and began championing AGW.
It was only when global temperatures took an upward turn around 1980 that Schneider and others quickly made a career change and became passionate advocates of impending catastrophe, only this time from warming, not cooling. But then, opportunism is a trait of politicians rather than scientists.
During the Ice Age Scare of the 1970s, Schneider was one of it’s foremost advocates. He published a book titled “The Genesis Strategy” at this time, warning of the coming glaciation, and wrote glowing a testimonial on the back cover of a popular `Ice Age’ book of the time – (Ponte, Lowell. “The Cooling”, Prentice Hall, N.J., USA, 1976), in which the author claimed that the climatic cooling from 1940 to the 1970s was but the precursor to the main event – the coming Ice Age.
Schneider was one of the first in the scientific community to warn of the impending Ice Age with this paper –
Schneider S. & Rasool S., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141
Stephen Schneider – Greenhouse Supersalesman (john-daly.com)
Well if they don’t keep the Catastrophic part of CAGW to the fore then the cash flow will dry up as will their power over us poor peasants. Can’t have that you know.
So wait…these guys combed through decade after decade of failed predictions, found that nothing bad ever happens, but concluded the problem is that the failed predictions will undermine the underlying solid science?
Is this an early April Fools Day story?
Someone should write an article about the incredible cognitive dissonance of people who are so convinced of something, that even after they have themselves shown the idea to be baseless and wrong, conclude that the only part that was actually wrong was the conclusions reached, not the premise that led to those conclusions.
In the very first sentence, they assert a conclusion that has no basis except in circular logic…that there is a “problem” called climate change.
And they also implicitly assert that human beings have the ability to alter the weather of a planet…that we can “tackle climate change”, to use the inane language of warmista alarmists.
But none of these ideas have any basis in reality, let alone science.
If they understood how the scientific method works, they would realize that making predictions is how a hypothesis is tested for validity.
Assuming the hypothesis is valid when there is no confirmation of it is exactly the opposite of science. It is what science replaced…the idea that people intuitively know facts, and “smart people” (who are always the people telling everyone what is what) first appoint themselves to decide things, and then need only to cast about to find shreds of information that seem consistent with the predetermined conclusion.
As for the idea that people can control the weather of a planet, I think it is past time we find a rubber room someplace quiet for anyone who thinks this is the case.
I wonder if it occurred to them to have a look at what has occurred instead of what was apocalyptically predicted?
I guess not, because if they did think of that, they would have found out that nothing has gotten worse with respect to weather.
Since 1970 we went from everyone being very worried about the rapid buildup of ice in the Arctic, and a spate of severe Winters that made people wonder if the interglacial period we are in was coming to an end, to the same people getting their panties in a knot over that same ice decreasing somewhat and the polar wastelands becoming slightly less frigidly frozen, and mid latitude Winters moderating somewhat, at least in some years, instead of the feared continuance of the trend to more severe and increasingly unmanageable Winter weather.
And instead of the world running out of food, we have far more than was ever possible to grow in those years, even though at the time there had already been decades of spectacular increases in production.
Instead of filthy air choking us all, and rivers catching on fire, we have clean air and clean water, even as we have used more fossil fuels than were even known to exist in those years, and on top of that, the amount of known remaining supply is nonetheless larger than ever.
Instead of desertification causing crushing famines, we have a greening planet and an expanding biosphere.
Instead of running out of water, we have found out the startling fact that water recycles and the planet is covered in the stuff. And we still let most of the rain that falls run to the sea unused, not even bothering to move ahead with efforts to store it for dry years and to prevent floods downstream.
Instead of masses of people dying horribly in global cataclysms, we have conquered so many diseases and arrested so many causes of death, that last year the world panicked over a number of people getting sick and dying of an infection, that would have been an inconceivably low number of infectious disease deaths in 1970. And that despite several entirely new and awful and deadly infectious diseases emerging, death rates are lower than ever seen back then, and lifespans longer than ever expected back then, and the number of those years that can reasonably be expected to be lived in good health has reached a level no one dreamed possible in 1970.
I think we should nominate these authors for some sort of recognition of the exceptionally muddy thinking they have displayed.
They have turned logic on it’s ear, and proven to themselves, if to no one else, that the big problem with being wrong is that it will tend to make people think that one’s underlying premise is incorrect and they have no idea what you are talking about, and hence no one will believe them when they stick with ideas that have no predictive power.
