Global warming--time to see how the predictions have turned out

I wanted to start the year out with a look back. There have been all sorts of dire warnings from the global warming crowd. I came across some of these and wanted to share them with you so we can understand the nature of these warnings.


1. Within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is." Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.

Well, ten years have gone by since this predictions was made. I guess we know how that turned out. England had the most snow recently since who-knows-when.

2. "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michael Oppenheimer, published in "Dead Heat," St. Martin's Press, 1990.

But I read that NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shows that precipitation -- rain and snow -- has increased slightly over the century. Hmm . . . another miss by the global warming set.

3. "Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000." Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972. In 2008 Dr. David Barber of Manitoba University said "We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time," (ignoring the many earlier times the Pole has been ice free).

Actually, accounts I've seen say the Arctic ice is thicker and temperatures are not rising. You know, even if the ice did thin out, records show this has happened periodically over the history of the earth.

4. "Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010." Associated Press, May 15, 1989.

OK, so here were are at the end of 2010. How did this prediction turn out? According to NASA, global temperature has increased by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1989. And U.S. temperature has increased even less over the same period. According to some, NASA data have been known to have a problem accuracy, because instead of collecting data from temperature stations, NASA makes assumptions regarding what the temperatures should be.

5. "If present trends continue, the world will be ... eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age." Kenneth E.F. Watt, in "Earth Day," 1970.

Oh that's right, we were told back in the 70s that there would be global cooling, that the Earth was facing an ice age. Maybe that will be the new message after this winter.

6. "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

You may remember Ehrlich, a fearmonger who was listened to by the intelligentsia back in the 70s. He lost a famous bet with another, more reasonable man (I forgot his name) who bet him that precious metal prices wouldn't soar as Ehrlich had predicted in his doom-and-gloom scenarios. Erhlich lost the bet.

7. "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970

Ehrlich made a good living spewing stuff like this. We know now that scientists can get more funding if they create alarming scenarios like this.

8. Al Gore sold his scary global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth, shown in almost every school in the country, with a poster of a terrible hurricane. Former US president Bill Clinton later gloated: "It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming. . . It's going to lead to more hurricanes."

But the past 50 years has been about the quietest on record for US hurricanes. The decade of the 1940s was the worst. Researchers at Florida State University concluded that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years. This year there were plenty of hurricanes in the Atlantic, but they were generally weak and did not hit land. Pacific hurricanes were at a record low in 2010.

That's enough for now. Remember that the alarmists are being rewarded for extreme statements with more money, so there's no incentive to stop. Don't jump to any quick conclusions until reason takes over.