Soothsayer ABC’s

The American public continues to be bombarded with fantastic messages of the Earth’s impending doom as a result of global warming, whether it be from Al Gore, Newsweek, or the Washington Post. Last August, it was pictures of burning planets matched by the condemnation of dissenters as skeptics and deniers. Now media outlets claim to know the future as far out as 2100.

In an upcoming two hour prime-time special, scheduled to air this fall, ABC will promote the view that the Earth faces a “perfect storm” of environmental dangers, a storm which may destroy humanity—and the globe—entirely. “If we continue on the business as usual trajectory, there will be a tipping point where we cannot avert. We will indeed drive the car over the cliff,” argues one unidentified speaker in ABC’s trailer.

“The world’s brightest minds agree that the ‘perfect storm’ of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results,” reads the website.

Titled “Earth 2100,” ABC’s group of international scientists will outline possible scenarios for Earth’s disasters in 2015, 2050, 2070, and, ultimately, 2100. They fail, however, to provide any identification for the scientists shown in the episode’s trailer.

The speculation goes even further, with ABC planning to integrate the opinions of everyday Americans into fantasy scenarios about the planet’s future.

The ABC producers are, through an Internet “game,” encouraging members of the public to send in candid videos of what they see as the challenges facing the Earth on these benchmark dates. The catch is that participants must base their assumptions of future events on detailed apocalyptic scenarios outlined by ABC’s hand-picked group of international scientists. One such respondent predicts a water-war between Mexico and the United States by 2015 accompanied by biological weapons unleashed in downtown New York City.

Among the multitude of “dangers” ABC sees as facing the future Earth are: scarce resources, oil depletion, massive migration, hurricanes, rising water levels amid a water shortage, drought, and social unrest. The video warns of impending disaster and features the following message:

“Rome Fell.

Maya Civilization Disappeared.

Easter Island Collapsed.

Are We Next?”

Media Research Center news analyst Scott Whitlock identifies two of the video’s scientists as “James Hansen, Al Gore’s science advisor and Heidi Cullen, the climate change expert for the Weather Channel.” In other words, these scientists represent a single side of the ideological spectrum.

Other controversial figures connected to the episode are:

• Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute, a think-tank dedicated to sustainability, clean water, and overcoming climate change challenges.
• Harvard University climatologist John Holdren, a prominent speaker on climate change. The President of the Woods Hole Research Center, Holdrens’ organization works to “promote policies that stabilize climate and protect the integrity of the global environment.”

An ABC News article promoting “Earth 2100” quotes Gleick as saying, “The 21st century is going to be the century which determine[s] whether we live or die as a sustainable species.”

“We are at a crossroads. We can choose the right path. Help us send a wake-up call to the world. Send us your vision of the future,” reads the promotional video. One of the major “wake-up calls” promoted is to reduce individual carbon footprints, and the site provides a link to the “Make Me Sustainable” website in order to further that goal. There, participants are encouraged to “reduce your CO2” and “spread the word.”

The other promoted solution is alternative energy, as clips of wind turbines pan across the screen.

“Earth 2100,” while supposedly including predictions about scarcity and air pollution, contains a considerable focus on the effects of global warming. “Global temperatures are rising faster than expected. The impacts of climate change, compounded by continued social unrest, are reverberating throughout the African continent,” reads the Africa 2015 briefing.

Serious weather will apparently hit the Australian continent as soon as 2015. “Rising sea levels, coupled with more frequent and intense storms, have caused recurrent floods in densely populated coastal cities. The severe weather is taking a toll on major infrastructure and the economy,” reads the website.

On an even more political note, the “briefing” contains offhand comments about the distracting effect of the Iraq War. “Despite the promises of the 2008 campaign, a weakened economy and a continued presence in Iraq has kept climate change on the backburner. Global temperatures are rising faster than expected. Countries around the world are being afflicted by heat waves, droughts, severe weather events, and public health concerns,” reads the United States 2015 “briefing” (emphasis added).

Even the promotional video’s “Rome Fell,” pronouncement is a misnomer.  Comparing Rome’s fall to global warming equates political disunity with environmental disaster. Rome was a civilization—a governmental entity—not a planet, and its people continued to live their lives long after the empire disintegrated. Similarly, the fall of the Mayan Empire did not depopulate Latin America.

While the special seems to rely on one-sided science and outright fear-mongering, ABC prefers to promote “Earth 2100” as “an unprecedented television and internet event” designed to answer “perhaps the most important question of our time—What will our world be like over the next one hundred years if we don’t act now to save our troubled planet?”

In other words, it is a television special designed to fulfill specific policy goals, and makes no pretense of representing all sides of the global warming debate

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.