Reader “Sasha” responding to Jeff Alberts in comments provided a large list that I thought was worth sharing.
Submitted on 2014/04/02 at 8:37 am
The question wasn’t “what do people think is caused by global warming”, but “what was predicted by scientists and activists 25 years ago that would be a result of global warming.” Big difference.
OK. Hang on to your hat!
The original post was asking for a list of failed climate predictions, so here are 107:
FAILED CLIMATE PREDICTIONS (and some related stupid sayings)
1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, February 8, 2006
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2. “Milder winters, drier summers: Climate study shows a need to adapt in Saxony Anhalt.”
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Press Release, January 10, 2010.
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3. “More heat waves, no snow in the winter… Climate models… over 20 times more precise than the UN IPCC global models. In no other country do we have more precise calculations of climate consequences. They should form the basis for political planning… Temperatures in the wintertime will rise the most… there will be less cold air coming to Central Europe from the east…In the Alps winters will be 2°C warmer already between 2021 and 2050.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, September 2, 2008.
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4. “The new Germany will be characterized by dry-hot summers and warm-wet winters.”
Wilhelm Gerstengarbe and Peter Werner, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), March 2, 2007
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5. “Clear climate trends are seen from the computer simulations. Foremost the winter months will be warmer all over Germany. Depending of CO2 emissions, temperatures will rise by up to 4°C, in the Alps by up to 5°C.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 7 Dec 2009.
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6. “In summer under certain conditions the scientists reckon with a complete melting of the Arctic sea ice. For Europe we expect an increase in drier and warmer summers. Winters on the other hand will be warmer and wetter.”
Erich Roeckner, Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, 29 Sept 2005.
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7. “The more than ‘unusually ‘warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C’”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment,
Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007
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8. “Harsh winters likely will be more seldom and precipitation in the wintertime will be heavier everywhere. However, due to the milder temperatures, it’ll fall more often as rain than as snow.”
Online-Atlas of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, 2010
9. “We’ve mostly had mild winters in which only a few cold months were scattered about, like January 2009. This winter is a cold outlier, but that doesn’t change the picture as a whole. Generally it’s going to get warmer, also in the wintertime.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 26 Jan 2010
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10. “Winters with strong frost and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will cease to exist at our latitudes.”
Mojib Latif, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 1 April 2000
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11. “Good bye winter. Never again snow?”
Spiegel, 1 April 2000
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12. “In the northern part of the continent there likely will be some benefits in the form of reduced cold periods and higher agricultural yields. But the continued increase in temperatures will cancel off these benefits. In some regions up to 60% of the species could die off by 2080.”
3Sat, 26 June 2003
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13. “Although the magnitude of the trends shows large variation among different models, Miller et al. (2006) find that none of the 14 models exhibits a trend towards a lower NAM index and higher arctic SLP.”
IPCC 2007 4AR, (quoted by Georg Hoffmann)
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14. “Based on the rising temperature, less snow will be expected regionally. While currently 1/3 of the precipitation in the Alps falls as snow, the snow-share of precipitation by the end of the century could end up being just one sixth.”
Germanwatch, Page 7, Feb 2007
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15. “Assuming there will be a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, as is projected by the year 2030. The consequences could be hotter and drier summers, and winters warmer and wetter. Such a warming will be proportionately higher at higher elevations – and especially will have a powerful impact on the glaciers of the Firn regions.”
and
“ The ski areas that reliably have snow will shift from 1200 meters to 1500 meters elevation by the year 2050; because of the climate prognoses warmer winters have to be anticipated.”
Scinexx Wissenschaft Magazin, 26 Mar 2002
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16. “Yesterday’s snow… Because temperatures in the Alps are rising quickly, there will be more precipitation in many places. But because it will rain more often than it snows, this will be bad news for tourists. For many ski lifts this means the end of business.”
Daniela Jacob, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 8 Aug 2006
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17. “Spring will begin in January starting in 2030.”
Die Welt, 30 Sept 2010
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18. “Ice, snow, and frost will disappear, i.e. milder winters” … “Unusually warm winters without snow and ice are now being viewed by many as signs of climate change.”
Schleswig Holstein NABU, 10 Feb 2007
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19. “Good bye winter… In the northern hemisphere the deviations are much greater according to NOAA calculations, in some areas up to 5°C. That has consequences says DWD meteorologist Müller-Westermeier: When the snowline rises over large areas, the bare ground is warmed up even more by sunlight. This amplifies global warming. A process that is uncontrollable – and for this reason understandably arouses old childhood fears: First the snow disappears, and then winter.”
Die Zeit, 16 Mar 2007
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20. “Warm in the winter, dry in the summer … Long, hard winters in Germany remain rare: By 2085 large areas of the Alps and Central German Mountains will be almost free of snow. Because air temperatures in winter will rise more quickly than in summer, there will be more precipitation. ‘However, much of it will fall as rain,’ says Daniela Jacob of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.”
