Eight years ago I wrote on THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME BY 2020
I said:
This time, I'll tell you what to expect over the next eight years, to the year I want to survive: 2020. My version is not as expansive as H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, which predicted the next 173 years from 1933 when he published the book.
Here is the complete 1936 film. Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it a 93% rating.
How well did I do in my predictions?
- Most important of all. I made it into the Year 2020.
- #10 Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president, will either escape or be killed. WRONG, thanks to Vladimir Putin.
- # 9 The U.S. will leave Okinawa. WRONG!
- # 8 The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will attain net positive laser fusion. WRONG!
- # 7 Gun control legislation will be enacted by the U.S. Congress. Essentially WRONG!
- # 6 The USA will become #1 in oil production by 2020. RIGHT! Happened in 2018.
- # 5 We won't send any humans to Mars, and neither will the Chinese. RIGHT!!!
- # 4 The Pacific International Ocean Station will be commissioned, and dedicated to Guy Toyama. WRONG!
- # 3 There will be small wars, of course. Terrorists will continue to cause minor havoc now and then, but nothing like 9/11. There should be general peace on Earth, for China will not want a Cold War. RIGHT!
- # 2 This is not my prediction: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has petroleum at $85 in 2020 (and $85 through December of 2021). WRONG! Look to the right column. The price today is $61/barrel. Here they go again, for the CME has oil futures at $53/barrel in January of 2030.
- # 1: As fossil fuels continue to be combusted, global warming will be shown to be the nightmare too many thought was a liberal hoax. Mind you, between now and 2020 the sea level will not rise even an inch. WRONG! Global warming is not today yet a nightmare, and the sea level did rise more than an inch: slightly more than 1.5 inches.
- All works published in 1924 (save for some sound recordings) will be in the Public Domain in 2020. That actually happened yesterday, so I'm one for one.
- The UK will leave the European Union.
- Israel will continue to be bedeviled by uncertainty on who is running the country.
- The Mars 2020 rover mission will be launched.
- The XXXII Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo from July 24 to August 9. Hope everyone, including those watching, survive the heat and humidity.
- The ICC Men's T20 World Cup will be held in Australia from October 18 to November 15. This is for my cricket fans.
- The World Expo in Dubai will open on October 20, and run until April 10, 2021. The next one will be Osaka 2025.
- Donald Trump will not win a Nobel Prize in 2020.
- Donald Trump will be defeated on November 3.
- The key antagonist will be Michael Bloomberg, for he will spend half a billion of his own dollars to make Trump look bad, which is not all that hard to do. Bloomberg will not be the Democratic candidate that day, but just as well, for he will be 78, and it doesn't matter who runs.
- A particularly key factor will be the environment.
- Trump on 1 June 2017 declared the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
- Fortunately, the writers of the treaty included a clause that allows this to occur only from 4 November 2020, the day after the presidential election.
- The onus of climate warming will doom Trump.
- The shift in female votes will be significant.
- Greta Thunberg will smile.
- The Sun will rise, as expected, the morning of 1 January 2021.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 330 to 28,869, yes, another all-time record:
Thursday’s gains come after Wall Street booked a strong 2019 performance on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 rising 28.9% in the year. That was the broad index’s biggest annual gain since 2013, when it surged 29.6%. The Dow, meanwhile, climbed 22.3% while the Nasdaq Composite skyrocketed more than 35%.
So:
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