I & I Editorial BoardPredicting that catastrophe is just around the next corner is an old game for the global warming crowd. From Al Gore to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to King Charles to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the forecasts of doom have been raining down on us for decades. That we are able to note this today is remarkable, because one crank is sure that 2026 is the year of our extinction.
“I can’t imagine there will be a human on the planet in 10 years,” Guy McPherson said when asked in 2016 how much time the human race had.
“We’re headed for a temperature in that span that is at or near the highest temperature experienced on Earth in the last 2 billion years.”
McPherson predicted an “exponential change” in the global temperature was coming hard and fast.
So is this fellow an escaped mental patient?
No. He’s an academic, now, according to his website, a University of Arizona professor emeritus of natural resources and the environment. He’s also a certified grief-recovery specialist, which seems like a good business to be in for anyone who causes emotional trauma by predicting that the end of humanity is nigh. At least one person blames McPherson for “most for my anxiety.”
Three years ago, Richard Lindzen, also a professor emeritus (of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), told an interviewer that McPherson was “entitled to any science fiction he wishes to produce, but there’s no scientific evidence [establishing his claims]. These are scare stories. I think once people realize the public is amenable to scare stories, they get carried away.”
The record shows that there has been no exponential increase in the global temperature since McPherson got carried away a decade back. Measurements made by satellites in the lower troposphere show that temperatures today are roughly where they were in 2016, and have in fact fallen since 2024, when they were not quite 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than they were in 1979, when the satellite record began.
We refer to this data set, compiled by Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, because we can’t rely on temperature stations, nor do we have any confidence that tree rings tell an accurate story. Only a climate alarmist would believe that nonsense. There should be a similar skepticism about the ability of ice cores to reconstruct past temperatures.
With no agenda to follow, Spencer and Christy don’t mix data from multiple sources, nor do they tease out a global warming signal from the numbers, as many scientists do with their adjustments. They don’t play tricks to achieve a desired outcome.
It befuddles us how the Guy McPhersons and Paul Ehrlichs and so many others can be so wrong with their warnings of impending destruction, yet continue to be treated in most of the media as respected experts who make divine pronouncements from their Olympian perches. It says a lot about our society that those who peddle junk science are treated with respect.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
You wrote, “The record shows that there has been no exponential increase in the global temperature since McPherson got carried away a decade back. ”
Of course it’s not exponential. He was clearly wrong about that. So he who exaggerated wildly, unlike the vast majority of climate scientists.
But the temperature is clearly increasing, from your own graph. Look at the red line, “Running, centered 13-month average.” For the past 3 years it’s been higher than any any other point on the graph.
If you showed more years in the past, the warming would be even more clear.
Like any good denier, you show the spike in 1998, in such a way as to mislead people into thinking that is a reasonable baseline. 1998 was a record year, and stands out from all the previous more than 100 years of record. Deniers used to pretend that warming stopped in 1998, but it clearly did not.
You may turn out to be right about a lot of things, but whenever I see a statement like this — “1998 was a record year, and stands out from all the previous more than 100 years of record” — these questions immediately come to my mind: “How many constantly recording thermometers were there across the vast Pacific in 1901? How many in the Sahara? How many in the entire continent of Antartica?”
Have you ever thought about those questions?
Yes, I have.
Google: NASA Why does the temperature record shown on your “Vital Signs” page begin at 1880?’
The use of “Deniers” was juvenile, undid everything else you wrote.
Hello ge5568,
“Like any good denier”
What do you believe the author is denying, exactly?
The thing is, it’s the people who keep telling us that there is a crisis who are the people denying climate change. They propose that there is some correct state for the climate which must somehow be preserved. It is they who deny climate change!
NONE of these ‘sky is falling’ prognostications has ever panned-out to be true. Quit listening to these self-appointed government-funded Chicken Littles.
The Earth is warming, like the climate scientists have predicted for decades. The other side said it was cooling. Then they said it soon would be cooling. Then they said it was warming, but it was due to natural cycles. And on and on.
Yes, there have been some bad predictions, but they are not what climate scientists say in general.
Sure, you can get a warming trend, IF you make adjustments to previous temperature records that just happen to lower older records.
Globa warming and high CO2 levels are lies for which the chosen solution is higher taxes. Its simply another government tax scam. What should we expect from governments, aka politicians, the truth?
Even the Royal Society, the oldest scientific group, has a graph on their website showing CO2 has been higher than it is now for 80% of the last 600 million years. In other words, CO2 is now dangerously low. Its not even close to being high.
I’m old enough to remember the hole in the ozone layer.
Yes, that was a big concern. And action was taken, and the problem was largely fixed.
Don’t you think we should address other problems as well?
In 1970 Erlich’s “Population Bomb” was required reading in my freshman English class. We debated it and I took the position that his premise was fatally flawed in that he failed to account for human ingenuity. I was right.
There are only about 200 humans on earth qualified to expound and debate the post graduate science of climate change. I am not one. It is reasonable to conclude that the climate has been changing since the planet was formed, billions of years ago. But I, as a retired PE, do comprehend numbers and could teach a course on the effects of the denotation of one nuclear weapon on society. The damage is scoped in megadeaths, 1,000,000 dead in hours. There are some 13,000 of these weapons (not having a classified standing, I guesstimate from open literature), so it is a debatable point that nuclear war will kill all living beings on earth higher that a cock roach. Given the world as it is, I discount climate change as a topic worthy of public concern. IF it is a real and present danger to our survival, we are powerless to stop or reverse the bad results. Man must use fire, fission and, one day, fusion to live. If, over time, they are bad, he must and will follow the dinosaurs into extinction.
I do not like paying $4.50 a gallon for my gas. But I drive to church.
As I&I notes in this column the global-warming charlatans are terrible at predicting the end of the Earth.
At my 81 year old age if they predicted that I’d die in 20 years then I could be assured that I’d live to be over a 100.
Anyone who occasionally manages to get outdoors knows the climate is changing. Why don’t I ever see polls about what people think based on their own experience?
Let’s stop humoring these Chicken Littles. They’re no different than the nut case in the street with a ‘THE END IS NEAR’ sign.