FOCUS, 24 May 2006
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21. “Consequences and impacts for regional agriculture: Hotter summers, milder plus shorter winters (palm trees!). Agriculture: More CO2 in the air, higher temperatures, foremost in winter.”
Dr. Michael Schirmer, University of Bremen, presentation of 2 Feb 2007
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22. “Winters: wet and mild”
Bavarian State Ministry for Agriculture, presentation 23 Aug 2007
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23. “The climate model prognoses currently indicate that the following climate changes will occur: Increase in minimum temperatures in the winter.”
Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Saxony Date: 6 July 2009
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24. “Both the prognoses for global climate development and the prognoses for the climatic development of the Fichtel Mountains clearly show a warming of the average temperature, whereby especially the winter months will be greatly impacted.”
Willi Seifert, University of Bayreuth, diploma thesis, p. 203, 7 July 2004
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25. “Already in the year 2025 the conditions for winter sports in the Fichtel Mountains will develop negatively, especially with regards to ‘natural’ snow conditions and for so-called snow-making potential. A financially viable ski business operation after about the year 2025 appears under these conditions to be extremely improbable (Seifert, 2004)”.
Andreas Matzarakis, University of Freiburg Meteorological Institute, 26 July 2006
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26. “Skiing among palm trees? … For this reason I would advise no one in the Berchtesgadener Land to invest in a ski-lift. The probability of earning money with the global warming is getting less and less.”
Hartmut Graßl, Director Emeritus,
Max Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, page 3, 4 Mar 2006
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27. “Climate warming leads to an increasingly higher snow line. The number of future ski resorts that can be expected to have snow is reducing. […] Climate change does not only lead to higher temperatures, but also to changes in the precipitation ratios in summer and winter. […] In the wintertime more precipitation is to be anticipated. However, it will fall more often as rain, and less often as snow, in the future.”
Hans Elsasser, Director of the Geographical Institute of the University of Zurich, 4 Mar 2006
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28. “All climate simulations – global and regional – were carried out at the Deutschen Klimarechenzentrum [German Climate Simulation Center]. […] In the winter months the temperature rise is from 1.5°C to 2°C and stretches from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Sea. Only in regions that are directly influenced by the Atlantic (Great Britain, Portugal, parts of Spain) will the winter temperature increase be less (Fig. 1).”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Press Release, Date: December 2007/January 2013.
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29. “By the year 2050 … temperatures will rise 1.5ºC to 2.5°C (summer) and 3°C (winter). … in the summer it will rain up to 40% less and in the winter up to 30% more.
German Federal Department of Highways, 1 Sept 2010
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30. “We are now at the threshold of making reliable statements about the future.”
Daniela Jacob, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, page 44, 10/2001
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31. “The scenarios of climate scientists are unanimous about one thing: In the future in Germany we will have to live with drier and drier summers and a lot more rain in the winters.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 20 May 2010
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32. “In the wintertime the winds will be more from the west and will bring storms to Germany. Especially in western and southern Germany there will be flooding.” FOCUS / Mojib Latif, Leibniz Institute for Ocean Sciences of the University of Kiel, 27 May 2006.
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33. “While the increases in the springtime appear as rather modest, the (late)summer and winter months are showing an especially powerful warming trend.”
State Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Geology, Saxony, p. 133, Schriftenreihe Heft 25/2009.
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34. “Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model … Despite appearing as part of a natural climate oscillation, the large increases in wintertime surface temperatures over the continents may therefore be attributable in large part to human activities,”
Science Daily, Dr. Drew Shindell 4 June 1999
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35. “Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. … Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 20 March 2000
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36. “This data confirms what many gardeners believe – winters are not as hard as they used to be. … And if recent trends continue a white Christmas in Wales could certainly be a thing of the past.”
BBC, Dr Jeremy Williams, Bangor University, Lecturer in Geomatics, 20 Dec 2004
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37. The rise in temperature associated with climate change leads to a general reduction in the proportion of precipitation falling as snow, and a consequent reduction in many areas in the duration of snow cover.”
Global Environmental Change, Nigel W. Arnell, Geographer, 1 Oct 1999
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38. “Computer models predict that the temperature rise will continue at that accelerated pace if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, and also predict that warming will be especially pronounced in the wintertime.”
Star News, William K. Stevens, New York Times, 11 Mar 2000
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39. “In a warmer world, less winter precipitation falls as snow and the melting of winter snow occurs earlier in spring. Even without any changes in precipitation intensity, both of these effects lead to a shift in peak river runoff to winter and early spring, away from summer and autumn.”
Nature, T. P. Barnett et. al., 17 Nov 2005
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40. “We are beginning to approximate the kind of warming you should see in the winter season.”
Star News, Mike Changery, National Climatic Data Center, 11 Mar 2000
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41. “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms but could cause an increase in freezing rain if average daily temperatures fluctuate about the freezing point.”
