Watt’s big list of failed global warming predictions

Watt has a big list of failed global warming predictions.  None have been fulfilled, many of them have been falsified.

Here is the subset of Watt’s list that has been clearly and obviously falsified.

May 15, 1989, Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide [USA] two degrees by 2010.”

1988 Rob Reiss asked official Climate Scientist Dr. James Hansen how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years, whereupon Climate scientist James Hansen issues this prediction, to be fullfilled in 20 years, which is to say, doom by 2008: “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change….There will be more police cars….[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”

Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, The Environmental Defense Fund: “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…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”

June 11, 1986, Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal): “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’” (prediction for 2006)

June 8, 1972, Christian Science Monitor: “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.”

June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs: “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.” In the summer of 2008 he makes a prediction for the summer of 2008! Careless of him. Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week. The state of the Northwest passage today, in 2014, is roughly the same as it was in 1921. Some years you can sail through, some years you cannot, and most years if you try it, there is a high risk of getting stuck.

January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City: “But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”

2008 Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) on a visit to Britain: “The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a sign that the climate is changing.” Implying that the warm winters are now going to be typical, a short term implied prediction. Careless of him. Two exceptionally cold winters followed. The 2009-10 winter may be the coldest experienced in the UK since 1683.

June 30, 1989, Associated Press: U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos,” said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He added that governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect. I heard the exact same prediction last night on the television (in 2014), entire nations disappearing, hordes of eco refugees creating political instability, with the date for doomsday changed from 2000 to 2030.

Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”

December 5, 1989, Dallas Morning News: “Some predictions for the next decade are not difficult to make…Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.”

Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel, 1 April 2000

“Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. … Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 20 March 2000

“Winter has gone forever and we should officially bring spring forward instead. … There is no winter any more despite a cold snap before Christmas. It is nothing like years ago when I was younger. There is a real problem with spring because so much is flowering so early year to year.”
Express, Dr Nigel Taylor, Curator of Kew Gardens, 8 Feb 2008

“Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 14 Feb 2004

“Spring is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first ‘conclusive proof’ that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, scientists announced yesterday.”
Guardian, 26 August 2006.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/aug/26/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment

“The global temperature will increase every year by 0.2°C”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, in Die Zeit, January 15, 2007

“Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry. It is very vulnerable to climate change; the resorts have always been marginal in terms of snow and, as the rate of climate change increases, it is hard to see a long-term future.”
David Viner, of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
February 14, 2004
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland

1990 Actress Meryl Streep “By the year 2000 – that’s less than ten years away–earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.” Heard the same prediction on television last night, though they were a bit vaguer about the date.

Edward Goldsmith, 1991, (5000 Days to Save the Planet): “By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle….Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”

April 22, 1990 ABC, The Miracle Planet: “I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left–we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.”

November 7, 1997, (BBC commentator): “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Niños are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Niño upon El Niño, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Niño, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”

July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”

October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”

Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian: “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”

March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”

1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”

2005, Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation: “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.” I heard on the television last night (2014) this exact same prediction with the date changed from 2010 to 2020

Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”

May 31, 2006 Al Gore, CBS Early Show: “…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”