Climate Change Observations: Part 1

Prior to computers, the predictions for climate changes and earth resources were made by humans using charts, graphs, data tables, slide rules and so on. Now with the computer age the predictions are faster to calculate and generate. These predictions are now called “models.” After the predictions or models are made, current data is supposed to be calculated against them to track and see if they are valid. The biggest problem today is that they are being treated as scientific fact when they are really predictions. In at least the past 100 years we should have become aware that the earth’s climate changes are not linear. I would suggest that they just might be chaotic. Below are some predictions that were treated as fact. Compare them with what now is known to have actually happened. I have checked the items below and they appear to be correct.

In August 1969,  the N.Y. Times reported that Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned, “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, we will be dead. We must realize that, unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years snowfall would become “a very rare event.”

In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President G.W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas and Britain will have a Siberian climate by 2020.

In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in 10 years.

A U.S. Dept. of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would have an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared in a joint appearance with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

These observations will be continued next week.

Tom Suter

La Crescenta

  TOM SUTER