Policy Documents

Global Warming Alarm Based on Faulty Forecasting Procedures

J. Scott Armstrong, Kesten C. Green, and Willie Soon –
May 4, 2010

Armstrong, Green, and Soon submitted this comment on the draft of the U.S. State Department's Climate Action Report.

They write,

Our research findings challenge the basic assumptions of the State Department’s Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report (CAR 2010). The alarming forecasts of dangerous manmade global warming are not the product of proper scientific evidence-based forecasting methods. Furthermore, there have been no validation studies to support a belief that the forecasting procedures used were nevertheless appropriate for the situation. As a consequence, alarming forecasts of global warming are merely the opinions of some scientists and, for a situation as complicated and poorly understood as global climate, such opinions are unlikely to be as accurate as forecasts that global temperatures will remain much the same as they have been over recent years. Using proper forecasting procedures we predict that the global warming alarm will prove false and that government actions in response to the alarm will be shown to have been harmful.