Year 2000 Predictions By ‘The Guardian’ Turn Out To Be Complete Failures…Southern Europe Has Become Wetter!

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

In December 2000, environment correspondent Paul Brown wrote here at The Guardian that global warming threatened “to create a dust belt around the globe” and that the Sahara had “crossed the Mediterranean” and forced “thousands to migrate as a lethal combination of soil degradation and climate change” turned “parts of southern Europe into desert.”

He added: “A fifth of Spanish land is so degraded […] and in Italy tracts of land in the south are now abandoned and technically desert. Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are the four EU countries already so badly affected that they have joined the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) which is meeting in Bonn this week.”

Failed predictions

Brown also wrote that the spreading desertification was not confined to the EU, but that also Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Russia have all reported signs of desertification and that it was spreading beyond the Black Sea and stretching as far as Mongolia. China!

Just the opposite is occurring

So since this 2000 claim made in The Guardian and the many other alarmist desertification claims coming due to climate change, we ask whether or not things have gotten worse since like they were supposed to. A brief look at precipitation data across southern Europe shows us that the opposite is more the case.

Precipitation has increased, and not decreased, and so greening is favored more than before.

Spain

What follows are the precipitation charts for some southern European countries, which are located north of Africa’s massive Sahara Desert. First we begin with Spain:

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)

Examined are two stations in Spain with sufficiently available precipitation data. Both La Coruna and Valladolid stations show more precipitation since 1983, thus contradicting predictions of less. But the trend has not impressed the alarmists at The Guardian, who in 2016 wrote:

Southern Spain will be reduced to desert by the end of the century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, researchers have warned.”

France

Next we look at France. Using data available from 13 stations across France from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), here as well we find no downward trend that would aid increased desertification:

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)

France also has five stations that go back further, i.e. to 1983:

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)

Here as well we see a rising precipitation trend, and not one that suggests precipitation is falling and so things are going to get drier.

Italy

Now we move to the southern European country of Italy, where the data from 7 stations are examined:

Modestly rising trend in Italy. Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)

Greece

Finally we look at the best datasets from Greece, where 6 stations are plotted:

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)

As is the case in the other southern European countries, Greece has not seen a downward trend in precipitation, rather the trend has increased noticeably.

Of course there are other factors that effect desertification, such as agriculture. However, the rainfall data over the current century shows that precipitation is rising and hampering the expansion of deserts into Europe. Contrast that to what the Guardian claimed in 2016:

Temperatures would rise nearly 5C globally under the worst case scenario by 2100, causing deserts to expand northwards across southern Spain and Sicily, and Mediterranean vegetation to replace deciduous forests.”

Clearly this is fake science that ranks on the scale of the Russia collusion hoax.

15 responses to “Year 2000 Predictions By ‘The Guardian’ Turn Out To Be Complete Failures…Southern Europe Has Become Wetter!”

  1. SebastianH

    Both La Coruna and Valladolid stations show more precipitation since 1983, thus contradicting predictions of less.

    Which of these stations is located in Southern Spain? None is.

    Here is a 2010 paper about precipitation in Southern Spain:
    https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joc.2235

    In 2012 Spain experienced a record dry period.

    A study about future droughts in Europe:
    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaaad3/meta

    Official EU documents about desertification:
    https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/BP_DESERTIFICATION/BP_DESERTIFICATION_EN.pdf

    An EU project to combat desertification:
    https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR18_33/SR_DESERTIFICATION_EN.pdf

    Another European desertification resource:
    https://www.climatechangepost.com/europe/desertification/

    Of course there are other factors that effect desertification, such as agriculture. However, the rainfall data over the current century shows that precipitation is rising and hampering the expansion of deserts into Europe. Contrast that to what the Guardian claimed in 2016:

    Yes, there are other factors … from the last link:
    “Desertification in the Mediterranean region is largely due to poor land-use practices and land degradation. Hotter and drier conditions at the end of this century, however, will likely extend the desertification-prone areas northwards in the Mediterranean Basin to encompass areas currently not at risk.”

    1. Henning Nielsen

      Is Heraklion in the north of Greece?
      Is Messina in the north of Italy?

  2. tom0mason

    Well it was a prediction from the UK Guardian! Hahahah! 🙂
    Easy target 🙂
    The Guardian, the comic for child-minded adults, the paper that is little more than a vanity publishing outlet for whoever wishes to be the editor/owner. A comic that is built on BS! UK Guardian publicly decries the use off-shore accounts for tax purposes, while using them to hide their finances, and then it tries to convince the public it’s part of a ‘charitable trust’.

  3. rah

    I don’t know why you all are bothering about this. Climategeddon is about to descend upon Britain! https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

    I mean it has to be true! It’s The Guardian that is exposing a secret Pentagon report after all! Sebs scripture can’t be wrong! So who cares about a little rain one way or another in S. Europe? Disaster is upon us and we skeptics who survive will all be humiliated for all time while the Sebs of the world will be telling us I TOLD YOU SO!

