5. By 2020, "millions will die" from climate change
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Reuters newswire ran this headline in 1997: "'Millions will die' unless climate policies change."
The report said 8 million people would die by 2020, citing a prediction in the Lancet medical journal.
The mass death prediction was clearly way off.
“None of these predictions came true, and aren't even close to coming true,” said Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “It's amazing that the public can continue to believe apocalyptic predictions despite
a 95 percent decline in weather-related deaths in the last 100 years.”
Some modern studies claim to find mass deaths; the Daily Beast covered a “shock report” that “Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year,” but Human Progress' Marian Tupy said such estimates are grossly inflated.
“They say climate change causes everything. Some people try to pin the war on Syria on climate change, and then say when all those people die, that's because of climate change. They have a secondary agenda,” Tupy said.
The five predictions highlighted here join a host of similar failed predictions
for 2010 and 2015 that Fox News tracked.
Tupy said that an overly negative view of humanity may be one cause of the bad predictions.
“Humans are not a curse upon the planet, but are actually a benefit, because we are problem-solvers. We are creators, not destroyers, on average.”
“When people ask you when was the best time to be alive – the answer is, tomorrow,” he added.