More CRU follies: First director predicted (human-induced?) global cooling, then after a hot summer in 1976, switched to predicting global warming

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[Tom Wigley] Off the record, as someone who worked with Hubert for many years and who took over from him as Director of the Climatic Research Unit, I can tell
you that Hubert's use of historical evidence was seriously flawed (check out Bell and Ogilvie in a very early issue of Climatic Change -- Astrid
Ogilvie is my wife), and his use of proxy data was equally uncritical (you could ask Keith Briffa for some of the gory details). Sad, but
true.

There are a few papers that document some of Hubert's errors, but they are in obscure places because we didn't want to upset him.

Climatic Research Unit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first director of the unit was Professor Hubert Lamb.[6] He had led research into climatic variation at the Met Office and was chair of the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, which already studied climate trends and the effect of pollution upon them.[6] He was then known as the "ice man" for his prediction of global cooling and a coming ice age but, following the UK's exceptionally hot summer of 1976, he switched to predicting a more imminent global warming.[6] The possibility of major weather changes and flooding attracted attention to the unit and sponsorship by major insurance companies wanting to mitigate their potential losses.[6] Prior to the Unit's establishment, it had widely been believed by the meteorological establishment that the climate was essentially constant and unvarying.[8] Lamb and others in the climatological community had for years argued that the climate system was in fact highly variable on timescales of decades to centuries and longer. The establishment of the CRU enabled Lamb and his colleagues to focus on this issue and eventually to win the argument decisively.[5]

Hubert Lamb retired in 1978. His successors were Tom Wigley (1978–93)...