"The elder statesmen of climate change science" says that his much-ballyhooed prediction was based on "nonsense"

N.J. scientist who coined 'global warming' term tries to avoid the limelight 35 years later | NJ.com

It was on a trip to Rome in September 2008 — to receive the Balzan Prize for outstanding achievement in science — that Broecker found out his obscure 1975 article on climate change had been rediscovered.

"It annoyed me at the time because at the press conference in Rome they kept asking me about this instead of more important things," said Broecker.

In the paper, he had accurately predicted the rate and amount of temperature increase, but the foundation of his analysis — glacial cycles seen in an ice core from Greenland — were never corroborated.

"If my prediction were based on something that turned out to be correct, I would be proud of it; instead I am embarrassed," says Broecker. "But it was the only record we had at the time."

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Mr. BROECKER: Exactly, and the cycles that were seen in the ice core from Greenland, one of them had an 80-year period. So the 40 years of plateau, no warming, corresponded to half of the, I should say, 80-year cycle.

And so I proposed in the article that if that were the case, then the situation should turn around in short order, and we should see a natural warming, which would join forces with the CO2 warming.
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Mr. BROECKER: Well, it was dumb luck, because it turns out that the record in Greenland was a very unusual record, and as we over the years got more and more records, the cycles that showed up so strongly in this Northern Greenland ice core didn't show up anywhere else.

So one might say that my prediction was based on, you know, in a sense, nonsense.

(Soundbite of laughter)