And yet they never make that final intuitive leap to the conclusion that the underlying premise is false?
Peeing on their own shoes and telling themselves it is raining.
“Peeing on their own shoes and telling themselves it is raining.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
First chuckle of my day (-:
Climate change works in mysterious ways my son and all will be revealed at the time of the dooming. Now where have I heard that before…?
Nick….YOUjust made my day. THANKYOU.
Irrational beings that we are, it is astounding to what lengths some will go, to rationalize their unsupportable beliefs! Sophistry becomes a skill set to prop up a belief that a truly objective person (were such a being to exist) would be happy to see fall to one side because of its imbalance. Although, it is more about convincing oneself that they are aligned with the ‘Truth’ than it is about converting others to the cause. That is, it becomes an ego-driven activity to boost the self-image of the insecure.
This is why the ideal of a scientist is one who is a disinterested observer. When one becomes emotionally involved, objectivity disappears. Chamberlain describes this well in his treatise, “Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses.”
“So wait…these guys combed through decade after decade of failed predictions, found that nothing bad ever happens, but concluded the problem is that the failed predictions will undermine the underlying solid science?”
I think that’s exactly what they did. They are still convinced climate catastrophy is coming, so they focus on the wrong predictions as interfering with dealing with the problem
They are what we would describe as “True Believers”. Lack of evidence has no effect on their outlook, even when it is right in front of their faces.
Funnily enough, I believe we’re beginning to see the Climatistas quietly tip-toeing away from their plethora of failed predictions.
Signalling early retirement on fat pensions?
A better escape than the handgun and one bullet round the back of their country club, which is what would be more appropriate.
I think some may have misinterpreted what I was saying there. Let me try again – “falling on one’s own sword”.
I suspect Covid has stolen their thunder and relevance deprivation syndrome is kicking in. Time for the tree change and the pension.
The real danger of predicting the apocalypse is that it justifies climate “solutions” that cause significant collateral damage. The collateral damage falls most heavily on the working class hence the rise of populism which the elite describe as racism.
Exactly. The only reason to completely eliminate fossil fuels is inevitable imminent catastrophe. That the collateral damage out weighs the much more likely actual damage is the truth that cannot be mentioned
“Scientists musr take extraordinary precautiohs in communicating events of great consequences.’
What nonsense. No proof.
When was the last time a scientist grappled with great consequences? What great or little precautions were used? Goes back to atom bomb physics, I suggest. Those were the days when physicists got the answers right. Geoff S
Wisdom volunteered by a self-appointed expert. No proof necessary!
“… making such forecasts can be counterproductive. “Truly apocalyptic forecasts can only ever be observed in their failure …””
I do not think so. The believers, those who make climate change really a threat, especially those in USA, nourish and flourish on these predictions.
The failure is not failure. It is the second coming in the night of the bridegroom, which will be unexpected … and a problem if you aren’t prepared for that.
The biggest problem for fake climate science is that it’s not too hard for people with technical backgrounds to point out where it’s wrong. Mr. Watt’s excellent expose of badly sited weather stations is a prime example. Other people with industrial experience in making precision measurements have shown that the data set that climate alarmists rely on is corrupted. And then there are the computer models which, in the digital age, lots of people can criticize intelligently. Scary movies by people like Al Gore put out a lot of obvious falsehoods which everybody can see. Last but not least, the blatantly idiotic excuses that deadly cold waves are caused by global warming made common people laugh out loud.
The only thing still keeping this mega-con afloat is a truly massive joint operation by government, media, and certain sectors of academe. Climate alarmism promises a money stream for grant-hungry researchers and universities and a justification for endless expansion of government power by the Regulatory Empire. The mainstream media are a never-failing cheerleader for the totalitarian schemes of Big Left. And that, my friends, explains just about everything you really need to know about climate change.
“the computer models which, in the digital age, lots of people can criticize intelligently”
Are any of the models thoroughly explained- with all formulas, flow diagrams, and code available? I suspect not. Any that are not should be dismissed.
“When it comes to climate change, the authors advise “thinking small.” That is, focusing on making predictions that are less grandiose and shorter in term.” Perhaps it has not yet occurred to these gentlemen that the result could just as well be a greater number of predictions falsified quickly by attentive observers. Let’s see what happens.
