Pirate's Cove

Can someone remind me who was President for most of the 2010’s?

The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.

At the start of the last decade, Kallan Benson was 5 years old, her favorite story was “The Secret Garden,” and Earth was in the midst of its warmest year on record. Benson had heard about climate change (her mother is an environmental scientist), but she didn’t know world leaders had just signed an agreement calling it “one of the greatest challenges of our time.” She cared about Earth, but she trusted adults to protect it.

She doesn’t feel that way anymore.

By the final year of the decade, the planet had surpassed its 2010 temperature record five times. Hurricanes devastated New Jersey and Puerto Rico, and floods damaged the Midwest and Bangladesh. Southern Africa was gripped by a deadly drought. Australia and the Amazon are ablaze. Global emissions are expected to hit an all-time high this year, and humanity is on track to cross the threshold for tolerable warming within a generation.

The 2010s were a “decade of disappointment,” said Benson, now 15 and a national coordinator for the youth climate organization Fridays for Future. If the world is to stave off further disasters, the next decade must be one of unprecedented climate action, she said.

“This decade that we’re going into now will be the most important of our lives,” Benson said. “We’re kind of running out of options. And we’re running out of time.”

Ten years ago, the United Nations released its first “emissions gap” report detailing the disparity between commitments made by nations to reduce greenhouse gases and what is needed to meet global temperature targets. It estimated that countries should be curbing emissions about 3 percent per year.

So, what, exactly, did members of the Cult of Climastrology do? How many changed their own lives to match their beliefs? Oh, but there’s this

We're doomed, we're all doomed! https://t.co/rq7TuuP3Rp Top scientists predictions for 2020: the UK with a ''Siberian" climate, major European cities sunk beneath rising seas, rioting and nuclear war over scarce water and energy. pic.twitter.com/Hy3P5jGReT

— Dana Pico (@Dana_TFSJ) January 1, 2020

Wait, failed predictions? Who would have thought!

Top 5 most outrageous 2020 doomsday predictions that didn’t pan out

1. The U.S. may warm 6 degrees F from 1990 to 2020

In 1990, The Washington Post reported in a front page story: “Carbon dioxide is the gas most responsible for predictions that Earth will warm on average by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2020.”

The outlet further warned: “The United States, because it occupies a large continent in higher latitudes, could warm by as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Nope.

2. Oil will effectively run out by 2020

CNN ran a headline in 2003 titled “World oil and gas ‘running out'”.

The New York Times reported in 1989 that “untapped pools of domestic oil are finite and dwindling,” and that “William Stevens, the president of Exxon U.S.A., said … by the year 2020 there would not be enough domestic oil left ‘to keep me interested.'”

Nope.

3. By 2020, no glaciers will be left on Mt. Kilimanjaro

“It’s now estimated that by the year 2020, there will be no glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro,” Christian Lambrechts, an officer at the U.N. Environment Program, told CNN in 2003.

The Associated Press also reported in 2007 that “in 2001, [glaciologist Lonnie] Thompson predicted the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania would disappear within the next 20 years.”

Nope. (#4 is on tech)

5. By 2020, “millions will die” from climate change

Reuters newswire ran this headline in 1997: “‘Millions will die’ unless climate policies change.”

The report said 8 million people would die by 2020, citing a prediction in the Lancet medical journal.

“None of these predictions came true, and aren’t even close to coming true,” said Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “It’s amazing that the public can continue to believe apocalyptic predictions despite a 95 percent decline in weather-related deaths in the last 100 years.”

It’s amazing how wrong climate cultists constantly are, eh? How can there be disappointment when everything they say will happen doesn’t?