This piece argues that decades of apocalyptic climate predictions have repeatedly failed, yet many scientists and institutions respond by shifting scenarios and crediting policy for averting catastrophe, while pushing costly energy regulations that critics say align with authoritarian ideas.
I remember being taught in grade school about acid rain, global warming, and a hole in the ozone layer, all delivered with the certainty of doom. Teachers warned that Florida and coastal cities would disappear, polar ice would melt, and we would face mass starvation. Those headlines and classroom lessons painted the planet as perpetually on the brink.
Now I am in my forties and most of those school predictions have not come to pass, and Florida remains above water. The timeline of catastrophe kept sliding, yet the messaging never included honest admissions of error. Instead, the narrative adapted, and the same institutions pressed harder for sweeping energy and economic changes.
When forecasts proved off, we did not get mea culpas. Instead, climate scientists claimed that policy action had prevented the worst outcomes and that decarbonization efforts explained lower projected warming. That spin lets failed predictions count as proof of success, while the public picks up the tab for higher energy costs and tighter regulations.
I will give them this: it takes audacity to insist you predicted catastrophe, demand expensive fixes, and then take credit when the catastrophe does not happen. The pattern is consistent: alarm, policy push, and then a retroactive claim that the policy worked. Critics say those policies reduce living standards, limit reliable energy, and expand government control under the guise of saving the planet.
https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2095523022148964506
Climate policies saved the world from catastrophic warming, say leading climate scientists. On September 1, a consortium that produces analyses for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released new scenarios. They say the new worst-case scenario is just 3.3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 over pre-industrial temperatures. That’s down from 4.6 to 4.9 degrees of the last three generations of climate scenarios used by the IPCC. “Our business-as-usual projection of 3C of warming – rather than 4 or 5C – is a testament to the progress in global decarbonization over the last few decades,” wrote climate scientists Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster back in May.
Others agreed. Chris Smith, a modeler at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis who helped build the new scenarios, told Carbon Brief that “back in 2010, RCP8.5 wasn’t an implausible future, we’ve now made it an implausible future.” Gavin Schmidt, the longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, argued that scenarios shifted “in light of what we (as a society) are doing,” so that “we have already done things and so ‘business’ is no longer ‘usual.’” Robert Vautard, cochair of the IPCC working group on physical science, said the old high scenarios “assumed no climate policies,” while “there ARE now many climate policies in many countries, developed in particular with the Paris Agreement signed in 2016.”
There is a political history to this that matters. Rush Limbaugh warned decades ago that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, communists would rebrand themselves under the environmentalist movement. That warning is often cited by conservatives who see a throughline from big-government ideology to modern climate activism. For many, green policy and central planning feel like two sides of the same coin.
Critics argue this has concrete consequences: energy shortages, higher costs, and less investment in reliable baseload power like natural gas and nuclear. Where debate should welcome innovation and realism, critics say skepticism is instead branded as malicious sabotage of a moralized crusade. That tactic chills honest discussion and makes practical solutions harder to achieve.
We should expect institutions that forecast the future to own up when they are wrong, and to base policy on clear evidence rather than wishful thinking. Demand for accountability is not anti-science, it is pro-reality; it pushes for better models, clearer assumptions, and policies that preserve prosperity while addressing real environmental risks. Until that happens, the public will keep questioning alarms that never quite arrive.