IPCC Climate Change, 2001
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42. “Global climate change is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, as well as warmer summers and milder winters…9.4.2. Decreased Mortality Resulting from Milder Winters … One study estimates a decrease in annual cold-related deaths of 20,000 in the UK by the 2050s (a reduction of 25%)”
IPCC Climate Change, 2001
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43. “The lowest winter temperatures are likely to increase more than average winter temperature in northern Europe. …The duration of the snow season is very likely to shorten in all of Europe, and snow depth is likely to decrease in at least most of Europe.”
IPCC Climate Change, 2007
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44. “Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
WalesOnline, Sir John Houghton – atmospheric physicist, 30 June 2007
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45. “In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.”
Telegraph, Dr. Peter Stott, Met Office, 24 July 2007
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46. “Winter has gone forever and we should officially bring spring forward instead. … There is no winter any more despite a cold snap before Christmas. It is nothing like years ago when I was younger. There is a real problem with spring because so much is flowering so early year to year.”
Express, Dr Nigel Taylor, Curator of Kew Gardens, 8 Feb 2008
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47. “The past is no longer a guide to the future. We no longer have a stationary climate,”…
Independent, Dr. Peter Stott, Met Office, 27 Jul 2007
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48. “It is consistent with the climate change message. It is exactly what we expect winters to be like – warmer and wetter, and dryer and hotter summers. …the winter we have just seen is consistent with the type of weather we expect to see more and more in the future.”
Wayne Elliott, Met Office meteorologist, BBC, 27 Feb 2007
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49. “ If your decisions depend on what’s happening at these very fine scales of 25 km or even 5 km resolution then you probably shouldn’t be making irreversible investment decisions now.”
Myles Allen, “one of the UK’s leading climate modellers”, Oxford University, 18 June 2009
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50. “It’s great that the government has decided to put together such a scientifically robust analysis of the potential impacts of climate change in the UK.”
Keith Allott, WWF-UK, 18 June 2009
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51. “The data collected by experts from the university [of Bangor] suggests that a white Christmas on Snowdon – the tallest mountain in England and Wales – may one day become no more than a memory.”
BBC News, 20 Dec 2004
[BBC 2013: “Snowdon Mountain Railway will be shut over the Easter weekend after it was hit by 30ft (9.1m) snow drifts.”]
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52. “Spring is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first ‘conclusive proof’ that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, scientists announced yesterday.”
Guardian, 26 Aug 2006.
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53. “Given the increase in the average winter temperature it is obvious that the number of frost days and the number of days that the snow remains, will decline. For Europe the models indicate that cold winters such as at the end of the 20th century, that happened at an average once every ten years, will gradually disappear in the course of the century.” (p. 19), and
“…but it might well be that nothing remains of the snowjoy in the Hautes Fagnes but some yellowed photos because of the climate change … moreover an increase in winter precipitation would certainly not be favorable for recreation!” (p38)
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix, Greenpeace, 2004
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54. “Shindell’s model predicts that if greenhouse gases continue to increase, winter in the Northern Hemisphere will continue to warm. ‘In our model, we’re seeing a very large signal of global warming and it’s not a naturally occurring thing. It’s most likely linked to greenhouse gases,’ he said.
NASA, GISS, 2 June 1999
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55. “We have seen that in the last years and decades that winters have become much milder than before and that there isn’t nearly as much snowfall. All simulations show this trend will continue in the future and that we have to expect an intense warming in the Alps…especially in the foothills, snow will turn to rain and winter sports will no longer be possible anymore.”
Mojib Latif, Leibnitz Institute for Oceanography, University of Kiel, February 17, 2005
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56. Planning for a snowless future: “Our study is already showing that that there will be a much worse situation in 20 years.”
Christopher Krull, Black Forest Tourism Association / Spiegel, 17 Feb 2005
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57. “Rhineland-Palatinate, as will be the case for all of Central Europe, will be affected by higher than average warming rates and winters with snow disappearing increasingly.”
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, “internationally renowned meteorologist”, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 20 Nov 2008
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58. “With the pace of global warming increasing, some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years.”
Guardian, 14 February 2004
[4 January 2013: “Nevis Range, The Lecht, Cairngorm, Glenshee and Glencoe all remain closed today due to the heavy snow and strong winds.”]
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59. “Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 14 Feb 2004
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60. “For the Baltic ringed seal, climate change could mean its demise” warned a team of scientists at the Baltic Sea Experiment (Baltex) conference in Goteborg. “This is because the warming leads to the ice on the Baltic Sea to melt earlier and earlier every year.”
Spiegel, 3 June 2006
[The Local 2013: “Late-season freeze sets Baltic ice record … I’ve never seen this much ice this late in the season.”]
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61. Forecasters Predict More Mild Winter for Europe
Reuters, Nov 09, 2012
FRANKFURT – European weather in the coming winter now looks more likely to be mild than in previous studies, German meteorologist Georg Mueller said in a monthly report.
