1. The U.S. may warm 6 degrees F from 1990 to 2020
In 1990, The Washington Post reported in a front page story. “Carbon dioxide is the gas most responsible for predictions that Earth will warm on average by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2020. The United States, because it occupies a large continent in higher latitudes, could warm by as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit.”
The Earth has warmed approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit according to NASA. The United States also warmed roughly 1 degree.
2. Oil will effectively run out by 2020
CNN ran a headline in 2003 titled "World oil and gas 'running out'".
The New York Times reported in 1989 that "untapped pools of domestic oil are finite and dwindling," and that "William Stevens, the president of Exxon U.S.A., said ... by the year 2020 there would not be enough domestic oil left 'to keep me interested.'"
But doomsayers underestimated American ingenuity, and the opposite happened. Both U.S. oil output and U.S. proven oil reserves are dramatically higher now than they were in 1989, thanks to technology allowing deeper oil to be discovered and extracted.
3. By 2020, no glaciers will be left on Mt. Kilimanjaro
"It's now estimated that by the year 2020, there will be no glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro," Christian Lambrechts, an officer at the U.N. Environment Program, told CNN in 2003.
But today, Kilimanjaro's glaciers are still there, according to a 2019 paper in the Journal Ecology and Evolution that includes photos and a new timetable:
4. A billion people will starve due to missing the tech revolution
In 2000, Discover Magazine published a largely spot-on list of predictions about 2020.
But it missed big when predicting a "grisly reality" of tech-caused inequality: For [virtual reality pioneer Jaron] Lanier, the most heartbreaking scenario is festering in the third world, where, he believes, the current generation ... will be lost in the next techno-revolution ... ‘You're going to have to somehow live while you watch a billion people starve...'"
But from 2000 to 2020, global extreme poverty fell by about a billion people, according to the World Bank, as technology connected the world and allowed people in developing nations to access capital, production know-how, and aid from developed countries.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/top-5-most-o ... redictions5. By 2020, "millions will die" from climate change
Reuters newswire ran this headline in 1997: "'Millions will die' unless climate policies change."
The report said 8 million people would die by 2020, citing a prediction in the Lancet medical journal.
The mass death prediction was clearly way off.
“None of these predictions came true, and aren't even close to coming true,” said Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “It's amazing that the public can continue to believe apocalyptic predictions despite a 95 percent decline in weather-related deaths in the last 100 years.”
Some modern studies claim to find mass deaths; the Daily Beast covered a “shock report” that “Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year,” but Human Progress' Marian Tupy said such estimates are grossly inflated.
“They say climate change causes everything. Some people try to pin the war on Syria on climate change, and then say when all those people die, that's because of climate change. They have a secondary agenda,” Tupy said.