|
Climate Change: Unpredictable Results |
|
Date |
Publication |
Prediction
(All exact quotes) |
Outcome |
|
Oct. 7, 1912 |
New York Times |
Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age |
Still encroaching… |
|
June 28, 1923 |
Los Angeles Times |
The possibility of another Ice Age already having started…
is admitted by men of first rank in the scientific world, men specially
qualified to speak. |
Must be a slow starter. |
|
Aug. 9, 1923 |
Chicago Tribune |
Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada |
Still there last time we
checked. |
|
December 1932 |
The Atlantic |
We must be just teetering on an ice age which some
relatively mild geologic action would be sufficient to start going. |
Still teetering. |
|
Feb. 20, 1969 |
New York Times from Col. Bernt Bachen |
The Arctic pack ice is thinning
and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade
or two. |
Santa still is safe. |
|
February 1974 |
Fortune magazine from Reid Bryson |
There is very important climatic
change going on right now… It is something that, if it continues, will
affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people
starving. |
World population increased by
2.5 billion. |
|
March 1, 1975 |
Science News |
The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent
enough that it will not soon be reversed, and we are unlikely to quickly
regain the "very extraordinary period of warmth" that preceded it. |
If "not soon be reversed" means
"reversed by the next decade," then yes. |
|
March 1, 1975 |
Science News |
The temperature has already fallen back some 0.6 degrees,
and shows no sign of reversal. |
So much for climatologists
reading the signs correctly. |
|
July-August 1975 |
International Wildlife |
But the sense of the discoveries is that there is no reason
why the ice age should not start in earnest in our lifetimes. |
There’s still time. |
|
1992 |
Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance" |
About 10 million residents of
Bangladesh will lose their homes and means of sustenance because of the
rising sea level, due to global warming, in the next few decades. |
While periodic monsoons still
cause flooding, rising seas have not been a problem. |
|
Feb. 2, 2006 |
The Daily Telegraph |
"Billions will die," says Lovelock, who tells us that he is
not normally a gloomy type. Human civilisation will be reduced to a "broken
rabble ruled by brutal warlords", and the plague-ridden remainder of the
species will flee the cracked and broken earth to the Arctic, the last
temperate spot, where a few breeding couples will survive. |
Even Malthus must be turning
over in his grave over this one. |
