Crying Wolf

Everyone is familiar with the story of the little boy who so often cried out that a wolf was attacking the sheep when no such threat existed that eventually everyone just ignored him.

We're not yet to the point of ignoring people who are crying out that the wolf of climate catastrophe is stalking the planet, but given the track record of the last fifty years it would be understandable if we were.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has compiled a list of over a dozen forecasts by prominent figures which failed to materialize. The CEI article introduces the list with these words:

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

The predictions from the 1960s often promised massive food shortages, those from the 70s predicted an impending ice age. In the 80s the apocalyptic prognostications switched from global cooling to global warming with forecasts of entire islands and coastlines inundated by the sea by the year 2000.

None of these prophecies have come to pass, but that doesn't deter the doomsayers who are still plying their trade today perhaps even more fervently than ever. Scaring people with prophecies of imminent disaster is, after all, a lucrative business as Al Gore, one of its foremost practitioners, could attest.

Here's a partial list of some of those predictions from the 60s and 70s:

• 1967: Dire famine by 1975.
• 1969: Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989
• 1970: Ice age by 2000
• 1970: America will be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980
• 1974: New Ice Age Coming Fast
• 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’
• 1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend
• 1988: Maldives completely under water in 30 years
• 1989: Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000
• 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019
• 2002: Famine in 10 years
• 2004: Britain to have Siberian climate by 2020
• 2008: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013

Each of these and many others are documented in the CEI piece. Check it out and ask whether, after all this, you can blame people for being skeptical when they hear similar pronouncements of incipient doom today.