“Nature has run out of patience, and we’re running out of chances.” — The Nation, 7/13/21

“We can’t wait any longer to deal with climate crisis; we see with our own eyes.” — Joe Biden, quoted at Axios, 7/7/21

The climate doomsday machine never sleeps. The public has been subject to more than 50 years of sustained apocalyptic climate hysteria — with precisely none of the dire predictions having actually come to pass. And yet, each day, multiple times a day, we are accosted with the same headlines about the same imagined horrors that didn’t happen the last 50 times they were predicted.

And no matter the climate “emergency” — cold or heat, planetary finale by fire or ice — the root cause of each climate “crisis” is always American capitalism; the solution is always socialism and population control.

It is so tiresome. Hard to believe these people don’t bore themselves to death with their rank unoriginality. We have 20 years left! No, ten! Actually, just months. Scratch that, hours! And yet, tomorrow’s gloom-mongering will be unquestioningly covered by every media outlet with zero notation that these drama queens have been issuing these same jeremiads for generations. And they’re always wrong.

(According to The Smithsonian magazine, the dire predictions “failed to come true because the predictions themselves changed the course of history.” C’mon, man.)

Here is just a small sample of the repetitious, over-the-top climate scaremongering through the decades:

1960s

• “It is already too late for the world to avoid a long period of famine… Paul Ehrlich said the ‘time of famines’ is upon us and will be its worst and most disastrous by 1975. He said the population of the United States is already too big, that birth control may have to be accomplished by making it involuntary and by putting sterilizing agents into staple food and drinking water, and that the Roman Catholic Church should be pressured into going along…” — The Salt Lake [UT] Tribune, 11/17/67
• “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… Man is not only running out of food, he is also destroying the life support systems of the Spaceship Earth.” — Paul Ehrlich, “Eco-Catastrophe!” 1969
• “We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.” — Paul Ehrlich, The New York Times, 8/10/69

1970s

• “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.” — Life magazine, January 1970
• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” — Denis Hayes, Earth Day organizer, in The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970 issue
• “The death rate will increase until at least 100 to 200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Paul Ehrlich, Mademoiselle, April 1970
• “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Kenneth Watt, ecologist, Time magazine, April 1970
• “[By the next century] the consumption of oxygen in combustion processes, worldwide, will surpass all of the processes which return oxygen to the atmosphere… [States] are already consuming more oxygen than their own green plants replace and … we are importing the balance from neighboring oceans.” — James Lodge, scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, quoted in “Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21st Century,” The Boston Globe, 4/16/70
• “Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century if population continues to grow and earth’s resources are consumed at the present rate, a pollution expert predicted… [Lodge] also warned that if the current rate of increase in electric power generation continues, the demands for cooling water will boil dry the entire flow of the rivers and streams of continental United States…” — The Boston Globe, 4/16/70
• “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years… [T]he world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt, at Swarthmore College, 4/19/70
• “We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” — Kenneth Watt, 4/19/70
• “Between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, [will] perish in the ‘Great Die-Off.’” — Paul Ehrlich, The Progressive, 1970 Earth Day issue
• “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” — Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day, 4/22/70
• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” — The New York Times, 4/23/70
• “America will be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.” — Paul Ehrlich, Redlands [CA] Daily Facts, 10/6/70
• “The oceans will be … dead … in less than a decade.” — Paul Ehrlich, Redlands [CA] Daily Facts, 10/6/70
• “A Harvard biochemist says civilization will end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action is taken against pollution, overpopulation, and the possibility of nuclear war.” — The New York Times, on Nobel Prize winner Dr. George Wald, 11/19/70
• “In the next 50 years, the fine dust man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees… [I]f sustained over several years … such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!” — Dr. S. I. Rasool, nasa scientist, quoted in “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,” in The Washington Post, 7/9/71
• “[D]eterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.” — letter to the White House from Brown University geologists warning of the “menace” of the coming ice age, 12/3/72
• “Scientists figure that only a 1 percent decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.” — Time magazine, “Another Ice Age?” 6/24/74
• “Professor T. M. Donahue of the University of Michigan testified [that] … researchers are not even sure they have exhausted the inventory of possible horrors that could result from ozone depletion… ‘We appear to be on the verge of a period of great peril to life on this globe… It is time to step back and take a very careful look at what we may be doing to ourselves and our planet…’” — upi, on Prof. Donahue’s testimony before Congress, 1974
• “There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.” — “The Cooling World,” Newsweek, 4/28/75
• “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.” — The New York Times, 1/5/78

