Wow… somehow I missed this gem by Ian Plimer in the Australian.
Computer models using the past 150 years of measurements have been used to predict climate for the next few centuries. Why have these models not been run backwards to validate known climate changes?
I would bet the farm that by running these models backwards, El Nino events and volcanoes such as Krakatoa (1883, 535), Rabaul (536) and Tambora (1815) could not be validated.
In my book, I correctly predicted the response. The science would not be discussed, there would be academic nit-picking and there would be vitriolic ad hominem attacks by pompous academics out of contact with the community.
Lots of pomposity in the comments thread, by the way. 100 comments right now, 24 of them hostile to Plimer by someone named “Marcus of Adelaide.” Lots of positive too, including this:
Thank you Professor for saying what most of my colleagues in the Engineering field think but will not say in public. The whole climate change debate stinks of ideology and has lost all sense of balance. It is out of control and I predict there will be alot of peoples reputations ruined and I’m betting it will not be yours!
My comment, yet to be published, is a call to Plimer’s critics to address his central thesis, rather than nitpick, the central thesis being that there is no evidence that human-emitted CO2 increases the planetary temperature.
Thanks to kae