You mentioned some of the past instances when there has been concern over the environmental impacts of human actions. In each case the scientists correctly identified the problem and its consequences, they identified the cause of the problem and put forward proposals that would rectify it.

In each case the advice of the scientists was heeded and measures were taken that addressed the issue. For some people this is a rather inconvenient reality, as a result they rewrite history to suit their own agendas even to the point of pretending that acid rain doesn’t exist, that the ozone layer was never damaged, or that they’ve been around for centuries or are entirely natural.

With global warming we have a similar situation. The scientists identified this phenomenon just over 200 years ago (Poisson, 1811) and empirically determined it a few years later (Fourier, 1824). By the time Arhennius wrote his work on the temperature of the Earth on 1896, the role of greenhouse gases and their effects upon temperatures was well and truly established.

From the 1950’s onwards the scientific community warned of the dangers of global warming but, for political reasons, they were largely ignored until the late 80’s. Unfortunately the politicians stifled 30 years of innovation and development and allowed the problem to intensify before taking any action.

If we had a situation now where steps were taken and global warming “went away” we would again have people claiming that it never actually happened and that the scientists were wrong. If one distorts and rewrites history enough then it’s easy to pretend that something never happened.

The predictions for global warming aren’t so much that the world will warm by X°C regardless, more that they could warm by X°C if we don’t do something about it. To prove the predictions wrong it would be necessary for global warming to disappear without anything having been done to address the issue, or for requisite action to be taken but for the warming to continue unabated.

"Unless we change X, Y will happen", we change X, and Y doesn't happen... were the scientists necessarily *wrong*"

No, they weren't necessarily wrong. However, in many cases we simply don't know if Y would have happened without X nor do we necessarily know that if Y was actually going to happen that X was the direct cause it didn't.

This type of logic has been used by snake oil salesmen (and similar) for eons. The premise is you create a false problem, propose a false solution and when the false problem fails to materialize, credit goes to the false solution.

I'm really surprised you're not aware of this.

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Edit: Actually the ozone hole should not be on your list. Scientists now say the effects of the Montreal Protocol won't be noticeable until 2025 and the ozone hole won't "heal" until 2070 so we don't know if they were right or not: http://www.livescience.com/41899-ozone-h...

Edit2: The Y2K bug is an interesting one as well. A lot of people believe this was some kind of hoax. As a person who worked on this, I can tell you that it was not. The problem was that the media took warnings from computer scientists and distorted the problem by reporting far-fetched possibilities like power plants going off line or other disasters.

This is actually one case where we won't ever know exactly what Y would have been but it is certain that a lot work done by computer scientists likely prevented many potential problems. It was a good example of doing something for insurance purposes just in case.

"But, if scientists say "Unless we change X, Y will happen", we change X, and Y doesn't happen... were the scientists necessarily *wrong*, or does that just mean we took action to avert the predicted problem? Any other thoughts?"

Options are:

We were wrong about direct causality between X and Y, and Y could not (or randomly did not) happen anyway.

We were wrong about the strength of the linkage between X and Y, and eliminating X was not the sole and complete reason Y did not happen.

We were correct, X did correctly follow to Y, and when X was prevented, Y could not happen.

Now let me address one other nicety. Scientists are inherently *wrong*, and they have had to learn to live with that. All they have are theories and falsifiability, with Nature holding all the cards. But She is at least consistent. Unfortunately we have little or no records in the fossil record of Her having sudden environmental changes such as we have been producing. So this leaves us not interpolating (inherently safer, even in a chaotic system), but extrapolating, which is subject to significant bias.

It is safe to say if we changed X, as you posit, that we "we took action to avert the predicted problem", whether or not the problem (Y) proceeded to occur or not.

In the case of acid rain, we have examples why control of sulfur and NOx is important, witness most of China today (population control, or breeding for stronger lungs?), and the Great Smog in London. This is NOT extrapolation, just interpolation.

[EDIT:

"Talking of ozone holes: How many ozone holes were there before 1920?"

One over each pole in late winter / early spring, every year, for 500 million years. Contaminants make the naturally occurring hole larger, deeper, start sooner, and last longer.

]

They use this logic constantly and see no problems with it. I was once riding on the freeway with a woman that was driving about 80 miles per hour, without noticing that all the cars were stopped ahead of us. When I told her she slammed on her brakes and averted an accident. Deniers would interpret this as me making an incorrect prediction that we were going to run into the cars ahead of us. How dare I be alarmist!

Those whackos that don't believe in acid rain should be forced to work in Norilsk, Russia. There is a nickel smelter there that releases something like 1% of the total global anthropogenic emissions of sulfur dioxide. No tree grows within about 30 miles of the smelters.

