Posted by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said during a TV interview in 2017:
“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
A few months after her statement the clock in Union Square was changed to function as a “climate clock” indicating how much time mankind still has until global warming becomes an irreversible run-away phenomenon.
On August 18, 2024, when this was written, the dooms day clock showed 4 years, 338 days, zero hours, 30 minutes, and zero seconds till dooms day.
In October of 1958, the New York Times wrote:
“Some scientists estimate that the polar ice pack is 40 percent thinner and 12 percent less in area than it was a half century ago, and that even within the lifetime of our children, the Arctic Ocean may open, enabling ships to sail over the North Pole.”
The article mentions that the arctic ice shield was on average about 7 feet thick then and today, it is still on average about 7 feet thick.
In November of 1967 the Salt Lake City Tribune wrote:
“It is already too late for the world to avoid a long period of famine.”
The article was based on Paul Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb” in which he predicted global famine by 1975 due to overpopulation. Ehrlich went so far as to recommend that the US government add sterilization chemicals to drinking water in order to reduce population growth.
In April of 1970, the Boston Globe wrote:
“Scientists predict a new ice age by the 21st century … air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century.”
We are in the first third of the 21st century now and all we hear is global warming.
In July of 1971, the Washington Post, citing an unnamed NASA scientist, wrote
“The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age.”
We are in the year 2024, 53 years from 1971. No ice age.
In December of 1972, two geologists from Brown University wrote a highly publicized letter to President Nixon:
“(A conference attended by) 42 top American and European investigators (concluded) 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… The present rate of cooling, seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at present pace.”
In January of 1974, the Guardian wrote:
“Space satellites show new ice age coming fast.”
Five months later in June 1974, Time Magazine wrote:
“Another Ice Age? … Telltale signs are everywhere from unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of warmth-loving creatures like the armadillo from the Midwest.”
The ice age prediction continued for the next four years. In 1978 the New York Times wrote:
“An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.”
However, it seems that an end to the trend was in sight, because in February of 1979, the same New York Times changed course and reported the exact opposite:
“There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a timer when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.”
Three years later, in May of 1982, the New York Times wrote citing the executive director of the UN’s IPCC:
“ (if the world didn’t change course, it would face an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust (by the year 2000).”
We are in 2024.
In September 1988, the Maldives complained to the rest of the world that there is “a gradual rise in sea level (in 30 years, and that) the end of the Maldives and its people would come sooner if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992, as predicted.”
The Maldives are still not under water, and they are fast developing their beach front properties. They are also building a large number of desalination plants with the help of Hitachi Aqua-Tech Pte. Ltd.
In 1989, the San Jose Mercury News wrote:
“A senior environmental officer at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says 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.”
Mr. Brown warned of coastal flooding, crop failures, and resulting political chaos.
In March 2000, an article in the Independent warns with particular reference to the UK:
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past … Children just aren’t going to know what snow is … within a few years, winter snowfall would become a very rare and exciting event.”
It still snows in the UK every winter.
In December of 2001, the Albuquerque Journal wrote:
“The changes in climate could potentially extirpate the sugar maple industry in New England (within 20 years according to George Hurtt, co-author of a 2001 Global Warming report commissioned by the US Congress)”
23 years later, New England still produces plenty of maple syrup.
In February of 2004, the Guardian Wrote:
“… a secret Pentagon report that predicted (that) climate change will lead to nuclear war, major European cities will sink in the ocean and that Britain would descend into “Siberian “ climate by the year 2020.”
In January 2006, the Associated Press, referencing Al Gore, wrote:
“Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next ten years, the world will reach a point of no return.”
That point should must have been reached then in 2016.
In November of 2007, the New York Times quoted the head of the IPCC as having said this:
“(This year was the) defining moment (of the climate change fight …) If there is no action before 2012, that’s too late.”
In the same month, Canada’s CanWest News Service wrote this:
“The Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summer as soon as 2010 or 2015 something that hasn’t happened in more than a million years.”
Not true. The Arctic was entirely ice-free between 80,000 and 150,000 years ago and ice-free in the summer between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. Still, the story gained traction. In December 2007, Associated Press wrote (citing an unnamed NASA scientist):
“Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer in Five Years? … At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer 2012.”