“The latest runs are generally in favor of a milder than normal winter, especially over northern Europe.”
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62. “Spring is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first ‘conclusive proof’ that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, scientists announced yesterday.”
Guardian, 26 August 2006.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/aug/26/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment
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63. “Given the increase in the average winter temperature it is obvious that the number of frost days and the number of days that the snow remains, will decline. For Europe the models indicate that cold winters such as at the end of the 20th century, that happened at an average once every ten years, will gradually disappear in the course of the century.” (p19)
“…but it might well be that nothing remains of the snowjoy in the Hautes Fagnes but some yellowed photos because of the climate change … moreover an increase in winter precipitation would certainly not be favorable for recreation!” (p38)
Impact of the climate change in Belgium (translated from Dutch).
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix for Greenpeace, 2004
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64. “The hottest year since 1659 spells global doom”
Telegraph December 14, 2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536852/The-hottest-year-since-1659-spells-global-doom.html
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65. “Jay Wynne from the BBC Weather Centre presents reports for typical days in 2020, 2050 and 2080 as predicted by our experiment.”
BBCs Climate Change Experiment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
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66. “Cold winters would gradually disappear.” (p.4)
67. “In Belgium, snow on the ground could become increasingly rare but there would be plenty of grey sky and rain in winter..” (p.6)
The Greenpeace report “Impacts of climate change in Belgium” is available in an abbreviated version in English:
http://www.greenpeace.org/belgium/PageFiles/19049/SumIB_uk.pdf
Impacts of climate change in Belgium
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix for Greenpeace, 2004
Climate scientist van Ypersele is Vice Chair of the IPCC.
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68. “Warmer and Wetter Winters in Europe and Western North America Linked to Increasing Greenhouse Gases.”
NASA, June 2, 1999
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990602/
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69. “The global temperature will increase every year by 0.2°C”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, in Die Zeit, January 15, 2007
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70. “Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry. It is very vulnerable to climate change; the resorts have always been marginal in terms of snow and, as the rate of climate change increases, it is hard to see a long-term future.”
David Viner, of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
February 14, 2004
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland
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71. “Climate change will have the effect of pushing more and more winter sports higher and higher up mountains,…”
Rolf Burki and his colleagues at the University of Zurich
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/03/research.sciencenews
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72. “ In the future, snowdrops will be out in January, primroses in February, mayflowers and lilac in April and wild roses in May, the ponds will be full of tadpoles in March and a month later even the oaks will be in full leaf. If that isn’t enough, autumn probably won’t begin until October.”
Geraint Smith, Science Correspondent, Standard
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/british-seasons-start-to-shift-6358532.html
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73. “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change….There will be more police cars….[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Dr. James Hansen, 1988, in an interview with author Rob Reiss.
Reiss asked how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years.
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74. 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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75. September 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger signing California’s anti-emissions 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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76. 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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77. 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 it is included it here.]
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78. 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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79. “Earth Day” 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist: “At the present rate of nitrogen build-up, 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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80. “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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81. 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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82. 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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83. 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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84. 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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85. 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 added that governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.
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86. Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
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87. 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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88. Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, 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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89. 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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90. Edward Goldsmith, 1991, (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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91. 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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92. 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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93. November 7, 1997, (BBC commentator): “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Niños 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 Niño upon El Niño, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Niño, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”
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94. 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.”
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95. October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
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96. Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian: “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”
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97. March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
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98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
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99. 2005, Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation: “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.”
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100. Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”
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101. June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs: “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.”
[Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week.]
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102. May 31, 2006 Al Gore, CBS Early Show: “…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”
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103. January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City: “But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”
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104. 2008 Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) on a visit to Britain: “The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a sign that the climate is changing.”
[Two exceptionally cold winters followed. The 2009-10 winter may be the coldest experienced in the UK since 1683.]
****
105. June 11, 1986, Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal): “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’”
****
106. June 8, 1972, Christian Science Monitor: “Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.”
****
107. May 15, 1989, Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide [USA] two degrees by 2010.”
The state of affairs in climatology resembles the state of affairs in political science that was discovered by Phillip Tetlock of the University of California Berkeley in the study that was published as the book “Expert Political Judgement.” Tetlock found (p. 236) that the poor performance of political scientists in forecasting the outcomes of political events was a consequence of relying on the “…’Rolodex’ or prestigeous affiliation or ideological compatibility heuristics…” in purchasing the services of scientists rather than statistically demonstrated competency. This was coupled to “…a strong desire among mass public consumers to believe that they live in a predictable world and an equally strong desire among more elite consumers in the media, business and government to appear to be doing the right thing by ritualistically consulting the usual suspects from widely recognized interest groups.”
It would me much, much more effective to present this list (probably pruned, as some claims have not yet really been falsified) with the claim, reference, and then immediately with links to the evidence that refute them.
