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1981 Paper's Predictions for Global Temperatures Spot-On

Posted by Unknown on from the we're-all-gonna-die dept.

Layzej writes "The Register reports on a paper published in Science in 1981 projecting global mean temperatures up to the year 2100. 'When the 1981 paper was written, temperatures in the northern hemispheres were declining, and global mean temperatures were below their 1940 levels. Despite those facts, the paper's authors confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO2 emissions.' The prediction turns out to be remarkably accurate — even a bit optimistic. The article concludes that the 1981 paper is 'a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test.'"

10 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. monkeys throwing darts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not commenting on the climate one way or the other, but when you have dozens of different predictions over the years is it really surprising that a couple of them happened to hit the mark? Don't forget the Global Cooling sentiment which was around just a couple of years before this article came out...

    1. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by jIyajbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, because the multiple predictions are not random, the way thrown darts are. This is Science 101. Multiple models are proposed to explain and/or predict an observable phenomenon. The model that makes the the most accurate predictions gains credence over the others.

      --
      "Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
    2. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by Elbereth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a difference between a scientific theory that ends up correctly modeling reality for a long period of time and me just making wild guesses. However, a lot of people will conflate the two, saying that all those scientists were doing was making wild guesses that happened to pan out. This is the same kind of thing that creationists say, when they point out that evolution is "just a theory". It also allows them to create their own competing "theory", consisting of a bunch of mythological stories.

      Science is not just a bunch of old guys with wild hair who sit around, pulling shit out of their ass, and saying, "Hey, this sounds good. Let's go with this wild guess. The public will eat it up, and we'll get more grant money!"

    3. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly why the "controversy" is political and not scientific.

      If the arguments were scientific, the conclusions would not be divided among party lines - yet they are. That should tell you something.

    4. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No it gained credence over other models that didn't get things right.

      That in itself says nothing about whether it is actually correct in itself just whether it makes good predictions. A simpler model that makes exactly the same predictions would be prefered - that's what Occam's razor actually says after all. If the models make different predictions we don't need the razor we just see which one (if any) matches reality.

    5. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I see no evidence that you even read this paper. All you are doing it spouting the standard denialist memes: it's cherry picked; it's not science; it's not falsifiable, etc. You say there is no error analysis, but does that mean that they gave a single temperature prediction? No, even just looking at the graph in the article you can see there is quite a wide range to their prediction with different areas based on what the human response to this problem was.

      You say some of the assumptions are false? Which ones? Why did you not include even a single example of how they got it wrong? And here is the my biggest problem:

      You can't simply say, "It will get warmer", be off by as much as 30% and get credit for good science.

      I did a search in the article for the text "It will get warmer" and could not find a match. It seems that the scientists behind the paper agreed with you, and so they didn't just make a single proclaimation without showing any supporting evidence.

      Climate change *could* be a serious thing but it gets washed up with politically driven junk from activists. They are doing more harm than good.

      Surely it is the skeptics that are doing the most harm. You know the ones. They have claimed over the past decade that global warming is false because it is actually getting cooler (although they have had to change this to claim that the temperature has remained steady once it became obvious that it was not getting cooler). They are the ones who make claims about climate changes without providing any supporting evidence, but will also deride scientists (who do actually show their working and their data) as doing the same.

    6. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not a denier, but you're not really countering his point. If 500 scientists make 500 predictions, and one is right but 499 are wrong you can't really point to that one (possibly lucky) guy and say "see, we knew it!".

      What if I come up with some new crackpot theory tying the price of tea in china to the average incidence of Herpes amongst 19-22 year olds and then predict the price in 5 years based on that theory. I then get lucky, and the price matches my prediction. Have I totally kicked ass with my new theory of Herpes-driven tea prices?

      Like I said, I do believe in man-made GW, but the "other side" can easily find one loon who happened to be right and point to him as proving their point. We need broader theory and broader, more often repeatable tests.

    7. Re:monkeys throwing darts... by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean the way Einstein predicted things that "fit after the fact"? Just last year we found at least one more of his predictions was true. He's just like Nostradamus, right?

      A model gets proposed, then tested. The ones that are closest to reality are proven correct, the ones that don't are proven incorrect. You are saying that this person's credibility is strained because a lot of other people were wrong? If that is how we measure credibility, then how is anyone supposed to be credible?

      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/space/05gravity.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

      There was a 2007 story about this, but from what I can tell the experiment didn't conclude until 2011.

  2. Re:30% off is spot-on by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm going to make a wild guess that you don't know very much about science in any field.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  3. Re:30% off is spot-on by rrohbeck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, warming is 30% higher than they predicted, they were clearly wrong.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it