The story of the Witchdoctor and his Climate Predictions

The story of the Witchdoctor and his Climate Predictions

Witchdoctor: Throwing the bones for climate prediction

By the blogowner, honestclimate, October 21, 2008

A long time ago in a far away place, long before the advent of the internet and telephones, the Witchdoctor of the tribe was not only responsible for curing medical ailments, but also for climate prediction.

Under the pretence of “throwing the bones” the Witchdoctor would claim to know if it would be a sunny day or if a storm would be on its way. He had a 100% track record with his climate predictions, but it had nothing to do with throwing the bones. The modus operandi of the Witchdoctor was to run 20km every morning to the top of the mountain to see if there were dark clouds or clear sky. If dark clouds were brewing he would run back to the village to “throw the bones” and proclaim that a storm was coming.

The tribe and chief praised him daily for his accurate predictions and the Witchdoctor loved the attention he was getting.

Vice Chief of Tribe, Al Gore

The Vice Chief was a very bitter man after losing to the Chief by a mere one vote in the tribal election. But the Vice Chief had a good eye for making money. When the Witchdoctor proclaimed that a storm was coming, the Vice Chief insisted everyone from the tribe bring him a gift, to “appease the weather gods”. This made the Vice Chief a very wealthy man.

One day whilst on his way back from the mountain, the Witchdoctor was almost home when he tripped over a rock and broke both his legs. Unable to run up the mountain to check the cloud cover, the Witchdoctor kept getting his predictions wrong. The tribes people started getting very annoyed. The Witchdoctor kept vehemently stating that a big storm was coming and that it would be the biggest storm they’d ever see and that it would kill many people. This did not happen. The tribes people were growing more and more tired of the catastrophic storm predictions, whilst the sky remained clear for a long time. Eventually they burnt the Witchdoctor at the stake.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and today we no longer use the term Witchdoctors, but rather Spindoctors ie. James Hansen, Stephen Schneider etc. The “throwing of the bones” has been replaced by fancy computer models. But like the throwing of the bones, computer models are a very inaccurate way of predicting climate. So instead of running up the mountain to look at the cloud cover, the modern climate scientist looks at climate trends in the charts. If the trend is down we’re heading for a catastrophic ice-age. If the trend is up we’re heading for catastrophic global warming. Dr Stephen Schneider is well known for using this method of climate prediction. And just as was the case in tribal times where the tribe was blamed for annoying the weather gods, so today we are also blamed for climate change.

The climate scientists of today broke their legs in 1998. How long before the public gets completely fed up and burns them at the stake?

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