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March 31, 2023 - Epoch Times
16:40
32 Climate Predictions That Were Proven False
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Right now, many people who are below the age of 30 here in America are under this impression that the world is going to end in just a few short years.
And the reason that they have this impression is not a mystery.
For instance, if you happen to be in New York City, And you take a casual stroll down Union Square, you'll come across a massive doomsday clock, which is quite literally counting down, second by second, the time that we have left before the supposed effects of global warming become irreversible.
That clock, by the way, was set up right around the same time that several lawmakers began to float the idea publicly that we only have 12 years left before the world ends.
Here's, for instance, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking about this very issue back in the year 2019.
Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.
And your biggest issue is...
Your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?
And wouldn't you know it?
Just a few short months after she made that statement, the clock in Union Square, which used to just be a normal clock, was changed to instead be a doomsday clock.
Now, whether the countdown is actually true or not, you can make up your own mind.
The YouTube fact-checkers definitely think it's true, given the fact that almost under any video that mentions climate change, they add their official stance as a disclaimer.
However, setting that aside, there is something else that I believe is worth highlighting.
The fact that very often it's exactly these types of bold predictions about specific dates when something should happen but winds up not coming true, which has pretty much undermined the credibility of so-called climate experts, at least in the eyes of most of the public.
And so, while the doomsday clock over in Union Square continues to tick, tick, tick away, let's take a short journey through time and look at the 33 climate predictions which turned out to be wrong.
By the way, if you appreciate content like this, I do hope you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons, which quite literally forces the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to ever more people.
Now, let's begin our journey in October of 1958.
That was when the New York Times published an article in which they wrote this, quote, Some scientists estimate that the polar ice pack is 40% thinner and 12% 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.
At the time, the article mentioned, the Arctic ice sheet was about seven feet thick, which was again in 1958.
And today, when we look at today's data, it's still about 7 feet thick.
Then, we can fast forward to November of 1967, and here's what the Salt Lake City Tribune reported on the issue of the coming famine.
It is already too late for the world to avoid a long period of famine.
Now, this article was citing the work of Mr.
Paul Ehrlich, who was a Stanford University biologist, and his prediction was that by the year 1975, there would be global famines due to overpopulation.
According to this report, he went so far as to propose lacing both the food supply as well as the water drinking supplies here in America with sterilization chemicals in order to cut down on the growing population.
And by the way, this worry of too many people was on top of another worry at this particular time, the coming Ice Age.
For instance, in April of 1970, here was what the Boston Globe reported.
Citing a pollution expert named James Lodge, the Boston Globe continued by writing this.
Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century.
And these predictions of a coming ice age just continued to roll on.
In July of 1971, a report in the Washington Post, this time citing a NASA scientist, it wrote this, quote, Which is funny, given the fact that 50 years from 1971 is pretty much exactly today.
Then, in December of 1972, you had two geologists from Brown University who wrote a highly publicized letter to President Nixon, saying that, quote, The present rate of cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at the present pace.
Then, you fast forward about a year and a half to January of 1974, and here was what was written in the Guardian newspaper.
Then, five months later, in June of 1974, a story in Time magazine asked a very similar question.
Another ice age?
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.
And this trend of predicting a coming ice age continued for the next four years.
For instance, in January of 1978, here is what was written in the New York Times.
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 appears that an end to the trend was in sight, because just a year later, that very same newspaper, meaning the New York Times, was reporting the exact opposite.
Here's one of their stories from February of 1979, which is again a year from the previous one we just read.
There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.
Then, three years later, in May of 1982, the New York Times even gave a potential date for this coming collapse.
In a story where they were citing the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program, here's what they wrote, quote, 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.
There were other predictions which came and went as well.
For instance, in September of 1988, there was a report in AFP which said that the island nation of the Maldives was at risk of becoming completely covered by a, quote, gradual rise in average sea level in 30 years and that the end of the Maldives and its people could come sooner if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992, as predicted.
And just for your reference, the Maldives are still not underwater, and instead, they're actually thriving and developing.
Just last week, there was in fact a $148 million contract that was issued to build 120 new luxurious beachfront villas over in the Maldives, an island that, according to this article at least, should be underwater by now.
Regardless, these predictions just didn't stop.
In June of 1989, which, by the way, is the same month as the Tiananmen Square massacre, the San Jose Mercury News, they reported this, quote, A senior environmental official 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 now reversed by the year 2000.
Then we fast forward to the year 2000, and even though many of these earlier predictions didn't quite pan out, well, they were replaced by new predictions.
For instance, in March of 2000, here was what an article in The Independent said about specifically the UK, quote, 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.
For reference, it still snows in the UK pretty much every winter, especially in the middle and northern part of the country.
Regardless, let's fast forward another year to December of 2001, and here is what a story from the Albuquerque Journal said.
The changes in climate could potentially extirpate the sugar maple industry in New England within 20 years, according to George Hurt, co-author of a 2001 global warming report commissioned by the U.S. Congress.
For your reference, 22 years after that report, a New England still produces plenty of maple syrup to this day.
