Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now estimated in most scenarios to take about a century.
Good man with atmospheric physics, not so great at predicting the fossil fuel economy :P
Anyhow, Arrhenius’ estimate being close involved plenty of luck, with bad spectroscopic data canceling out the effects of simplifications—he could have been a factor of 4 off it it had gone the other way. So if we’re to take the lesson of Arrhenius, the recipe for predictive success is not cognitive science, it’s “use solid physical simplifications to make estimates that are correct within a factor of 4, and then get remembered for the ones that wind up being close.”
Of course, that works better when you have physical simplifications to make.
Good man with atmospheric physics, not so great at predicting the fossil fuel economy :P
Anyhow, Arrhenius’ estimate being close involved plenty of luck, with bad spectroscopic data canceling out the effects of simplifications—he could have been a factor of 4 off it it had gone the other way. So if we’re to take the lesson of Arrhenius, the recipe for predictive success is not cognitive science, it’s “use solid physical simplifications to make estimates that are correct within a factor of 4, and then get remembered for the ones that wind up being close.”
Of course, that works better when you have physical simplifications to make.