If environmental science wasn't so agenda driven with predetermined outcomes that they are trying to prove then it would have a bit more credibility. But such is not the case. The people behind the agenda driven science have already invested too much political capital and the 'scientists' have put their credentials on the line. They have to spare no expense to keep the agenda driven science going at all costs or they have everything politically and personally to lose.

Considering that nature has a way of healing itself one must be able to prove that humanity solved these issues. It can't due to the dynamic nature of the environment. It can't even prove humanity caused these issues in the 1st place due to the dynamic nature of the environment.

No proof humanity caused the ozone hole or acid rain because nature itself provides the exact same mechanism that is considered the cause as humanity has been accused of providing. LOL. It's just like oil seeping from underwater oil deposits in the gulf of mexico naturally. It's been proven that it does and creates all those little balls of tar that wash up on the beach. Then come along some environazi and starts blaming humanity for their existence. Sure there have been oil spills but those are very rare and they get stopped and cleaned up while nature allows oil to continuously seep from the underwater deposits as it has done for millions of years.

So an ozone hole opens up. Humanity bans a chemical. Ozone hole closes and environazis claim credit until the ozone hole opens up again. Not a word from them. Are they really misinterpreting cause and effect that badly or are they just anti humanity agenda driven lunatics?

Acid rain has been around as long as volcanic activity has. LOL. Both acidification and volcanoes are still around. In fact when the acid rain alarmism failed to come to fruition and cause the catastrophe that was predicted the environazis started claiming that acid rain was causing the rivers, lakes, and top soil to become more alkaline.

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/13/221725348/...

I kid you not. How can anyone take these alarmists seriously when they continuously attempt to make their alarmism unfalsifiable by claiming every condition is caused by the phenomenon that they are alarmist about?

We make a prediction.

We take some action.

The prediction does not come to pass.

Scenario 1:

I predict that my house will be struck by lightning in the next storm.

I sacrifice a local virgin.

My house is not struck by lightning.

Scenario 2:

The planet will become uninhabitable.

I give a billion dollars a day to my friends.

The earth survives.

The facts are interesting but the connections and causality between them are crucial.

Climate science is very weak on causality and quantity, in my humble opinion.

EDIT Talking of ozone holes: How many ozone holes were there before 1920?

EDIT2: Thank you Ozone Guy. Just as I suspected. The holes existed before refrigerators.

This is not an "either/or" question, CF. It can be very difficult to tease apart cause and effect relationships. We all know about the placebo effect in drugs.

There are more subtle examples. One of my favorites is the drug Premarin, often taken by post menopausal women to trick their bodies into acting "younger" again. Anecdotal information was that Premarin conferred a whole host of other benefits- lower rates of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, protection from certain forms of cancer. A very large 5-year trial found that these benefits really didn't exist. As it turned out, women who took Premarin had healthier lifestyles in general. Taking Premarin was an effect; caring for one's health was the cause.

Then there is conformation bias. Imagine if you are part of a tribe of Pubelo Indians and our crops are nearly gone from lack of rain. The medicine man decides to hold a ceremony and it rains the next day. You know that tribe will be performing that rain ceremony for years to come because "It works sometimes."

Every problem is different. This warming period may or may not be the same as previous ones in history. Teasing out the main drivers is not a simple task. History can be a guide. It can tell us about human nature as well. The solutions may even be found in history- or they may not.

Chem Flunky,

I wonder if you are aware that both acid rain and the ozone layer fall under the same category. Certainly you can say that man was contributing BUT there were other natural causes as well. When the scientists first reported, it was entirely man-caused and the world was going to end. They got the needed changes then discovered that there were other causes beyond man.

Same thing is occuring with AGW. Man is contributing to the heat, but scientists from a lack of understanding are once again exagerrating the situation. For the Ozone layer it was fine. The cheap solution was well worth the cost. For acid rain, we needed to reduce the smog for health reasons anyways.

For AGW, you want to replace 85% of the world's power. And lets be honest here. Sure man is contributing to the heat. Sure there will be negative consequences. But you know very well there will also be positive consequences. You know that the tree ring data is BASED upon the assumption that trees grow better in warmer years. You know that CO2 fertilization actually occurs. You know that they have been using LINEAR regression to model the temps of the past 60-100 years.

When you predict the end of the world, people better start seeing changes are they are going to doubt. You warmers shot yourselves in the foot. You created your own lack of believability.

OM,

You are right on about the Y2K. I worked on some of the issues coming from Y2K in our system. It was a problem, but it was so far from the crap that the media was saying about all bank accounts being wiped out, that their claims seemed stupid in hindsight.

That is the problem with AGW. There is some warming, but the predictions are overestimating the problem (we KNOW this). To make it even worse, the media is getting ahold of the problem and making it into an apocalypse.

These warmers, unfortunately, are little more than religious zealots that think they know science. They do nothing to correct the scare-mongering by the media and even have the audacity to defend it, thereby showing how little they actually care about true science.

