Very interesting… Klimazweibel just posted a “be humble” look-back at 1970′s US energy consumption forecasts. This is certainly “consistent with” Seekerblog’s tagline thanks to physicist Neils Bohr “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”.
Keep in mind that the much-improved energy efficiency of the US economy is the result of 30 years of compounding of the average annual improvement in efficiency, which last time I looked was around 1.8%.
(…) I stumbled by chance upon another set of predictions, this time for US energy consumption, all of the issued in the 70′s with 2000 as time horizon. Some were more accurate than others, but there is clearly a bias.
From Craig et al., Can History teach us? A retrospective examination of long-term energy forecasts for the United States. Annu. Rev. Energy and Environment 27, 83(2002)
It seems that ‘Be humble’ is a good advice most of the time![]()
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