A Lesson in Grammar

An exclamation mark is a grammatical sign used to express strong feelings or a forceful statement that someone wants us to believe.  So, considering the importance of the exclamation point in the English language, I thought I would illustrate the evolution of climate thinking by citing a few of the very bold predictions experts from around the world have made through the years.

~ First The Earth Was Heating Up ~

December 1939 – “The Glaciers are Collapsing!” – “It may without exaggeration be said that the glaciers—like those in Norway—face the possibility of a catastrophic collapse,” Professor Hans Ahlmann, a Swedish geologist, said in a report to the Geographical Society after his Arctic expedition, as cited by the paper.

May 1947 – “The Oceans will Inundate us!” – “The possibility of a prodigious rise in the surface of the ocean with resultant widespread inundation, arising from an Arctic climate phenomenon[,] was discussed yesterday by Dr. Hans Ahlmann, a noted Swedish geophysicist at the University of California Geophysical Institute,”

October 1958 – “Ships will sail over the North Pole!” “Some scientists estimate that the polar ice pack is 40 percent thinner and 12 percent less in area than it was a half-century ago, and that even within the lifetime of our children, the Arctic Ocean may open, enabling ships to sail over the North Pole.” – the NY Times

November 1967 – “World Famine Unavoidable!” – “It is already too late for the world to avoid a long period of famine,” The Salt Lake Tribune reported, citing Paul Ehrlich’s prediction of famines by 1975.

~ Then It Was Cooling Down ~

April 1970 – “A New Ice Age Is Upon Us!” – “Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century,” The Boston Globe reported, saying that pollution expert James Lodge predicted that “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century.”

October 1970 – “Expect Water and Food Rationing”- Once again, Paul Ehrlich went on to predict that America would be rationing water by 1974 and food by 1980, California’s Redlands Daily Facts

July 1971 – “A Disastrous new Ice Age is Coming!” – “The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age,” said atmospheric scientist S.I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Columbia University, The Washington Post

January 1972 – “We have 10 Years to Stop the Catastrophe!” – “We have 10 years to stop the catastrophe,” said Maurice Strong, then-U.N. environmental secretary, regarding the world’s environmental problems, reported by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

December 1972 – “We’re Going to Freeze!” – Two Brown University geologists wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon, reporting that a conference attended by “42 top American and European investigators” concluded “a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.”

January 1974 – “Ice Age Coming Fast!” – “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” – The Guardian.

June 1974 – “Ice Age Signs are Everywhere!” – “Telltale signs are everywhere—from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest,” – Time Magazine

January 1978 – “No End in Sight to Cooling Trend!” – “An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.” – NY Times

~ Then It Was Heating Up Again ~

February 1979 – “The North Pole is Melting” – “There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.” – NY Times

May 1982 – “An Environmental Holocaust!” – Mostafa Tolba, then-executive director of the U.N. environmental program, said that if the world didn’t change course, it would face “an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.” – NY Times

September 1988 – “The Maldives Will Be Gone by 1992” – “The small island nation of the Maldives was threatened to be completely covered by a gradual rise in average sea level in 30 years,” Agence France-Presse reported, noting that “the end of the Maldives and its people could come sooner if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992, as predicted.”

June 1989 – “Entire Nations Will Be Underwater!” – “A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown (then director of the NY office of the UN Environmental Programme), says 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,” – San Jose Mercury News

March 2000 – “Children Won’t Know What Snow Is!” – “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,” – The Independent “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” said David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of England’s University of East Anglia, noting that within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event.” 

December 2001 – “In 20 Years, No Maple Syrup in New England!” – “The changes in climate could potentially extirpate the sugar maple industry in New England within 20 years” – The 2001 global warming report commissioned by the U.S. Congress.

February 2004 – “By 2020, European Cities Underwater” – The Guardian reported on a secret Pentagon report that predicted climate change will lead to nuclear war, major European cities will sink into the ocean, and Britain would descend into “Siberian” climate by the year 2020.

January 2006 – “Greenhouse Gases Will Kill Us In 10 Years!” – “Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return,”  The Associated Press, paraphrasing Al Gore.

November 2007 – “After 2012 It’s Too Late!” – “This year was the “defining moment” of the climate change fight,” according to Rajendra Pachauri, then-head of the U.N. climate panel. “If there is no action before 2012, that’s too late,” – The New York Times

November 2007 – “Ice Free Arctic Ocean as Soon as 2010!” – “The Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summer as soon as 2010 or 2015—something that hasn’t happened in more than a million years,” Canada’s Canwest News Service – “Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?” said an Associated Press headline the following month.  “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012,” – Jay Zwally, NASA climate scientist.

December 2007 – “Ice Free Arctic by 2013” – “Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013; but maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative” – The BBC

March 2008 – “Arctic Will Melt Away!” – “If Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions,” – Xinhua, (China’s official propaganda mouthpiece.)

April 2008 – “North Pole Ice Free 2008!” – “There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole” National Geographic News 

June 2008 – “Arctic Will Be Ice Free in 5 – 10 years!” – “In five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of ice in the summer,” NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Sciences. 

December 2009 – Ice Free Arctic Ocean as soon as 2014 – “The Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in summer as early as 2014.” USA Today.

September 2012 – “No Snow by 2020!” – “Enjoy snow now … by 2020, it’ll be gone,” The Australian

July 2013 – “No More Snow!” – “Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe,” The Guardian 

July 2017 –  “We Will Become Like Venus at 250 Degrees Celsius and Sulfuric Acid Rain!” – After then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement, physicist Stephen Hawking said, according to BBC:  “We are close to the tipping point, where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees [Celsius] and raining sulfuric acid.”

August 2017 – “Climate Change Will End Snow!” – “Climate change puts Australia’s ski industry on a downhill slope,” The Sydney Morning Herald

January 2018 – “No Permanent Arctic Ice by 2022!” –  “The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,” – Harvard University, Professor James Anderson

July 2020 – “The End of Snow!” – Australian Geographic Magazine

December 2021 – A No Snow California!” – “A no snow California could come sooner than you think.”  Los Angeles Times 

August 2022 – “The End of Snow!” – “The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives,” – Bloomberg

March 2023 – “Arctic Ice Irreversible Thinning!” – “Artic Ice has seen an irreversible thinning” – Washington Post.

~ Then a Few Told the Truth ~

“We (the UN-IPCC) redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”– Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, co-chair of the IPCC working group on Mitigation of Climate Change

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model (i.e., capitalism) that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,”– Christiana Figueres, Executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change and a 2016 nominee for Secretary General of the United Nations.

“The whole thing is a total scam, there is actually no scientific evidence that CO2 is responsible for climate change over the eons.” – Patrick Moore – co-founder of Greenpeace

~ And Finally, Climate Change Became Woke ~

“The world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Quote of the day: “The whole political vision of the left, including socialism and communism, has failed by virtually every empirical test, in countries all around the world.  But this has only led leftist intellectuals to evade and denigrate empirical evidence.” – Thomas Sowell

Headlines courtesy of the Epoch Times