Armageddon: An Introduction to Climate Predictions & Hyperbole
Do they ever have to get it right? Even directionally? Are they aware truly green nuclear power already exists?
Sarah Saves Receipts (SSR) plans to file numerous reports sharing the best of our thousands of receipts on climate change. To start, we’ll let the climate change community frame the debate for us in their own words. Then we’ll take a brief walk through their can’t-shoot-straight track record of past climate predictions.
Receipts are forthcoming.
But first a warning. Never has there been receipts more universally dark, apocryphal, and dripping with drama; so much so a soundtrack seems in order. The more ominous and epic the better. SSR offers Aerosmith’s, “I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing” from the movie Armageddon. Please press play. Stuff is about to get biblical.
According to the Climate Doom Committee, consisting of climate scientists, activists and climate advocacy journalists, climate change…
Is a catastrophe…
CNN: The planet is on a ‘catastrophic’ global warming path, UN report shows
New York Times: Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Crucial, U.N. Panel Says.
An apocalypse…
New York Times: Another Step Toward Climate Apocalypse
WIRED: The Climate Apocalypse Is Now, and It’s Happening to You
And true to our soundtrack, climate change is an outright Armageddon…
Sydney Morning Herald: Climate Armageddon: No time to waste in the battle to save our planet
Scientific American: Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amok
The Cost to Avert this Armageddon? How Many Zeros Can You Add?
The spending on climate change is slated to be as epic as the predictions themselves. Per Bloomberg, $200 TRILLION dollars is needed. That’s the bad news. The good news is apparently that’s a “bargain”.
Actually, perhaps $200 trillion is a bargain, when compared to insurer Swiss Re’s estimate of $270 trillion:
Swiss Re: Over USD 270 trillion in climate investments needed to meet 2050 net-zero targets
Focusing on the United States, climate related spending is already far over budget. Again, per Bloomberg, the excess spend may be 3x the original estimate, and approaching $1 trillion from just the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). IRA is but one climate-related spending initiative.
Bloomberg: A Year Into Biden’s Climate Agenda, the Price Tag Remains Mysterious
“The uncapped incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act mean spending sparked by the historic US climate law could triple initial estimates and push past $1 trillion.”
The U.S. Government is Broke. Every Trillion Spent on Climate is Added Directly to Our Spiraling Debt.
Unfortunately, the United States government is effectively broke. See the Congressional Budget Office graphics and link below. Debt is at historical levels and spiraling out of control.
Continued deficit spending since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) was ramped dramatically further to pay for covid lockdowns that were not recommended by academic research or government pre-pandemic planning. Sarah Saves Receipts documented exactly how unscientific and harmful the lockdowns were here:
Yet we continue to deficit spend even as these emergencies are over, the economy is growing, and employment is at record lows. (SSR will discuss our dire debt situation in future posts.)
This means every dollar of climate change spending is borrowed. In fact, we lack even the funds to pay the interest. Thus, not only is every dollar of climate change spending added to our debt, but then we take on more debt to pay the interest on the original debt. Each year the principal grows larger still and we borrow even more to pay an ever-increasing interest payment. Hence the term “debt spiral”.
Given how much they want us to spend, and our dire debt situation, they better have a good track record of getting these predictions correct. Do they?
Congressional Budget Office: The 2023 Long-Term Budget Outlook
Climate Catastrophists Say Spend Unlimited Trillions Based on Their Predictions of Doom. Yet, what is Their Track Record?
They can’t get it correct, not even directionally.
You do have that theme from Armageddon playing, right? Just checking.
SSR is of sufficient age to remember when manmade climate change was set to freeze the planet over. We recall being excited at the prospect of more ice and snow in hopes it would correlate with a spike in cancelled school.
Lenord Nimoy even narrated this television segment:
Turns out the prediction of climate ice age disaster wasn’t only wrong, it wasn’t even correct directionally.
As we all are aware, the Climate Doom Commitee did a complete 180 degrees from predicting an impending ice age, to predicting a global boiling.
Failed Ice Age Prediction Deniers
The climate catastrophists are out working to clean up, justify, and blame everyone else for their deeply failed predictions of a coming ice age.
LongReads: In 1975, Newsweek Predicted A New Ice Age. We’re Still Living with the Consequences.
“…climate change deniers latched upon the 1970s speculations of a cooling planet as a way to discredit scientists who raise the alarm over increasing global temperatures.”
SSR gets it now: it’s our fault the Climate Doom Committee got it so phenomenally wrong and we dare point it out. If we question their track record, or their demand to have the government spend itself into oblivion, we are the problem. Before unplugging all our baseload power in favor of unreliable solar and wind, couldn’t we talk about it? Shouldn’t we?
Yet after such a colossally failed prediction of an ice age, here they are again with claims of “catastrophe”, “apocalypse”, and “Armageddon”, this time because the globe is now boiling.
