Global Warming Naysayers Who Made Predictions That Came True (or did not)
August 8, 2010 8:17 AM Subscribe
Need examples of notable global warming skeptics whose predictions came true, or did not.
The most obvious example would be Julian Simon's bet with Paul Erhlich that after a decade, the price of five commodity metals would drop. Erhlich was, at the time, predicting a crash of the global economy and worldwide famine, one component of which was increasing scarcity of commodity resources (sort of a proto peak-oil):
Julian L. Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up. Ehrlich ultimately lost the bet, and all five commodities that were selected as the basis for the wager continued to trend downward until 2002, when metal prices generally began to increaseand at least the price of copper, tin, and nickel increased.posted by fatbird at 9:11 AM on August 8, 2010
While fatbird's example is a good one, it's not terribly relevant to global warming.
I'd agree with yersina: it's important to understand that GW skeptics aren't doing science. On the whole, they are anomaly hunting: they are not coming up with alternative, testable theories that better fit all the available data, and any explanations that are developed ("Mars has global warming too! It must be the sun!" "Global warming is due to the Tunguska event!") are shown to be facile.
There are a few exceptions. Please note that these exceptions are not peer reviewed, but at least they make predictions. Girma J Orssengo (albeit not a climate scientist) is probably the leading one (shorter summary of the post): he projects a cycle of global temperature oscillations. His graph already looks to be headed in the wrong direction, as 2010 is expected to be the warmest year on record. Richard Lindzen is probably the most appropriately-accredited opponent of global warming, but he appears to have reneged on an offer to bet on the average global temperatures in 20 years time.
Wikipedia's list of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming might be a useful place to start for further research. Again, very few of them are climate scientists, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of testable hypotheses or predictions.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:45 AM on August 8, 2010
I'd agree with yersina: it's important to understand that GW skeptics aren't doing science. On the whole, they are anomaly hunting: they are not coming up with alternative, testable theories that better fit all the available data, and any explanations that are developed ("Mars has global warming too! It must be the sun!" "Global warming is due to the Tunguska event!") are shown to be facile.
There are a few exceptions. Please note that these exceptions are not peer reviewed, but at least they make predictions. Girma J Orssengo (albeit not a climate scientist) is probably the leading one (shorter summary of the post): he projects a cycle of global temperature oscillations. His graph already looks to be headed in the wrong direction, as 2010 is expected to be the warmest year on record. Richard Lindzen is probably the most appropriately-accredited opponent of global warming, but he appears to have reneged on an offer to bet on the average global temperatures in 20 years time.
Wikipedia's list of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming might be a useful place to start for further research. Again, very few of them are climate scientists, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of testable hypotheses or predictions.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:45 AM on August 8, 2010
Ask our Me-Fi friends in Moscow, Greenland or along the Great Barrier Reef.
posted by Freedomboy at 11:03 AM on August 8, 2010
posted by Freedomboy at 11:03 AM on August 8, 2010
I'd agree with yersina: it's important to understand that GW skeptics aren't doing science.
This is not the place for a debate about it, but I'd argue that critical community review-- checking calculations, assessing the extent of evidence, examining possible sources of error or bias-- is a perfectly legitimate and valuable part of the scientific process.
In any case, what I think I was trying to say was that if part of the skeptics' contention is that there's insufficient high-quality data available to justify unreservedly adopting a particular climate model, then the refusal to counter-offer a different model may be part of the point.
posted by yersinia at 1:04 PM on August 8, 2010
This is not the place for a debate about it, but I'd argue that critical community review-- checking calculations, assessing the extent of evidence, examining possible sources of error or bias-- is a perfectly legitimate and valuable part of the scientific process.
In any case, what I think I was trying to say was that if part of the skeptics' contention is that there's insufficient high-quality data available to justify unreservedly adopting a particular climate model, then the refusal to counter-offer a different model may be part of the point.
posted by yersinia at 1:04 PM on August 8, 2010
> it's important to understand that GW skeptics aren't doing science.
Genuine question, but are the non-skeptics actually "doing science" in the way that the OP wants? Aren't both sides just making predictions about the future, based on theoretical models? How do you find out who's right other than just waiting?
Obviously the people digging up Antarctic ice and reading the bubbles to tell us what the temperature was 1,000 years ago are doing science. But in terms of predicting the future, is there any hard "if theory X is true, we should see result Y" science going on, on either side? Can there actually be any?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:28 PM on August 8, 2010
Genuine question, but are the non-skeptics actually "doing science" in the way that the OP wants? Aren't both sides just making predictions about the future, based on theoretical models? How do you find out who's right other than just waiting?
