A post from a few days ago, Assume Something, lamented the low and declining public credibility about the environmental community, and the scientific discourse more generally due to deliberate manipulation of information to advance political and cultural agendas. A case in point.

Projecting Heat-Related Mortality Impacts Under a Changing Climate in the New York City Region -- Knowlton et al., 10.2105/AJPH.2006.102947 American Journal of Public Health analyses the effect of climate change on heat-related premature mortality. They get increases in the 2050s between 47% to 95%, with a mean 70% increase compared with the 1990s, and a decrease of these estimates by 25% due to acclimatization (i.e. being used to it, more use of air conditioning). . .

What I'd like to see is a validation of this method by using 1963 US data on mortality and air conditioning use in today's climate. In 1963 domestic air conditioning had just recently become affordable and was still a middle class status symbol, the death rate across the population was 17% higher and the (real, inflation adjusted) GDP per capita was just $15036 compared to $37807 in 2006. Does anybody imagine it would have been even remotely right?

Assuming that the economic trends continue we should have a 250% richer population in 2050, air conditioning would have had the time to become cheaper and more widespread, the demographic structure would have become completely different and in particular, if heat-related mortality is viewed as a problem by the future people, they would also have worked on solving it. While building a model on the real data of today is far better than just making something up, it still has serious problems extrapolating this far. . .

While no doubt a changed climate can bring nasty problems, one should be very careful about extrapolating from the present. At the very least one should check for things like Garbage in, garbage out in any model. But running things through a computer and especially invoking climate change seems to excuse anything.

I wonder. So many of the model based projections we have heard of in recent times are simply ludicrous that we might get better predictions from just making something up. At least this wouldn't conceal the manipulation and further degrade public views of science discourse.