10 Failed Predictions: Video

I’ve done pretty well over the years selling Survived T-shirts.  I Survived Y2K was a best seller.  I Survived 2012 was a good one too.  I’m working on I Survived COVID shirts now.  

I’ve been searching the internet for more T-shirt opportunities and compiled a list of catastrophic predictions.  Unfortunately most of the prediction dates have come and gone without catastrophe.  I captured the ones listed in above article that have passed in 2020 without incident. Maybe the recent predictions by Prince Charles and AOC will make Survived T-shirt status.  😜

1967 – Paul Ehrlich – “the time of famines” was already upon us and would be at its worst and most disastrous by 1975.  – predicted famines didn’t happen.

1969, Ehrlich  “by the time we have enough evidence to convince people” about the world’s runaway population growth, a limited food supply, and man’s contamination of the environment, “you’re dead” because “everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years” –  blue steam didn’t happen.  

1970 – Ehrlich –  “the oceans would be as dead as Lake Erie in less than a decade,” and that America would have water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980 –  didn’t happen.  At least Lake Erie is doing a little better.

I could keep going on Erlich, he’s a catastrophic alarmist that keeps giving failed prophecies as more of a doomsday fiction writer.  But let’s move on to others.

1970, James P. Lodge Jr. – air pollution will obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the 21st century – hmm, wrong temperature direction buddy

1971 – Dr. S. I. Rasool – in the next 50 years, i.e., by 2021, the fine dust we put into the atmosphere by fossil-fuel burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees. – hmm, wrong temperature direction buddy

1972 – R. K. Matthews – wrote in a letter to President Richard Nixon that “a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.” – hmm, still waiting

1974 – George and Helena Kukla – the world has plunged into a new ice age, with snow and ice cover of the earth having increased by as much as 12% in just five years, from 1967 to 1971 – hmm, wrong temperature direction buddies

1974 – Dr. Reid Bryson  “The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinary mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.” – hmm, wrong temperature direction buddy

1988 – James Hansen – forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s – didn’t happen.

1988 – Hussein Shihab – Maldives completely under water in 30 years – didn’t happen

1989 – James Hansen – New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019 – didn’t happen.

2000 – David Viner – very dire prediction for those living in England: Snow was going to become almost extinct there, snow on the isles was going to be “a very rare and exciting event,” “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time.” – still plenty of snow in UK winters

2008 – Hansen – Arctic will be ice-free by 2018
2008 – Al Gore – warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013
2009 – Al Gore – Arctic ice-free by 2014 
2009 – John Kerry – Arctic ice-free by 2014
2013 – Peter Wadhams – Arctic ice-free by 2015
2013 – US Navy – Arctic ice-free by 2016
2014 – Peter Wadhams – Arctic ice-free is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018
How can so many be so wrong with predictions of arctic ice?

2010 – Andrew Derocher/Steve Amstrup/Ian Stirling – two thirds of the world’s bears will be lost by mid-century due to climate change – oops, polar bear population increasing, not decreasing

2003 – National Park Service – Computer models indicate the Glacier National Park glaciers will all be gone by the year 2020, and they put up many signs advertising this –  they quietly removed the signs in early 2020. 

2002 – Lonnie Thompson – snow on the summit of Africa’s highest mountain Kilimanjaro will completely disappear between 2015 and 2020, thanks to global warming – snow still on Kilimanjaro 

2009 – Gordon Brown – 50 Days to Save The Planet From Catastrophe

2009 – Laurent Fabius – we only have 500 days to stop climate chaos

Prince Charles –
2009 -We Have 96 Months to Save World
2019 – the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  –
2019, Jan – The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change
2019, May – Like the “world ending in 12 years” thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal –  a walk back from her Jan remark
2019, Sept – What is not realistic is not responding to the crisis – not responding with a solution on the scale of the crisis. …Because what’s not realistic is Miami not existing in a few years. That’s not realistic – I love the double negatives, is Miami going to exist in a few years or not?

UAH December 1997 = 0.25
UAH December 2020 = 0.27

Doubt you find any alarmist predictions of no warming over the next 23 years back in the Kyoto era.

This video should be required for all High School students. Oh wait…for a moment I thought our schools were for education and knowledge. Silly me!