Indeed, this should be a permanent page on WUWT, regularly updated. One could even name it the Bullshit! page or the Climate Prediction Fail page. This might or might not be useful with respect to all of the science — real science papers are usually very circumspect in their claims. However it would be enormously useful in identify, and debunking, runaway global warming memes by identifying the point where they were released into the wild and comparing the egregious and terrifying predictions with reality. Indeed, it could easily be named The Climate Science that Cried Wolf page or the Chicken Little page.
Here is an example to get it started:
Claim: The oceans will rise by five meters by 2100.
Author: James Hansen, chief of NASA GISS from 1981 to 2013.
Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change
Evidence (so far): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png
(which only goes to 2008, probably because SLR has slowed significantly in the years in between. The satellite (only) part of the right hand end up to the present:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Summary: The rate is “currently” 3.2 mm/year, according to this figure, but also according to this figure the rate itself peaked in a stretch across 2000 to 2006 and has actually dropped slightly since, although the figure splices together three different satellite measures. The tide gauge data: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/tide-gauge-sea-level (as crudely as this presents it) is indicating a slower rate, under 3 mm/year and possibly also slowing.
SLR has been remarkably consistent over the entire 140 years or so of tide gauge data. Within substantial uncertainties, the rate has been 2mm/year plus or minus about 1 mm/year. We are over 1/8 of the way to 2100, decades later than the time Hansen made his egregious predictions of SLR doom, and there is little reason to think that the rate of SLR has any chance of reaching 1 meter by 2100, let alone 5. I suspect most climate scientists are embarrassed by the claim, since current estimates are well under a meter by 2100 and falling rapidly as the years without any significant acceleration add one upon another with CO_2 having increased already by more than 1/3 since roughly 1950.
Conclusion: Failure Pending
Claim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uxfiuKB_R8 (James Hansen, again).
Summary: The arctic will cool as Greenland melts. Storms will grow far more violent. Runaway greenhouse warming will occur and the oceans will (eventually) boil. No kidding.
Evidence: It’s difficult to know where to start. The Arctic is warming (if anything), not cooling. Greenland is not melting. Storms are not more violent or more frequent. There is no evidence of runaway greenhouse warming in the longest running climate proxy reconstructions even when Antarctica was warm and green during the summers and CO_2 levels were as much as 20 times higher than they are today. The Ordovician-Silurian transition glacial epoch began with CO_2 levels some 17 times higher than the present, and peaked with CO_2 levels some 10 times the present. Nobody knows why (and some very exotic stuff is presented as possible reasons — the sun passing through an galactic cloud of space dust, that sort of thing).
Conclusion: Fail so far. In fact, not even a hint of success. Time frame uncertainty makes it difficult to properly falsify, though, at least until Greenland melts.
Let’s redo a few from up above:
37. The rise in temperature associated with climate change leads to a general reduction in the proportion of precipitation falling as snow, and a consequent reduction in many areas in the duration of snow cover.”
Global Environmental Change, Nigel W. Arnell, Geographer, 1 Oct 1999
****
38. “Computer models predict that the temperature rise will continue at that accelerated pace if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, and also predict that warming will be especially pronounced in the wintertime.”
Star News, William K. Stevens, New York Times, 11 Mar 2000
****
39. “In a warmer world, less winter precipitation falls as snow and the melting of winter snow occurs earlier in spring. Even without any changes in precipitation intensity, both of these effects lead to a shift in peak river runoff to winter and early spring, away from summer and autumn.”
Nature, T. P. Barnett et. al., 17 Nov 2005
Evidence: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
Summary: From 1967 to the present, there is a robust trend towards increasing NH snow extent. Five of the top six years for snow extent occurred between 2003 and the present. There is on average rough 1 million square kilometers greater snow extent now/recently than there was in the supposedly colder 1960s.
Conclusion: Fail. Fail. Fail. Also, What’s Up With That? If one admits as a general hypothesis the idea that NH snow extent should scale at least crudely inversely with NH temperature, the slope should be negative! Monthly anomaly data (also available on this site) are no better — they (curiously) show that the monthly anomalies were much higher before 1986, plunged quite suddenly over the three years from 1987 to 1990, and have been generally recovering ever since with slightly better than neutral anomalies for the last few years. In addition to just how they compute an “anomaly” (certainly not relative to the mean of the graph) this raises consistency issues — just how are the anomalies so anemic compared to the snow extent that in some sense should sum over the anomalies? Either way, though, Fail Fail Fail.
97. March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
Evidence: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=10773750185851 (view at medium resolution.) Date: April 2, 2014 is 13 years after 2001.
Summary: Count the islands.
Conclusion: Don’t be silly.
105. June 11, 1986, Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal): “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’”
Evidence: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1986/to:2006 (Hansen’s endpoints, not mine.)