1980s

• “The overall temperature of the earth rose sharply this year, signaling the beginning of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and significantly increasing the likelihood of droughts and heatwaves…” — The Miami News, declaring that “1988 will be the warmest year since measurements began 130 years ago,” 6/24/88
• “Today Dr. James E. Hansen of [nasa] told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases… If Dr. Hansen and other scientists are correct, then humans, by burning of fossil fuels and other activities, have altered the global climate in a manner that will affect life on earth for centuries to come.” — “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” The New York Times, 6/24/88
• “Prepare for long, hot summers… during the 90s… If we do nothing to cut down on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, temperatures in 2050 will be 6 to 7 degrees higher than they are today… The level of the ocean will rise anywhere from one to six feet… [T]he maximum strength of hurricanes may increase by 50 percent…”” — Gannett News Service, 12/12/88
• “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of … unep. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar ice caps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet…” — AP, 6/30/89
• “The West Side Highway [along the Hudson] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change… The droughts [will] get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying ‘Water by request only.’” — Jim Hanson, quoted at Salon, predicting in 1989 how New York City would look by 2019
• “A senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” — AP, 6/30/89

1990s

• “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.” — Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992
• “The civilization that has existed for centuries is beginning to exhaust its potential, and is no longer able to preserve and improve life on earth. For the first time, we see a threat to the very existence of the human race… For the first time, we see signs of danger to the very stability of the biosphere.” — Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet dictator, founding the International Green Cross due to “the crisis in environment,” The Los Angeles Times, 4/27/93
• “The earth has entered a period of climatic change that is likely to cause widespread economic, social, and environmental dislocation over the next century if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, according to experts advising the world’s governments.” — The New York Times, 9/18/95
• “At the most likely rate of rise … most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years. They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.” — The New York Times, 9/18/95
• “[G]lobal warming requires an international solution. Make no mistake. The problem is real. And if we do not change our course now the consequences, sooner or later, will be destructive for America and for the world.” — Bill Clinton, cnn, 10/22/97

