Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
is another example in a long history of calamity forecasts similar to those described in
MacKay's 1841 topic,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds
.
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Evidence on the nature and outcomes of all 26 analogies is provided in our online
of these analogies, invite others to submit their ratings of the analogies for publication at
publicpolicyforecasting.com, and encourage others to propose other environmental alarms
in case we have missed important analogies.
What were the outcomes of the alarms? The forecasts of harmful outcomes all turned
out to be wrong. For the 23 alarms that resulted in government actions, the measures that
were taken caused harm in twenty cases. The alarms faded from public attention slowly
overtime,butharmfulpolicieshaveremainedinmanycases.WesuggestusingtheGolden
Rule of Forecasting to identify and to expose such false alarms, and to thereby help to
minimise the harm that they cause.
Conclusions
Climate has varied in the past and can be expected to do so in the future. Mankind has
adapted to both cool and warm periods, and trade and economic growth over the past 300
years has greatly increased our ability to do so. In that context, forecasts of climate are of
little value unless they are for a strong and persistent trend,
and
are accurate.
TheIPCC'forecasts'areforastrongandpersistenttrend,buttheyhavebeeninaccurate
in the short term. Moreover, there is no reason to expect them to be accurate in the
longer term. The IPCC's forecasting procedures violate all of the relevant Golden Rule
of Forecasting guidelines. In particular, their procedures are biased to advocate for the
hypothesis of dangerous manmade global warming.
Wefoundthattherearenoscientificforecaststhatsupportthehypothesisthatmanmade
global warming will occur. Instead, the best forecasts of temperatures on Earth for the
twenty-first century and beyond are derived from the hypothesis of persistence.
Specifically, we forecast that global average temperatures will trend neither up nor down,
but will remain within 0.5 °C (1°F) of the 2013 average.
This chapter provides good news. There is neither need to worry about climate change,
nor reason to take action.