Obviously the people digging up Antarctic ice and reading the bubbles to tell us what the temperature was 1,000 years ago are doing science. But in terms of predicting the future, is there any hard "if theory X is true, we should see result Y" science going on, on either side? Can there actually be any?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:28 PM on August 8, 2010
is there any hard "if theory X is true, we should see result Y" science going on?
Yep. On the other side, Orssengo's work, which I cited above, is an example of the rare AGW-skeptic model of climate that includes a prediction.
It should also be noted that the better the climate model, the more robust its results both forward and backward in time. For example, "rewinding" a climate model to 1000AD, supplying it with known inputs, and letting it roll forward, comparing outcomes in the simulation against real-world historical data, allows us to gauge how reliable the model will be at predicting future climate conditions. As you point out, there's no way to absolutely determine the future accuracy of a climate model except by waiting, since we can't account for every eventuality. (The grounding of aircraft after 9/11, for example, had an immediate, albeit short-term, effect on climate, just as the lower industrial production and associated reduced CO2 emissions of the current recession is; neither event could have been predicted by a climate model, but their effects can be compared to the results shown in a climate model with appropriately altered inputs).
critical community review-- checking calculations, assessing the extent of evidence, examining possible sources of error or bias-- is a perfectly legitimate and valuable part of the scientific process.
And I would agree, with the emphasis on part of the science, and with the addition that uneducated criticism of scientific data is rampant when it comes to AGW. There are exceptions: Steve McIntyre, who detected flaws in some of NASA's climate data, is probably the best-known and most well-regarded. But the vast majority of data correction and criticism is done during the process of peer review, not through amateur anomaly hunting.
Science is advanced by testing the predictions of competing hypotheses against experimental and real-world outcomes. There's nothing wrong with pointing out flaws in data, so long as the objections are educated ones. The criticism of Pons and Fleischmann's "cold fusion" experiments are a good example, in which the results claimed were inconsistent with the predictions of conventional physics. In general, if you don't have a testable hypothesis backing up your objections to data, you're a bean-counter, not a scientist.
(As you point out, yersinia, this part is getting off-topic, so I'd be happy to debate it in MeMail if you wish).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:42 PM on August 8, 2010
Yep. On the other side, Orssengo's work, which I cited above, is an example of the rare AGW-skeptic model of climate that includes a prediction.
It should also be noted that the better the climate model, the more robust its results both forward and backward in time. For example, "rewinding" a climate model to 1000AD, supplying it with known inputs, and letting it roll forward, comparing outcomes in the simulation against real-world historical data, allows us to gauge how reliable the model will be at predicting future climate conditions. As you point out, there's no way to absolutely determine the future accuracy of a climate model except by waiting, since we can't account for every eventuality. (The grounding of aircraft after 9/11, for example, had an immediate, albeit short-term, effect on climate, just as the lower industrial production and associated reduced CO2 emissions of the current recession is; neither event could have been predicted by a climate model, but their effects can be compared to the results shown in a climate model with appropriately altered inputs).
critical community review-- checking calculations, assessing the extent of evidence, examining possible sources of error or bias-- is a perfectly legitimate and valuable part of the scientific process.
And I would agree, with the emphasis on part of the science, and with the addition that uneducated criticism of scientific data is rampant when it comes to AGW. There are exceptions: Steve McIntyre, who detected flaws in some of NASA's climate data, is probably the best-known and most well-regarded. But the vast majority of data correction and criticism is done during the process of peer review, not through amateur anomaly hunting.
Science is advanced by testing the predictions of competing hypotheses against experimental and real-world outcomes. There's nothing wrong with pointing out flaws in data, so long as the objections are educated ones. The criticism of Pons and Fleischmann's "cold fusion" experiments are a good example, in which the results claimed were inconsistent with the predictions of conventional physics. In general, if you don't have a testable hypothesis backing up your objections to data, you're a bean-counter, not a scientist.
(As you point out, yersinia, this part is getting off-topic, so I'd be happy to debate it in MeMail if you wish).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:42 PM on August 8, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Most of the skeptical stuff I've read has taken the form of questions or quibbles-- "Is there really enough data to say that definitively?" "Are you sure you were rigorous in collecting the data?" "Why isn't there more transparency about your calculations?" "What about X/Y/Z anomalies that aren't covered by the data?" "What about X/Y/Z alternative explanations, aren't any of those possible?" And so forth. I haven't seen many definitive anti-global-warming statements (by people who weren't crackpots, that is) making contrary, non-hindsight-based predictions that could be proven true or false. And if I did find any such, I'd be very surprised if they were endorsed by the mainstream of the movement.
posted by yersinia at 8:37 AM on August 8, 2010