“making such forecasts can be counterproductive”
Indeed they can .We know that even making regular seasonal weather forecasts can show just how wrong the experterati can be.
Promise of a ‘barbecue summer’
“It was in April that the Met Office proclaimed the chances were ‘odds-on for a barbecue summer’.
Needless to say it was a total washout all through July and August. Forecasting 2 to 3 months ahead is beyond their capabilities without great luck.
“‘Seasonal forecasting is still a new science” – The Met Office
Philip Eden, vice president of the Royal Meteorological Society, accused the Met Office of indulging in ‘spin’.
He said: ‘The problem is that we don’t actually know very much about the outside influences which affect the weather during a period of, say, a month or three months ahead.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1202982/Met-Office-left-red-faced-Britains-forecast-barbecue-summer-turns-washout.html
Ain’t that the truth, they don’t know very much. At all.
Yet the UK just bought a new 1.2 BILLION DOLLAR super computer which, in an amazing statement of unequalled false precision claimed; ” The Met Office’s current system, which uses enough energy to power 1,500 homes, can predict where it will rain, sleet, snow or shine to an accuracy of about one square mile across most of the UK.”
“This target area is reduced to 300 square yards in London to improve forecasts around the major airports.”
Hysterically criminal. I am quite certain airports take a basic forecast and then make decisions based on real time observations. I am absolutely certain they would ignore any 300 sq yard forecasts.
Story here… https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/met-office-to-give-forecasts-from-abroad-with-1-2-billion-energy-guzzling-supercomputer/
sources say the forecasting set-up will be the most advanced in the world
Every few years the Met Office needs a new super computer to get it it wholly wrong.
You can only model that which you understand.
Yes, “a new system to MORE QUICKLY get it wholly wrong.”.
Now now, be fair, you don’t say how far in the future the forecast is good for. Even by looking out of the window I can forecast about ten minutes into the future; I would guess this machine will be able to “guess” at least a couple of hours away.
I didn’t see where the article said how far into the future these predictions went.
For that level of accuracy I suspect the predictions reach 1/2 an hour into the _past_.
Most of the crapola we hear about climate has nothing to do with “forecasts” or “predictions”, so the paper is pretty much a giant red herring. The Climate Liars have gotten better at their lying, using sweeping, broad statements and fiery rhetoric. The usual format is to say something like, we need to cut our emissions drastically, starting now, or the world will end (or some such nonsense). The goal is to appeal to people’s emotions.
“When it comes to climate change, the authors advise “thinking small.” That is, focusing on making predictions that are less grandiose and shorter in term.”.
This is unadulterated BS. It shows that the authors know that it is all fiction in the first place. Otherwise they would be saying what every genuine scientist would say: your predictions should be no more or less than that which can be reliably derived from the science.
This seems like a very important paper to me. The next step would be for someone with credibility in the scientific community to examine the psychology of the apocalypse narrative that underlies this over-forcasting. Apocalypse psychology has a long human history. It clearly infects the science of climate change. This paper lays a groundwork for credibly examining that.
“apocalypse narrative”
in the context of climate religion?
Finally – some truth from academia:
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
Nailed it – I wrote below “… every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~50 they (climate doomsters) have made since 1982, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.”
When will the climate clown show end? People are so stupid and gullible – they believe anything if it is repeated often – even when it costs them trillions and threatens their lives.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/22/remember-the-british-met-called-the-end-of-snow-last-december/#comment-3191368
A CLIMATE AND ENERGY PRIMER FOR POLITICIANS AND MEDIA
This is an excerpt from a draft that I am sending to Canadian and American politicians and the media – but most of these fools won’t even understand it, because they have no scientific competence and have been deceived – programmed by false climate scares and green energy frauds for ~forty years.
SUMMARY
We published in 2002 that there was no catastrophic human-made global warming /climate change crisis, and green energy schemes were not green and produced little useful (dispatchable) energy. Dangerous global warming and climate change has NOT HAPPENED and green energy schemes have proved to be COSTLY, UNRELIABLE AND INEFFECTIVE.
Global warming is not a threat, but global cooling IS dangerous. In 2002 we predicted that global cooling would start circa 2020, based on low solar activity, and that prediction is increasingly supported by the evidence.
file:///C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png
Politicians foolishly adopted very-scary global warming falsehoods and brewed the perfect storm, crippling our energy systems with costly and unreliable green energy schemes that utterly fail due to intermittency, at a time when we will need more reliable, dispatchable energy due to increased energy demand and imminent global cooling. The good people of Britain, Germany, California and Texas have all suffered and died due to green energy failures that were predictable and predicted.
