Here's a prediction that will definitely come true. “There will always be people who make predictions, especially alarmist ones, that will not come true.”
“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change and combat CO2,” Democrat firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, explaining her views and those of “millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us.”(1)
She said this without laughing in January, earned a round of applause from the progressive audience, and then emphasized the point by calling the fight against climate change “our World War II.”
“Climate change is here + we've got a deadline”: 12 years left to cut emissions in half,” she captioned in a tweet promoting the video. In addition Ocasio-Cortez doubled-down on her 12 year declaration during an Instagram live-stream when a viewer mocked her over the claim. 2
The elected Democrat repeated the claim time and again and even collaborated with The Intercept to create a video centered around the charge.
Then she said it was all a joke. She mocked the Republican Party for taking her claim about the end of the world seriously, which she suggested was a combination of 'dry humor + sarcasm.' 2 This leaves one wondering which future words of wisdom she utters will be serious or are 'jokes.'
Cortez was recently one-upped by Beto O'Rourke who recently claimed humans had only ten years to act on climate change. It's important to point out that the 'consensus science' as codified, for example, in the periodic reports from the United Nations does not support such a cliff-hanger mentality at all. 3
The Institute for Energy Research recently reported, “The climate change alarmists are given a free pass to throw out the most absurd rhetoric, such as a recent author's (James Dyke) warning that potentially billions of people could die because of human caused climate change. Once again, as mentioned above, such claims are not reported by the UN's own climate change reports. 4
Also recently the Doomsday Clock—the countdown to total nuclear annihilation established by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists during the Cold war—got wound up tighter than ever by adding CO2 to nuclear weaponry as an existential threat. “Today sets the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight—the closest it has ever been to apocalypse,” the organization announced in a press release.
Another report stated that without immediate and drastic action, reminiscent of efforts during World War II, this analysis predicts that by 2050, climate change could become an existential threat to human civilization that can never be undone. The message is simple: if we do not take climate action in the next 30 years, it is entirely plausible that our planet warms by 3 degrees C and that human civilization as we know it collapses. 5
Under this scenario, the authors explain, the world will be locked into a 'hothouse Earth' scenario, where 35 percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population will be subject to more than 20 days a year of 'lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human survivability.'
As Joanne Nova wryly observes, “Humans can survive from -50 to +40 C, but a 3 degree rise will wipe us out.” 5
For most of the last 30 years, Al Gore has been a prophet of doom, time and time again warning of catastrophe if we don't repent, time and again coming up empty. His 2006 film, an Inconvenient Truth, warned of devastation from rising sea levels- animations showed Manhattan under water, along with San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai, the Netherlands and much of Florida. Time and again Gore predicted the melting of the polar caps, in 2008 announcing that “The entire North polar ice cap may well be completely gone in 5 years.” That never happened; today there is more sea ice in the Arctic than in recent years at this time. 2
Support Canada Free Press
Earth Day
None of the first Earth Day predicted man-made climate change disasters have occurred, except in the extrapolations of true believers. All weather events have been consistent with historical norms, including hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and also glaciers, some of which today recede while others advance. Studies show polar bears are thriving. So is the global biota—as demonstrated by satellite data, the planet is greener than ever, as a consequence of higher levels of carbon dioxide, aka 'nature's fertilizer.' Starvation is less rampant too—so much food is being produced that obesity has become a major health concern in much of the Third World. 2
Another original Earth Day prediction was the claim that 'civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.' There were many other totally ridiculous alarmist assertions contained in the Earth Day themes of 1970 that proved completely wrong and demonstrate the lack of any credibility in this politically contrived scheme. 6
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate that there won't be any more crude oil,” ecologist Kenneth Watt warned around the time of the first Earth Day event. “You'll drive up to the pump and say 'fill her up,' and they will say, 'I am very sorry, there isn't any.' Watt also warned of global cooling and nitrogen buildup rendering all of the planet's land unusable. Here we are, 19 years past Watt's arbitrary deadline, and drivers are pulling up to the pump without any lack of supply or cause for concern. Thanks to human ingenuity and the entrepreneurial drive of energy producers, the United States is now the world's largest oil producer, and continually breaking records. 7
While global energy poverty and food insecurity remain a pressing challenge, the problems are getting much better, not worse. World Bank and United Nations data show extreme poverty and global hunger have noticeably dropped since 1970. And according to the International Energy Agency, the number of people without access to electricity fell to below 1 billion people for the first time.
The overwhelming majority of Earth Day observers, climate protestors and similarly-minded 'occupiers' never bothered with pesky things like failed predictions made by their 'heroes--far more fun to rant about 'system change.' Emotions trump facts in this narrative, which is why it is so dangerous.
