If the “science is settled” regarding global warming, climate change, extreme weather, or whatever it goes by these days, why are past predictions not more accurate?

Weather forecasting, although frequently off the mark, is usually fairly accurate. If snow is predicted, it typically falls. It may be a few inches more or less than predicted but it isn’t sunny and 80 degrees on a day a major snowstorm is forecast.

Yet climate, which is a longer-term measure of weather, cannot be predicted with any more accuracy than flipping a coin or throwing dice. Let’s look at some past predictions.

Almost twenty years ago, in 2004, the Guardian reported what U.S. defense officials at the Pentagon warned about the future climate:

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

As 2020 has just arrived, let’s see how those predictions turned out. For New Year’s Day, London is predicted to have a high of 46 degrees. While in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, the New Year’s Day high was only 23 degrees. So much for “Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020.”

London was Siberia at one time, but 200 years ago. Remember the snow and ice in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? “Dickens grew up during the coldest years of the Little Ice Age, between 1805 to 1820.”

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As to the “nuclear conflicts, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting,” I don’t see any of that either as 2020 arrives. Well, perhaps big media is rioting as its dreams of overturning the last election have been fruitless.

This climate prophesy also claimed, “As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.” One year after the 2004 report would be 2005, 15 years ago.

I don’t recall any rising sea levels or major upheavals, other than Hurricane Katrina, which flooded the below sea level city of New Orleans due to city officials not spending allocated monies on levee reinforcement. Don’t blame corrupt financial mismanagement of American cities on global warming.

One of the report’s authors warned, “It was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years.” Well it didn’t start tomorrow and five years later, in 2009, the only brewing disaster facing America was Obamacare.

There is a plethora of other failed catastrophic climate predictions. Thirty years ago, the Indian Ocean was to swallow the Maldives. Al Gore, in 2009, predicted the North Pole Ice cap would be melted within the next five to seven years. Yet the Maldives are still there and icebreakers are getting stuck in Arctic Sea ice.

Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist, wrote The Population Bomb in 1968. Among his predictions:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”

The only end that is coming is for dirty deep state players, assuming Barr and Durham do their jobs. But England is alive and well, and soon leaving the EU. India seems to be thriving too. It wasn’t a population bomb but instead a prediction bomb.

Speaking of England, Prince Charles has been predicting the end of the world as often as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has been telling everyone that Trump is about to be found guilty of collusion, treason, tax evasion, and coloring his hair.

In July 2009, the good prince predicted there were only 96 months to save the world. That’s eight years, or July 2017, just a couple of months after Robert Mueller began his investigation witch-hunt against President Trump. It wasn’t the end of the world, only the end of Rachel Maddow and the credibility of her fellow “journalists.”.

In 2015, Charles extended the deadline by 33 years. How generous. Too bad he didn’t give his brother, Andrew, a 33-year extension to talk his way out of his Jeffrey Epstein mess.

This year, the Prince of Wales changed his tune again, “Warning that if we don’t tackle climate change in 18 months the human race will go extinct.” If the prince doesn’t get a handle on his brother and his underage girls, the royal family may go extinct within 18 months.

One year ago, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told us the world will end in 12 years. Now we are down to 11 years. The failed or flailing Democrat presidential candidates agree.

Beto O’Rourke says, “We don't have more than 10 years to get this right." Mayor Pete is a bit more generous, saying, "Science tells us we have 12 years before we reach the horizon of catastrophe when it comes to our climate." Andrew Yang threw in the towel, announcing, “We are 10 years too late. We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction, but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground."

Why don’t they all give it up and stop trying to predict the unpredictable? The IPCC acknowledges, “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

We can only predict the obvious, that the climate does change over time. Cooling leads to ice ages and warming melts the ice, as has been occurring on the planet for millions of years. This has been happening long before humans roamed the Earth, drove SUVs, and grilled burgers in their backyards.

We don’t even know what normal climate is. Is today colder than normal or warmer? Not over the past hundred years but over the past hundred million years.

For those who claim to know the unknowable, I say “How dare you,” borrowing the catch phrase of the world’s foremost climate expert, a bratty teenager from Sweden.

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The left has corrupted climate in the cause of wealth redistribution, making their braying and doomsaying nothing but noise. This may get them a few votes, but will not prevent the next heat wave, snowstorm, or hurricane. Time for them to give it up rather than continuing to double down on stupid.

Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician, freelance writer and occasional radio talk show host whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.