Check out these doomsday predictions that did not come to pass (some in the past or present and a few in the future):
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted that “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
By 1973 air pollution is “certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” so predicted Paul Ehrlich in 1970. More than 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles. It didn’t happen. Ehrlich has been very bad at making predictions.
By 1974, environmentalists declared that America would be subject to water rationing (declared in 1970). Hasn’t happened yet, at least in most states.
By 1975: By the late 1970’s, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted that there would be massive food shortages leading to the starvation of hundreds of millions of people.
Ehrlich’s recommendation: The United States is already too big, that birth control may have to be accomplished by making it involuntary and by putting sterilizing agents into staple foods and drinking water, and that the Roman Catholic Church should be pressured into going along.
By 1980, in a 1970 interview for Mademoiselle magazine, Paul Ehrlich asserted, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” That many people did not die during any such 10-year period. At no time has 100 million or even 10 million people starved to death anywhere in the world.
By 1980, city-dwellers will need to wear gas masks to survive air pollution. Have you seen many people wearing gas masks in the cities you visit or live in? I haven’t seen any.
By 1980, environmentalists declared that America would be subject to food rationing (declared in 1970). Food rationing still hasn’t happened.
While there have always been famines and warnings of famine, food experts generally agree that the situation now is substantially different. The problem is becoming so acute that every nation, institution, and every human being will ultimately be affected. — New York Times, 1969, on writing about food shortages due to population growth
By 1980, the oceans will be dead (proclaimed in 1970).
By 1980, the life expectancy of Americans born since 1946 would be only 42 years. So predicted Paul Ehrlich in the May 1970 issue of Audubon magazine. He said that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.”
1980 to 1989: The Great Die-Off. In the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, Paul Ehrlich predicted that 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the Great Die-Off during the 1980s.
By 1985, air pollution will block 50% of the sunlight reaching Earth, resulting in global cooling and a coming Ice Age.
If we are unprepared for the next advance, the result could be hunger and death on a scale unprecedented in all of history. … During the lifetime of our grandchildren, arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our planet into a polar desert. — Leonard Nimoy, host, In Search of the Coming Ice Age (1978)
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. — New York Times, 1978
Ten years before global warming became an invented political meme, we were told to watch out for the coming Ice Age.
By 1989, everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam (so proclaimed a New York Times headline in 1969). Apparently the Times thought the scientific consensus declared that an impending apocalypse was coming due to environmental pollution.
We must realize that unless were are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. — Paul Ehrlich, 1969
We weren’t extremely lucky. We were realistic. No cloud of blue steam ever arose as people disappeared, because people did not disappear. — David Walker, author, The 2020 Election Coup
By 1990, all lead, zinc, tin, silver, and gold reserves will be gone. Note: All these metals are still here—still being mined, still being used, and still being key elements of the economy.
By 1998: In ten years, the oceans will be dead and mankind will soon follow. — Ted Danson, actor, proclaimed in 1988
By 2000: By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic. — James Lovelock, author, Healing Gaia
By 2000, global crude oil reserves will be gone. Obviously this did not happen.
By 2000, global temperatures will be 11 degrees cooler. We will be in a new Ice Age. So proclaimed a few NASA scientists in 1970. Obviously this did not happen.
A 1974 Time magazine headline warned of Another Ice Age?
The Guardian science reporter proclaimed: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast.
In a letter to then President Nixon, The Department of Geology at Brown University warned of an imminent new ice age (early 1970s).
By 2000: The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2000. … World food production cannot keep pace with the galloping growth of population. — Environmental Fund letter (1975). Obviously this did not happen.
By 2000: A senior U.N. environmental official says 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. — Associated Press news article. Obviously this did not happen.
On January 1, 2000 (Y2K), computers will go haywire and plunge the civilized world into chaos. Repeat after me: Obviously this did not happen.
By 2006: As the 21st century progresses, stronger Katrina-like hurricanes will occur more frequently.
By 2011: We’re gonna run out of oil. — Jimmy Carter, U.S. president. Again, repeat: Obviously this did not happen.
