Transition -- January 1, 2020

The five most outrageous 2020 doomsday predictions that did not pan out -- as compiled by Fox News, and posted January 1, 2020.

#1 -global warming

• 1990
• Washington Post
• Earth will warm on average by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2020
• NASA: earth has warmed about 1 degree, thirty years later

#2 -- oil

• 1989
• NY Times
• "William Stevens, the president of Exxon, USA, said ... by the year 2020 there would not be enough domestic oil left to keep me interested."
• thirty years later: US proven oil reserves are dramatically higher
• search doofus-in-chief on the blog

#3 -- global warming

• 2003
• UN Environment Program on CNN
• the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania would disappear within the next 20 years
• thirty years later, the glaciers are still there, but now the same organizations say the glaciers will most likely disappear within 25 years

#4 -- famine

• 2000
• Discover Magazine
• a billion people will starve due to missing the tech revolution
• in fact, thirty years later, from 2000 to 2020, global extreme poverty fell by about a billion people
• World Bank: tech allowed people in developing nations to access capital, production know-how, and aid from developed countries

#5 -- global warming

• 1997
• Reuters cited a prediction in the Lancet medical journal
• 8 million people would die by 2020 unless climate policies changed
• "it's amazing that the public can continue to believe apocalyptic predictions despite a 95% decline in weather-related deaths in the last 100 years (and despite more and more millions of people living along the coasts)