2000s

• “According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit [cru] of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare … event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,’ he said.” — “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past,” in The [UK] Independent, 3/20/00, since scrubbed from the internet
• “Within as little as ten years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals, or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.” — George Monbiot, “Famine Can Only Be Avoided If the Rich Give Up Meat, Fish, and Dairy,” The [UK] Guardian, 12/23/02
• “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us. Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war. Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years. Threat to the world is greater than terrorism.” — The [UK] Guardian, 2/21/04
• “[U]nless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next ten years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said. He sees the situation as ‘a true planetary emergency.’” — cbs News, reporting on the premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth,” 1/26/06
• “The earth has a fever and … that’s a warning of something seriously wrong.” — Al Gore, listing “the increase in wildfires, the melting glaciers, and gradual drying up of all continents as undeniable proof of global warming,” abc News, 6/23/06
• “A leading U.S. climate researcher [James Hansen] says the world has a ten-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert a catastrophe.” — “Warming Expert: Only Decade Left to Act in Time,” nbc News, 9/14/06
• “UN Scientists Warn Time Is Running Out to Tackle Global Warming. Scientists Say Eight Years Left to Avoid Worst Effects. Panel Urges Governments to Act Immediately.” — The [UK] Guardian, 5/4/07
• “The ipcc chairman … acknowledged … ‘If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.’” — The New York Times, 11/18/07
• “An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years… ‘The Arctic is screaming,’ said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, CO.” — AP, 12/12/07
• “Fifty million climate refugees by 2010.” — United Nations Environment Program, 5/1/08
• “We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path. This is the last chance… We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes.” — James Hansen, demanding the world get back to 1988 levels of greenhouse gases, levels he hated in 1988, AP, 6/24/08
• “Gore calls on the U.S. to produce all its energy from zero-carbon sources within ten years, saying that the future of human civilization is at stake.” — The [UK] Guardian, July 2008
• “Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster.” — “The Final Countdown,” in The [UK] Guardian, 7/31/08
• “The entire north polar ice cap will be gone in five years.” — Al Gore, 12/14/08
• “Barack Obama has only four years to save the world.” — Jim Hansen, nasa climatologist, quoted at The [UK] Guardian,1/17/09
• “Prince Charles: ‘We Have Less Than 100 Months to Stop Climate Change Disaster.’” — The [UK] Daily Mail, 3/8/09
• “We have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it… We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours.” — Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party in Canada, “‘We Have Hours’ to Prevent Climate Disaster,” The Toronto Star, 3/24/09
• “If we continue on the business-as-usual trajectory, there will be a tipping point that we cannot avert. We will indeed drive the car over the cliff.” — John P. Holdren, science advisor to President Obama, quoted in “‘Earth 2100’: the Final Century of Civilization?” at abc, 5/29/09
• “2015 is only six years away, but many experts say that if the world has not reached an agreement to massively reduce greenhouse gases by then, we could pass a point of no return.” — “Earth 2100,” abc, 6/2/09
• “The UK faces a ‘catastrophe’ of floods, droughts, and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned. Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the ‘impasse.’ He told the Major Economies Forum in London … there was ‘no plan B.’” — bbc, 10/13/09
• “Snows of Kilimanjaro ‘to Disappear in 20 Years’: The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will have disappeared [by 2030] because of global warming, claim scientists…” — The [UK] Telegraph, 11/3/09

2010s

• “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles: The price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high…” — The [UK] Independent, 10/23/11
• “President Obama has a ‘last window of opportunity’ [in 2012] to get it right on climate change, UN Foundation President Tim Wirth warned.” — E&E News, 12/23/11
• “A new paper … argues that the release of a 50-gigaton methane pulse from thawing Arctic permafrost could destabilize the climate system and trigger costs as high as the value of the entire world’s gdp.” — The [UK] Guardian, 7/24/13
• “U.S. Navy Predicts Summer Ice Free Arctic by 2016.” — The [UK] Guardian, 12/9/13
• “We have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.” — Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, 5/13/14
• “New York summit is last chance to get consensus on climate…” — The [UK] Guardian, 9/4/14
• “Mayors from South America, Africa, the United States, Europe, and Asia will… sign a declaration stating that the Paris summit ‘may be the last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2 degrees centigrade.’” — Reuters, 7/21/15
• “World Has Three Years Left to Stop Dangerous Climate Change, Warn Experts.” — The [UK] Guardian, 6/28/17
• “Four Years to Save the Earth: 2020 Is the Deadline to Avert Climate Catastrophe, Experts Claim in Chilling Commentary.” — The [UK] Daily Mail, 6/29/17
• “The World Has Just Over a Decade to Get Climate Change Under Control, UN Scientists Say.” — The Washington Post, 10/7/18
• “We have just 12 years to make massive and unprecedented changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels, the United Nation’s climate science body said in a monumental new report…” — Vox, 10/8/18
• “Ocasio-Cortez: ‘World Will End in 12 Years’ If Climate Change Not Addressed.” — The Hill, 1/22/19
• “I will start with the good news. The world, as a small number of people have been saying lately, will not end in 11 years. The bad news, however, is that around the year 2030, if we continue with business as usual, we will likely be in a position where we may pass a number of tipping points. And then we might no longer be able to undo the irreversible climate breakdown.” — Greta Thunberg, speech at the National Assembly in Paris, 1/23/19
• “We need to start now, to cut carbon emissions aggressively, or by 2030 we may have passed a tipping point beyond which the planet, and yes you people living on it, is in for a world of possibly permanent hurt…” — Tom Toles, “Ocasio-Cortez Says the World Will End in 12 Years. She Is Absolutely Right,” in The Washington Post, 1/24/19
• “Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting.” — United Nations press release, 3/28/19
• “I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.” — Prince Charles, “Climate Change: 12 Years to Save The Planet? Make That 18 Months,” bbc, 7/24/19
• “According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation, and war. The study found that the U.S. military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades…” — Vice, 10/24/19
• “We don’t have decades. What the scientists are telling us, if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years, we’re talking about cities all over the world, major cities going underwater.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democrat debate, 11/20/19
• “If we don’t solve it [the climate crisis] soon, we will never solve it, because we will pass a series of irrevocable tipping points — and we’re clearly now approaching those deadlines. You can tell because there’s half as much ice in the Arctic, and because forests catch fire with heartbreaking regularity, and because we see record deluge.” — “The Climate Science Is Clear: It’s Now or Never to Avert Catastrophe,” The [UK] Guardian, 11/20/19

