Forecast for the West: Less Snow, More Floods

Snowpack well above normal

UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles according to

NCPA Study Reveals Forecasting Flaws That Make Conclusions Unreliable. This would preclude the article's assumed accuracy.

DALLAS (February 1, 2008) - Predictions of melting ice caps, catastrophic sea level rise and severe floods and droughts are the result of a United Nation's report that violates nearly half of accepted forecasting principles, according to a new study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Consequently, the UN report is an unreliable tool for determining future public policy.

"These dire predictions are not the result of scientific forecasting," said J. Scott Armstrong, an internationally known expert in forecasting methods from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the NCPA study. "Rather, they are opinions derived from a political process."

The most accepted forecasting methods were determined by internationally-known experts and expert reviewers and are available in the Principles of Forecasting handbook. These principles were designed to be applicable to making forecasts about diverse physical, social and economic phenomena. The NCPA study applied these forecasting principles to audit 2007's Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted big increases in average world temperature by 2100. The audit found that:

Out of 140 forecasting principles, 127 are relevant to the procedures used to arrive at the climate projections in the IPCC report;

Of these, the IPCC report clearly violated almost half (60);

An additional 12 forecasting principles appear to be violated, and there is insufficient information in the report to assess the use of 38 others; therefore

Only 17 out of 127 applicable forecasting principles can be shown to have been followed by the IPCC.

RD of WA @ Feb 04, 2008 14:32:10 PM