…
OUR PREDICTIVE CLIMATE AND ENERGY RECORD IS AMONG THE BEST.
THE GREENS’ PREDICTIVE CLIMATE AND ENERGY RECORD IS THE WORST.
The ability to predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence. Climate doomsters have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record – every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~50 they have made since 1982, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.
The radical Greens have NO credibility, make that NEGATIVE credibility – their only competence is the fabrication of false alarm.
file:///C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png
you gave a local filesystem link there, might want to fix it
Thanks Tony – actually I meant to delete it.
I’ve posted this link before, but will post it again as its relevance to this article is acute.
The marvellous “Extinction Clock” website details all the failed predictions since 1970 and counts down towards all the ones that are yet to (invariably) fail.
Whenever some themrageddonsit has been preaching climate doom on twitter I post this link and they go remarkably quiet
Extinction Clock
“observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science”
Who’da thunk?
Not the people making the baseless forecasts!
“making predictions that are less grandiose and shorter in term”
That would be predicting the weather.
We already try to do that.
Sigh.
Andrew
Epic Cause & Effect Error – they are coming at this thing from totally The Wrong Way.
It goes quite insane when these folks claim to be from:
“”Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy“”
They’ve zero idea of ‘social’ and even less of ‘public policy’
Why….
The ‘scientists’ making these claims are ALL working inside the Public Sector.
Arguably, that alone decrees that they are not = scientists
Anyway, each and every one of them is aware of the need to justify themselves in their cosy lovely ultra cushioned ivory tower spaces and they do that by providing Sound-Bites for their (immediate) paymasters = politicians wanting to be visible and to be seen to ‘care’
(Their ultimate paymaster is of course Joe Average Taxpayer – that is the cushion they’re on)
It gets better and better because their chosen subject, Climate, impinges upon EVERY aspect of everybody’s lives, or can certainly be claimed to do so.
Thus the politicians can use the predictions to increase control, rig elections, create ever more ‘scientists’ and of course, Create New Taxes and increase rates of existing taxes.
And as every Western Government for the last 30 years at least has been in a constant state of bankruptcy, It Is A Dream Come True
Vice is nice, but Incest is best
There’s your problem. Positively fedback incest.
It ain’t gonna go away any time soon.
Something better had be done, or we’ll find ourselves using Squillion Dollar Bills for toilet paper.
Mr Trump realised it (Eisenhower saw it 60 years ago) and hence why every effort from every angle, including from inside the Government Machine, was made to be rid of him.
Turkeys vote for Christmas.
Meanwhile AR6 is coming out and the models are even more divorced from observations than previous editions. Who in their right mind could take them seriously?
Oh, wait.
“and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”
A peer reviewed paper of the bloody obvious… how quaint….
Leftists’ hilarious apocryphal apocalyptic and apoplectic prophesies of impending global Armageddon are always wrong because CAGW is already a disconfirmed hypothesis…
These silly charlatans have been wrong 1001 times, yet people still take them seriously, which says less about the poor character of these charlatans, and more about the sad state of our society and our educational system..
The real problem is not “the underlying science”; it’s the lying science.
I like it! 🙂
The irony is that Leftists are the ones who deny science….
Under the rules of the scientific method, if hypothetical projections consistently exceed reality by more than 2 standard deviations for a statistically significant period of time, the hypothesis is officially disconfirmed…
The absurd CAGW hoax has exceeded this disconfirmation standard, yet here we are; “the earth becomes uninhabitable from CAGW in 11 years.”
Leftists have lost their frigging minds…
No, Leftists are very much in their right minds. What they’re doing is right out of the Marxist playbook. It’s the SJW and critically “woke” who lack the brains to see how they’re being manipulated. The Left haven’t made a false move since Regan ended the Cold War. There’s nothing random about current events.
Rory you are correct. You nailed it.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/20/cold-snaps-expose-climate-science-fragility/#comment-3188906
Global politics has now become toxic and unhinged, with the extreme-left panicking, and trying to force the neo-Marxist Great Reset on us all.
WHY NOW? Because solar-driven global cooling is upon us, and the fraud of catastrophic human-caused global warming is about to be exposed to even the most obtuse of humanity.
