Making Predictions for 2011

By Alan Caruba

In ancient times a soothsayer could make a good living divining the meaning of chicken bones and shiny pebbles. The modern version is usually some journalist who, looking back over his shoulder, decides he can predict the future. These are often the same people who fail to predict the outcome of elections, sports team rankings, and, of course, the weather.

Who, for example, could have predicted that, in November 2009, the world would be treated to thousands of emails between a handful of utterly deceitful “climate scientists” who were rigging the data in computer models to ensure that everyone remained scared to death of “global warming”?

The result was the breakdown of the 2009 United Nations Conference of Parties 15 climate conference in Copenhagen. This year a COP 16 in Cancun tossed out any pretence about “global warming” and went straight for a scheme to get wealthy nations to transfer trillions to mostly corrupt ones.

History frequently turns on unanticipated events. The attack on Pearl Harbor is a classic example. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is another. For the present generation of Americans, the decade began with 9/11 and is ending with the collapse of the housing mortgage market that began in late 2008, They have marked this first decade of the new millennium as having altered everything that came before it.

One result was the election of a totally unknown and undistinguished junior Senator from Illinois named Barack Hussein Obama. What also followed was the one-party control by the Democratic Party of both houses of Congress with its failed “stimulus” bills, Obamacare, and efforts to extend amnesty to illegal immigrants. The result was the most massive transfer of political power since the late 1940s to the Republican Party.

The President “owns” the unemployment problem in America. He “owns” the outcome of a war in Afghanistan that has been going on since 2001. He “owns” a Democrat Congress that was held in utter contempt by the majority of Americans. He promised change and got it. His political party and its policies are once again in decline.

So, what I am saying is that anyone who says they can predict what will happen in 2011 is just blowing smoke. Get out the chicken bones and shiny pebbles.

What do we know as we anticipate the beginning of 2011? We know that this winter, which began well before the solstice on December 21st, has been brutal thus far just about everywhere in the northern hemisphere. This winter and future ones are going to be longer and far more harsh than anyone living today has ever witnessed. Europe is experiencing the coldest winter in a hundred years. We will likely see records broken throughout the U.S.

The Earth is well into a Maunder Minimum, a dramatic diminution of solar output. When the Sun grows quiet, the Earth gets cold. It did this between 1300 and 1850. We could be looking at hundreds of years in which crops will be affected, reducing food for more than six billion people with whom we share the planet. That’s a recipe for riots and wars.

There is no way of knowing how long the Islamic Revolution will last. With a history based entirely on conquest and domination, the present fever and fervor may take quite a while to sink back into a dank resentment of everything modern, everything that has to do with individual freedom. When your whole understanding of the world is contained in a single “holy” book deemed the word of Allah, there are few options for reform.

We cannot know how long it will take America to work its way out of its economic problems, mostly based on literally insane spending, borrowing, and the over-regulation of everything.

The world is beginning to make plans for a failed America. Our credit rating may drop. How long we can just print money to buy our own debt is anyone’s guess. It’s like moving one’s debt between credit cards. The debt, however, does not go away and the spending (and the waste) never stops.

The Russians and Chinese are already using their own currencies to finance their trade deals, not the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, in Europe, nations including Great Britain, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, are on the razor’s edge of financial collapse. Too much socialism. Too little realism.

A former British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was asked what he feared most. “Events”, he said, “events.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010