This all came to mind reading an article on President Biden's special climate envoy John Kerry's recent prediction that we have nine years left to avert climate catastrophe. From the article:
Earth will be plagued by consistently catastrophic climate patterns starting in 2030 unless human inhabitants of the planet begin making drastic changes — and right away.This is an odd statement for the climate envoy to make since cold spells in Texas are not unique. There have been several in the last century and the worst was 122 years ago in 1899. Was that one caused by global warming, too? The reason this current blast has been so destructive is that Texas is far more developed today than it was then and far more reliant on technology that's vulnerable to cold and ice to deliver their energy.
"The scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis. We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left," Kerry told CBS "This Morning" in an exclusive interview aired on Friday.
The former secretary of state was brought on to discuss the historic winter freeze blasting southern states like Texas as well as the Biden administration's official reentrance into the Paris climate accord, an international agreement aimed at lowering global carbon emissions. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord in 2017, citing the fact that it was disproportionately harmful to American business.
During the interview, Kerry argued the situation is so dire that the initial pledges agreed to when the deal was signed in 2015 won't cut it anymore.
"Even if we did everything that we said we were going to do when we signed up in Paris we would see a rise in the Earth's temperature to somewhere around 3.7 degrees or more, which is catastrophic," he explained, imploring that new, more ambitious pledges needed to be made.
"There is no room for B.S. anymore. There's no faking it on this one," he said.
Kerry argued that chaotic weather events such as the winter freeze that has resulted in dozens of deaths in Texas could become the new normal if aggressive steps aren't taken. The freezing temperatures are "directly related to the warming," he noted, "even though your instinct is to say, wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age .. it's not. It is coming from the global warming and it threatens all the normal weather patterns."
But never mind that. Mr. Kerry has given us a prediction that can be tested, and if 2030 rolls around and we haven't seen the calamitous weather he predicts, we may conclude that his failed prediction, though based upon a legitimate scientific hypothesis, is prima facie evidence that the hypothesis is either false or in some way in need of modification.
Of course, there may be reasons why a theory fails to fulfill the predictions based upon it that have nothing to do with the quality of the theory itself. There may be instrument or researcher error, or maybe the prediction was sloppily framed, etc., so one or two failures do not merit trashing the theory, but repeated failures should certainly cast doubt on its reliability.
How many predictions does a theory have to fail, how many unfulfilled promissory notes does the public have to accept, before concluding that either the theory is false or its proponents won't let it be falsified because they keep finding reasons to excuse its failures?
After all, this is not the first time environmental alarmists have issued such dire prognostications. In his 1968 book Population Bomb Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich prophesied that there'd be a world-wide population catastrophe by the 1990s resulting in global famine, war and disease. It never happened.
Likewise, we were told in the 1970s that we were soon reaching "peak energy" and would quickly run out of fossil fuels like oil and coal. It never happened.
More relevant to the matter of climate change, in 2006 former Vice President Al Gore declared that unless "drastic measures" were taken to reduce greenhouse gasses, in just 10 years the world would reach a "point of no return." Yet in 2016 no one believed that we had passed the point of no return. If we did pass the "point of no return" in 2016 there'd certainly be no point in insisting today that we re-enter the Paris Climate Accords or in Mr. Kerry insisting that we have to do something by 2030.
Speaking of doing something, Mr. Kerry would have more credibility if he didn't give the appearance of thinking that he need not actually do anything himself, just that other people must. He's still flying around the globe in a private jet that emits up to 40 times as much carbon per passenger mile as a commercial flight, and although private jet emissions are a tiny fraction of total emissions, the people who make these flights have personal carbon footprints that are hundreds, or even thousands, of times the average as a consequence.
One might think that if Mr. Kerry was sincere in stating that we're on the brink of doomsday unless we all pull together to reverse the trend that he'd set a better example for the rest of us by putting his private jet in mothballs and flying commercial.
But of course flying commercial means he'd have to rub elbows with commoners and what elitist would deign to do that?