10 Climate Alarmist Predictions for 2020

[itsnotoutthere]

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical. Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/28/egg-on-their-faces-10-climate-alarmist-predictions-for-2020-that-went-horribly-wrong-n1289371

[Doug1066]

3 hours ago, itsnotoutthere said:

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change,

This is at least partly wrong.  The ten years was from the date of issue of the last Climate Assessment Report and was until the earth's mean temperature reached 2.0C over pre-industrial levels.  The earth will not end on that day, but environental impacts will accelerate about then, indeed are accelerating already.

 

"In 1987, the Star-Phoenix in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, quoted James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. His model predicted an average temperature increase of “between one-half and one degree Celsius by the end of the ’90s.”

That happened.   Temps have climbed 1.6C since 1826.  It was already the case in 1987,  For that matter, they have climbed about 2F since 1909.  This is Oklahoma's Climate Division 1 - the Oklahoma Panhandle.  The graph is a 30-year running average - the minimum length of time needed to assess whether there has been a climate change.  The value shown on the graph for any given year is the central estimate for mean surface temps in that year.

 

 

In 1978, The Vancouver Sun cited a paper in the journal Science. University of Washington researcher Minze Stuiver predicted that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will have doubled by 2020.

In 1978 atmospheric CO2 concentration was 333 ppm, up from 278 ppm in 1694.  My records end in 2008 at a CO2 concentration of 381 ppm.  As of July, it was 417 ppm.

Predictions of the future are always difficult because you're extrapolating beyond the range of your data.  Here is the link to the paper they claimed to quote:  https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.199.4326.253  I couldn't find anything about co2 levels doubling by 2020.  That claim is a misquote of a misquote.

 

“China says it will, by 2020, reduce gases by 40 to 45 percent below ‘business as usual,’ that is, judged against 2005 figures, for energy used versus economic input. India offers a 20 to 25 percent slowdown in emissions growth.”

By 2017 China reduced its powerplant emissions by 72%  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0468-1

India's goal was to reduce emissions by 33 to 35%.  Due to increasing energy demand (123% by 2020) and construction of new coal-burning power plants to meet it, that goal will not be reached.  https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017EF000542  Current plans are to increase wind power to 60 GW and solar to 100 GW by 2022 and increasing nuclear power to 63 GW by 2032.  India will be late meeting its goals, but is on track to get there.

 

 No snow on Mount Kilimanjaro

This was one of Al Gore's predictions.  It turned out to be wrong, the only one of his 10 predictions that was.  At the time, scientists noted the decreasing snow cover on Kilimanjaro and assumed it was from temperature increase.  Subsequent research has shown that the loss of ice cover is due to evaporation, the result of increased winds from lower areas evaporating the ice.  You can't win them all, Al.

 

Rising sea levels in the Sunshine State

There's a mistake here:  the forecast is for what would happen if all ice on earth melted.  But that isn't predicted for several centuries yet.  I can't imagine a climate scientist making that big a mistake, so I'm wondering just who the Sun is quoting and what their qualifications are.  There are a lot of quotes by non-scientists in the article.  I doubt that all of these people knew what they were talking about.  There's also a lot of confusion over what was predicted for when.

"According to NOAA, the sea level at Virginia Key has risen by about 9 centimeters, which works out to 3.54 inches."

That's the correct figure for Virginia Key sea level rise since the 1930s.  Note that during the Roman Warm Period (250-400 AD) sea level was about 5.6 feet above what it was in 1950.  We have a ways to go to reach that.

 

In March 2000, David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia in England, predicted that winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event,” The Independent reported. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Viner said.

That's what Viner said, alright.  I might make the same statement if somebody got me into a bar and plied me with too much to drink.

 

"In October 2000, a Greenpeace report predicted that global warming “could cause a massive economic decline across at least 13 tiny Pacific nations in the next 20 years,” the Australian newspaper The Age reported. Global warming would devastate most of the Pacific’s coral reefs, devastating the tourism and fishing industries of tiny Pacific nations."

Coral bleaching has already devastated the tourist industry on some Pacific Islands.

That has actually happened on Fiji which has lost a major chunk of its only urban center.  But on the remainder, sea level rise hasn't been as fast as some folks have predicted, so the islands haven't been flooded yet.  On Fiji there is a problem with the guages:  the two gauges are mounted on docks made of coral land fill.  This gradually settles with time, lowering the guages and producing a higher reading.  This is where the panicked predictions of island submersion are coming from.  Greenpeace, in particular is not too careful with its data. 

 

"In 2004, The Guardian reported on a Department of Defense report predicting that climate change could be America’s greatest national security threat. Among other things, the report predicted nuclear war, endemic conflict over resources, and European cities underwater by 2020."

The Pentagon's job is to imagine the worst possible outcome and devise ways to counter it.  Plans include a zombie apocalypse and what to do about alien invaders.  Still on the books is Plan Green - a plan for invading Mexico if that is ever needed.  They also have a plan for another freezing disaster like the Younger Dryas.  That there is no body of water on earth capable of precipitating another such disaster is beside the poinbt - they're ready for it.

BUT:  the Mediterranean basin has been in a mega-drought for about 40 years.  Farms fail and the farmers move to the cities where they expect their governments to take care of them.  But doing that is utterly beyond the capabilities of most mid-east nations.  The result is anger, frustration and revolt with groups such as ISIS, the Taliban and Al queda.  Climate change has already affected US defense posture and possibly contributed to us losing the Afghanistan War.

As for a nuclear war:  Trump was ready, but General Milley was ready for Trump, thank god.

 

The end of Arctic ice

In September 2018 Arctic Ocean ice cover was down to 4.79 million square km., down from 16.34 million square km in March 1979, a drop of over 70%.  Arctic Ocean ice cover in the month of September has decreased, on average by 0.017 million square km per year over the last 40 years.  So while we won't totally run out of ice in the next few decades, as far as the effect on climate goes, we already have.

 

Glaciers gone at Glacier National Park

While that hasn't happened, yet.  The glaciers are shrinking. 

 

The only change needed in most of these ten cases is that climate change hasn't happened as far as the Sun's authors thought it would, mostly because CO2 isn't climbing as fast as some thought it would and that, in turn, has a lot to do with the world switching to clean energy.  It seems to me that the people in question in most cases were not climate scientists, had no idea what was normal for each of these categories and consequently made a few bad predictions (as well as not being able to read a tide gauge).

Also, this paper doesn't take into account any discoveries in climate science made over the last 20 years.

Doug

Edited September 18, 2021 by Doug1066

[WVK]

8 hours ago, itsnotoutthere said:

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical. Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/28/egg-on-their-faces-10-climate-alarmist-predictions-for-2020-that-went-horribly-wrong-n1289371

The future isn’t what it used to be.

[Bavarian Raven]

18 hours ago, itsnotoutthere said:

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical. Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/28/egg-on-their-faces-10-climate-alarmist-predictions-for-2020-that-went-horribly-wrong-n1289371

Their predictions still did better than the bible at predicting the futur e lol