    I just can’t understand why the Brits are still obsessing over Brexit while doom is descending upon them? [SARC]

  4. SebastianH

    Oh, you mean this report?

    https://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/v1003/readings/Pentagon.pdf

    This scenario makes plausible assumptions about which parts of the globe are likely to be colder, drier, and windier. Although intensified research could help to refine the assumptions, there is no way to confirm the assumptions on the basis of present models.
    Rather than predicting how climate change will happen, our intent is to dramatize the impact climate change could have on society if we are unprepared for it. Where we describe concrete weather conditions and implications, our aim is to further the strategic conversation rather than to accurately forecast what is likely to happen with a high degree of certainty. Even the most sophisticated models cannot predict the details of how the climate change will unfold, which regions will be impacted in which ways, and how governments and society might respond.

    That’s neither “my scripture” nor is it an actual prediction. It’s a scenario of what could happen in the event of extreme climate change and the implications to US security.

    Next time you attempt to amuse me, try harder 😉

    1. rah

      Oh yes, the Guardian is a scripture for all you deniers of real science. I don’t need to try very hard at all to make you folks look foolish since you do it yourselves all the time. That Pentagon study was supposed to be an for aid war planners to formulate contingencies for conditions in future areas of conflicts. At the time of it’s publication it made the rounds and was much publicized as proof that the US military was predicting catastrophic climate change conditions. None of what it has claimed was plausible has happened or appears about to happen. It was and is fiction for the neurotic who live in a fictional world where the climate is going to turn and kill massive numbers of people. IOW it is a LIE to deceive the dups of this world that believe in that crap. Own it! It’s who you are!

      1. Yonason

        “…the entire misinformation campaign regarding global warming is less a science issue that has become politicized, than a political issue that has become scientized.” – the inestimable Dr. Sanity
        http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/02/scientizing-politics.html

        Sadly, she hasn’t been active for a number of years. Hopefully she’ll return to the net. Her material was always excellent.

        1. rah

          As I posted elsewhere Yonason. At one time the alarmists of the world were amusing to me, but no more. Now they have become a threat. This not just about politics. They have become a threat to my nations survival, my personal liberties, and to the prospects for prosperity of my offspring, and in fact the welfare of the whole worlds population. They are not funny anymore. This has become an ever deepening and bitter world war. A war where the press censors the views of skeptics in the west. A war where our classrooms and major organs of the press have been taken over by the enemy.

          1. Yonason

            Yes. Anyone who dismisses them as just clowns to be laughed at, doesn’t understand the threat they represent.

      2. SebastianH

        IOW it is a LIE to deceive the dups of this world that believe in that crap. Own it! It’s who you are!

        rah, the thing is you are the ones falling for lies. So no, I won’t “own” what you want me to own, especially not when you write replies like this one.

        1. rah

          Really Seb?

          Name a single climate change catastrophe that has been predicted that has occurred or is occurring!

          List and prioritize all the climate forcings:

          Explain why the permanent hot spot in the in the upper troposphere of the tropics has not been found despite the fact that the physics upon which the IPPC climate models are based demands that it be there.

          1. Yonason

            I and others have also asked him for that and other info. Just as he gave no suitable answers then, he’ll give none now. Insult, deceit, mockery and redirect are all he ever provides. I don’t anticipate any improvement.

          2. tom0mason

            rah
            Not a chance of cAGW advocates offering real physical evidence — they have none!
            All they have is an unrealistic theory and unrealistic models. Their world is govern by the inaccurate climate models, models that can only accurately predict what happens on a virtual Earth but not what happens on this planet.

            At first I would give SebastianH the benefit of the doubt in that he was attempting to understand how this planet’s climate operates. I know now that I was wrong.
            He is here just to blather on with an opinionated UN-IPCC deceptive nonsense, distractions, and insults. He is this blogs fool! Offering nothing but just trying hard to make anyone with views contrary to his look small.
            My advice, do not treat him seriously, he and his opinions are just a bad joke that offer no enlightenment to the topic of any post on this blog.

  5. rah

    Really I am saying it long past the time to take off the gloves. No quarter given just go in for the kill. To give you an idea how I mean that let me explain an exchange with a nephew of mine last Christmas. We have a close family and I like my nephew. He works in the family business which is metals fabrication and warehousing. He is in charge of running the CNC Plasma, water jet, and oxy acetylene cutting tables.

    He approached me on climate change questioning my beliefs. I didn’t fool around trying to teach the kid science or arguing the science. I just pointed out he drove a corvette and just bought a house with natural gas heat and he worked in an industry that the greens believe to be bad for the environment. Then I told him when you start walking the walking instead of just talking the talk I’ll believe you mean it. Till then you just being another climate change hypocrite. I walked away.

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