The nasty consequences of global warming keep getting worse and worse, until advanced civilizations are wrecked back into more primitive states, where they're unable to keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere. It looks to me like this one is unlikely too - advanced nations will be able to cope at significant cost. It's just poor nations that are boned.

One thing I noticed about predictions of nasty consequences of global warming, is that they're always about 5 to 10 years from the present, with the date always being updated. See here, for a discussion of a recent example.

It all started back in October 2005 when the U.N. flatly stated, “by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration.” They forecast “this new category of ‘refugee.’” In 2008 the Srgjan Kerim, president of the U.N. General Assembly, upped the doomsday prediction, saying there would “between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010.” Environmental activist Norman Myers, a professor at Oxford University predicted that climate change could force to 200 million climate refugees.

The U.N. specifically identified Pacific and Caribbean populations that would be ravaged by climate change. Gavin Atkins, writing for Asiancorrespondent.com reports “a very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world.” Atkins reports that all of China’s “threatened” cities –Shenzzen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhuhai, Puning and Jinjiang — are the fastest growing cities in the world.

Atkins also looks at other endangered locations, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, the Seychelles and the Solomon Islands. None have refugees and all have enjoyed healthy population growths.

This is by no means the only example of a global warming doomsday prediction failing to come true and being quietly forgotten.