By Selwyn Duke

There may be a reason why, according to an AI analysis, approximately 40 percent of global-warming girl Greta Thunberg’s recent activism has involved anything but global warming. And it could just be because, as a commentator recently noted, the “climate alarmists are not ‘alarming’ anymore.”

Why not? Here’s one reason: There’s been another big “oops!” by the climate-alarmist cartel — in the form of a retracted doom-and-gloom study. Per RedState’s Bob Hoge:

Sometimes, you might do something so embarrassing, so humiliating, that you want to hide in the closet. The prestigious science journal Nature may be thinking about doing that right about now, because on Wednesday, they officially retracted an influential 2024 climate report that predicted gloom and doom, death and misery, and impending economic catastrophe.

As is the case with so much of the leftist climate narrative, their wild claims were quite simply unproven:

In April 2024, the prestigious journal Nature released a study finding that climate change would cause far more economic damage by the end of the century than previous estimates had suggested. The conclusion grabbed headlines and citations around the world, and was incorporated in risk management scenarios used by central banks.

On Wednesday, Nature retracted it, adding to the debate on the extent of climate change’s toll on society.

Shocker — it seems as if they were relying on flawed data.

The decision came after a team of economists noticed problems with the data for one country, Uzbekistan, that significantly skewed the results. If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to earlier research. Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent.

(Hat tip: commentator Silvio Canto Jr.)

The Boy Who Cried “Heat!”

Of course, a 23-percent global-economic-output reduction is still worrisome, right? The question is: How much stock should we put in these studies to begin with? Not much if the doomsayer greentopians’ previous prognostications are any guide. Just consider what the late Professor Walter E. Williams related in 2017’s “Environmentalists’ Wild Predictions”:

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President [Al] Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book “The Doomsday Book,” said Americans were using 50 percent of the world’s resources and “by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them.” In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, “The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.”

Would You Buy a Used Doom-and-gloom Prediction From These Guys?

Returning to the Nature study, scientific retractions are a now-old story. In fact, retraction of research is many times more common today than decades ago. This isn’t surprising, either, because scientific fraud has become rife. (For details, read 2014’s “Blinding Me With Science: Fraud and Folly for Fame and Funding.”)

Yet honestly conceived or not, here’s some food for thought regarding the greentopians’ consistent prognostication failures. Would you take investment advice from a broker whose stock picks have been consistently wrong for decades? Because that’s essentially what today’s doomsayer environmentalists are asking us to do: “Trust us, we’ll be right this time — promise.”

Yet, finally, more people are catching on. Polls indicate that Americans’ concern about global warming…climate change…global climate disruption — uh, whatever-you-call-it — is fading. Pseudo-elite-billionaire alarmist Bill Gates has apparently moderated, too. As recently as 2021 he warned that it’s “going to be essentially unlivable at the Equator by the end of the century.” Now he says climate doomsaying is just “wrong” and greater energy use is “good” because it’s associated with “economic growth.” (Hence, it reduces poverty.) My, ya don’t say, Willie?

Why, even The New York Times, the “paper of record,” now confesses that the greentopian alarmists “are losing the information war.” But while it blames Big Oil, at issue is Big Internet. The alphabet networks (mainstream media) controlled 90-plus percent of the TV market in the mid-1970s. Today their share has shrunk to 19 percent. This means they can no longer “control the narrative.” People can, and many do, get climate realism (aka “denialism”) from the alternative media. And the Truth will set you free.

The Question

All this has some climate realists taking a victory lap. President Donald Trump responded to Gates’ words by proclaiming that we “just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax.” And the aforementioned Silvio Canto announced that “climate doom and gloom is over.” Well, not so fast.

Leftist agendas can be as difficult to slay as the mythical Phoenix. They appear destroyed, but then rise from their own ashes to fly again. The greentopian alarmists are still out there; they still have much international support. And, if the Democrats regain executive power, it’s almost certain alarmists’ domestic impetus and government funding will be restored.

Given this, I’ll leave you with a question, one no greentopian has ever sufficiently answered. To wit:

What is the ideal average temperature for the Earth?

This is necessary information. After all, without having this figure, how can we know if the given climate change — whether naturally occurring or caused by man — is good or bad?

For we then can’t know if it’s bringing us closer to or farther away from that ideal temperature.

Memorize this question and ask it whenever the opportunity arises. I’ve seen it change minds.

In the meantime, it’s now evident why the world’s Greta Thunbergs have changed focus. The global-warming cartel still exists, but its stock is way down. So, for the moment, they have to find another reason why the world is ending more than just a little bit.

This article was originally published at The New American.