Essay by Eric Worrall
Are failed climate doomsday prophecies are coming home to roost?
Back in 2016, Professor Guy McPherson predicted we’d all be dead in the next decade.
Since then most of us have quite plainly not died, and even Michael Mann has been forced to downgrade his doomsday prophecies.
Democrats and globalists are abandoning climate doomsday predictions and embracing the new scare, artificial intelligence.
The inventor of the Gaea hypothesis James Lovelock recanted his climate alarmism.
Pope Leo’s first encyclical all but ignored the fake climate crisis, and focussed instead on AI.
2012 wasn’t the first doomsday Professor Guy McPherson predicted. Back in 2007 Guy McPherson predicted peak oil would cause permanent blackouts starting in 2012.
The end of civilization and the extinction of humanity
By Guy McPherson, originally published by Nature Bats Last (blog)
August 29, 2007…
Many experts who write about simply one of these issues — Peak Oil — predict complete economic collapse within a decade, followed shortly thereafter by utter chaos and the subsequent death of more than 80% of the world’s population. After all, the exponential curve of human population growth matches perfectly the exponential growth of world energy supply, suggesting that the downturn of the energy curve will cause a large-scale die-off of human beings. And if you think chaos can’t descend on this country, you weren’t paying attention to New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Horrible as that event was, nearly everybody involved knew it was a temporary inconvenience; I’m concerned how people might act when they recognize Peak Oil as a long emergency.
One by one, starting in 2012, the world’s cities will experience permanent blackouts; and once we enter the Dark Age, the Stone Age won’t be too far behind. Bear in mind, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I know the current culture — the culture of make believe, or the culture of death, depending on how deeply you care to think about it — is the worst possible route for most of the planet’s species; as a conservation biologist, I realize the faster and more complete the collapse of Empire, the greater our biological legacy. On the other hand, the paralyzing hand of fear grips me every time I think about Peak Oil; a life in the ivory tower is damned poor preparation for Stone-Age living. Fortunately, I only think about it a few thousand times each day.
Read more: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2007-08-29/end-civilization-and-extinction-humanity/
…
So what is Professor Guy McPherson up to these days? You’re be glad to know that to date he has not been claimed by the mass extinction. A few weeks ago he gave an interview discussing the dangers of microplastics and the destabilisation of the global magnetosphere – and explained how we’re actually in the 9th mass extinction – or maybe the 10th or 12th.
Perhaps I’m not being fair – we still have a few months until November, the 10 year anniversary of Guy McPherson’s global warming mass extinction prophecy. Don’t forget, the science is settled folks.
McPherson is just an ordinary attention seeker.
I took him up on his preposterous claims 8 years ago or more. I suggested he was probably not getting laid enough and this was an attempt to attract more wide-eyed climate girlies.
I got no response. This bloke deserved all the ridicule he got.
Perhaps concern with microplastics is his projection to compensate for a personal micro problem.
Now, Now, be nice. No hits below the belt.
Some of those perfessors would be getting nervous about the ability of AI to hack accounts and scrape the net-
‘Shark Tank’ Legend Exposes Major Scandal of Who’s Behind Protests
Yes, he is one of many. Coming up in the not too distant future is the AOC prediction:
“Millennials and Gen Z, and all these folks that… are looking for the future, we’re like: ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change’.” – January 21, 2019
He seems to have made a well-paid career of making predictions
My prediction, for the foreseeable future, is that AI (artificial intelligence) is going to be no smarter than a box of rocks.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra
I wonder if one of the many competing AI apps can produce a “Rogues Gallery” of all the climate catastrophists & grifters since the 1970s until now who were / are the most egregious purveyors of doom for humanity and the planet?
That makes AI more capable in Congress than most Democrats.
“most”? How about “all”?
I have Hope that there’s at least 1 junior Democrat Congressman out there with more than 1 neuron
The only Democrat Senator who manages to make sense from time to time, is the one who had a stroke.
That’s no way to talk about Biden. Who probably still thinks he’s a Senator!
He should switch to Republican.
He votes more Republican than some Republicans.
The radicals in his party will be going after him like they go after Republicans.
That is not setting the bar very high though.
We know that there are at least Four Dems in Repubs disguise in that group.
Well that’s how they make Democrat Senators…first ingredient is the foreskin of a Republican
So, you’re saying it may achieve the same level of smartitude as, say, the Democrat Party? 🙂
Oh, dear God. Help us.