Species Extinction
The latest chapter of the climate change campaign consists of a warning about a coming mass extinction of species. This made a big impact at House hearings on Wednesday May 24.8
One million species will become extinct in the not-to-distant future and we are to blame. That is the conclusion of a new study by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Larry Kummer reports that a close review of the most recent information dating back to 1870 reveals that instead of a frightening increase, extinctions
are actually in a significant decline. What is apparent is that the trend of extinctions is declining rather than increasing, just the opposite of what the new report claims. Also, according to the IPBES report, we can expect 25,000 to 30,000 extinctions per year, yet the average over the last 40 years is about 2 species annually. That means the rate would have to multiply by 12,500 to 15,000 to reach the dizzying heights predicted. Nothing on the horizon is likely to achieve even a small fraction of that. This extinction study is just the latest example of misuse and abuse of the scientific process designed to sow fear of an impending climate apocalypse. 8
In an incredibly ironic twist that poses a difficult conundrum for those who are intent on saving the planet from our carbon dioxide excesses, the new study reports that the number one cause of predicted extinctions is habit loss. Yet their solution is to pave over vast stretches of land for industrial scale solar factories and to construct immense wind factories that will cover forests and grasslands, killing the endangered birds and other species they claim to want to save.
Experts Even Get Predictions Wrong
Even credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future.
David Epstein notes in the past 40 years the track record of expert forecasters in science, and in economics, in politics, is as dismal as ever. In business, esteemed (and lavishly compensated) forecasters routinely are wildly wrong in their predictions of everything from the next stock market correction to the next housing boom. 9
The idea for the most important study ever conducted of expert predictions was sparked at a 1984 meeting of a National Research Council committee on American-Soviet relations. The psychologist and political scientist Philip E. Tetlock listened intently as other members discussed Soviet intentions and American politics. Tetlock was struck by how many experts perfectly contradicted one another and were impervious to counterarguments.
Tetlock decided to put expert political and economic predictions to the test.
He collected forecasts from 284 highly educated experts who averaged more than 12 years in their specialties. To ensure that the predictions were concrete, experts had to give specific probabilities of future events. Tetlock had to collect enough predictions that he could separate lucky and unlucky streaks form true skill. The project lasted 20 years, and comprised 82,361 probability estimates about the future. 9
The results: The experts were by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire.
Pundits and scientists gives us absurdly confident forecasts about the distant future, things decades or generations away. Often about certain doom, usually based on mathematical models looking at only a tiny sliver of the countless factors affecting our world. Humility about our ability to see the future too seldom appears in these. The darkest predictions are those that deliberately ignore possible non-political solutions. The shrillest calls for political action are those that see only one threat and ignore the may other dangers that threaten us.10
Scary press releases make easily written stories for journalists. A steady diet of them makes will entertained but ignorant and passive citizens, overwhelmed by the daily tsunami of doomster stories and awareness that all have proven false in the past.
Here's a prediction that will definitely come true. “There will always be people who make predictions, especially alarmist ones, that will not come true.”
References
Lawrence Solomon, “The unspoken danger of CO2: it makes people go absolutely nutty,” business.financialpost.com, February 8, 2019
Amanda Prestigiacomo, “Ocasio-Cortez: I was joking about the world ending in 12 years, and you're an idiot if you believed me,” Dailywire.com, May 13, 2019
Robert P. Murphy, “Do we really have a decade left to solve climate change?”, instituteforenergyresearch.org, May 9, 2019
“Scaring the public on climate change,” Canada Free Press, June 29, 2019
Carly Cassella, “Climate change could end human civilization as we know it by 2050, analysis finds,” sciencealert.com, June 5, 2019
Larry Hamlin, “Another dodgy Earth Day ploy hyping flawed and failed species extinction propaganda,” wattsupwiththat.com, April 25, 2019
Nicolas Loris, “On Earth Day, gloomy predictions haven't come to pass,” bangordailynews.com, April 20, 2019
Larry Kummer, “Gregory Wrightstone: exposing the mass extinction lie,” wattsupwiththat.com, May 27, 2019
David Epstein, “The peculiar blindness of experts,” The Atlantic, June 2019
Larry Kummer, “Hopeful news for us from the horse manure crisis of 1894,” wattsupwiththat.com, June 13, 2018
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change and combat CO2,” Democrat firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, explaining her views and those of “millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us.”(1)
She said this without laughing in January, earned a round of applause from the progressive audience, and then emphasized the point by calling the fight against climate change “our World War II.”