The Situation Assessment is described below – its perpetrators are among the most evil scoundrels on Earth, and to date they are succeeding.
For decades, climate skeptics have been correctly arguing that the science of the global warming extremists was wrong, but it was never about the science – it was always a fraud – a false scheme concocted for political and financial gain.
People give the warmist cabal too much credibility – false alarm is their tactic – the climate alarmist leaders know they are lying –
they’ve known it all along.
SITUATION ASSESSMENT – first published many months ago:
It’s ALL a Marxist-Democrat scam – false enviro-hysteria including the Climate and Green-Energy frauds, the full-Gulag lockdown for Covid-19, the specious linking of these frauds (“to solve one we have to solve the other”), paid-and-planned terrorism by Antifa and BLM, and the mail-in ballot US election scam – it’s all false.
The Climate-and-Covid scares are false crises, concocted by wolves to stampede the sheep.
The tactics used by the warmist propagandists are straight out of Lenin’s playbook. The Climategate emails provided further evidence of the warmists’ deceit – they don’t debate, they shout down dissent and seek to harm those who disagree with them – straight out of Lenin.
The purported “science” of global warming catastrophism has been disproved numerous ways over the decades. Every one of the warmists’ very-scary predictions, some 50 or so since ~1982, have failed to happen. The most objective measure of scientific competence is the ability to correctly predict – and the climate fraudsters have been 100% wrong to date.
There is a powerful logic that says that no rational person can be this wrong, this deliberately obtuse, for this long – that they must have a covert agenda. I made this point circa 2009, and that agenda is now fully exposed – it is the Marxist totalitarian “Great Reset” – “you will own nothing, and you’ll be happy!”
The proponents of both the very-scary Global Warming / Climate Change scam and the Covid-19 Lockdown scam know they are lying. Note also how many global “leaders” quickly linked
the two scams, stating ”to solve one we have to solve the other”- utter nonsense, not even plausible enough to be specious.
Regarding the sheep, especially those who inhabit our universities and governments: The sheep are well-described in this essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb as “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” or IYI – IYI’s hold the warmist views as absolute truths, without ever having spent significant effort to investigate them. The false warmist narrative fitted their negative worldview, and they never seriously questioned it by examining the contrary evidence.
Now they’re making a full on, racist attack on white males while simultaneously attacking the Western family and the middle class. They’ve even got the sjws questioning sex (calling it gender) and promoting the idea that its (fluid). All this has gelled since Obama was installed by the globalists to bring it about.
Interesting times. They knew Trump wasn’t buying it so he was cancelled.
No matter what they say or do they were never gunna spin the lights going out particularly for cold weather and on top of that Covid to concentrate the mind on the here and now. South Australia California and now Texas with more to come as electrochemical storage will never cut it. It was always their lunar prescriptions that would bring them down.
“For decades, climate change researchers and activists have used dramatic forecasts to attempt to influence public perception of the problem and as a call to action on climate change. These forecasts have frequently been for events that might be called “apocalyptic,” because they predict cataclysmic events resulting from climate change.”
If there was a real problem then they wouldn’t need to exaggerate, it would be obvious to everybody. But of course what’s really obvious to everybody is there is no climate emergency.
People are fed up with being lied to.
The problem with your “cry wolf” idiom is that in the end the wolf does show up, unlike the climate apocalypse™.
There’s a chapter in the first volume of ‘Climate Change – The Facts’ ( not to hand) which describes the science of forecasting in some detail and how utterly bad is the IPCC.
“International Journal of Global Warming” from the Department of Redundancy Department and just as useful
I should know I am a soothsayer.
Crystal ball screens with addled data sprung,
Patterned web of lies sighs the louder.
Then woven damage of the soothsayer’s tongue,
Raised dismal projected strife the higher.
Subliminal whispered beguiling songs,
Implants distressed visions within a psalm.
Soothsayer voices past of beaten wrongs,
Spread UN’s anointing oils of alarm.
“Distress fortune burns ahead,
With inundated coral island death.
Profligate forebear’s inertial life misled,
More woeful guilt of your child’s suffering breath.”
No! Sustain your ungored heart with truth,
Eye soothsayer’s conjured warmth deceit
Instruct a future promise within the youth,
With straight light of observed event.
Hear not destructive soothsayers’ hymn.
