Fact Check: Bernie Sanders Shortens Climate Change Doomsday Clock by 3-4 Years

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday shortened the deadline for a climate change point of no return — claiming that we only have “eight or nine years” left to address the “crisis,” despite the fact that climate change activists have missed the mark with their doomsday predictions at least 41 times over the last 50 years.

Sanders said we “don’t have decades” to address climate change and moved the deadline to “eight or nine years,” though his website currently says 12 years.

“We don’t have decades. What the scientists are telling us – if we don’t get our act together within the next eightor nine years, we’re talking about cities all over the world – major cities  – going under water,” Sanders said, listing multiple doomsday predictions and adding that the fossil fuel industry is “probably criminally liable.”

He said:

We’re talking about increased drought. We’re talking about increased extreme weather disturbances. The United Nations is telling us that in the years to come, there’s going to be hundreds of millions of climate refugees causing national security issues all over the world. What we have got to do tonight, and I will do as president, is to tell the fossil fuel industry that their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet. And by the way – the fossil fuel industry is probably criminally liable because they have lied and lied and lied when they had the evidence that their carbon products were destroying the planet and maybe we should think about prosecuting them as well.

Nonetheless, climate change alarmists’ doomsday predictions, over the last 50 years, have not come to pass.

“On at least 41 occasions, these so-called experts have predicted some terrible environmental catastrophe was imminent … and it never happened,” Breitbart News’s John Nolte reported:

Here is the source for numbers 1-27. As you will see, the individual sources are not crackpots, but scientific studies and media reports on “expert” predictions. The sources for numbers 28-41 are linked individually.

1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
21. 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015
27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
31. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
32. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 90s
33. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
34. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
35. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
36. 2006: Super Hurricanes!
37. 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
38. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
39. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
40. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
41. 1970s: Killer Bees!

Most notably, former Vice President Al Gore famously predicted in 2006 that the planet “would reach a point of no return within ten years” unless drastic measures were taken. That deadline passed nearly four years ago. Nonetheless, he claimed during an interview with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl in August that those past predictions were “accurate.”:

[S]ome changes, unfortunately, have already been locked in place. Sea level increases are going to continue to matter what we do now. But, we can prevent much larger sea level increases. Much more rapid increases in temperature. The heatwave was in Europe. Now it’s in the Arctic. We’re seeing huge melting of the ice there.

So, the warnings of the scientists 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, unfortunately, were accurate.

“Here’s the good news, Jonathan, in the Democratic contest for the presidential nominations this year, virtually all of the candidates agree this is either the top issue or one of top two issues,” he added.