Failed Doomsday Predictions, Including a 1960 'Population Crush' Forecast, Show Why Alarmist Climate Predictions and Appeals to 'Following the Science' Deserve Skepticism
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "What Ends the World Will Take Your Breath Away! | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." October 15, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The authors list several scientific doomsday predictions about climate that didn't happen, then point to a 1960 Science paper that predicted human population would become infinite in 2026, which obviously won't occur. They argue this shows that scientific predictions of disaster, and calls to 'follow the science,' shouldn't be taken as gospel.
Conclusion
Dire scientific predictions of catastrophe, climate predictions in particular, have a track record of failure, so the public should not treat such predictions, or appeals to 'follow the science,' as authoritative; faith in scientific institutions is misplaced compared with trust in a higher authority.
Premises
- Several prominent, specific climate-related predictions made by scientists and scientific bodies (a glacier-free Glacier National Park, an ice-free Arctic summer, nations wiped out, the end of New England's maple industry, all by about 2020-2021) did not come true.
- These failed predictions nonetheless generated grave public concern for years after they were made.
- The 1960 Science paper by von Foerster and colleagues predicted infinite human population by November 13, 2026, and was never retracted, yet it will plainly fail, since global fertility has fallen from about 4.95 to about 2.2 births per woman and population decline is projected.
- The 1960 paper's prediction was conditional on 'paradise' assumptions (no environmental hazards, unlimited food, no detrimental interaction), which did not hold, so the authors gave themselves an out, and the forecast became useless once circumstances changed, as they always do.
- The 1960 paper was published in a prestigious journal by credentialed scientists and was widely cited until the early 1990s, so prestige and peer-reviewed publication do not guarantee that a prediction is reliable.
- If 'follow the science' meant deferring to published scientific predictions, one would have to believe the 1960 doomsday forecast, which is absurd.
Assumptions
- The failed climate predictions listed are representative of climate science and its predictions generally, not cherry-picked outliers.
- The signs, a single paper, and a UN official's remark accurately reflect the scientific consensus on climate rather than individual or non-representative claims.
- The 1960 paper is analogous to modern climate projections, so the failure of one type of conditional extrapolation discredits the other.
- The failure of specific dated predictions undermines the credibility of the underlying science and of policy recommendations based on it.
- 'Follow the science' means uncritical deference to any published scientific claim, rather than to the weight of evidence.
- Predictions that fail because conditions changed show the predictors were wrong, not that the warnings helped prompt change or were conditional.
- Satire or reductio by analogy is an adequate method of evaluating the reliability of current scientific claims.