Ozone guy,

We also do not have accurate enough past records to make any claim about the speed of change. The temps going up ro down by 1 degree over a hundred years could have happened throughout the past and we would not know. But let's look at 1910 to 1940. A 0.5 degree global change in 30 years, NOT caused by man.

You know the records going back millions of years are not good for looking at small 100 year intervals. Given the 1910 to 1940, I find any talk about " the most fastest change ever seen on earth" absolutely ridiculous and completely not justifiable.

JimZ,

Exactly right. Global warming is going to kill us all unless we submit to a world governing body and tax CO2. As if increasing the power and size of gov't is the ONLY way to deal with CO2. They could get repubs to agree to increasing use of nuclear power in a heartbeat, but it is entirely clear that these warmers are far more concerned about their political stance than "science" or the "climate".

James,

LOL, Acid rain leads to streams becoming more alkaline. I would laugh harder, but given AGW leads to droughts and floods, cooling and warming, more hurricanes and less hurricanes, I am rarely shocked by the crap they try to feed people nowadays.

Of course not. Solving a problem, such as the ozone hole, acid rain or unsafe drinking water doesn't mean that such things were never a problem. Or even the Y2K bug.

I do agree that the Y2K bug was overblown. Computers don't stop working just because they wrongly calculate the date. But there were still some issues, like people buying new cars and finding out that they were proud owners of horseless carriages.

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetc...

And in January, 2000, some computers were displaying the year as 19100.

http://perlmaven.com/the-year-19100

Mostly because a Highway in NYC is not underwater

and buildings are not boarded up . Crime has not risen in NYC and Jim Hansens crystal Ball or whatever He uses is broken .

I watched this silly thing in 1988 when the Senators turned

of the air conditioner to be drama queens .

I completely agree with Raisin. I think acid rain was something that humans largely caused but it's effect on deforestation was grossly exaggerated probably by well meaning people. I remember being fooled by it because it made some sense that acidifying the environment might favor formation of bogs. I remember being fooled by alarmists suggesting that melting permafrost would allow bogs in the polar regions to become net methane producers. Even a skeptic like me can be wrongly swayed by claims. After being fooled a few times, you learn to be wary of unsubstantiated claims. Ozone holes are another good example. They are certainly natural. The human component is theoretical and IMO probably grossly exaggerated. There is a long history of the left exaggerating environmental problems to push their leftist agenda. In every circumstance it is the left that exaggerates and the the left that wants its agenda as a solution. It isn't a coincidence. It is deliberate and AGW is simply one of the latest examples where obvious exaggeration is used. Sometimes it is laughable to those who can step back and look at it objectively.

Frequently, "skeptics" will bring up past environmental crises that we are no longer worried about, apparently as "proof" that scientists were wrong about the environmental problem in question. Acid rain, the ozone hole, and the concerns about global dimming in the '70s are the major targets I've seen.

But, if scientists say "Unless we change X, Y will happen", we change X, and Y doesn't happen... were the scientists necessarily *wrong*, or does that just mean we took action to avert the predicted problem? Any other thoughts?

Good question. Glad you asked.

Ozone: A great hole in the Ozone developed over Australia. It was determined by scientists that this was due to man's use of R12. So R12 was banned along with other refrigerants. The hole went away. There was much celebration and many arms were broken by scientists patting themselves on the back.

TA DAH! A larger and deeper hole occurred. The sound of crickets. Sh-h-h-h! So the scientists got together and determined that a hole in the Ozone wasn't so bad after all. That is how you solve a scientific problem. You just don't mention it and it'll go away.

Acid rain: Upper New York was a disaster area. These trees were dying due to acid rain. Scientists determined the cause was by industrial pollution. So the EPA mandated scrubbers and other expensive gadgets along with strict regulation. Some real scientists attacked the problem in a scientific manner. They took core samples of the earth to determine when this acid rain started. They got down to about the time when Christ walked the Earth and discovered they had Acid Rain in that area dating back to Christ's time.

Sh-h-h-h! Crickets. When was the last time you heard of the disaster of Acid Rain? The rain is still there but the rhetoric isn't. Problem solved.

Joseph Goebbels,

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

So naturally if you stop lying or continually ragging on the problem the problem is solved.

So no one is loosing any sleep over these two calamities as they were a quarter century ago but we still have the rain and a different and larger hole.

That is true science to a greenie.

As in, "if you walk of a cliff you will probably fall to your death" The only way to (dis)prove that would be to walk of the cliff. Just like the only way to (dis)prove catastrophic AGW is to allow or make run away AGW happen.

The Nazi lover Sagebrush is lying again, the trend shows that the ozone hole is slowly decreasing.

He is foolish trying to suggest that because acid rain can occur naturally (as a result from volcano's) that humans are incapable of dumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.