Showing posts with label global cooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global cooling. Show all posts

Sunday, September 22, 2019





50 years of doomsday climate-change predictions that didn’t come true

This post first appeared at Fellowship of the Minds
Yesterday, Sept. 20, 2019, was Friday, a school day. But countless young people in the U.S. and across the world skipped school to protest in a global “climate strike”.
In the “woke” San Francisco Bay Area, school children skipped school to protest about climate change, putting pressure on politicians and corporations they say are contributing to an environmental crisis.
As reported by Berkeleyside, one of the protesters, Berkeley High junior Adrienne Mermin, 16, described climate change as apocalyptic. She warned: “There’s a deadline on our existence and a deadline on when we can reverse this. When climate change and climate justice was connected to environmental racism, it became more than just ‘the ice caps are melting,’ and more ‘this affects all of us, and every single one of us can help stop this.’”
Mermin was echoing the doomsday warnings of adults like Al Gore, who predicted the North Pole would be ice-free by 2016; Prince Charles, who said in 2009 that because of capitalism and consumerism, we had just 96 months or 8 years, i.e., until 2017, to save the world; and more recently Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who proclaimed Miami would disappear in “a few years” due to climate change.
Writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute on Sept. 18, 2019, Myron Ebell and Steven J. Milloy remind us that Gore, Chucky and AOC are just the latest instances of doomsayers who have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. Like Gore, et al., the makers of these apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science. The problem is this: “None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true,” and the media won’t report on the failed predictions.
What follows is a collection of apocalyptic climate predictions from notable people in government and science:
  1. In 1967, Stanford University “population biologist” Paul Ehrlich said that because of unrestrained population growth, “the time of famines” was already upon us and would be at its worst and most disastrous by 1975. (Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 17, 1967, p. 9)
  2. Two years later in 1969, Ehrlich warned that “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 stream in 20 years” — i.e., by 1989. (New York Times, August 10, 1969)
  3. A year later in 1970, Ehrlich once again sounded a doomsday warning that “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. (Redlands Daily Facts, October 6, 1970)
  4.  In 1970, James P. Lodge Jr., a scientist at the national center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, predicted that air pollution would obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the 21st century, and that if the current rate of increase in electric power generation continued, the demands for cooling water would “boil dry the entire flow of the rivers and streams of continental United States.” (Boston Globe, April 16, 1970)
  5. In 1971, Dr. S. I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, predicted that “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. (Washington Post, July 9, 1971)
  6. In 1972, R. K. Matthews, chairman of Brown University’s Department of Geological Sciences, 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.” (NOAA, October 2015)
  7. In 1974, “preliminary analysis” of space satellites conducted by European climatologists George and Helena Kukla showed that the world had 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 1972. (The Guardian, January 29, 1974)
  8. In 1974, “a growing number of scientists” found that the earth’s atmosphere had been gradually cooling for the last three decades. “Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” and “The telltale signs are everywhere — from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest”. (TIME, June 24, 1974)
Go to Competitive Enterprise Institute for 18 more apocalyptic climate-change predictions that didn’t come true, one of which is this doozy:

Climate Change…


50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions




Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience.
SUMMARY
Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.
None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.
What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.
More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.
While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.
1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’
1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’
1970: Ice age by 2000
1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.’
1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’
1972: New ice age by 2070
1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’
Source: The Guardian, January 29, 1974
1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’

Source: TIME, June 24, 1974
1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’

But no such ‘great peril to life’ has been observed as the so-called ‘ozone hole’ remains:


Sources: Headline
NASA Data | Graph
1976: ‘The Cooling’

Source: New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976
1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’

Noblesville Ledger (Noblesville, IN) April 9, 1980
But 10 years later, the US government program formed to study acid rain concluded:

Associated Press, September 6, 1990
1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend

Source: New York Times, January 5, 1978
But according to NASA satellite data there is a slight warming trend since 1979.

Source: DrRoySpencer.com
1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s

But the last really dry year in the Midwest was 1988, and recent years have been record wet.

Source: RealClimateScience.com
1988: Washington DC days over 90F to from 35 to 85

But the number of hot days in the DC area peaked in 1911, and have been declining ever since.

Source: RealClimateScience.com
1988: Maldives completely under water in 30 years

Source: Agence France Press, September 26, 1988
1989: Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000

Source: Associated Press, June 30, 1989
1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019

Source: Salon.com, October 23, 2001
1995 to Present: Climate Model Failure

Source: CEI.org
2000: ‘Children won’t know what snow is.’


Source: The Independent, March 20, 2000
2002: Famine in 10 years

Source: The Guardian, December 23, 2002
2004: Britain to have Siberian climate by 2020

Source: The Guardian, February 21, 2004
2008: Arctic will be ice-free by 2018

Source: Associated Press, June 24, 2008
2008: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013

But… it’s still there:

Source: WattsUpWithThat.com, December 16, 2018
2009: Prince Charles says only 8 years to save the planet

Source: The Independent, July 9, 2009
2009: UK prime minister says 50 days to ‘save the planet from catastrophe’

Source: The Independent: October 20, 2009
2009: Arctic ice-free by 2014

Source: USA Today, December 14, 2009
2013: Arctic ice-free by 2015

Source: The Guardian, July 24, 2013
The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02550-9 (open access)
Gas hydrate dissociation off Svalbard induced by isostatic rebound rather than global warming
Abstract
Methane seepage from the upper continental slopes of Western Svalbard has previously been attributed to gas hydrate dissociation induced by anthropogenic warming of ambient bottom waters. Here we show that sediment cores drilled off Prins Karls Foreland contain freshwater from dissociating hydrates. However, our modeling indicates that the observed pore water freshening began around 8 ka BP when the rate of isostatic uplift outpaced eustatic sea-level rise. The resultant local shallowing and lowering of hydrostatic pressure forced gas hydrate dissociation and dissolved chloride depletions consistent with our geochemical analysis. Hence, we propose that hydrate dissociation was triggered by postglacial isostatic rebound rather than anthropogenic warming. Furthermore, we show that methane fluxes from dissociating hydrates were considerably smaller than present methane seepage rates implying that gas hydrates were not a major source of methane to the oceans, but rather acted as a dynamic seal, regulating methane release from deep geological reservoirs.

2013: Arctic ice-free by 2016

Source: The Guardian, December 9, 2013
2014: Only 500 days before ‘climate chaos’

But…

Sources: Washington Examiner

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