Yesterday we sat out in the garden drinking our afternoon coffee when I spotted a couple of vapour trails in the sky. This jogged my memory to a forecast made some years ago, leading onto others.
Zeta. This was going to create cheap electricity by harnessing the power of converting hydrogen into helium. Since the fuel would be water it would be so cheap it would not be worth billing it. Probably early fifties, it has now disappeared instead we now have JET www.jet.efda.org
Now the vapour trails, they came a little later. There were a number of scientists saying that due to the high number of vapour trails the light from the sun was being partially blocked. This would lead to less energy arriving from the sun and would cause a new ice age. There do seem to be fewer vapour trails than at one time but there was never any sign of global cooling.
In March or April 1975 there was a met office expert commenting on the fact that we had seen a couple of cool summers and were still in winter conditions. We were entering a mini ice age, there would be colder winters and cooler summers until well into the 21st century. It did seem possible when I was on Dunstable market one Saturday morning well into May. It was snowing, but a week later the temperatures were in the 70s (fahrenheit) and the following year had a summer which broke nearly all previous records for high temperatures and lack of rain.
It hardly seems worth commenting on "There will not be a hurricane", many of us remember that one.
It does seem that sometimes quite respectable scientists get it wildly wrong. Can you think of more?
P.S. Arthur C. Clarke on the other hand was spot on with some of his forecasts.
Zeta. This was going to create cheap electricity by harnessing the power of converting hydrogen into helium. Since the fuel would be water it would be so cheap it would not be worth billing it. Probably early fifties, it has now disappeared instead we now have JET www.jet.efda.org
Now the vapour trails, they came a little later. There were a number of scientists saying that due to the high number of vapour trails the light from the sun was being partially blocked. This would lead to less energy arriving from the sun and would cause a new ice age. There do seem to be fewer vapour trails than at one time but there was never any sign of global cooling.
In March or April 1975 there was a met office expert commenting on the fact that we had seen a couple of cool summers and were still in winter conditions. We were entering a mini ice age, there would be colder winters and cooler summers until well into the 21st century. It did seem possible when I was on Dunstable market one Saturday morning well into May. It was snowing, but a week later the temperatures were in the 70s (fahrenheit) and the following year had a summer which broke nearly all previous records for high temperatures and lack of rain.
It hardly seems worth commenting on "There will not be a hurricane", many of us remember that one.
It does seem that sometimes quite respectable scientists get it wildly wrong. Can you think of more?
P.S. Arthur C. Clarke on the other hand was spot on with some of his forecasts.
