Predictions

“I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people who tell me there’s a crisis start acting like there’s a crisis.” — Glenn Reynolds

Well, they’re at it again.

Last week the latest climate pronunciation from the United Nations was released, no doubt worded to scare the bejesus out of us:  “The world has three years to avoid a major climate catastrophe.”  The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a 2,800 page report to world leaders, asking them to do more to combat climate change.  According to the report, if global greenhouse gas emissions don't peak by 2025 and reduce by 43% in the subsequent five years, the world will have to face warming of around 3 degree C by 2100.

Sound familiar?  Here’s what they said in 2017…..

JUNE 29, 2017:   “We Only Have 3 Years Left to Prevent a Climate Disaster, Scientists Warn”.  See here, and here.

When you look at the two above, doesn’t the 2017 prediction look pretty silly in light of the 2022 prediction?  And if they’re THAT bad making predictions, why should we believe the latest one?

And don’t these pronouncements always seem to sound like a late night infomercial?  “Call in the next 15 minutes and we’ll send you a set of Ginsu steak knives at no extra cost.”

Anyway, here are some predictions from the last few decades.  And note that these are not quotes from our leaders such as John Kerry, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg but from various climate “experts.”

You may feel free to laugh out loud.

1972: We have ten years to stop the catastrophe!

1982: “….if things aren’t fixed by the turn of the century — the year 2000 — the world would face “an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.’’

1989: If we don’t solve the climate crisis by 1999 we’ll have: “global disaster, nations wiped off the face of the earth, crop failures”

1990: “We shall win — or lose — the climate struggle in the first years of the 1990s.”

2004:  A “secret report” from the Pentagon to President George W. Bush said climate change would “destroy us.”  Some of the climate plague that will befall us:

• Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas

• Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020

• Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world

2007: The head of the UN climate panel, said, “If there is no action before 2012, that’s too late”

2019: The UN said “only 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change”

Now I know you’re a smart person who has beliefs that may differ from mine, and I totally respect that.  I’m not trying to change your mind – we can each do that on our own.

What I am doing is pointing out the damage done by “hair on fire” predictions.  Dire predictions followed by a non-existent or lukewarm follow-up by government merely debases the prognosticators and tells the average person that these people are full of caca del toro.

Several years ago a political leader said we only have 10 years to alter the climate and if we don’t we’ll reach the point of no return.  Well, now we have about 5 years left.  Do we just throw in the towel now?

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Didja Ever…..

………See a headline that makes you say hmmmmm, huh, wait, WHAT?

That’s what I said when I saw the headline “Most Americans can’t name all 4 of their grandparents!”

In a shocking poll:

• 49 percent of Los Angeles residents could not name all of their grandparents

• 51 percent of those in Washington D.C.

• 48 percent of those in Atlanta

• 46 percent of those in Houston or New York City

You may have thoughts about why this happens.  I certainly do.  The writer of the story attributes the US Census data becoming publicly available in 1950 as a reason.  Sounds bogus to me.

One other tidbit that came out of the survey is that “only four percent [of respondents] could name all eight of their great-grandparents.”  (I can name six of eight off the top of my head and find the remaining two in our Ancestry family tree.)

How about you?

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Given food prices today, this seems like a bargain!!!

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