In the same month, the BBC reported:
“Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’ … 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 maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
In March of 2008, Xinhua, China’s main propaganda outlet, cited a Norwegian official, who wrote this:
“If Norway’s average temperature this year (i.e. 2008) equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions.”
Norway’s average temperature increased slightly, but the polar ice did not melt.
In April of 2008, the New Scientist wrote:
“North Pole could be ice free in 2008 … There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment … That raises the specter (of) the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
In June of 2008, the National Geographic News wrote:
“We are actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time (in history).”
I the same month, the Associated Press wrote:
“In five to ten years, the Arctic will be free of ice in the summer.”
In December of 2009, USA Today cited Al Gore with this famous prediction:
“The Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in summer as early as 2014.”
In the summer of 2012, The Australian wrote:
“Enjoy snow now … By 2020, it will be gone.”
In July 2014, the Guardian wrote:
“Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe (says a scientist).”
The Sunday Morning Herald wrote in August of 2017:
“Snowy retreat: Climate change puts Australia’s ski industry on a downhill slope. Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.”
Recent data show that snowfall in Australia has been quite normal in recent years.
In January 2018, Forbes quotes a Harvard professor who said:
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.”
Recent (March 6, 2023) NASA data show that there is 5.64 million square miles of Arctic ice cover. Goodbye Harvard.
In June of 2018, Greta Thunberg shared on Twitter:
“Top Climate Scientist: Humans will go extinct if we don’t fix climate change by 2023.” To which she added: “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuel over the next five years.” She later deleted that tweet.
In January of 2020, Glacier National Park had to remove signs that warned that its glaciers would be gone by 2020. An awkward sign indeed, when you can still see the glacier in the background.
In December of 2021, the Los Angeles Times wrote:
“A no-snow California could come sooner than you think.”
Data show that in 2021 California had the snowiest December on record.
In August of 2022, Bloomberg reported:
“The end of snow threatens to upend 76 million American lives.”
A few months later, the Sierra Nevada mountains had their second snowiest winter on record and in February of 2024 Governor Newsom had to declare the state of emergency because of heavy snowfall in Southern California.
In conclusion, we can say that hardly any of the many climate predictions have come true, not for global cooling and not for global warming. Al Gore’s climate prophesies, however, stand out as egregiously wrong.
Snow:
In 2006, Al Gore predicted that Mount Kilimanjaro would be snow-free “within a decade”. Snow forecasts for September and October of 2023 for the Kilimanjaro were 59 inches.
Hurricanes:
Al Gore predicted that global warming would produce more and stronger hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hosts a regularly updated webpage titled “Global Warming and Hurricanes: An Overview of Current Research Results.” The update as of October 2022 says:
“We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.”
Outch.
The oceans will rise!
In his 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore prognosticated that the ocean level would rise so much in the very near future that New York would be under water soon. He showed the consequences of a wildly hypothetical 20-foot increase in sea level. This was done with an alarmist video showing Manhattan, most of Florida, Beijing, Shanghai, and many other regions being submerged under the waves.
NASA started tracking ocean levels in 1993, during which year the sea levels rose by 6 millimeters. Similar rises are shown for other years; however, NASA also shows declines in sea level. In 2010 for example, sea levels dropped 9.1 millimeters. For the entire period from 1993 to 2023 NASA reported a total sea level rise of 103 millimeters. Over the past 122 years NASA reports a sea level rise of 8 inches. One wonders, though, how NASA determines sea level rise, when the tectonic plates of the earth are constantly moving up and down.
At the current rate, it will take about 1800 years for the oceans to rise 20 feet.
There is no clear consensus among scientists and political end-time ideologues about floods, droughts, and tornadoes. It is remarkable, though, that many of the climate doomsayers are proclaiming “catastrophic” changes demanding “drastic” measures to prevent the catastrophes they are prophesying. One could get the impression that these climate doomsayers are not demanding drastic measure because there are catastrophic events or trends but that they are prophesying these catastrophes because they need a justification for their drastic measures. Their idea of sustainability is apparently a very small number of humans with a neolithic lifestyle. Seems to me that nature will do what nature wants to do regardless of good or bad human behavior. Seems to me also that in this digital age of rapid and retrievable information climate prophets should be cautious about their predictions. They are like spitting against the wind.