Jack Van Impe has nothing on these jack-legged Armageddon peddlers. 117 years of climate catastrophe predictions...
The following quotations are from people who believe that the economic activities of our industrial way of life are upsetting the normal rhythms of our climatic system, and, if not corrected, will lead to horrific damage in the future. They include environmentalists, political activists and the occasional scientist. Many of these people have been good enough to provide dates for their predictions, or at least a general time frame for the damage that is likely to occur. These are the most useful predictions because they can be tested against the trials of time. Vague generalities (like those frequently issued by the IPCC) are not at all helpful. In future, therefore, I would hope that when doomsday predictions are made, they will be accompanied by dates or some concrete time frame for their accomplishment.
I have gleaned these quotations from my reading and from the internet. One internet source was particularly valuable titled “117 Years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions.” I encourage all readers to consult that wonderful site. The only way I can improve upon it is by continually updating these predictions (and many are coming due in the very near future). Regards, Richard Barrett
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March 20, 2000, from The Independent, According to Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
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September 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger signing California’s anti-emmissions law, “We simply must do everything in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late…The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.”
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1990 Actress Meryl Streep ”By the year 2000–that’s less than ten years away–earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”
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April 2008, Media Mogul Ted Turner on Charlie Rose (On not taking drastic action to correct global warming) ”Not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.” [Strictly speaking, this is not a failed prediction. It won't be until at least 2048 that our church-going and pie-baking neighbors come after us for their noonday meal. But the prediction is so bizarre that I include it here.]
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January 1970 Life Magazine ”Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support …the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
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Earth Day 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist ”At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
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Earth Day 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist ”The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
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April 28, 1975 Newsweek ”There are ominous signs that Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically….The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it….The central fact is that…the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down….If the climate change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”
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1976 Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling,” ”This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”
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July 9, 1971, Washington Post “In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to ten years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
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June, 1975, Nigel Calder in International Wildlife ” The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.”
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June 30, 1989, Associated Press U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.
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Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch ”New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
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December 5, 1989, Dallas Morning News “Some predictions for the next decade are not difficult to make…Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.
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1990 Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund, “(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
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April 18, 1990, Denver Post “Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert–huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered by NASA satellite photos are expected to re-emerge over the next 20 t0 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected ‘greenhouse effect’ scientists believe”
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1991 Edward Goldsmith, 5000 Days to Save the Planet ”By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle….Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live….At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”
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April 22, 1990 ABC, The Miracle Planet “I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left–we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.”
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February 1993, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution “Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late.”
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November 7, 1997, BBC (A commentator) “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”
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July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post ”Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”