A much more serious problem than climate events so far is that despite all the evidence, runner and others truly believe they're nonsense. And because of inaction resulting from that, the climate problems are going to get a lot worse

Aidan, I see you can't even answer one questions.

Philip S

You ask: "What is the explanation for the dozens of predictions by so called experts and scientists of doom that have failed to materialize?"

Give references to examples where that has happened. You need to show your premise has some foundation before it can be answered, that can only be done by providing examples.

Dear Philip S,

I'm going to second ant on this one. You are the one claiming; "What is the explanation for the dozens of predictions by so called experts and scientists of doom that have failed to materialize?" without even giving a single example.

Hansen's predictions from 1988 are quite remarkable given his original paper did not have the benefit of the advances in data and computer modelling. Actual figures continue to come in between scenarios B and C.

Really impressive work.

Stump up old chap or put a sock in it.

Philip S,
Nobody can give a single answer for every wrong prediction. However I can give you some possible explanations, starting with the likeliest:

• THE PREDICTIONS WERE NEVER ACTUALLY MADE
(Such as when someone on this board falsely accused Tim Flannery of predicting it would never rain again in Sydney)

• THE PREDICTIONS WERE PART OF A RANGE
(The top figure in the range caught the media's attention, but what the scientists were actually saying is there was only a 5% chance of exceeding that figure)

• THE SCIENTISTS PREDICTED A MUCH LONGER TIMESCALE
(For example, sea level rises of tens of metres were predicted in the early 1990s and it caught the public's imagination, but when the scientists said that would take centuries to occur, media attention had moved on)

• THE PREDICTIONS WERE ACTUALLY WRONG
While this possibility is far less likely than the others, it is important to note that our planet's atmosphere is a very complex system. Our understanding and modelling of it, though constantly improving, is far from perfect. Data is limited, assumptions can be wrong, and particularly in the early days the capability of computers was sometimes a limiting factor. Though great steps are taken to avoid it, human error is still possible. Plus there are variables like volcanic eruptions that could not be predicted.

If you can be more specific in what prediction you're referring to, I could probably find the explanation of why it didn't eventuate. Better yet, I expect you could do so yourself.

Aidan
The U.N.’s top climate scientist said in 2007 we only had four years to save the world

Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that if “there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.”

Environmentalists warned in 2002 the world had a decade to go green

Environmentalist write George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within “as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.”

In the late 1980s the U.N. was already claiming the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences.

On June 30, 1989 a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Prince Charles’s warning we only had 96 months to save the planet

It’s only been about 70 months since Charles said in July 2009 that there would be “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.”

This is probably where Charles got it.
In 2009, world leaders met in Copenhagen, Denmark to potentially hash out another climate treaty. That same year, the head of Canada’s Green Party wrote that there was only “hours” left to stop global warming.

“We have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it,” Elizabeth May, leader of the Greens in Canada, wrote in 2009. “Earth has a long time. Humanity does not. We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours. We mark that in Earth Hour on Saturday.”

Vice President Al Gore, predicted in 2006 as he was hyping in his BS (but nevertheless Oscar-winning) documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce “greenhouse gases,” then the world would reach a “point of no return” within a decade.