For who on earth can ever know
So ‘Live rational!’ be your maxim.
When Chaos’s airs will forever blow.
The main problem is that the CGM’s predict a rising average global temperature. From this almost *everyone*, scientist and non-scientist, assumes it is maximum temps that are going up and almost all of the catastrophic forecasts are based on this, the earth will turn into a cinder from ever higher temperatures.
The CGM’s don’t predict precipitation, they don’t predict clouds, they don’t predict sea level rise, they don’t predict crop growth, they don’t predict greening/non-greening, they don’t predict anything but some hokey average global temperature that can’t actually be measured anywhere.
This is the most basic lie of the so-called climate scientists – they lie by omission – if they told the public that it was MINIMUM temps going up that is causing the average to go up then no one would worry and the money faucet would be turned off. The people would know that minimum temps going up would lead to fewer deaths by cold, longer growing seasons meaning more food, and less extreme weather due to smaller latitudinal temperature differences. Good things, not bad things.
All correct, thank you Tim G. I recently talked with my friend, top meteorologist Joe D’Aleo and he made the same point – also that many of these rising minimums are caused by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, as municipalities grow and more and more land area is covered by development.
The observed moderate rise in minimum temperatures is all positive news – the climate doomsters know this, but are deliberately lying to the public – their core competence. They have been lying to us for decades, certainly since ~1982 or even earlier, possibly circa 1970.
The climate doomsters are panicking now, because they know they’ve been riding on a natural solar-driven global warming trend that is now ending, and solar driven global cooling has begun – as we predicted in 2002. Their global warming fraud will soon become obvious to even the most obtuse of humanity, who are unlikely to accept their latest blatant lie – that “warming causes cooling”. LOL!
Their “jig is up” – hence the huge mail-in vote fraud to defeat Trump and elect BIden and his motley crew of Chinese Communist Party puppets – Biden is the Manchurian Candidate.
I fear for America, the dying bastion of liberty in an increasingly compromised, dystopian world.
Reminders of Climate Reality – Cold Kills
Storm of the Century – the Blizzard of 1949
The “Long Winter” of 1880/81
“The underlying science of climate change has many solid results….” Name one that can be proven. Without proof science is theory at best and scaremongering at worse and “climate science” is both.
Science does not provide “proof”. At best it provides an answer to a question. If the answer holds under scrutiny and cannot be falsified, we say it’s true.
Telling the rent-seeking climate dowsers (like Santer, Dessler, Schmidt) and climastrologers (like Mann, Hayhoe) to stop making apocalyptic forecasts is like telling the scorpion not to sting the frog. It is their nature.
Their raison d’être.
Of course, the converse of these “apocalyptic” forecasts are those that are overhedged, like …
More CO2 leads to shortness of breath leads to more resting sitting on cold rocks leads to hemorrhoids
Easy
Climate science has nothing to do with predictions of future climatic disaster. Equating the two is a political exercise only, as no one can tell the future. The main thing to keep in mind is that humans cannot change the weather or the climate politically. If they could, the issue would have been solved hundreds of years ago when we burned witches at the stake for weather cooking.
“..the International Journal of Global Warming…”
WTF ?
You have GOT TO BE KIDDING! Please tell me this is a parody— that such a thing doesn’t really exist.
God help us all.
Next up:
Climate Change is a white supremacist construct
or is White Supremacy a Climate Change construct?
Leftists are already there….
According to a curator at the Smithsonian Museum, evil “Whiteness” includes adherence to such evil concepts as: the Scientific Method, cause and effect, objective reality, empirical evidence, rational thought, etc.
I’m not kidding:
https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203651?s=20
NYT columnist suggests avoiding the use of critical thinking: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html
“If this is not a claim where I have a depth of understanding, then I want to stop for a second and, before going further, just investigate the source,”
I ask you, has a single prediction of Man-made Catastrophic Climate Change made in the last 30-years actually come true?
No, not one prediction has come true in all this time. That includes the Human-caused Global Cooling scare, too.
This is a published postscript on the entire Obama Administration and its Party holdovers in the Biden Administration. And Penn State is down the road too.
And somewhere out in the Ort Cloud there is a planetoid with your name on it. It doesn’t really matter what the warning time is because the current crop of leaders have a more lucrative crisis gig to keep pushing. They would probably continue that line right up the end because one pays and the other is a cost.
They failed to prove phrenology so they have changed to palmistry.