Then we fast forward another three years to February of 2004, where a story within the Guardian newspaper exposed, quote, a secret Pentagon report that predicted climate change will lead to nuclear war, major European cities will sink into the ocean, and Britain would descend into Siberian climate by the year 2020.
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And as we mentioned earlier, although it does still snow in Britain, by the year 2020, it was nothing like the climate of Siberia.
Regardless, we fast forward another two years, and in January of 2006, the Associated Press, while paraphrasing Al Gore, they wrote this, quote, Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.
Then the following year, in November of 2007, the New York Times quoted the head of the United Nations Climate Panel, who said this, quote, This year was the defining moment of the climate change fight.
If there is no action before 2012, that's too late.
In that same month, Canada's CanWest News Service, while paraphrasing another polar researcher, they wrote this, quote, 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.
And this Arctic Ocean without ice prediction began to gain traction.
For instance, the next month, in December of 2007, here was a story in the Associated Press citing a NASA scientist.
At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.
In that same month, by the way, the BBC, they had a slightly different prediction.
Citing another climate expert, here's what the BBC wrote.
So given that fact, you can argue.
That maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.
Then, a few months later, in March of 2008, you had Xinhua, which is China's official propaganda mouthpiece, citing a Norwegian official who wrote this, quote, If Norway's average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions.
For your reference, Norway's average temperature did actually slightly increase from the year 2007 to the year 2008, but the ice did not melt.
Regardless, a month later, in April of 2008, there was a report in New Scientist magazine which was citing the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, And they wrote this, quote, And these ice predictions just kept piling on.
For instance, in June of 2008, you had the National Geographic News, it's a news outlet, citing an environmental scientist writing this, quote, In that same month, the Associated Press, paraphrasing a NASA scientist this time, wrote this, Then, just a year later, you have probably one of the most famous predictions that have been made.
USA Today, citing the former U.S. Vice President, Mr.
Al Gore, they wrote this, And again, these predictions just kept snowballing, no pun intended.
In summer of 2012, the Australian wrote this, quote, Enjoy snow now.
By 2020, it'll be gone.
In July of 2013, you had The Guardian, quote, Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe, says a scientist.
Then in August of 2017, you had the Sydney Morning Herald, quote, Snowy retreat?
Climate change puts Australia's ski industry on a downhill slope.
For the last one, by the way, the weather data shows that over in Australia, it's been snowing quite as usual in recent years.
Then we get to January of 2018, and this was when a Forbes article, citing a Harvard University professor, wrote this, quote, The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after the year 2022 is essentially zero.
Free reference, even though the odds were against it, at this very moment, there is about 5.6 million square miles of Arctic sea ice.
Then, in June of 2018, Ms.
Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist, she shared a story on Twitter which was titled this, quote, Top climate scientist says humans will go extinct if we don't fix climate change by 2023.
To which Greta added this, quote, Now for some odd reason, Greta decided to delete that particular tweet earlier this year.
And she was not the only one that had to delete her earlier prediction.
That's because in January of 2020, Glacier National Park had to remove one of their signs because that sign claimed that all the glaciers would be melted away by the year 2020, which would be an awkward thing to read in the year 2020 when you can still see the glacier in the background.
Then, in December of 2021, the LA Times ran a story with this headline.
Interestingly enough, a few weeks after this article was published, researchers over at UC Berkeley announced that California actually had the snowiest December on record.
Regardless though, a year later, in August of 2022, Bloomberg reported this.
The end of snow threatens to upend 76 million American lives.
However, it's worth noting that just a few months later, the Sierra Nevada mountains saw their second snowiest winter on record.
And then, of course, right now, right at this moment, California is getting blasted with a bomb cyclone with record levels of snow coming down, quite literally, as we speak.
Which all brings us neatly back to the doomsday clock over in Union Square, which claims that we only have a few years left.
And you know what?
This time, they might be right.
Like the boy who cried wolf too many times, well, this time, it might really be the end.
However, in a more realistic assessment, after going through this entire list of 33 predictions which didn't quite pan out, it seems like these climate predictionists are shooting themselves in the foot.
Because instead of just presenting the data and the research that they were able to pull together and explaining to the people, explaining to the public at large their findings in a rational and clear way, it seems like instead they just insist on continuing to issue these predictions one after the other.
And these predictions, after they fail to materialize, well, they lead more and more people to trust these so-called climate scientists less and less.
Perhaps that would explain why it's mostly young people at these climate protests.
Since they haven't lived through the past 50 years of these predictions, they perhaps assume that this latest prediction is the only one, and therefore it must be right.
Now, again, I am not anything close to a climate expert or a climate scientist.
And as to the question of whether there is indeed a climate crisis or not, well, you can decide that for yourself after looking into the data.
I'm only pointing out the fact that if you look at all these predictions that were promulgated by the media, and if you took them seriously over the past 50 years, you would have been not only stressed out, but you would have also been wrong.
If you'd like to go through any of the links and articles that we presented in today's episode, which, by the way, was only a small representative sample because there are quite literally hundreds of these types of articles.
Regardless, though, if you'd like to go through the ones that we presented, I'll throw them all down into the description box below.
Actually, I'll throw one link, and when you go to that link, all of them will be listed out there.
They'll be down in the description box below.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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