Botched Environmental Predictions

Here are eight.

Speaking of which, here’s some new research (yes, “peer reviewed”) indicating that most of the warming modelling done to date is invalid. I’m shocked, shocked.

Decades from now, scientists, real ones, are going to be amazed at the hubris of today’s generation of climate “scientists,” given how little we really understand this complex and chaotic phenomenon.

15 thoughts on “Botched Environmental Predictions”

  1. And of course, there’s no consequence for getting the prediction wrong. This is the problem with “not totally accurate” predictions. Note how many of the predictors when questioned, came up with lame excuses.

    Ehrlich is particularly notorious:

    “Present trends didn’t continue,” Ehrlich said of Watt’s prediction. “There was considerable debate in the climatological community in the ’60s about whether there would be cooling or warming … Discoveries in the ’70s and ’80s showed that the warming was going to be the overwhelming force.”

    Ehrlich told FoxNews.com that the consequences of future warming could be dire.

    The proverbial excrement is “a lot closer to the fan than it was in 1968,” he said. “And every single colleague I have agrees with that.”

    “When you predict the future, you get things wrong,” Ehrlich admitted, but “how wrong is another question. I would have lost if I had had taken the bet. However, if you look closely at England, what can I tell you? They’re having all kinds of problems, just like everybody else.”

    “Certainly the first part of that was very largely true — only off in time,” Ehrlich told FoxNews.com. “The second part is, well — the fish haven’t washed up, but there are very large dead zones around the world, and they frequently produce considerable stench.”

    “Again, not totally accurate, but I never claimed to predict the future with full accuracy,” he said.

    He’s still pushing the same doomsday scenario he was pushing in 1970. And we’re “closer” to his predictions than we were in 1970. Somehow I don’t buy it.

  2. Why are these people not held responsible for the physical results of their wild imaginations? How many billions of dollars wasted and lives lost, yet they not only keep their jobs but apparently their status as “prophets”?

  3. What a buch of charlatans. Well, okay, we weren’t right but close enough for us. What you think doesn’t matter.

  4. Decades from now scientists and laymen alike will regard the global warming craze as something akin to the Salem witch trials or the tulip mania. “How could people have been so ignorant and gullible back then?”

  5. an increase of nearly one degree and an increase of two degrees was “definitely within the margin of error”

    And 0.7 isn’t?

  6. The damage is already done. They didn’t really care if the data matched with the science. It was about playing out a narrative and getting the seed kernel of an idea planted in people’s brains. This is why they went after young people in particular with global warming because they know how easily their minds are easily shaped at a young age. Their intent is to legitimize government gaining additional power and the ability to levy additional taxes so it can save the world! Never mind that the additional power gives them the ability to create regulations that give undue advantage to “green” businesses that somehow just so happen to be owned and operated by friends, families, and back scratching acquaintances of the legislatures.

    What I find particularly depressing is that as we approach the end of the year the plethora of ‘end of the year roundups’ are touching on the subject of global warming. In those posts I am shocked to find the number of comments by people who clearly seem out of the loop as to what happened with the East Anglia leaked info or with these peer reviewed studies that show the science is fact far from settled. They still cling to the tired old “consensus of environmentalists agree” argument and then just tell you to shut up and go back to watching Faux Newz because your too ignorant understand anything. The people over on the UK sites in particular are just foaming at the mouth with vehement support of the global warming/change/variability agenda.

    What is astonishing is that global warming proponents really believe that this the best way forward for human progress. Despite the fact that all of this slows economic growth to crippling levels. Despite the fact that archeological evidence shows that mass migrations of humans took place in the face of external climatic pressures which were then quickly followed by extraordinary levels of technological innovation and intellectual progress. Despite the fact that warmer periods of climate coincided with the highest levels of human prosperity and enlightenment. But for the warmongers you can point all this out and all you get is, “Nope! All the environmentalists agree, were DOOMED!” And then they go shove their head back in the sand. Really sad if you ask me.

  7. Josh:
    Well said. Note that governments are going ahead with controls on carbon emissions and personal energy use, including policies that lead to higher energy prices, even though all evidence (that’s actual real-world physical evidence, not computer models and theories) shows the climate is actually cooling, if anything.

    Nitpick: “Warmmonger” should be spelled with two m’s. “Warmonger” is already a word and means something else.

  8. Solar cycles, cloud cover, and now dust, it looks like the climate models neglect or fudge several factors that may make a substantial difference.

  9. I’m with Jerry Pournelle: I’ll start believing the predictions of a physics-based climate model when they can take the initial conditions as of, say, 1950, and match the next 60 years (up through 2010). I will never believe the predictions of a correlation-based “model”, as you can never get anything out of it more than you put in (as anybody using such tools to model the stock market has discovered, usually to their detriment).

  10. Bedevere: How do you know she is a witch?
    Peasant: She looks like one.
    [Crowd indistinctly shouts]
    Bedevere: Bring her forward!
    Girl: I’m not a witch.
    Bedevere: But you are dressed as one…
    Girl: They dressed me up like this. [Crowd murmurs]
    Girl: And this isn’t my nose. This is a false one.
    Bedevere: [inspects the nose and confirms] Well?
    Peasant: Well, we did do the nose.
    Bedevere: The nose?
    Peasant: And the hat. She’s a witch!
    Peasant Crowd: Burn her!
    Bedevere: Did you dress her up like this?
    Peasant Crowd: No, no, no! [beat] Yes, yes. A bit. But she’s got a wart.
    Bedevere: Why do you think that she is a witch?
    Peasant: Well, she turned me into a newt.
    [Bedevere gives him a disbelieving look]
    Bedevere: A newt?
    [Silence]
    Peasant: Well, I got better.
    Peasant Crowd: Burn her anyway!

  11. Larry, you needed to continue to the point where the decide on and enact a method of falsifying their assumption.

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