Earlier in the year, I wrote my ten predictions for 2020 which were typically pessimistic and defeatist, however one thing that I didn't predict was a global pandemic leading to the overnight destruction of the economy, mass unemployment, a doubling of the death rate and the house arrest of half the population of the planet. This all sounds terrible, but every cloud has a silver lining, and these events have certainly altered my earlier predictions. The original 10 predictions for 2020 were as follows;
1. The Winter of 2019-2020 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
2. The Spring of 2020 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
3. The Summer of 2020 will be one of the hottest and driest on record.
4. The Autumn of 2020 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
5. The Winter of 2020-2021 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
6. Governments will still fail to properly acknowledge the existence of global warming and thus also fail to tackle it.
7. Wildfires will once again ravage Australia on a scale not previously recorded.
8. Australia will continue to be the worlds largest per capita producer of coal.
9. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will continue to bleach and die as sea temperatures rise.
10. The campaign to find just the tiniest bit of dirt on Greta Thunberg will continue. All those she opposes must be SO bloody annoyed that she's so squeaky clean. Normally the plan would be to find some minor indescretion or hint of hypocracy, relentlessly focus on that to discredit her, then continue business as usual. Currently it's being attempted on her parents but even they are pretty damned clean.
So lets take a look at these, although we are only a third of the way into 2020, a lot has changed which may influence them.
1. The Winter of 2019-2020 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
Well I got that one spot on.
"The 2019-20 UK winter – covering the months of December, January and February – saw the highest maximum December temperature and the wettest February on record. Overall, the winter was the UK’s fifth warmest, while it was the warmest on record for Europe as a whole." https://www.carbonbrief.org/met-office-the-uks-wet-and-warm-winter-of-2019-20
2. The Spring of 2020 will be one of the warmest and wettest on record.
Close, but not quite. Spring 2020 was one of the warmest, dryest on record with a swing from flooding to drought and record breaking March temperatures of 24 degrees C.
3, 4 & 5 still to come.
6. Governments will still fail to properly acknowledge the existence of global warming and thus also fail to tackle it.
Well this panned out ever so differently than anybody could have predicted. Since the global pandemic has shut down the economies of much of the world, billions have stopped commuting, factories have closed, road use is at a level not seen since 1954, and oil demand has fallen so abruptly that the price per barrel is MINUS $40. As a side effect of this, skies are clearer, air is cleaner, carbon dioxide levels are already starting to drop, areas of the world that have been under permanent clouds of pollution are now visible from space. And given the timing, it absolutely cannot be denied that climate change is man made. Whether we change our ways after the pandemic ends is still up for debate, but it has thrown into relief the fact that we can change, and that changing will make a positive difference. As a result of this unexpected turn of events, numbers 7, 8 and 9 are also now up in the air and may not be as miserably predictable as they seemed in the new year.
10. The campaign to find just the tiniest bit of dirt on Greta Thunberg will continue. All those she opposes must be SO bloody annoyed that she's so squeaky clean. Normally the plan would be to find some minor indescretion or hint of hypocracy, relentlessly focus on that to discredit her, then continue business as usual. Currently it's being attempted on her parents but even they are pretty damned clean.
Who the hell is Greta Thunberg? I'm afraid that due to the next twenty years of news having occurred in the first quarter of 2020, I've completely forgotten 2019.
