Fact Check: Pete Buttigieg Says Climate Change Doomsday Deadline Is ‘2020’

Claim: Pete Buttigieg said during Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, that the climate change doomsday deadline is now and asserted that “we will never meet any of the other scientific or policy deadlines that we need to” if the country does not elect someone who will take action.

Verdict: False. Climate change alarmists have been reconfiguring the so-called “doomsday” clock for years and have 50 years’ worth of failed predictions — predictions that faltered as the country continued to progress and reach its policy goals.

“Let’s be real about the deadline. It’s not 2050, it’s not 2040, it’s not 2030. It’s 2020,” Buttigieg said during the debate.

“If we don’t elect a president who actually believes in climate science now, we will never meet any of the other scientific or policy deadlines that we need to,” he continued.

“So first of all, let’s make sure we’re actually positioned to win, which, once again, if we put forward two of the most polarizing figures on this stage as the only option, it’s going to be a real struggle,” he added.

Buttigieg’s assertion — that future policy initiatives will prove worthless unless the American people elect a leader who vows to tackle the climate change “crisis” — follows a pattern of false assertions from other climate alarmists throughout the years.

Breitbart News’s John Nolte documented dozens of predictions made during the last 50 years, none of which came to fruition:

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!

Nonetheless, Buttigieg touted his plan to “get us carbon neutral by 2050” and called for “global climate diplomacy.”