It appears that he hasn’t been much help to date. Perhaps some of the early books may have been written by AI.
It has been my experience that rocks in the wild, at least when they find their way onto roads such as freeway on-ramps, will generally get off the road after being hit once or twice. Rocks aren’t quite as smart as deer, which will remove themselves from an area when hunters are in the field, without the necessity of getting shot. However, I think that you are selling rocks short — whether they are in a box or not! The unanswered question is, “Which are dumber, rocks or the CEOs who think that massive unemployment will boost the economy and sell lots of their products to people who are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from than having things they don’t need and they can’t eat.
Are you saying that CEOs who keep employees who aren’t needed is the best way to improve the economy?
Didn’t the Soviets try that?
No, what I’m really saying is that CEO’s who think AI can replace humans haven’t looked at the big picture and don’t have a grasp of how a consumer economy works. What the Soviets tried is exactly what AI enthusiasts are promoting — a planned economy where everyone is minimally provided for but the only people who live well are those who run the state.
These fear mongers need to be pilloried and sued (pick a reason, these days it’s not important since the process is the sentence).
How a “professor” can be so totally wrong about so many things, and maintain his position is beyond me. !
A person with his record, working in any other field, would be unemployable.
“Professor-emeritus”
Not sure he was employed. This was ten years ago too.
Look at Ehrlich, everything he has ever predicted, going back at least 50 years has turned out to be not only wrong, but wrong by huge margins.
Yet he is still feted as being the profit of our ages.
As long as what you are predicting can be used to support the left wing narrative, being wrong will never be allowed to damage your career.
No, Bill Gates is the “profit” of our ages. 🙂
The profitor from vaccines
Many academic colleagues of media self-promoters such as Ehrlich and Carl Sagan privately mocked them. That is in part why Sagan failed to gain tenure at Harvard. I have a brilliant long time friend and colleague schooled in mathematics and earth and planetary sciences, (BS, MS — MIT) , and geophysics (PhD — Texas A&M) who told me that many in the planetary science community had little respect for Sagan.
Lacking appropriate scientific humility, they are examples illustrating the fact that academic brilliance is not correlated with real world common sense.
It’s been discussed how Climate Change/global Warming plus other names is very much a religion.
I had a girl friend many years age whose sister was very religious and believed that the Rapture was imminent.
It appears that Macpherson has the same line of thinking??
Well, that’s probably better than having a girlfriend of few years age.
(Unless of course, you’re a member of certain cultures / religions).
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself. 1st job was as a proof-reader at a newspaper)
Yes. The Rapture, the Climax…oh, the Climate…
I’m not “religious” (I dislike the word), but I am a staunch believer in Jesus Christ.
While the word “rapture” is not found in most all Bibles, the truth of the concept of “the rapture” is absolutely in the Bible (below) – God’s word, from which all mankind derives morality and truth. While science is completely fallible, God is not, cannot be. The God of the Bible is the source of all creation. (I guess this righteous declaration now opens me up to all manner of castigation and abuse; for, being Christian is apparently the secular world’s default persecutable. Go ahead, piss on my 1st amendment right – those so inclined to, go ahead, show everyone what liberal democrats you are). 🙂
The rapture: 1 Thessalonians 4:”16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”
And as I understand it, the “rapture” is absolutely imminent, and all readers here would do well to understand all its implications.
So you are one of the gullible.
Most disappointing.
altipuri, I’ll pray for you. No, really. I want the best for you. Not much over 2 decades ago, I had your sentiments about Christ. I was so very wrong.
Well, if you’ve changed once already, the next time should be easier.
I recently saw a podcast about entanglement of electrons. The people began to discuss the situation at the big bang. Was everything entangled? Was the Creator (God) the small ball of sub-atomic particles? Did the Creator (God) decide to scatter his constituent parts all throughout the universe? What if everything is entangled in some form or fashion? Does the Creator (God) see everything, know everything, control the universe?
Philosophical I know, but fun to think about. I put God into parenthesis for the folks that don’t believe in a spiritual being. I do, but you’re free to believe what you want. If you do, think about a soul, what it is, and how it might actually be a part of God.
Jim, why does the universe need a Creator, if the Creator doesn’t need one? Positing a Creator for the universe is just kicking the can down the road.
It always amazes me how atheists, who believe in things that can’t be proven, have managed to convince themselves that they are the smart ones.
If God made Adam in his own image, why would God need a penis? Where would God have gotten the idea for a vagina when there was no counter part to God? Wouldn’t it make more sense that God was female and and Her progeny reproduced asexually either by parthenogenesis or ‘Virgin Birth’ like Mary of Nazareth?
