This timeline contains notable climate prediction failures from 1966 to the present. It scrolls left to right, oldest failures on the left, newest on the right. For phones/tablets, you can swipe with your finger or use the arrows. For desktop devices you can use the arrows or click on an event, then drag left or right.
The widespread famines predicted for the 1970’s never occurred nor did most of the apocalyptic predictions for the 80’s. Too this day, Ehrlich states that all his work was based on peer-reviewed science and therefore his work is above reproach.
In 1969, Daniel Patrick Moynihan sent a one-page memo to a top Nixon advisor on “the carbon dioxide problem.”
“The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The CO2 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to introduce instability through the burning of fossil fuels. At the turn of the century several persons raised the question whether this would change the temperature of the atmosphere. Over the years the hypothesis has been refined, and more evidence has come along to support it.”
“It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content 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. We have no data on Seattle.” —Memo by Daniel P. Moynihan, September 17, 1969
Environmentalists in 1970 truly believed in a scientific consensus predicting global famine due to population growth in the developing world, especially in India.
“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,” Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, said in a 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.”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.”
According to data from the United Nations, as recently as 1992, over a quarter of the world’s population was undernourished. Since then, a dramatic decline in hunger has occurred, particularly in places like China where economic liberalization has led to rapid development. In 2015, the share of the world population suffering from undernourishment had fallen to about 18 percent, while in China it had fallen even further, to less than 10 percent.
Not only do fewer people go hungry as a share of the population, but the total number of people suffering from hunger has also declined. Despite population growth, the number of undernourished persons has fallen from over 950 million in 1992 to about 685 million in 2015. That’s almost 270 million fewer undernourished people or a 28 percent reduction. China saw a more dramatic reduction of 51 percent. In 2015, 150 million fewer Chinese were undernourished than in 1992.
“In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution,” reported Life magazine in 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,” said ecologist Kenneth Watt.
As nebulous as this prediction was, there is no buildup of Nitrogen or nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere and crop production is at an all time high.
Barry Commoner was an American biologist and educator who warned of the environmental threats posed by modern technology since the 1950s. One of his predictions was that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
US Oil production did not die in 1992, nor after the shale revolution has it died as of today. Today’s limitations are due to regulatory barriers, not resource availability.
Predictions of an impending ice age made in 1972 with the forecast date being “due very soon” and “bring glacial temperatures in about a century” do not by definition falsifiable yet.
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily 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. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
“As a nation, Americans have been reluctant to accept the prospect of physical shortages. We must recognize that world oil production will likely peak in the early 1990’s, and from that point on will be on a declining curve. By the early part of the 21st century, we must face the prospect of running out of oil and natural gas.”
The June 23, 1988 Democratic Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing opened the door on climate alarmism in the nation with testimony from scientific “experts” and Committee Senators who offered speculation and conjecture on a host of weather and climate topics while sharing their scientifically unsupported and sensationalized doomsday perspectives. The complete record of the hearing’s proceedings can be found here.
Environmental Defense Fund Senior Scientist Dr. Michael Oppenheimer claimed the following regarding increasing global sea level rise acceleration as follows:
“Global mean temperature will likely rise at about 0.6 degrees F per decade and sea level at about 2.5 inches per decade.”
“These rates are about six times recent history.”
“Furthermore, as long as greenhouse gases continue to grow in the atmosphere, there is no known natural limit to the warming short of catastrophic change.”
“Because the oceans are slow to heat, there is a lag between emissions and full manifestation of corresponding warming, a lag which some estimate at 40 years.”
“The world is now 1 degree F warmer than century ago and may become another 1 degree warmer even if conditions are curtailed today.”
“Every decade of delay and implementation of greenhouse gas abatement policies ultimately adds perhaps a degree F of warming, and no policy can be fully implemented immediately in any event.”
Outcome:
We are now 3 and 1/2 decades beyond Dr. Oppenheimer’s incredibly flawed and failed alarmists sea level rise acceleration hyped claims with global CO2 emissions having never declined from 1988 levels of 20.82 billion metric tons but instead having now reached 34.37 billion metric tons in 2022 with the rate of relative sea level rise at NOAA’s Battery Station showing little if any change from its 1988 rate of about 11.4 inches per century.
The latest UAH satellite measured global average temperature anomaly for the period from 1979 to 2023 shows a decadal rate of increase of about 0.14 degrees C. For the period staring from 1986 to 2021 the rate of UAH global average temperature anomaly is also about 0.14 degrees C per decade which results in an increase of about 0.49 degrees C during this period.
About 10 million people in Bangladesh will lose their homes and means of sustenance because of the rising sea level, due to global warming, in the next few decades. Where will they go? Whom will they displace? What political conflicts will result?
Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh’s landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually.
Maminul Haque Sarker, head of the department at the government-owned centre that looks at boundary changes, told AFP [Agence France-Presse] sediment which travelled down the big Himalayan rivers—the Ganges and the Brahmaputra—had caused the landmass to increase. …
“Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that show some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea,” Sarker said.
“Unfortunately, oil production will likely peak by 2020 and start declining. Without a change, developing countries will ultimately be left in the dark, and developed countries will struggle to keep the lights on. Conflict is inevitable. My guess is that this won’t become a big issue unless there is a thalidomide event. We will have to see in the rear-view mirror that we are past the peak in worldwide oil production.”
World Oil production did not peak in by the year 2020 although it has leveled off amidst economic slowdown and anti-fossil fuel policies enacted in Western nations.
Since 2000, global hunger has been reduced by a quarter, child mortality by half and extreme poverty by no less than 70 percent, despite the devastating effects of the pandemic and a worldwide lockdown. Clearly, global capitalism has delivered – at least compared to every other era of human history.
Fifty million climate refugees by 2010. Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth.
Sources
Norman Myers, ‘Environmental refugees, An emergent security issue’, 13. Economic forum, Prague, OSCE, May 2005 ; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005 ; Liser, 2007.
Despite frivolous claims attributing anything to Climate Change, in 2023, there is still no mass migration of climate refugees, or any climate refugees for that matter.
The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming”. He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.
Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
That extended warming and melting just isn’t happening. While the researchers sounded alarm over a warm summer in Siberia in 2005, this past year has been completely the opposite. For example, this Washington Post Story from Jan 10, 2023: Siberia sees coldest air in two decades as temperature dips to minus-80
It must be tough to keep that permafrost at a melting tipping point with winter temperatures like that. Here is the view of the region today, note the widespread below zero temperatures:
The Associated Press reports that melting in the Artic has surpassing previous estimates, prompting scientist to issue new warnings.
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
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.”
AP Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts
By SETH BORENSTEIN –
WASHINGTON (AP) — An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.
Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, 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.”
As of both 2017 and 2023, the world is still here.
New York City, United States – November 2, 2017: Crowds gather in Times Square at day time. Tourist intersection of neon art and commerce and is an iconic place of New York City.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67086773
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