Harold Pease, Ph. D
Billed as the storm of the year, and perhaps of the decade or 21st century, tens of millions of people from Philadelphia-to-Boston scurried home before the 50 to 75mph snow-blowing icy winds over took them. Authorities banned travel on all streets in New York City and violators, who lingered too long, could be fined $300. City Mayor, Bill de Blasio warned, “This will most likely be one of the largest blizzards in the history of New York City.” More than 7,700 flights in the Northeast were canceled and governors rushed to declare state of emergencies. Certainly the Northeast could use some of that “hot air” from the global warming predictions of the past to mitigate this mega storm.
Here are a few of those predictions as cited in The New American, “Embarrassing Predictions,” August 25, 2014. In June 30, 1989, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned, “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” Crop failures and flooding “would create an exodus of (starving) ‘eco-refugees’.” The year 2000 came and went with no nations disappearing or with fleeing starving “eco-refugees.”
In 2005 the UNEP predicted some 50 million “climate refugees” fleeing the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas within five years; 2010 came and went without producing a single “climate refugee.” The United States and China both have significant populations within these danger zones. Most of the identified areas, rather than deceasing in population because of the melting ice, actually increased in population.
Not to be outdone a Pentagon Commission Report in 2003 envisioned “a post-apocalyptic world caused by global warming within a decade, only to be proven wrong about everything.” By 2013 California was to be flooded with inland seas, parts of the Netherlands ‘unlivable,’ polar ice all but gone in the summers, and surging temperatures.” The environmentalist U.K. Observer followed with the prediction that “Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years.”
Perhaps the most outlandish global warming alarmists predictions was that of the end of snow. David Viner, a climatologist from the University of East Anglia, predicted that a “snowfall would become ‘a very rare and exciting event’…. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” And, “skiing in Scotland would soon become just a memory.” Fortunately for skiers, the BBC reported in 2014 “that Scottish hills had more snow than at any point in seven decades.”
Close behind the end of snow prediction was the end of ice for the Arctic prediction, made by former Vice President Al Gore and others in 2007-09. Gore maintained that, “the entire North Polarized cap will disappear in five years.” It didn’t!! When that time came in 2013, ice coverage was actually 50 percent higher than the year before. In fact, dozens of global warmists, anxious to witness the prophecy fulfilled, boarded the flagship MV Akedemik Shokalskiy for the North Pole and enroute were frozen in place by sea-ice. They had to be rescued by a helicopter because ice cutters were unable to free the ship for two weeks. Actually, Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft measured ice volume in the summer of 2013 at 9,000 cubic kilometers—twice the thickness as reported in 2007 when Gore made his prediction. Obviously the North Pole was still deep in ice.
A similar case can be made for the South Pole. “Sea Ice area in the south is now at the highest point since records began” indeed, “if both poles are considered together, there is about one million square kilometers of frozen area above and beyond the long-term average.”
The embarrassing predictions of the global warming crowd of the past do not give us confidence in their predictions of the future. In the last three months new predictions have surfaced. The latest include: a prediction of a fifty percent increase in lightning strikes this century over the last. Global warming will threaten the survival of more than half of all species of birds in the United States and Canada by the turn of the century. And, the United Nations reported a historic rise in CO2 gases in 2013, which will inevitably force a warming of the climate. If such a rise has occurred why is the Arctic ice twice its 2007 thickness? Global warmists simply move on to the next frightening prediction without explaining why those of the past did not pan out.
Of course, neither the present mega storm in the Northeast, nor the designation of the winter of 2013-14 as one of the coldest on record in the United States, verify or fail to verify global warming. But if any of the predictions had any validity New England would not be so cold this week. Certainly the “hot air” from the global warming alarmists predictions would have easily melted the two to three feet of snow they now endure.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.