It’s not just Ice Age Predictions That Were Wrong, It’s Pretty Much All Climate and Planet Predicitons
Failed predictions are pretty much business as usual in the world of climate or planet related science:
American Enterprise Institute: 50 Years of Failed Doomsday, Eco-pocalyptic Predictions; the So-called ‘experts’ Are 0-50
New York Post: 50 years of predictions that the climate apocalypse is nigh
This extreme failed prediction regarding population is worthy of a listen:
Failed predictions continue right into the present. Here are a few representational examples:
This 2006 prediction is over 17 years old. It gave us ten years to save the planet before it becomes uninhabitable. It’s 2024. Don’t expect Ms. Hinsliff to issue a mea culpa.
Ms. Thunberg’s 2018 tweet, since deleted, reiterated a prediction of human extinction by 2023 that has gone unfulfilled. Don’t expect an apology for scaring the bejesus out of her young followers.
A search using Microsoft CoPilot artificial intelligence search engine gave SSR this response regarding John Kerry’s prediction of the artic being sea ice free by summer 2014. Not only is the artic not sea ice free, but ice is rebounding. SSR hopes to review this positive development in future posts.
You knew SSR wasn’t going to let the veritable Chairman of the Board of the Climate Change Doom Committee get off without scrutiny:
Wall Street Journal: What Else Did Al Gore Get Wrong?
“Over time, the former vice president’s pronouncements on population may be more embarrassing than his climate predictions.”
(And for the record, SSR has no problem saying nice things about Al Gore. See inside this post.)
In a world of climate change hyperbole, it turns out every location can be its own Lake Wobegone. To paraphrase that mythical Prairie Home Companion town’s tagline, the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the temperatures are warming faster than average:
Don’t Cancel Your Plans. Turns Out, All Predictions of Armageddon, Are Wrong
SSR feels just a tad embarrassed to have to point out the obvious that every prediction of global apocalypse, regardless of the reason, has failed. Here is a rather long list dating back to beginning of recorded time:
Wikipedia: List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events
Yet, nothing seems to stop mankind from moving straight to the next end-of-times prediction. Clearly, there is something about extreme predictions that people crave, or at least draw them in.
The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences: Apocalypse Now, or Never? The Fallacy of Doomsday Predictions
Yeah, But This Time They’re Not Kidding
Climate scientists and the climate advocacy journalists that unquestionably report their decades of failed predictions never seem to be disgraced, lose credibility, much less offer any humility. No, they simply reload with new and even more over the top predictions.
Per the Guardian, this time they really mean it, it’s “final”:
In fairness, the business of predictions is not an easy one, something to which Sarah Saves Receipts (SSR) can attest. Almost fourteen years as a hedge fund and mutual fund portfolio manager meant having a constant awareness that only a few bad calls separated a great year-end bonus from investors withdrawing their money and in turn being out of a job… permanently. No one should cry for SSR. It was the business we had chosen. I knew the rules. But clearly getting it correct is not required in the business of end-of-world predictions.
Not to Mention, Reliable Green Energy Already Exists; Yet, Inexplicably We’re Shutting It Down
The Climate Doom Committee’s plan is to shut down reliable baseload power in favor of unreliable windmills and sun catchers. They do this even though a truly green, energy dense, reliable source of energy already exists; namely, nuclear power.
SSR argues if climate change was the Armageddon they claim — they really believed the world was truly on the brink of collapse — we would already be building a massive new fleet of nuclear reactors. Inexplicably, we’re shutting down nuclear reactors, typically with fossil fuel power picking up the slack.
Mass. Inst. of Technology: Shutting down nuclear power could increase air pollution
“…analysis reveals that indeed, air pollution would increase, as coal, gas, and oil sources ramp up to compensate for nuclear power’s absence.”
Shutting down green energy in favor of polluting energy means, at least to SSR, that they are not serious. However, their intent to scare us is. If that requires being dishonest about it, then so be it as implies this quote below from Stephen Schneider, one of the key scientists to predict an impeding ice age before realizing his calculations were wrong and deciding he meant global warming:
About Sarah Saves Receipts Future Posts on Climate
The Climate Doom Committee enforces a narrative that climate change is not only settled science, but is settled beyond debate. That may be the case for mainstream media, but at SSR we can discuss it all we want.
In future climate related posts we hope to detail, amongst other topics:
How the proposed solution to ward off climate change — solar and wind power — has no hope of fueling an industrial economy due to unreliability, and high costs.
How, inexplicably, we are running headlong into implementation of these unreliable power sources without so much as one demonstration project at scale to prove they can power a grid at scale. (They can’t.)
How, the plan to destabilize an already stressed electrical grid with wind and solar comes exactly as we massively ramp up electricity demand via electric vehicle mandates and other fossil fuel to electric switching.
Temperatures may indeed be rising, but SSR will report on how historical temperature readings have been adjusted lower to make the past look cooler. Climate scientists have reasons for their adjustments which we will share. However, SSR is skeptical of data manipulation that conveniently makes a prediction “true” when it might not be to the degree they claim, or perhaps at all.
How the Climate Doom Committe works together to discredit, censor and cancel those who try to offer opposing or even varied views. No wonder there is no balance to the discussion.
What your life would really be like in a Net Zero world. (Not fun.)
Stay tuned…. and subscribe!