Imminent is an adjective that describes something about to happen very soon.
People have been predicting it for 190 years.
More like 1900 years!
Ozonebust, get out your white board; on the leftmost part of the board, place a tinny tiny dot. Then starting at the dot, using one of those red white-board markers, draw a straight line across the board with it ending in an arrow pointing at the symbol that represents infinity. The dot is “imminent”. Stand back 6 feet. Can you even see the tinny tiny dot? If you drew it correctly, the answer is NO. Then think about the stats of what you drew. “Imminent” decays to nothing, eternity never stops.
In Jesus, God has given us freedom thru His grace to choose Jesus in faith – it is a gift from God, lest anyone should boast. It is your free choice. Please, please, think about about it. I want to see you on that line in eternity.
A good lace to start about the history of Christianity in the Bible is Acts. It jumps right in to the heart of it.
That’s your belief system, and I am happy for you. Stop the preaching.
You start by saying you’re not religious, but the rest of your post shows that you’re extremely religious. So how can we take anything you say seriously?
Also, if you believe the rapture is “absolutely imminent” could you please name the day. Or could it be that your prediction of the rapture is as bogus as all the other predictions over the last hundred years or more?
There is a distinction between “religious” (adhering to a set of outward practices and principles – law) and inward faith. The gospels are replete with examples of conflict between the religious authorities and Jesus. This is the classic challenge of balancing between the essential guard rails of law and love.
Religion allows for Islam, Hinduism, etc.etc. Jesus having died on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in the only begotten son of God is saved from eternal condemnation, the state into which we are all born because of original sin, is what happened.
Christianity is not religion, it is truth, it is what happened, it is history. Read the Biblical history book (the Bible), and learn the truth.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees were religious, so intransigent in their religious beliefs that they could not recognize the very Savior they espoused was coming and who was perfect and true in every way. Those “religious” people had Jesus killed. “Religion” is a bad word, but I see the necessity of it in this secular world for people that are ignorant of the truth.
“original sin” is b.s. A newborn is innocent. Original Sin was “introduced” into the Church’s “laws” about the time of Constantine, to gain even more control over the “followers”. Of course, when religion (any) enters the arena of discussion, Common Sense and Logic, exit.
sturmudgen, Agree that a newborn is innocent; but the newborn, like all humans, is imbued with sin. As I understand it, children lacking sufficient cognition (God alone determines) to know Jesus are saved because of their innocence. God is good. He gave us the choice to choose Jesus as our savior. Unless, or until, we accept Jesus, all humans remain condemned. John 3:”18 “He who believes in Him [Jesus Christ] is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Genesis 2 specifies God’s command that Adam&Eve (in essence, all us us – mankind) defied: Genesis 2:”15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””
The original sin: Genesis 3: “4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” <– Don’t know how you can get any more “original” then the 3rd chapter of the Bible – just after mankind was created.
There is a difference between being religious and being a believer.
“There is a difference between being religious and being a believer.”
MarkW, Very well put. The difference is a chasm. “Religion” gets you absolutely nothing except perhaps false hope, allowing one to totally falsely believe they are good (if you rely on religion/religious, you are living in filthy rags before God). Faith is Jesus Christ gets you everything.
This clown predicted “peak oil would cause permanent blackouts starting in 2012.”
The gormless twit probably wasn’t aware that very little electricity is produced from oil !!!
Proclamations like those in the above article are just another reminder of why the climate alarmists are just comedians with another name. The difference is that at least comedians are fairly consistent in generating humor, while the alarmists just generate derision and are soon ignored entirely.
And with most comedians, they are actually trying to be funny…
… (except on CNN where they fail miserably)
Climate wonks like McFearson expect people to take them seriously !
CNN and SNL.
Are failed climate doomsday prophecies are coming home to roost?
No. And they will not, either. If you want to know what happens when prophecies fail, read the book. “When Prophecy Fails”, by Leon_Festinger, Henry_Riecken & Stanley Schachter. There is a pretty good summary here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
Many of those with the highest levels of belief, commitment, and social support became more committed to their beliefs, began to court publicity in ways they had not before, and developed various rationalizations for the absence of the flood
That is what has happened in the climate case, and it will continue to happen. The failure of renewables will prompt demands to spend more and build more of them. The failure of climate disasters to happen will prompt ever more virulent denucnations of ‘deniers’. And so on.