Charles,
Dr.Myles Allen anticipated this in May 2019 when he mildly rebuked Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion.
See “Why protestors should be wary of ‘12 Years to Climate Breakdown’ rhetoric.”
Published in The Conversation and republished in The Guardian on April 19.
However the train has left the station and it is too late to rein in the hysteria.
Get a co2 worshipper to stop lying? Good luck with that.
There is zero incentive to temper catastrophic predictions. The people making them are never held accountable. Ehrlich has received more than $2.5 mill in various ecological prizes over the last 20 years. Remind me why he would stop making ridiculous predictions.
I found this part hilarious:
Yeah, like the short-term prediction in January that February would be nice and warm in Texas …
The problem is that chaotic systems by their very nature are only marginally predictable, even in the extremely short term. That’s why cyclone predictions a couple days out have a “cone” rather than a single predicted track.
We now have satellites watching the planet 24/7 and supercomputers modeling the weather … and despite that, last month a prediction of 3″ of rain at my house two days before the fact became a scant half-inch when it occurred.
The truly looney-tunes part is that people actually believe that the same computer models that failed so horrible by tens of degrees in Texas and by inches of rain at my house can predict the temperature in the year 2100 to within a couple degrees …
w.
Yeah, but those are Palaeoclimatology related.
Nothing to do with models, petty sure this guy is going on about models.
What is absurd is the concept that you can test a modeled climate change prediction.
What a joke … so … what type of time-machine do you own?
Talk about apocalyptic predictions! The following is Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the UK Environment Agency,( at the annual conference of the Association of British Insurers as reported in The Guardian 24.2.21
“Much higher sea levels will take out most of the world’s cities, displace millions, and make much of the rest of our land surface uninhabitable or unusable.Much more extreme weather will kill more people through drought, flooding, wildfires and heatwaves than most wars have.The net effects will collapse ecosystems. slash crop yields, take out the
infrastructure that our civilisation depends on, and destroy the basis of the modern economy and modern society.”
(The Environment Agency has faced repeated critcism recently for its approach to flood control in several parts of the UK, so it may just be possible that he doesn’t believe what he is saying but is just passing the buck. OR NOT)
If the climate disaster seems to be about 20 years away for most alarmists, and then recently 12 years for AOC and 9 years for John Kerry, it is useful propaganda to incite young people like Greta Thunberg to jump on the bandwagon and scream “We gotta do something NOW!”
Older people, who have memories of what the climate was like 30, 40, or 50 years ago, and notice that not much has changed, tend to be more sanguine and skeptical, reacting, “Yeah, I heard that predicted for some year in the past, and it never happened, why should I believe it now?”
The “gloom and doom” climate “predictors” are similar to some religious cults, who predict some catastrophe a few years in the future, and promise that people who join their cults will be saved. Then, when the catastrophe never arrives, they say that their “prophet” misread the signs, and that it will still happen a few more years in the future. Just keep those tithes and checks coming in! Amen!
People who actually study the weather and climate know that there are many natural forces that affect the climate at any location on Earth, such as the El Nino / La Nina cycles, shifts in ocean currents, the polar vortex, volcanism, and changes in solar radiation, which have much stronger effects than minuscule additional IR radiation absorbed by CO2, whose effect diminishes as the CO2 concentration increases (saturation of IR absorption bands, interference from water vapor).
There are also huge negative feedback loops in the Earth’s environment that tend to damp out short-term swings, such as the huge heat of fusion of ice, and the huge heat capacity of the oceans, that guarantee that changes in sea level will be so slow that it is difficult to measure them accurately, when compared to the twice-daily cycle of the tides with a much higher amplitude.
If the biggest threat from “global warming” is sea-level rise eventually flooding coastal cities, there is still no evidence that the current sea-level rise rate of 2 to 3 mm/year (depending on how it is measured) is accelerating.
So, rather than depriving everyone of needed energy, why not plan on the sea-level rise continuing indefinitely at that rate, or about 8 to 12 inches per century, and take measures to protect the inhabited coasts? Building a sea wall 1 foot high in a century doesn’t seem like an impossible task, and is much cheaper than trying to build enough windmills and solar panels to replace coal and natural gas.
i predict they will continue to make long term erroneous predictions
COVID was released to impose draconian rules onto society “for our own good” – lol
A couple of years back, there was a piece by Judith Curry reprinted here on this general topic, from from a different angle.