Summary: Let’s be generous and assume that Hansen (a scientist) was using 2 F and not 2 C (which is what he should have meant, but this is Congress). The direct evidence is for 0.4 C of warming, which is 0.72 F. His prediction was too high by a factor of almost three. But this doesn’t begin to indicate the depth of the problem. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1986/to:2015 shows that temperatures have actually decreased since 2006, to where if we actually use the February endpoint against 1986, there has only been 0.2 C or 0.4 F rounding up over not a decade, but thirteen years.
Separately, we could consider plots of Holocene temperature reconstructions, general Pliestocene temperature reconstructions, adjust for the usual high frequency vs low frequency problem with the proxies, and conclude that it is probable that temperatures now are lower than they were in the Holocene optimum (since we’re still warming in recovery from the LIA, the coldest single stretch in the Holocene in 9000 years), or we could consider more recent non-hockey-stick evidence that suggests that the Medieval warm period was very likely just about as warm as today. Either way, Hansen’s assertion for highest in 100,000 years — spotting him the entire Wisconsin and Younger Dryas even though that is just silly — is probably false, it might be the warmest in 1000 years. Or it might not. Lots of thumbs on the HADCRUT scales and it is nearly impossible to precisely determine global average surface temperatures with thermometers.
Conclusion: This is sworn testimony to the US Congress? This is the man that headed NASA GISS for decades? Why not just put http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind in charge of the National Science Foundation? How in the world could the United States put a man who so obviously lacked anything approximating scientific objectivity in charge of an organization which then unsurprisingly devoted all of its considerable and growing resources into proving him right by any means necessary?
Fail.
So please, WUWT members, contribute. It isn’t enough to just post assertions of failure (even if some of them are obvious). Document them. With sound, unbiased links to third party evidence, journal articles, graphs, photographs. Is Nebraska blowing away? Post photographs and links to the true state of Nebraska these days. Is Malaria in Spain running wild? Post links like this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3375659/ that correctly and reasonably identify the cause of increased Mediterranean malaria to increased immigration from malaria rich African countries, who then reseed existing Anopheles populations with the parasite. Post links to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal and quote:
“When the canal reached Montezuma Marsh (at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse), over 1,000 workers died of “swamp fever” (malaria) and construction stopped.”
Note things such as the fact that this was in the middle of the Dalton Minimum, a few short years after the Tambora explosion put 38 cubic miles of pulverized dust into the atmosphere (1815) and the infamous “Year without a Summer” (1816). This is a few miles away from where I lived (Skaneateles) in upstate New York, and even now it is as cold as a well-digger’s ass. Malaria was pandemic in Siberia, Canada, the US, Northern Europe throughout the coldest of times because the Anopheles mosquito is perfectly happy in any swampy terrain that melts during the summer — subzero winter temperatures are nearly irrelevant to it except in that they limit the season it is likely to bite. It wasn’t climate change that ended the threat of malaria in developed countries, it was antibiotics and DDT and expensive modern medicine that all but eradicated it in the US and most of Europe.
This should really be a running project, as there are plenty of old claims and absurdities not on the list (I’ve added a few) and I’m sure more are coming in all the time. Some reasonable amount of care should be taken to put up only objectively verifiable data or peer reviewed publications (except where the refutation can be reduced to e.g. pictures of Tuvalu, unsubmerged by an ocean that stubbornly refuses to rise any faster than the 2-3 mm/year it has risen for a century or more).
rgb
Sasha, Les Johnson, Jimbo et al: great lists of failed prediction stuff
They all can be filed under ‘Lest We Forget!’
John
Mod, a tiny bit of help, please. I failed to correctly close a boldface tag (sigh) and wrote “13 years” where I meant to write “27 years” when addressing Hansen’s prediction of 2F warming in 20 years. I also made several trivial grammar errors, but (double sigh) it probably isn’t worth the effort of correcting them so I’ll just have to sound illiterate. Again. Damn.
rgb
REPLY: Fixed what I could find, the only mention of 13 years seems correct in context, leave another comment with details if need be – Anthony
Rarely do I side with the AGW point of view, but to call these “failed predictions” is really stretching it. Some are notable, but very few.
Well, some haven’t failed yet because they make claims about times that haven’t happened yet. In many of those cases, though, the evidence does not support the claim while it may not yet have technically falsified it. Who knows, arctic ice could “collapse” next year! A super-ENSO could cause global temperature to rocket up by 0.6 C and put it back in the middle or even upper end of the GCM pack. Greenland could melt.
Or, it could stay about the same. Or, it could get colder. That’s the hard thing about predicting the future. So much possibility — until it happens.
But many, many of the claims above (and many more not yet on the list) are patently ridiculous and their failure should be documented. US workers moving to Mexico because of a repeat of the Great Dust Bowl? In the future, who can say, but within the time frame claimed for the prediction, no, this is an objective failure.
