There are some people now who will not have kids because “people harm the planet”. We should not freak out over predictions with a poor history of accuracy. Humanity is in No danger of immediate demise.
Was in school in 1970 when Earth Day started. My family already used returnable bottle and recycled can & newspaper before Earth day existed.
Not a denier, temperatures have gone up. Ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Is that worth scaring children?
EPICA Ice Cores over 800,000 years show earth temperature has cycled from lows -12C/-22F to highs +8C/+14F. On that scale we are at ~+3C/+5F. The earth was naturally warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1700s well before human emissions of CO2 grew after 1950s.
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in 1969 "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born." He added that by 1975, "some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions." In 1970, he revised his prediction for the worse to warn us, as Perry writes, “that "between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the 'Great Die-Off.'" The Club of Rome made similar apocalyptic predictions in 1972.
Was no worldwide food shortage in the 1980s. Today less farmland provides more food for a global population that doubled over 50 years. Farm yields have tripled in that time. Obesity has become a larger threat to health than starvation.
Extreme poverty has fallen from 1/3rdthe population to 1/10th (still too large). Global production of goods and services have doubledin one generation increasing wealth. The world middle class encompasses 52% of the world population, even though slums and rural poverty remain in some parts of the world.
Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth” predicted sea levels could rise twenty feet. That prediction that has brought rebuke even from those sympathetic to the climate cause. “The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925–1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades”, climate scientist Judith Curry. The sea level has risen a few inches, not feet.
Lewis and Curry study appears in the peer-reviewed American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate. Authors Nic Lewis and Judith Curry looked at actual temperature records and compared them with climate change computer models. What they found is that the planet has shown itself to be far less sensitive to increases in CO2 than the climate models say. Lewis and Curry findings show temperature increases will be 30%-45% lower than the climate models say.
What causes poor predictions of the future?
What causes poor predictions of the future?
- Recentcy bias and linier thinking are two main culprits.
- Not understanding how fast new technologies are rolled out. Did anyone have a “smart phone” before 2007?
- Models don’t predict changes in behavior. The 1987 Montreal Protocol started phasing out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances.
- Funding for scientific research is easier if you are proving a desired result.
Humans are very clever and hard working. There are few problems that cannot be solved today or in the future. CO2 production will fall with more efficient electric motors, generators, hybrids, fuel cells, hydrogen, solar and nuclear technologies. Need to work on implementing new technologies, but confident we will succeed.
The future is still bright for our grandchildren.
When Earth Day Predictions Go Predictably Wrong
Here's One Global Warming Study Nobody Wants You To See
Climate Alarm: Failed Prognostications
