> When have the predictions of experts been wrong?
And just to give some other examples besides the climate model predictions of warming:
Experts predicted that global cooling would lead to catastrophe in the 1970s.
Experts predicted there would be mass famine and a world population crash by the early 1980s.
Experts predicted that resource prices would skyrocket by the 1990s.
Experts predicted that we would be out of oil (not oil prices rising, but literally out, as in no more, wells all dry) by the turn of the millennium.
Experts predicted in the late 1980s that we had only 10 years to stop emitting CO2 or civilization would be destroyed. (Sound familiar?)
Except in areas where controlled experiments can be done, experts have a terrible track record of prediction. That's because in areas where controlled experiments cannot be done, the process of accumulating reliable knowledge is very, very slow. So it's not that the experts could have done better; they couldn't. Nobody could. But nobody wants to hear that we simply lack good predictive ability on a global scale in areas in which people have strong public policy convictions. People would rather have experts make unrealiable predictions, than have them truthfully say they just don't have the ability to predict.
Individual scientists get predictions wrong, consensus generally doesn’t since the dawn of modern science. If you research it you’ll see for example that global cooling was a minority view and the consensus at the time was warming.
Even the very first IPCC report from 1990 proved accurate in its predictions decades later because it was a consensus work. Climate predictions from the IPCC reports are accurate. There are decades of evidence.
> Individual scientists get predictions wrong, consensus generally doesn’t since the dawn of modern science.
Not if "consensus" is defined so that the current climate change alarmism counts as "consensus".
If the consensus is based on repeated controlled experiments that verify predictions to high accuracy, then yes, that kind of consensus generally doesn't make wrong predictions. In fact such a consensus almost never makes wrong predictions. But such a consensus is also rare in science, because it's very hard to make enough repeated controlled experiments to high enough accuracy to justify it.
> global cooling was a minority view and the consensus at the time was warming.
In the 1970s? No, it wasn't. The experts I mentioned were scientists.
> Even the very first IPCC report from 1990 proved accurate in its predictions decades later
I have no idea where you're getting that from. Those predictions are among the ones that are now falsified by the data. Even the IPCC itself implicitly admitted that in the AR5, by no longer claiming that its projections of climate change up to 2100 were based on climate models; they now claim those projects are based on "expert opinion", without specifying how that expert opinion was arrived at.
And just to give some other examples besides the climate model predictions of warming:
Experts predicted that global cooling would lead to catastrophe in the 1970s.
Experts predicted there would be mass famine and a world population crash by the early 1980s.
Experts predicted that resource prices would skyrocket by the 1990s.
Experts predicted that we would be out of oil (not oil prices rising, but literally out, as in no more, wells all dry) by the turn of the millennium.
Experts predicted in the late 1980s that we had only 10 years to stop emitting CO2 or civilization would be destroyed. (Sound familiar?)
Except in areas where controlled experiments can be done, experts have a terrible track record of prediction. That's because in areas where controlled experiments cannot be done, the process of accumulating reliable knowledge is very, very slow. So it's not that the experts could have done better; they couldn't. Nobody could. But nobody wants to hear that we simply lack good predictive ability on a global scale in areas in which people have strong public policy convictions. People would rather have experts make unrealiable predictions, than have them truthfully say they just don't have the ability to predict.