But I’d like to see the evidence for alpine temperatures compared to the claims for alpine temperatures, specifically, or the evidence for snow vs rainfall in Germany, or whatever. See it presented, with a link to an “official” site or reliable site with the refuting data.
Seriously, this might actually shut up the real nut-jobs out there, if they were publicly called on each absurdity as it fails. Enough failures and — well we all know the story of the boy that cried wolf — the key thing is to publicly identify the people that are doing it because nobody remembers ten years later, so somehow they retain an aura of respectability and credibility.
rgb
Sasha and Anthony,
Since I started writing this, I see that rgbatduke has weighed in with several of the points I make here. But I’ll make them, anyway.
Many thanks for the list. But I’m afraid it needs a bit of winnowing and sub-division.
Some (e.g. no. 3) make predictions that can’t be judged yet. It’s incorrect to say they are failed. Flawed, maybe; but not yet failed.
Some (e.g. no. 5) make predictions, but give no specific date by which events will happen. It’s not easy to say when they’ve failed (or succeeded).
Some (e.g. no. 99) are (perhaps) literally true statements, though the predictions they reference are failed. But who made those predictions?
Some (e.g. no. 104) use enough weasel words not to make any specific prediction, so they can’t fail.
Others (e.g. no. 2) don’t, if you look at them closer, seem to mean anything at all.
I skimmed the first 20, and the only ones which passed my (ex-mathematician’s) smell test as actually “failed” were numbers 7 and, arguably, 10.
Maybe the problem is more failure to furnish falsifiable forecasts than the falseness of the few falsifiable forecasts?
Cheers,
Neil
this thread is the most stunning and damning examination of CAGW alarmism I have ever seen. It will take me weeks to go through it all. Wow.
I believe a web page is called for for all failed predictions and a voting system to keep up a top ten of who made the worst predictions, which newspapers fell for it and the funniest predictions.
This needs serious mockery.
Just getting through them…
So far, this one has struck me particularly…. There really should be an accounting for this one given the (engineered) increase in fuel costs in recent years….
“42. “Global climate change is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, as well as warmer summers and milder winters…9.4.2. Decreased Mortality Resulting from Milder Winters … One study estimates a decrease in annual cold-related deaths of 20,000 in the UK by the 2050s (a reduction of 25%)”
IPCC Climate Change, 2001”
Presumably we will have to go through a “peak-deaths” in the trend first then?
Please no-one tell me I need to put a “sarc” after that?
Oh. Angry too……
Especially as it is killing off early the very generation that fought and died (by the million) to ensure that this crowd of self-haters can have the comfortable arm-chair pontificating that we are subject to.
All for the greater good of course.
Did I say I was angry?
Now to read the rest.
.
Angry…….I’m sure I’m not alone either….
george e. conant says:
April 2, 2014 at 3:13 pm
this thread is the most stunning and damning examination of CAGW alarmism I have ever seen.
One big problem, George, is that the statements made by the CAGW alarmists mostly remain floating around as if they were true. The head of NASA/GISS said warming would continue and the oceans will boil. If that guy said it, it must be true.
Getting the truth out here and throughout the “skepticosphere” is easy. Getting it “out there” where the Main Stream Media controls what is true, is another matter entirely.
Some Earth Day Predictions:
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” Kenneth Watt
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” George Wald
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” • Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” • New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” • Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” • Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“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….” • Life Magazine, January 1970
“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.” • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” • Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“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.” • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
I think it is HERE.
——————————-
It is high time we got this thing together via a brainstorm to list predictions that have clearly failed. Wadhams is the next likely target for September 2016. He has been very firm with this as a final date for the Arctic to be ice free without caveat.
On this page Pierre has been clear that some of the predictions have been pushed forward so we have to wait. A clear date deadline is the key with no caveats. 50 million climate refugees set a date. Maslowski set a date.
If I said there may be 50 million climate refugees by 2012, I get wiggle room. If I said there WILL be 50 million climate refugees by 2012 then I have failed.
See my list of Arctic ice free predicitons HERE on WUWT. Now look for the weasel words and caveats.
Xinhua News Agency – 1 March 2008
“If Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions,” Orheim said.
[Dr. Olav Orheim – Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat]
__________________
Canada.com – 16 November 2007
“According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015.
“And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” said Fortier,””
[Professor Louis Fortier – Université Laval, Director ArcticNet]
__________________
National Geographic – 12 December 2007
“NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” ”
[Dr. Jay Zwally – NASA]
__________________
BBC – 12 December 2007
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,”…….”So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
[Professor Wieslaw Maslowski]
__________________
Independent – 27 June 2008
Exclusive: Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer
“…..It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it’s not happened before,” Professor Wadhams said.”
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
__________________
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Vol. 40: 625-654 – May 2012
The Future of Arctic Sea Ice
“…..one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover…..”