By 2012: We have just five years left before disaster (claimed the head of the IPCC in 2007). Again, obviously this did not happen.
By 2013: The North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by 2013 because of man-made global warming. — Al Gore, former U.S. vice president (predicted in 2009). As did current climate czar John Kerry in 2009. Other prognosticators predicted the same thing in 2007. Everyone was wrong. By 2013, the polar ice cap actually grew by 538,000 square miles.
We should be underwater—some of us would be Kevin Costner on a catamaran, but the rest of mankind, poof. Of course, Al doesn’t live in a grave—he lives in a mansion that has a bigger carbon footprint than 99.99 percent of American homes. — Jim Thompson, Redstate cartoonist (https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2022/07/27/cnns-climate-correspondent-predicts-all-life-on-earth-is-about-to-end-n602728)
By 2015, great disasters would occur because of global warming (ABC predicted in 2008).
By 2016: Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. — Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, 2006. The truth? Kilimanjaro still has snow, sometimes lots of it.
By 2016: A leading U.S. climate researcher says the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming to avert catastrophe. — NBC News in 2006
By 2016: We have ten years before the earth is scorched. That’s what Al Gore predicted on January 27, 2006.
Warming fears are the worst scientific scandal in history. When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists. — Dr. Kiminori Itoh, physical chemist
In 2016, Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote by double digits and defeat Donald Trump in an Electoral College landslide (as predicted by multiple pollsters). Trump lost the popular vote by a small margin but won the Electoral College with votes to spare.
By 2016, there’s a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap will have melted. So proclaimed Al Gore at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference where he said the ice caps would melt in five to seven years. It did not happen. Al Gore has a horrible prediction score.
By 2018: Environmental activists predicted the disappearance of the Maldive Islands: A gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years (predicted in 1988 news reports).
Some so-called experts predicted island nations being obliterated by 2000. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. The islands are all still here.
Other so-called experts predicted that part of New York City would be submerged by 2019, including the West Side Highway. The West Side Highway is still here.
By 2020, prices would soar if the Obamacare individual mandate disappeared (predicted by many in 2017).
Fact: the predictions were 100% wrong. Prices stabilized. When you take away mandates, increase competition, and stop forcing people to buy something prices are more likely to go down, not up. It is a simple concept. — Jack Hellner, columnist, American Thinker
Source: The media is clearly confused about the difference between made-up predictions and factual news: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_media_is_clearly_confused_about_the_difference_between_madeup_predictions_and_factual_news.html (4/16/23).
By 2020, so-called experts predicted that Great Britain would be as cold as Siberia (predicted in 2004). This did not happen.
Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. — The Guardian newspaper in 2004
By 2020, the globe would be 5.4° Fahrenheit warmer than the 50-year average. So predicted fake climate scientist James Hansen in 1987. In 2020, Washington DC’s weather was only 1.2° warmer than the 50-year average.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic will result in as many as 2.2 million U.S. deaths. The reality? The CDC reported 377,883 COVID-related deaths in 2020. Sadly, that’s still a lot of deaths, but less than a fifth of what was hysterically predicted.
By 2020, Trump’s tax rate cuts will cost trillions (predicted by many politicians in 2017).
Fact: The prediction was 100% wrong. Revenues have risen substantially, as they did under Reagan and Bush when they cut rates. The CBO routinely underestimates the cost of government spending programs and underestimates revenues when tax rates are cut. — Jack Hellner, contributor, American Thinker
By 2020: Signs at Glacier National Park had to be replaced after predicting that their glaciers would be gone by 2020.
By 2020: Demand for the metals used in building electric vehicles (copper, nickel, cobalt) would rise so rapidly the world couldn’t meet demand. The world would have to mine as much copper in the next 25 years as has been mined in the past 5,000 years (World Bank study). That demand hasn’t happened as real people avoid buying toxic electric vehicles.
In 2022: Inflation will come down. This is not exactly a doomsday prediction, but it is likely another false prediction from those who should know better. Alas, inflation is still raging in 2023
What people should know is that inflation is going to come down next year. Economists have said that. They’re all projecting that. — Jen Psaki, White House press secretary (October 2021).
