Suppose a guy at work convinces you the world is going to end in a week. So you craft a few plans. You make sure you’re wearing clean underwear. You clean out the fridge. You double-brush your teeth before bed. You call the kids.
Next month a minister convinces you the world is going to end in a month. So you prepare. You play nice with people you dislike. You go to church and offer up a few prayers. You clean up the garage.
A few months later a guru convinces you the world is going to end in a month. You call your sis to apologize for your last argument. You offer to weed your aunty’s garden.
After a number of such predictions flop, do you suppose you might stop believing them? Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
‘Tis the season for dire climate predictions. Al Gore made a few recently. You remember him. He is in the predicting business and all of his are dark.
Anyway, with his latest predictions he twists reality. He says the dire predictions he made years ago are, in fact, coming true. They are not. But Al ignores his flops.
For example, he tells us the seas are rising at a dangerous rate. He and others tell us islands and countries will be wiped out by higher seas. Ahhh, but our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reassures us that oceans have been rising for 10,000 years. And the rise, now and recently, is a tiny 1/8th inch per year. No need to work overtime on that ark.
Gore also told us polar bears were literally being forced off the planet. That was years ago. His critics tell us their numbers are four times greater than they were in the 1960’s. Ah well.
Of course Gore is not a scientist. He relies on scientists to feed him his material. Some scientists.
UN guys just predicted starvation for millions. Because deserts are expanding. And extreme weather is destroying crops. They predicted general chaos around the world as people search for food. Soon.
Critics of their prediction point out that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels are our friends. Both actually make greening and growing more likely. Plants love both.
Satellite images actually show more greening. The amount of cropland in the world has been steadily increasing. And food production has spurted 240 percent since 1961. Food growth has been much faster than population growth.
How many times have you read that the earth will reach a tipping point within ___ years? That is, if we don’t make drastic changes. You know, changes like ending our use of fossil fuels. Changes like killing off Big Macs and converting to Kentucky Fried Okra.
If you dig into the subject you will find hundreds of tipping point predictions. Why you can hardly claim to be a politician, scientist, quasi-scientist, prince or movie star until you make a few tipping point predictions.
These birds figure nobody will take them seriously unless and until they tell us we are doomed. When they plot their careers they insert tipping-point predictions into the master plan.
The problem is that none of these predictions have come true. But that does not stop them from making more. Tipping points are us. Or them.
You would think they would feel embarrassed. But they don’t. Top officials of the UN gave us 10 years. In 1989. They reckoned nations would be wiped out by rising sea levels by 2000. By 2000 they probably all got promotions.
In 2007 other UN experts said 2012 would be the tipping point. After that we would be doomed. Unless we took drastic action. Well, we did not. Maybe you see things differently, but I don’t believe we perished. Mind you, I have not looked out the window this morning. Maybe we did. Let me know if your neighborhood got wiped out.
In 2009 a top guy at NASA told us disaster would arrive by 2013. By express mail. Meanwhile experts from 20 governments predict 100 million will die by 2030. If the world fails to act on climate change, they will. Or so they say.
The Washington Times looks at this picture and sums it up: It’s a global-warming apocalypse that didn’t happen.
I like the prediction a New Zealand atmospheric scientist made about climate change. “We’re all going to survive this. It’s going to be a joke in five years.” Even though I like it, he was wrong. He made that prediction in 2007. Thus far, we have not reached the joke level.
Or have we? We have had so many tipping-point predictions crash and burn, I suppose we are entitled to laugh. At the predictors. At ourselves for taking them seriously.
Somebody asked J.P. Morgan to predict what the stock market would do. He predicted it would fluctuate.
My prediction? It is that climate doomsters will still be predicting and setting tipping-points 20 and 30 and 50 years from now. They will still have us going to hell in a basket woven from climate-change predictions.
I predict the world will never run short of experts to predict the end of it. Nor of people who believe them.
What do you predict? I invite you to write to me with your latest prognostications. And I promise to file them with all the others. Write to me at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Find Tom on Facebook. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.