Analysis

Democrats Keep Getting Their Climate Change Doomsday Predictions Wrong

(Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Varun Hukeri General Assignment & Analysis Reporter
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For more than 50 years, members of the scientific community and environmental movement have made climate change predictions that ultimately turned out to be incorrect. Many of these predictions have been embraced by prominent Democrats over the years.

President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry is the latest Democrat to promote predictions of impending global disaster. He said during an appearance last week on “CBS This Morning” that the world only has nine years left to avert a climate catastrophe.

That number was based on a 2018 projection that global temperature increases would become irreversible by 2030. (RELATED: Psaki Won’t Say If Biden Agrees With Kerry On 9-Year Climate Catastrophe Timeline)

There is a scientific consensus that points to climate change and the contributing role of human activity. But what remains unclear is the extent to which human activity contributes to climate change and whether the level of emissions are a “proven threat,” according to the Heartland Institute.

The Biden administration is proposing aggressive climate reforms with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. But lingering questions about climate change and the lengthy track record of incorrect predictions from Democrats and environmentalists could make it difficult for the administration to sell its agenda.

“Democrats have been getting their predictions so wrong for 30 years because they don’t understand climate science,” Heartland Institute vice president Jim Lakely said in a statement to the Daily Caller.

Competitive Enterprise Institute environmental director Myron Ebell and former Trump transition team member Steve Milloy compiled 27 instances of incorrect climate predictions by Democrats and scientists over 50 years in a report last December.

One such prediction was made by former vice president and prominent climate activist Al Gore in 2009, who had suggested during a United Nations climate conference that the polar ice cap over the Arctic Ocean would disappear by 2014, USA Today reported.

BERLIN, GERMANY - AUGUST 08: Former Vice President Al Gore attends a press conference for 'An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power' at Hotel Adlon on August 8, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

Former Vice President Al Gore attends a press conference on August 8, 2017 in Berlin, Germany (Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

Another report published last year by Milloy compiled 10 instances of incorrect climate predictions that were supposed to take place in 2020.

A prediction made by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2009 during the Obama administration claimed glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park would disappear entirely by 2020. The agency later took back its prediction in 2017 and began removing signs that warned of melting glaciers, CNN reported last year.

“One need only go to Glacier National Park and view the locations where the Obama administration maintained signs saying the glaciers would be gone by 2020,” Heartland Institute president James Taylor said in a statement to the Caller. “The signs are gone, the glaciers are still there.”

One reason why climate change predictions are consistently incorrect could be because the climate models and data such predictions rely on are often exaggerated or misrepresented.

A 2018 peer-reviewed study published in the American Meteorological Society’s scientific journal concluded that climate models can exaggerate the climate change impact from emissions by as much as 45%.

ILULISSAT, GREENLAND - JULY 30: Icebergs, including one carrying a lake of melt water, float jammed into the Ilulissat Icefjord during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 near Ilulissat, Greenland. The Sahara heat wave that recently sent temperatures to record levels in parts of Europe is arriving in Greenland. Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland, where over the last several decades summers have become longer and the rate that glaciers and the Greenland ice cap are retreating has accelerated. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Icebergs float during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 near Ilulissat, Greenland (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

“The predictions made by global climate models of the future global mean temperature have been falsified by the data,” Ebell said in a statement to the Caller. “Continuing reliance on the models is not science, it’s propaganda.”

“Aside from the fact that Earth’s climate is far too complicated to be predicted to the degree of accuracy claimed by climate alarmists, they base their work on exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s effect on global warming,” CO2 Coalition executive director Greg Wrightstone said in a statement to the Caller.

Democrats and environmentalists today continue to promote the study warning of a potential climate catastrophe in 2030. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed the “world is gonna end in 12 years” during an event in 2019. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has used the study to advocate for aggressive climate action. (RELATED: Just 12 Years Left? Let’s Break Down The Alarmist Talking Point Fueling Kids’ Climate Change Strikes)

“Self-anointed ‘climate experts’ get their predictions wrong because the predictions are not scientific in nature,” Milloy told the Caller. “They wrongly imagine their predictions are science. They’re not. Until our ‘climate experts’ develop a track record of being correct, no attention should be paid to them.”