Listen to the debate about President Barack Obama's supposed “war on coal,” and you'll hear arguments like these: “Electric rates are going to double between now and 2017,” coal executive Bob Murray told Fox host Neil Cavuto in late June. “[Obama] is driving this country from a reliable, low-cost power grid to enormous electric power costs for absolutely no environmental benefit whatsoever.” When the rule came out, the Environmental Policy Alliance, a conservative group, ran a full-page ad accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of wanting “to shut down 25% of our electric grid.” And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has charged the EPA rule would cost the economy more than $51 billion a year.

The fossil fuel industry has been promising this kind of catastrophe for decades, with a slight variation now and then. If the sky indeed fell because of the EPA’s proposed climate rule like promised, it would be the first time the industry guessed it right. And you can expect these allegations to pick up again this week and last through the midterms, as the EPA kicks off a series of public hearings on its first-ever proposal to restrict carbon emissions from existing power plants, the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S.

Back then, the fossil fuel industry was trying to fend off a different set of regulations designed to cut toxic pollutants, like nitrogen and sulfur emissions, from coal. Today, the industry and allies are fighting a different initiative: an effort by the Obama administration to reduce coal emissions from existing power plants, enough to reduce the power sector’s pollution 30 percent by 2030.

But if the circumstances have changed, the rhetoric hasn’t.

Like all such warnings, these contain at least a little truth. Some coal plants really will close. Some people may pay higher bills. But is not the whole story, and it helps to look at how the dire predictions of the past four decades panned out: