Ah, the infamous Goodyear Balloon Simulation mistake:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gkstill.com&#x2F;CV&#x2F;PhD&#x2F;Chapter4.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gkstill.com&#x2F;CV&#x2F;PhD&#x2F;Chapter4.html</a><p>I go two ways on that one. As you point out, on the one hand it is hard to beat Mother Earth when it comes to massive climate impacts, up to and including two eras where the world was a complete snowball, and multiple wipe out of anything bigger than a rodent by asteroids. On the other, the Russians got up to 50Megatons before the test ban treaty kicked in - and while you may wish to argue that a few of those flying around wouldn&#x27;t be the end of the world - I on the other hand would wonder what would happen if some evil bastard targeted the north pole&#x2F;greenland with them, thereby changing the albedo of the entire planet. (Yes, I know you couldn&#x27;t melt the entire glacier, but dump enough soot on it, and I wouldn&#x27;t want to predict the short term consequences.)<p>I agree the Gulf War thing was entertaining for anybody paying attention. It is more than a little irritating that in so many areas of science, there&#x27;s no follow-up on prophecies like that. Some kind of this day last year, X predicted Y, which didn&#x27;t happen would make a fun end of the news item.