Top 10 dud global warming predictions

[bijou]

GLOBAL warming preachers have had a shocking 2008. So many of their predictions this year went splat.

Here's their problem: they've been scaring us for so long that it's now possible to check if things are turning out as hot as they warned.

And good news! I bring you Christmas cheer - the top 10 warming predictions to hit the wall this year.


Read, so you can end 2008 with optimism, knowing this Christmas won't be the last for you, the planet or even the polar bears.

1. OUR CITIES WILL DIE OF THIRST

TIM Flannery, an expert in bones, has made a fortune from books and lectures warning that we face global warming doom. He scared us so well that we last year made him Australian of the Year.

In March, Flannery said: "The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009."

In fact, Adelaide's reservoirs are now 75 per cent full, just weeks from 2009.

In June last year, Flannery warned Brisbane's "water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months".

In fact, 18 months later, its dams are 46 per cent full after Brisbane's wettest spring in 27 years.

In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney's dams could be dry in just two years.

In fact, three years later its dams are 63 per cent full, not least because June last year was its wettest since 1951.

In 2004, Flannery said global warming would cause such droughts that "there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century's first ghost metropolis".

In fact, Perth now has the lowest water restrictions of any state capital, thanks to its desalination plant and dams that are 40 per cent full after the city's wettest November in 17 years.

Lesson: This truly is a land "of drought and flooding rains". Distrust a professional panic merchant who predicts the first but ignores the second.

2. OUR REEF WILL DIE

PROFESSOR Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of Queensland University, is Australia's most quoted reef expert.

He's advised business, green and government groups, and won our rich Eureka Prize for scares about our reef. He's chaired a $20 million global warming study of the World Bank.

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white.

In fact, he later admitted the reef had made a "surprising" recovery.

In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant "between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland's great Barrier Reef could die within a month".

In fact, he later admitted this bleaching had "a minimal impact".

In 2007, he warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were again bleaching the reef.

In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report, and veteran diver Ben Cropp said this week that in 50 years he'd seen none at all.

Lesson: Reefs adapt, like so much of nature. Learn again that scares make big headlines and bigger careers.

...

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24820442-5000117,00.html

So wrong, yet so funny.

[LC EFA]

The only reason we haven't deported Tim Flannery to some place like Fwance, is for comic relief.

[bijou]

The only reason we haven't deported Tim Flannery to some place like Fwance, is for comic relief.

I suppose all countries do need to keep a pet moonbat or three. (Sadly we in the UK do seem to have more than our fair share).

[mamacags]

At least the moonbats in your country sound smart.  No one can sound really really stupid with an English accent.  Now imagine all of that being said by someone from Brooklyn.

[Baruch Menachem]

This has been the coldest, snowiest year I can recall in my 50 years.  I think we had more snow in 1968, but not by much.     We have had two solid weeks of freezing temperatures, which hasn't happened since the Carter administration.   Right now it is 25, which is a temperature I have never experienced before.     Last year was wetter,  I think.

[Peter3_1]

Funny, but cores from FLORIDA's corals show that they GROW LIKE CRAZY in climates that are warmer and with as much or more CO2 than we have now. More food, more oxygen, plenty of "growth atoms" (carbon) and vola they all die????? I think not!

I'm wondering just how insane it will get before the people who actually run the world, Joe and Judy Laborer, get sick of the idiocy and throw the idiots out on their ears.

[Crazy Horse]

Funny, but cores from FLORIDA's corals show that they GROW LIKE CRAZY in climates that are warmer and with as much or more CO2 than we have now. More food, more oxygen, plenty of "growth atoms" (carbon) and vola they all die????? I think not!

I'm wondering just how insane it will get before the people who actually run the world, Joe and Judy Laborer, get sick of the idiocy and throw the idiots out on their ears.

We all wonder

[Chris]

The environuts have been trying for years.  First, it was smog, then acid rain, the ozone layer.  They finally found something that would stick.  I think it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of evidence to convince your average person that it's political propaganda, but I think most people will realize this is just another fad sooner or later.

[Baruch Menachem]

New suckers all the time.   As the old ones get smarter and move on, the new ones just keep coming up..