[Professor Wieslaw Maslowski]
__________________
Yale Environment360 – 30 August 2012
“If this rate of melting [in 2012] is sustained in 2013, we are staring down the barrel and looking at a summer Arctic which is potentially free of sea ice within this decade,”
[Dr. Mark Drinkwater]
__________________
Guardian – 17 September 2012
“This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates“.
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
__________________
Sierra Club – March 23, 2013
“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….”
[Paul Beckwith – PhD student paleoclimatology and climatology – part-time professor]
__________________
Financial Times Magazine – 2 August 2013
“It could even be this year or next year but not later than 2015 there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in the summer,”
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
95. October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
.
Bit of a shame this one. Childhood hero of mine.
As an aside wasn’t it Sagan who stated on camera that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”?
Crap. Lots more out there, including some of my stuff I had not documented, like this Oxfam prediction of 75 million refugess by 2050.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/#comment-643485
Plus in that posting, lots more references from me, Jimbo, CuriousGeorge and more….
In my guest-thread, Notes from Skull Island: Why Skeptics Aren’t Well-Funded and Well-Organized, at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/ , I listed 22 things that would be happening if contrarians were in fact well-organized and well-funded. Here’s item 11:
$1 million a year devoted to such a research project would deliver plenty of bang for the buck. Or even $100,000. C’mon, NSF, ante up!
Just finished. Thank you very kindly for those.
To paraphrase Oliver, have you got any more?.
Jimbo: I thought I recognized the style. That was some of your sea ice predictions in my long list.
I looked, and sure enough, it was your name in the “hat tip” column of the data.
PS: The richest vein to mine for their failed predictions is the printed literature of alarmist organizations, such as their monthly newsletters. They would have been likely to pick up and document virtually every alarmist forecast that was printed or, more important, uttered at a climatist coven but not “in the literature.” There are sure to be some real doozies there, more extreme than what they committed to print.
Libraries must have huge collections of this stuff, as must the organizations’ own archives. Searching and transcribing this material would be a major effort, especially searching the foreign-language archives, but it should pay major dividends after only 10% of the job had been done. Heck, after only 1% of the way to the end.
I don’t see how the NSF could rationally turn down a funding request for such a project. It would do so, of course, but that action would play poorly in Peoria, and hand us a nice talking point, so our side should try to provoke them into making it.
The greatest benefit would come from quotes by IPCC authors and bigshots, as this would suggest prejudice and bias on the organization’s part.
They’re sitting ducks! Let’s get them in our sights!
On WUWT Climate Fail Files there is one entry.
50 million climate refugees
You could add Professor Wieslaw Maslowski’s prediction of an ice free Arctic on or by 2013. He said that date was already too conservative. He later revised his prediction but that should not get him off the Climate Fail Files. He failed. Don’t let them get away with revision, otherwise the page would be worthless.
If you’re of a certain age, these quotes function like a time machine being wonderfully nostalgic. I remember when I first became aware of global warming: a very non-scientific friend who felt great longing to be counted among the beau monde told me about a lecture she had attended at a university; the subject was “global warming.” She said that in a decade the sea-level would rise to an extent that would destroy coastlines along the United States. I recall that I met this news with considerable skepticism, by which I’d have you note that my friend was politically hip before it was cool, and I was similarly a denier before that had even become a heresy. So we were early adopters, both of us!
Items 73, 85, 95, 98, 99 and 105 are especially resonant for me. If memory serves my friend attended the lecture around 1987 so Hansen’s remark about the submerged highway provides quite a blast from the past. Takes me back to my vigorous youth!
Oh, should mention that the United States coastline wasn’t devastated by the way! What a relief! (Didn’t want to leave everyone here wondering what happened ….)
Given the circumstances, I’d say my skepticism has some warrant.
“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change….There will be more police cars….[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Dr. James Hansen, 1988, in an interview with author Rob Reiss
Well, it COULD happen! /choke…snarf…sarc…gurgle/ What fun! I’m so glad some of you are so anal or have so much time on your hands (or else are very organized, have high performance standards, and work very hard and smart) to debunk these insufferable, murderous idiots. Well done. Pour it on (and I’ll try to contribute content/$/whatever that helps). Respectfully, JimF
PPS: A lot of the richest newsletter material, from before 2000 or so, isn’t online–or isn’t easily findable. The good parts may have been edited out if too ridiculous. That’s why a search of the printed literature would pay big dividends. But an online search of newsletter archives could be an inexpensive first step.
It won’t be necessary. Build it and they will come. Then the media will be piqued to ask warmists to explain their documented failures.
Our talking points will be: “They were just as sure THEN–and they were wrong–so why should we let them fool us twice?” Also, “97% of climatologers were 97% wrong–and still they claim the case is closed?! If so, it’s their side that’s lost.”
PPPS: Another resource to search would be the newspaperarchives (pay) site.
“98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist:” If that is the Lubos of TRF, I find that difficult to believe, plus Lubos Motl was born in l973.