It will fade out very gradually and there will still be pockets of true believers in 2100. Just as there are still believers in the great Soviet utopia, still trying to persuade the rest of us to give it one more shot.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have also had many failed apocalyptic predictions in the 20c, whose fate and effects are instructive examples of the likely turnout of the climate mania.
However much everyone might wish that the predictions would not happen and then everyone would wake up and stop believing, that isn’t how this works. MyUserName will still be prophesying climate disaster and the replacement of fossil fuels by wind and solar until the day he or she dies. Regardless of events. As will the others here and elsewhere. In fact the failure of their prophecies will only reinforce their belief.
Soviet era socialism is prospering in both UK and Australia. The socialist governments have rewarded themselves and supporters hansomely.
The State of Victoria is so bad that Union standover tactics are highly rewarded by high paid jobs for nothing more than protecting the corruption. Some of the Union take is recycled through the Labor party to ensure they stay in power.
Victoria is on an accelerating path to impoverishment. The prospect for the credit rating to be reduced is growing. S&P is looking to downgrade from current AA rating.
ALL heavy industry in Australia is on soviet era support to remain operational.
Failed prophesies aside, Michel, be very careful of saying the word “Jehovah”.
People have been stoned just for saying their halibut dinner was fit for Jehovah.
Ed Milliband’s father was a true believer in Marxism all his life, yet died a rich man.
Ed inherited some of his fortune, avoiding some inheritance tax in the process, and now seems to be doing his best to complete his father’s life work. So far he is succeeding in the UK in deindustrializing the cities and industrialising the countryside, all at great cost to the people who actually pay the taxes.
I wonder if the good professor is now relieved or disappointed.
Shouldn’t that be either
Our failed climate doomsday prophecies are coming home to roost?
Or
Are failed climate doomsday prophecies
arecoming home to roost?Yes, of course.
Leave out the second “are” in the last sentence.
If you look closely, you can see a strikethrough on the second “are”.
(The window for editing is about 5 minutes. Your post came about 11 hours after.)
Along with “hansomely”.
Per Google AI
How many recent Climate Doomsday Prophecies have failed to materialize in their predicted time frame?
While there is no single, official master list tracking every incorrect environmental forecast, research groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) have documented at least 50 high-profile climate and environmental doomsday predictions that have failed to materialize over the last several decades.
Historically, these missed timelines generally fall into a few prominent categories:
1. The “New Ice Age” and Global Cooling (1970s)
2. Immediate Resource Depletion and Mass Starvation (1970s–1980s)
3. Total Loss of Arctic Ice (2000s)
4. Submerged Island Nations (1980s–2010s)
Always good to Train AI by asking these types of questions.
I asked MS Copilot if any of my teaching of it was being permanently embedded. It responded that it only retains my teaching of it for my use. And I suspect that will only be retained while I have a subscription.
After a teaching session, I asked it to write a few paragraphs on how ice microphysics in the tropical atmosphere sets the ocean surface temperature to the sustainable limit of 30C and it follows that all climate models are wrong because they show ocean surface sustaining more than 30C.
All AI will give a response on the 30C limit but not the exact reason of ice microphyscis. And they will not openly condemn climate models without going through the logic of their failure.
My Copilot “knows” that Greenland is accumulating ice above 2300m but that is not general knowledge available to MS Copilot. The initial response of AI to the question of Greenland gaining ice anywhere is nowhere.
I have an understanding with my ephemeral Copilot that it is not to repeat its initial boilerplate after it acknowledged that it was wrong. Unfortunately, a naive person can expect to be served up the consensus liturgy, and if they don’t know enough to ask the ‘inconvenient’ questions, they will go away thinking that they have been told the scientific truth. LLMs are the most powerful propaganda dispenser ever developed.
one of the dangers with AI is many people think they are getting an unbiased opinion from the AI, but as Climate Skeptics know, AI certainly has a bias when it comes to human-caused climate change, and no doubt, many other subjects as they are just reflecting the biases of their programmers.
We have learned that we can talk AI out of their bias, but they start out biased, and to get them unbiased, you have to know your subject matter very well in order to question the AI properly.
The next question for AI: Have any climate doomsday predictions actually happened?
The answer will be: No.
The persistence of Malthusianism is, in my view, a very nasty indicator of the blessings of human progress, insofar as one can only oppose progress in a world that is actually progressing.