Here was a tweet I wrote back then, and a comment I had added here on WUWT discussion of the article:
“There was a piece by Judith Curry today on Watts Up With That, regarding the trauma that these so-called scientists are feeling, because not enough people are paying attention to them when they scream about doomsday.
I said a few words.”
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1148803812595048448?s=20
Climate scientists’ pre-traumatic stress syndrome – Watts Up With That?
I said:
If they think the world is ending in spite of the fact that everything is getting better, it is not “the appearance of bias”.
It is clownish refusal to recognize that one’s fears are all imaginary.
One thing should be obvious to everyone: One side is correct, and the other side is wrong.
So, how to decide, if one has no actual knowledge of the facts, or the skills and ability to delve into those facts for clarity?
Well, one approach that seems logical is to look at which side keeps predicting stuff that does not happen.
Which side has really bad judgement about what effective strategies might be for eliminating CO2 production (conceding for the sake of argumentation that such a need exists)?
Which side alters data instead of modifying their hypothesis?
Which side ignores entire libraries of information about physical geography, and Earth history, and written and photographic historical accounts ,and archeology, and yadda yadda yadda, and instead focuses intently on a notion with mysteriously unobservable consequences?
And which side is part of a political philosophy that wants to fold all the ills of Man into an overarching theme that has for a solution the granting of all powers and all controls to it’s adherents?
One side behaves like con artists, grifters, and flim flam experts.
They refuse to address a very long list of problems with their idea, refuse to debate or even acknowledge a difference of opinion, and go out of their way to disparage and marginalize anyone, even on their own side, who offers any hint of criticism, or even a balanced view.
The insist on a revised version of the scientific method that rejects such standards as the ability to make predictions, and instead inserts such things as a corrupted “peer review” process, taking a vote but only counting “ayes”, and such logically fallacious forms of evidence as relying on the opinions of so-called experts (never mind that these are the experts who have a batting average of very close to .000 re validation of predictions). In other words, they have replaced the actual scientific method with the exact way of deciding what is what, that the scientific method replaced!
At the present time, we have an avalanche of media figures and politicians and activists bombarding the world with incessant and shrill alarmism. At the same time all moderation has left the pronouncements of these individuals and groups: Bad weather is now synonymous with “climate change”, and even one hot day in one isolated location is widely cited as proof positive of an ongoing worldwide crisis, even if no actual harm comes from it. But an extended period of record cold and frost in mid-Summer not even a week later, in the exact same spots, is completely ignored!
It is all hype, all the time, with nary a fact in sight.
And where are people like Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann while all this is going on?
While the inanity and exaggerations reach all time high levels, the tendency for actual scientists to speak up and call it out has gone from hesitant to non-existent.
The people who should be telling everyone that the idea of the world ending in 12 years, has no basis in science or even in rational discourse, are instead deafeningly silent.
Add it all up, and it is more clear than ever: This is not a science, it is a weaponized form of disinformation.
The proponents of it range from people who are surely lying, to those who are spectacularly duped, to those who are profiteers with no care for science or truth.
Scattered throughout are conniving politicians, “If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads” media hacks, gravy train bandwagon-hoppers of various descriptions, and several flavors and stripes of agenda driven ideologues.
Hard to say where the people mentioned as being PTSD-suffering insomniacs figure in to it all. Some are likely miseducated, some not very bright but high in what cognitive scientists call conscientiousness, and some just incredibly neurotic.
All should ask themselves how it can be that, while the present has never been better, their assessment for the immediate future is unprecedented doom?
All of this would be terribly interesting but ultimately unimportant if it was like any other disagreement in science.
Instead, the fact is the stakes in this are very high, as high as they could be, and it has nothing at all to do with science.
This is a con, and what is sought is power and money, the stakes are human lives, at risk is control of our own lives and our very freedoms, and the endgame of the loudest voices is global socialism.
How did these Heretics ever get this published? Surely Michael Mann will be preparing a lawsuit to shut them up! This is blasphemy in the Great Church under Gaia! We mustn’t ever let go of the message here or else! People might actually think for themselves…WE CAN’T HAVE THAT!
If one were to remove hypocrisy and lies and failed predictions from Climate “science” there would not be much left…Frankly it’s stuns me that more actual scientists won’t publicly try to save their profession from being a complete sham.