https://www.cmu.edu/epp/news/2021/the-risks-of-communicating-extreme-climate-for...


This article may help resolve the discussion here:

February 18, 2021
The Risks of Communicating Extreme Climate Forecasts

By Staff Writer

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.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jun 8^th, 2023 at 12:41pm:


So what is it? One in a million?

You still haven't provided the scientific paper that says so.

It doesn't get a mention in The Physical Science Basis.

But the Synthesis reports glowingly on Climate Attribution Studies. These are done by using two models one with increasing CO2 and one not. However, as with all models, the assumptions underpinning them are what should be noted. The models have not been validated.

But of course you KNOW better. You just can't articulate it. Dummy.

lee wrote on Jun 8^th, 2023 at 1:33pm:


But why not abandon fossil fuels?

1. They are filthy.

2. They are expensive for consumers (while being tremendously rewarding for price gouging cartels and companies). 

Memo from Davos a few years back, re increasing global insurance losses due to extreme weather-related catastrophes:

"Central banks might have to buy the fossil industry...." (and close it down ASAP).

Obviously they accept the IPCC AGW warnings...  

lee wrote on Jun 9^th, 2023 at 1:27pm:
 

In dealing with a blind, recalcitrant conservative?

Yes, actually.

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Fracking pollutes ground water, didn't you know...and combustion of fossil gas poisons the atmosphere.

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Not so; that's why expensive (hard to develop) Oz gas had to be sold overseas, to high-paying customers.

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Only when the fossil companies are in charge of revewables development; as Shell said recently: "we can't make money out of renewables".   

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Addressed above; renewables are free once the infrastructure is built.

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And yet weather catastrophes are real and increasingly expensive to insure against.   Scary.

Jovial Monk wrote on Jun 8^th, 2023 at 3:47pm:



Apologise to David DuByne -
he has been proven correct many times.

What you should be preparing for is a record high El Nino with those very high ocean temperatures. Get aircond or have your ac serviced/overhauled. What if power is off for some days?

I didn’t mention SST. I mentioned ocean heat content.

Jovial Monk wrote on Jun 10^th, 2023 at 3:25pm:


Which of course means nothing. Without the energy system being out of balance, we wouldn't have previous ice ages or interstadials or even weather.

Strangely enough it was Ben Santer who changed the IPCC report to first say they had found the "fingerprint", even though the agreed upon report said no such thing. And now it has become the mainstay of "climate seance".

"Wearing his other hat as IPCC author, Santer was also widely accused of being the man who added the key words "discernible human influence" to the body of the IPCC report, and of doing it very late in the day. [Ben Santer disputes this point and some others. See footnote] True enough. This was messy and does not reflect well on the IPCC. Those words were agreed at a main session of the IPCC in late 1995, attended by politicians. They wanted them included in the report's summary for policy-makers. But they went beyond what was said in the chapter from which the summary was supposedly drawn.

Yet IPCC procedure required that the chapters had to be made consistent with the summary, rather than vice versa. "


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/ipcc-report-author-data-open...

So it was the politicians wanted it and Santer agreed. So there you have it, it was politicians not science, and remains so to this day.