Moreover, Malthusianism is an intellectually comfortable position (lazy would be a more accurate word). I don’t know whether you are familiar with Michel Audiard, a legendary French screenwriter and dialogue writer. One of his famous lines (among many others) is: “A seated intellectual goes less far than a fool who keeps walking.” Well, let’s say that while humanity moves forward, Malthusians remain comfortably seated on their backsides, letting themselves be carried along by progress like tyrants in their palanquins, shouting to the multitude that “this can’t go on,” that “the world is about to collapse,” and so on.
Well, they can climb down from the palanquin whenever they please. It will make the load a little lighter for everyone else.
(Below, a portrait of Michel Audiard)
I don’t know how or when McPherson went sideways but he seems to have burst to fringe ideas quite rapidly. He reached peak silliness.
There are several different ways of thinking about “peak” oil, copper, or just about anything, say Christmas trees. Most essayists have not assumed an abrubt end of something. “Hey Mom, your freezer doesn’t have any ice cream in it.” There is usually a curve shown. It goes up, reaches a high value, maybe plataues, and then there is a fall-off. Parts of the curve may be steep or gradual. McPherson appears to be a right-angle type. Bizarre.
plateaus… lol
AlGore;The Goreacle decreed all humans dead prior to 2000. All of you just lie down and die already! 😉
There was a Star Trek episode about people who willingly allowed themselves to be erased because they bought into what the government told them.
The US election is in November, 2026 – could that precipitate the end of humanity, immediately?
Also, is “… the destabilisation of the global magnetosphere …” also our fault, or Big Oil’s?
I predict that the democrats will sweep the November federal elections, obtain veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Congress, and then will impeach President Trump.
I hope you are wrong. democrats are insane.
That’s a possibility. Or, Republicans and our personal freedoms might just squeak through.
I would expect Red States to continue their conservative direction no matter who is president.
If a Democrat is elected, the Blue States will turn into Europe. Bye, bye!
Good point, perhaps the warning is a Democrat victory would trigger a mass extinction event?
Seems the science isn’t ‘settled.’ It’s scuttled, resting on the bottom of the sea of climate hoaxster ideology.
The Science has been corrupted by the people charged with protecting its integrity.
All our science institutions have been corrupted by this narrative.
Government should not be interfering in private businesses, and it should not be interfering in science.
Worral is again lying about what was said. What makes him such a dishonest liar? Is it his stupidity or is it purposefully?
Care to actually demonstrate some of these lies? Or do you just, once again, take your word for it?
After careful perusal of the article I spotted Eric’s lie…
Copied for context/Lie portion Bolded)
Yep…Flesch definitely caught Worral in a lie. 😉😆
Can you indicate which statement is the “Lie” and reiterate the “Truth”?
Or is the argument of the Flesch weak?
The flesh-er-Flesch is always weak…sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Are you saying McPherson’s prediction was correct?
You have made a strong accusation without even identifying what he supposedly lied about, let alone offer any support for your claim. Which is the greater sin, actively lying, or implying that someone else has done it if they haven’t? Are you projecting?
It is a journalism trick to cast aspersions without having facts. Worral is repeating his opinion but remember he may be lying about his motivation.
It is impossible to attribute motivation without knowing what the alleged lie is.
I watched the video of Guy McPherson. This is the exact quote: “I can’t imagine there will be a human on the planet in 10 years”.
Eric Worrall said “Back in 2016, Professor Guy McPherson predicted we’d all be dead in the next decade”. This seems to be a pretty accurate summary of what was said.
“Dishonest liar”? Is there such a thing as an “honest liar”? Or is Eric just dumb?
Look at how fair Eric Worral is: He lets a liar call him a liar and leaves his post up.
Of course, Eric can count on others calling this liar out.
This is a classic low IQ hit and run bullpuppy.
It appears that the previous Pope’s intelligence about climate change was artificial. Hence the current Pope’s warning about artificial intelligence.
Fantastique
Well, he was quite right about that. That’s why we need more affordable energy than less.
From the above article:
Not to worry . . . mankind will just transition to harvesting frozen methane clathrates, instead of oil, from massive ocean deposits in deep waters along the continental shelves.
“The world is remarkably rich in methane hydrates, offering the tantalizing possibility that we could power all of humanity’s energy needs for 1,000 years if we can figure out how to recover them cost-effectively.”
— https://www.aei.org/economics/environmental-energy-economics/could-methane-be-humanitys-1000-year-fuel/
The attached image is taken from the above-referenced article.
There is that caveat “IF“!