By Silvio Canto, Jr.
If you collect 45s, as my brother and I did, then you remember that one-hit wonder Thunderclap Newman and “Something in the Air.” To this day, I think the song was about something unexpected, sort of like people rethinking or “getting it together now” over climate change. This is from Joel Kotkin:
Like the Marxist dialectic, or the predictions of the Gospels, the green movement has long seen its triumph as preordained. Yet sometimes the inevitable turns out to be not so.
Over the past few years green policies — notably the drive for “net zero” — have been failing. Both markets and politicians have seen the light. What Joe Biden’s treasury secretary Janet Yellen once called “the greatest business opportunity of the twenty-first century” has revealed itself to be something of a disaster.
Something of a disaster? Yes, I would say so. Let’s check out how it’s working.
The Paris Climate Accord is not much of a deal anymore, in large part because it’s hard to fix the climate if nothing stops China. In other words, we finally came to terms with the reality that China and India are polluting the air a lot more than the Western countries who couldn’t wait to sign it.
The language has changed, too. You may remember when we called it global warming. Everything now is “climate change,” a convenient way of blaming everything on the climate.
Last, but not least, what killed the climate change cult is all of those predictions that turned out to be false. How many times can you get it wrong? I guess a million if you are making predictions about warming and cooling. Let’s remember some of the biggest hits:
1) In 1970, S. Dillon Ripley, a wildlife conservationist who served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, warned that 75 percent to 80 percent of species would be extinct by 1995. Wrong.
2) In 1970, Kenneth Watt, an ecologist and professor at the University of California, Davis, warned that “there won’t be any more crude oil,” that “none of our land will be usable” for agriculture, and the world would be 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. False.
3) In 1970, biologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University warned that by the end of the decade up to 200 million people would die each year from starvation due to overpopulation, life expectancy would plummet to 42 years, and all ocean life would perish. Extremely false.
4) In 1970, Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, predicted that “world population will outrun food supplies” and “the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine” by the year 2000. Didn’t happen.
5) In 1971, Dr. S. I. Rasool, an atmospheric scientist at NASA, predicted the coming of a “new ice age” within 50 years. Incorrect.
As I recall, the one about the coming ice age made the cover of Newsweek or Time. It had me wondering if they would have to cancel baseball or force every city to build a dome stadium.
Check out more hits:
6) In 1975, Ehrlich, the Stanford biologist, warned that 90 percent of tropical rainforests and 50 percent of species would disappear within 30 years. Erroneous.
7) In 1988, Hussein Shihab, environmental affairs director of the Maldives, warned that his island nation would be completely underwater within 30 years, which wouldn’t even matter because experts also predicted the Maldives would run out of drinking water by 1992. False.
8) In 2004, a Pentagon analysis warned of global anarchy due to climate change. Major European cities would be underwater by 2020, at which point Britain would suffer from a “Siberian” climate. Extremely false.
As it turned out, Britain never got a Siberian winter, but they do have a lot of immigrants who hate everything about the country. They didn’t run out of water in the Maldives, either, but a lot of people are going there for vacation. Maybe they drink bottled water in all of those fancy resorts.
And we round out the list with two more:
9) In 2008, Bob Woodruff of ABC News hosted a two-hour climate change special warning that New York City could be underwater by 2015, among other apocalyptic predictions. Didn’t happen.
10) In 2009, former vice president and climate activist Al Gore predicted the Arctic Ocean would have no ice by 2014, which is the same thing Greta Thunberg said would happen by 2022. Nope.
Well, New York City did not go underwater, but it’s a horrible place to live as more people bail out from high taxes. And V.P. Gore and Greta will likely not live to see the end of ice on the Arctic Ocean. We also have not yet lived to see a Gore presidency, which was the best part of the story.
So yes, there is something in the air, because climate talk is not what it used to be. I guess that’s what shutting down power plants and making bad predictions will do to a movement.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/something_in_the_air_and_it_s_not_carbon_dioxide.html