Jeane Dixon was guest on late night TV as well as frequently in magazines and other media because she made predictions-some of which came true but mostly were off target. For years, media featured her New Year predictions. Her notoriety sprung from her prediction that the 1960 Presidential election would be won by a Democrat but the winner would not live out his term. Following President John Kennedy’s assassination, someone remembered her prediction and the rest, as they say, is history.
From Wiki, comes the definition of the Jean Dixon Effect.
John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term ‘the Jeane Dixon effect’, which references a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions.[1] Many of Dixon’s predictions proved erroneous, such as her claims that a dispute over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu would trigger the start of World War III in 1958, that American labor leader Walter Reuther would run for President of the United States in the 1964 presidential election, that the second child of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his young wife Margaret would be a girl (it was a boy), and that the Russians would be the first to put men on the moon.[15][16]
I think it is time to declare the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming Effect. The theory certainly fits the Effect definition as posited by John Allen Paulos.
And it is about time to do that. A new, ultra-fast computer, the Cheyenne, has just been brought on-line in Wyoming. It will be used to do studies, some of which will be related to “man-made global warming”. What we can expect are more erroneous predictions made faster than they used to be. That’s progress. And of course, it means more doom-laden stories for the media to circulate.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 