Thirty Failed Climate Forecasts (optimism please)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 2, 2026
Martin Ecclestone on social media (November 4, 2025) usefully provided a historical review of climate exaggeration. “Educate yourself,” he began. “Uninformed personal opinions don’t change facts.”
Here’s a list [30] of the major climate-change impacts that climate scientists predicted and that have already eventuated (observed and documented in the scientific literature and major assessments). I’ve kept each item short — if you want, I can expand any item with dates, regions, or citations.
1. Global mean surface temperature rise (planet warming).
2. More frequent and/or more intense heatwaves (land).
3. Ocean warming (upper ocean and deep ocean temperature increase).
4. Global sea-level rise (mean sea level increase).
5. Melting of glaciers and mountain ice (glacial retreat).
6. Loss and thinning of Arctic sea ice (decline in extent and volume).
7. Ice-sheet mass loss (Greenland and Antarctica contributing to sea-level rise).
8. Earlier spring phenology (earlier leaf-out, flowering, snowmelt).
9. Changes in precipitation patterns (shifts in regional rainfall amounts).
10. Increased frequency/intensity of heavy precipitation and flood events.
11. Regional increases in drought frequency and/or severity (in many areas).
12. Increased wildfire frequency, extent and fire-weather conditions.
13. Ocean acidification (declining seawater pH from CO₂ uptake).
14. More frequent and severe coral bleaching and mass coral-mortality events.
15. Shifts in species’ geographic ranges (poleward/upward migrations).
16. Changes in timing of biological events (mismatches in food webs; e.g., breeding vs. food peaks).
17. Increased tree mortality and forest dieback linked to heat, drought and pests.
18. Permafrost thawing and associated ground instability/greenhouse-gas release.
19. Increased coastal erosion and more frequent coastal flooding (storm surge + higher baseline sea level).
20. Salt-water intrusion into coastal aquifers and soils (salinization).
21. Increased risk of glacial-lake outburst floods (new/proliferating glacier lakes).
22. Changes in ocean circulation and regional oceanographic patterns (observed changes and signals).
23. Changes in the distribution and seasonality of vector-borne diseases (e.g., mosquitoes).
24. Observed impacts on crop yields and growing seasons (regional increases and decreases).
25. Observed impacts on human health (heat-related illness and mortality, some flood-related health impacts).
26. Observed economic impacts and damage to infrastructure from climate-related extremes.
27. Losses of coastal wetlands and mangroves in some places (linked to sea-level rise and human pressure).
28. Increase in megafaunal/animal population stress and localized extinctions at vulnerable sites/ecosystems.
29. Documented changes in fisheries (range shifts, productivity changes, local declines).
30. Increased frequency of compound events (two or more hazards occurring together or in sequence, e.g., heat + drought, flood + landslide).
Documentation
Notes on scope and confidence
• The items above are major, widely documented impacts that were predicted by climate science and have now been observed. Confidence and attribution vary by impact and by region — for many items (e.g., global warming, sea-level rise, Arctic sea-ice loss, glacier retreat, ocean warming, more intense heatwaves, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, increased heavy precipitation) the scientific assessments assign high to very high confidence that human greenhouse-gas emissions are the primary cause.
• Some impacts (e.g., exact changes to regional precipitation patterns, changes in some disease distributions, or economic impacts) are more context-dependent and have greater regional variability and uncertainty.
• This list is extensive but not literally every single local or indirect effect — many local, ecosystem-specific and socioeconomic consequences branch from the entries above.
Key authoritative sources summarizing observed impacts (for deeper reading): IPCC assessments and major agencies such as NASA and NOAA document and attribute these observed changes.