2020s

• “One of the biggest risks facing humanity is failing to take action to stop the climate emergency before it is too late. If we don’t start to fix it in time, then parts of the planet will become uninhabitable as the biosphere stops absorbing carbon dioxide and actually starts pumping it out. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, and wildfires will get worse and happen more often, sea levels will rise and flood some of our biggest cities. Food chains will collapse, people will starve, famines will spread, even more species will become extinct, and millions of people will be displaced… [W]e have to act fast and start now.” — “Only Ten Years Left to Fix Climate Emergency,” Zurich Insurance Group, 2/18/20
• “The Tipping Points at the Heart of the Climate Crisis: Many parts of the earth’s climate system have been destabilized by warming, from ice sheets and ocean currents to the Amazon rainforest — and scientists believe that if one collapses others could follow. The warning signs are flashing red.” — The [UK] Guardian, 9/19/20
• “The clock reveals how little time we have left to tackle the climate crisis before the planet is past a tipping point. That number is 7 years, 98 days, 15 hours… and counting.” — The [UK] Independent, 9/24/20
• “The scientists told us three years ago that we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis. We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left.” — John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate, “cbs This Morning,” 2/19/21
• “Climate Tipping Points May Have Been Reached Already, Experts Say.” — cbs News, 4/26/21
• “It’s getting more likely the world will reach a climate tipping point in the next five years.” — cnn, 5/27/21
• “Climate Tipping Points Could Topple Like Dominoes, Warn Scientists.” — The [UK] Guardian, 6/3/21
• “‘One Can Ask If We Haven’t Already Stepped on This Landmine’: Scientist Who Led Largest Arctic Expedition Says Heating May Be Irreversible.” — The [UK] Independent, 6/18/21
• “A leaked draft report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints the starkest picture yet of the accelerating danger caused by human use of coal, oil, and gas. It warns of coming unlivable heat waves, widespread hunger and drought, rising sea levels, and extinction… The draft language is blunt, saying, ‘The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own.’” — pbs, 6/23/21
• “Democrats Have a Year to Save the Planet.” — The New York Times, 6/30/21
• “Secretary General António Guterres of the United Nations recently said that we are at ‘the very edge of the abyss’ of accelerating and runaway climate change. We now face the end of human civilization as we know it.” — The [PA] Daily Item, 7/3/21
• “In 1972, a team at mit predicted that humanity’s pursuit of economic growth without regard for environmental … costs would lead to society collapsing by the mid 21st century — a new study finds this may become a reality.” — The [UK] Daily Mail, 7/14/21

The good news is, Americans are onto these fear-stokers. They are ramping up the hysteria in an attempt to get traction, but it isn’t working — they know people have completely tuned them out.

So now, if anyone buttonholes you, and starts haranguing you about the planet having a fever, you can pull out this list, hand it to them, and say: “Go ahead, circle the predictions that came true. Surely you can find one in over 50 years of prognosticating, no?”

You’ll be left alone. Guaranteed.

Chalkboard cartoon ©2021 by permission of Michael Ramirez and Creators Syndicate, Inc.; Cartoon sign montage ©2021 The Limbaugh Letter/iStock photos