Wassily Leontief, Nobel prize winner for modeling, said this about the limits of models. "We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions." Exactly. Assume continued warming as in the last three decades, and you get a warming disaster. Assume more episodes of global cooling, and you get a cooling disaster.[...]
In his latest best seller State of Fear, Michael Crichton does a devastating expose of the way ecological groups have tweaked data and facts to create mass hysteria. He points out that we know astonishingly little about the environment. All sides make exaggerated claims.
We know that atmospheric carbon is increasing. We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that started in 1850 at the end of what is called the Little Ice Age. It is scientifically impossible to prove whether the subsequent warming is natural or man-made.
Greens say, rightly, that the best scientific assessment today is that global warming is occurring. Yet never in history have scientists accurately predicted what will happen 100 years later. A century ago no scientists predicted the internet, microwave ovens, TV, nuclear explosions or antibiotics. It is impossible, even stupid, to predict the distant future.via Al Fin: Global Warming Gold
That scientific truth is rarely mentioned. Why? Because the global warming movement has now become a multi-billion dollar enterprise with thousands of jobs and millions in funding for NGOs and think-tanks, top jobs and prizes for scientists, and huge media coverage for predictions of disaster.
The vested interests in the global warming theory are now as strong, rich and politically influential as the biggest multinationals. It is no co-incidence, says Crichton, that so many scientists sceptical of global warming are retired professors: they have no need to chase research grants and chairs.
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