The New York Times warned of “the end of snow” in 2014, and, sure enough, many of us can’t see the end of the snow.
Being buried up to your eyeballs will do that.
If I had a dollar for every grossly errant environmentalist prediction, I wouldn’t exactly be holding a paper cup looking for change on skid row — but only because I might not even have a cup.
Speaking of enviro-predictions, “Since 1980 Americans have heard that the Earth was warming rapidly, that the South would not have winters anymore,” and that we’d see ice’s last gasp, writes American Thinker’s Jack Hellner.
“We were told it is the ‘scientific consensus’ and the science was ‘settled,’” he continued. “So why the heck would politicians prepare for something when they were told by ‘experts’ that it would never happen?”
Hellner thus blames Texas’s problems on global-warming alarmists such as Al Gore, Bill Gates, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and gives Lone Star State politicians a pass. Yet the buck stops with people’s leaders (and those electing them), who, were they wise, would realize that “experts” aren’t always all that expert. More on that later.
Hellner points out that alarmist John Kerry, in-between flights on private jets, warned us that we have only nine years left to remedy our climate woes; presumably, if we don’t, we’re doomed. Well, I guess, then, party hardy now for tomorrow we die.
Actually, no, prepare to meet God (and not just a minute before predicted doomsday).
Actually, no — I mean, yes, always prepare to meet God — but you also may want to prepare for life beyond 2030. After all, we’ve been told we had only about 10 years to solve our supposed climate problems for the last 30-some-odd years.
That is, when the doomsayers felt generous. In 2009, former British prime minister Gordon Brown said that we had fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe. Yet as “far as I can tell we are still having snow, the temperature is nearly the same, the coastal cities are still here, the icecaps are still here, and Manhattan and Miami are still not flooded,” notes Hellner.
Yet if Texas’s politicians and our leaders in general were wise, they’d know that Brown’s prediction is pretty much par for the course. Just consider the following list, presented by Hellner and derived from the Competitive Enterprise Institute page, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions”:
- 1967 Salt Lake Tribune: Dire Famine Forecast by 1975, Already Too Late
- 1969 NYT: “Unless we are extremely lucky, everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. The situation will get worse unless we change our behavior.“
- 1970 Boston Globe: Scientist Predicts New Ice Age by 21st Century said James P. Lodge, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
- 1971 Washington Post: Disastrous New Ice Age Coming says S.I. Rasool at NASA.
- 1972 Brown University Letter to President Nixon: Warning on Global Cooling
- 1974 The Guardian: Space Satellites Show Ice Age Coming Fast
- 1974 Time Magazine: Another Ice Age “Telling signs everywhere. Since the 1940s mean global temperatures have dropped 2.7 degrees F.”
- 1974 “Ozone Depletion a Great Peril to Life” University of Michigan Scientist
- 1976 NYT The Cooling: University of Wisconsin climatologist Stephen Schneider laments about the “deaf ear his warnings received.”
- 1988 Agence France Press: Maldives will be Completely Under Water in 30 Years.
- 1989 Associated Press: UN Official Says Rising Seas to ‘Obliterate Nations’ by 2000.
- 1989 Salon: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019 said Jim Hansen the scientist who lectured Congress in 1988 about the greenhouse effect.
- 2000 The Independent: “Snowfalls are a thing of the past. Our children will not know what snow is,” says senior climate researcher.
- 2004 The Guardian: The Pentagon Tells Bush Climate Change Will Destroy Us. “Britain will be Siberian in less than 20 years,” the Pentagon told Bush.
- 2008 Associated Press: NASA Scientist says “We’re Toast. In 5-10 years the Arctic will be Ice Free”
- 2008 Al Gore: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013.
- 2009 The Independent: Prince Charles says Just 96 Months to Save the World. “The price of capitalism is too high.”
- …2013 The Guardian: The Arctic will be Ice Free in Two Years. “The release of a 50 gigaton of methane pulse” will destabilize the planet.
- 2013 The Guardian: US Navy Predicts Ice Free Arctic by 2016. “The US Navy’s department of Oceanography uses complex modeling to make its forecast more accurate than others.
- 2014 John Kerry: “We have 500 days to Avoid Climate Chaos” discussed Sec of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabious at a joint meeting.
Now, question: If a stock broker had a 30-year history of consistently wrong investment predictions, would you take his advice on stock picks?
Man’s fallible nature brings us back to an earlier point about wise vs. unwise leaders. It should be obvious that you can’t just “listen to the experts” because “experts” generally don’t all say the same thing. On the issues we argue about you have experts on both sides — and that’s when there are only two sides.
Just consider how many Supreme Court rulings are 5-4. Yet all that bench’s justices supposedly are juridical experts. To whom should we listen? To the majority? Even with science?
The problem is that Truth isn’t determined by majority vote, and “consensus” is a term of politics, not science. You’d never say consensus holds “that the sun is 98 million miles from the Earth” or “that force=mass×acceleration.” Science is about achieving provable results, not popular support.
In fact, history is replete with examples of iconoclastic scientists who were mocked or even persecuted, but who turned out to be right.
So “expert” advice is all for naught without virtuous leaders — who being so will possess the virtue of wisdom — and who can effectively filter information. Of course, having such helmsmen is impossible without a virtuous people that can effectively filter candidates for leadership.
