Climate Alarmists Are Often Wrong But Never in Doubt
This article was orginally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
One of the most annoying things about climate doomsayers is the certainty with which they make their dire predictions, while simultaneously making excuses for all their past prognostications that failed to materialize. Let’s revisit a few.
In the early to mid-1970s, several magazine articles and a number of scientists predicted that cooling trends could usher in a new “mini-ice age” beginning within a few short years. Didn’t happen. In fact, new crystal balls went from cold to hot.
A June 1989 Associated Press story quoted “a senior U.N. environmental official” who claimed that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, insisted that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” Without action “ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.”
At last report, the Maldives continue to thrive – thanks largely to growing tourism! According to CBS News, in 2009 former Vice President Al Gore (always good for a chuckle) “told a U.N. climate conference that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now,” meaning 2016 at the latest. Didn’t happen.
In 2000, the UK Independent ran an article quoting a scientist who suggested that within a decade, thanks to global warming, British children “won’t know what snow is.” Don’t tell that to the British youngsters and others who experienced the severe winters of 2010, 2013, 2018, etc.
Enough? Let’s do a couple more.
There were numerous predictions in the early 2000s that all glaciers in Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 or, if we were lucky, by 2030.
“Later predictions delayed the glaciers’ inevitable demise to 2050,” according to a December 2025 article in the Daily Inter Lake. “Now, researchers say there is reason to believe some of the park’s perennial ice formations will persist into the 2100s.” Glaciers are famously stubborn. Several news stories over the years have quoted scientists and climate alarmists predicting that New York City would disappear under water thanks to flooding due to climate change.
For instance, in 2011, on the heels of Hurricane Irene, The Guardian produced the headline, “Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade,” and a subhead, “Sea-level rise due to climate change could cripple the city in Irene-like storm scenarios, new climate report claims.”
Instead, the only tsunami facing New York City is the flood of debt coming under socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Despite a track record that should discourage even the most ardent true believer, the predictions keep flying, fast and furious, most centered these days around slightly rising temperatures that will allegedly increase rainfall, create more wicked storms, and lead to drought, flood (they always cover both possibilities) or other catastrophes.
“Climate change is real, it’s happening and unless we do something about it soon, the consequences will be severe,” according to Martin Krause, director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate Change Division. Second verse, same as the first.
While most believers in manmade climate change are part of the “Let’s Come Up With the Worst Case Scenario and Hope it Scares Everyone Into Action” school of alarmism, it’s refreshing to occasionally come across someone with a more reasonable approach.
Fitting that bill might be Noah Kaufman, former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration, currently a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a co-director of the Resilient Energy Economies Initiative.
In a “let’s all calm down a minute” article appearing earlier this month in The Atlantic, Kaufman – while making it clear that he personally is firmly aboard the manmade climate change bandwagon – laments the specific time-and-date panic predictions that have helped lose respect and credibility for his cause.
“Few economists embrace these all-or-nothing views on climate policy,” Kaufman writes. Kaufman points out that “quantitative estimates of aggregated global damages over centuries lie far beyond our analytical capabilities. Small changes in assumptions … can yield results that appear tojustify virtually any policy response.”
At the end of the day, “these models can display a pessimistic worldview in which climate damages accelerate to catastrophic levels, or a more optimistic one in which human progress keeps damages relatively modest. They offer little help in determining which of these futures is coming.”
Kaufman concludes by acknowledging that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.”
I recommend Kaufman’s article. Even though I will likely remain among those who agree that the climate routinely changes but remain skeptical about the extent of mankind’s impact, I don’t mind discussing it and listening to different viewpoints. Such conversation is much more palatable with someone who is not exhibiting a holier-than-thou attitude or demeaning the intelligence of anyone who disagrees.
More manmade climate change believers who take a respectful, calmer and non-accusatoryapproach to the naysayers could go a long way in lowering the temperature – and don’t we all agree on that objective?
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