Fact: The prediction was 100% wrong. All people must know is that Biden’s energy policies caused prices to rise and energy prices affect everything we buy or use. — Jack Hellner, contributor, American Thinker
2022 to 2023: California will be extremely dry, according to the Los Angeles Times. Instead, California was drenched with rain and snow—and was worried about floods.
A warm, dry winter is in store for much of California as La Niña conditions are slated to persist through at least January, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Los Angeles Times, April 2022).
2023: A new ice age will dawn in the first third of this century.
Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century. — Boston Globe proclaimed in 1970
June 21, 2023: A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years. — Greta Thunberg, climate idiot, in a June 21, 2018, tweet. As of 6/28/23, most of humanity are still here!
Five years ago today, St. Greta of Thunberg, the little child who has led the climate change movement across the Western world, promised that, as of June 21, 2023, the world would cease to exist. (Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/_st_greta_of_thunbergs_failed_doomsday_prediction.html.)
March 27, 2025 — We have 1,028 days left, so said the t-shirt of a climate change protester at the French Open semifinal on June 3, 2022. The t-shirt didn’t speak about what would happen so it will be hard to track this prediction. My prediction: March 27, 2025 will be a great day!
2028 to 2030: We’ve got 6-8 years before the climate is so chaotic we live in a permanent state of biblical catastrophe. — Adam McKay, movie director (February 2022).
By 202?, the oceans will come up to the elbow of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. That’s according to a prediction made by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in an MSNBC interview in 2014.
Here in New York, if we lose the ice caps, … [the water] would come up to the Statue of Liberty’s elbow, the one that’s holding the Declaration of Independence. That’s where the water line will be. — Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History
By 2029: Science tell us that we have nine years before the damage is irreversible. — Joe Biden, U.S. presidential candidate in 2020
The production of lithium used in electric car batteries would have to triple today just to maintain the demand in the United States alone. The rest of the world would have to go wanting (Scientific American study).
By 2030, a billion people will be displaced by climate change. — World Economic Forum (2017 video)
By 2030: It’s only going to get worse as climate gets worse and more and more people are harmed. We have 11 years to avoid catastrophe. — Jane Fonda, actress, in 2019
By 2030: Pete Buttigieg claims the planet will be at the point of no return by 2030 if no action is taken.
This is the hardest thing we will have done—certainly in my lifetime—as a country. This is on par with winning World War II, perhaps even more challenging. — Pete Buttigieg
By 2031: The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019
We cannot allow the climate crisis to become a catastrophe. … Some of us are going to have to live on this planet in fifty years. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2021 (after predicting that the WORLD was going to end by 2031!).
2032: There is a very real risk that America will not be a democracy in ten years, predicted U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in February 2022.
I think there’s a very real risk that we will not. What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
By 2050, consistent with rising global temperatures, climate idiots predicted that 15 U.S. cities will be under water. Prediction: Not going to happen. A scare tactic.
Within the lifetime of Prince George, much of Buckingham Palace could be underwater. — Daily Mail, based on a Climate Central study in 2021.
The rapid death of unusually high numbers of human beings through disease can seriously dent the human population. Carried to an extreme, it is not too hard to imagine it wiping out the human species. — Isaac Asimov (no date set)
I doubt all the doomsday global warming predictions are accurate, but if they are, we are goners. Because nothing the Left is doing on climate change is making even the tiniest difference. — Pat Buchanan, commentator
Why are all the organs of dominance of our polity so immune to facts? And why do the media persist in blocking legitimate skepticism and doubling down on failed doom predictions? — Thomas Lifson, columnist, American Thinker
And one prediction that has sadly come true:
In 1995, a year before he died, Carl Sagan predicted the following would happen. Sadly, it has come to pass.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. — Carl Sagan, cosmologist
The left has become the boy that cries wolf. We can only be told so many times that the world will end if we don’t adopt their policies so many times before we just start to tune out. It is surprising it took this long, but regardless, many have gotten there. — Brandon Morse, columnist, RedState (April 2022)
Resource: Thirty Years of Global Warming Prophecies: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/thirty_years_of_global_warming_prophecies.html (4/15/23).
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