Predictions for the New Year

Shannon Bohrer

(1/2025) Every year, I attempt to predict the future, and sometimes, I am successful. While we have the standard predictions from the self-proclaimed experts, I am not one of them. That does not prevent me from predicting politics, weather, or other topics. My predictions are based on intuition, recent news accounts, history, and how much coffee I consumed that day. In formulating my predictions for 2025, this year feels different, as it did in the last several years. I question myself: How can each year seem different when discussing the same topics? I sometimes feel like the country is driving down a highway, going in the wrong direction, but speeding because we do not want to be late. That is not a prediction; it’s just my thoughts.

Confusion is a common word often used to describe our current political and environmental issues and our individual feelings. The last election was supposed to settle our differences but seems to have increased our divisiveness. Hopefully, predictions for the new year can help alleviate our differences and stress levels. After all, predictions are made yearly by self-proclaimed experts and are something that many people look forward to. Just about every news source will make their predictions. Nevertheless, do we ever remember them?

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." - Yogi Berra

I will start with the weather since it is a common prediction and maybe the easiest to address. Last year, I stated that 2023 would be the hottest year ever recorded, at least until the end of 2024. The initial reports confirm that the 2024 numbers will surpass the 2023 numbers. Correctly making that prediction was neither complex nor problematic; it was easy and straightforward. Quoting as best I can from a Mississippi hydrologist, our future weather will be too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. I wonder if the hydrologist was making a prediction or an observation. Universally, climate scientists predict not just higher temperatures but also extremes in weather patterns. Predicting a pattern that continues is not difficult.

Last year I predicted that armed conflict in the middle east would continue and possibly expand. It did. Isreal entered Lebanon, however, as I write this there is a proposed cease fire between Isreal and Hezbollah. The conflict and fighting between Hamas in Palestine and Isreal still exist, and Hamas still has hostages. How this will end is unknown. The future president appointed Mike Huckabee to be the ambassador of Israel. Huckabee said his first priority is the release of the hostages. He also said, "Basically, there really is no such thing as – I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset – there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian." Yet, it is reported that over 44,000 Palestinian deaths have occurred during this war, with over half being women and children.

Another prediction from last year was the continued war in Ukraine. That war has heated up, with both sides moving - Russia into Ukraine and Ukraine into Russia. Coincidentally, both sides ramped up after the election, probably because the president-elect said he would stop the war and negotiate peace, and only he could do this since Putin is a friend of his. If a peace deal is made, will Ukraine have a seat at the table?

Although there have been many experts offering opinions on how the war will end or expand, no one knows how or when this will happen. Even if peace is achieved, this war might continue in the participants’ minds for a long time. Wars in Eastern Europe have a long history. The assignation of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 was the spark for World War I. At that time, Sarajevo was a city in Bosnia-Herzegovina, part of Austria-Hungary. Sarajevo had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878, and after the war, it became part of Yugoslavia. In 1991 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence.

Eastern European history, including Ukraine's, has a history of new borders resulting from hostilities and wars. Historically, the new borders and memories of the old borders have resulted in old hostilities reemerging. That is why Ukraine will have long memories.

My political predictions are problematic. With so many changes in our federal government and so many appointees that require Senate approval, along with the promises made during the election, I do not think anyone could accurately predict our political future for the next several years. Of course, that has not stopped the Experts from predicting that our future is promising or terrifying. The differences are exposed in our daily news. Half the country predicts stability and prosperity, while the other half predicts darkness and despair.

While experts and others like me make predictions for the coming year, I never see any reporting on their successes or failures. It’s almost as if the projections are made for entertainment. As a new year approaches, we hear what happened during the past year before we hear the predictions for the new year. When the news people report what occurred during the past year, it would be nice if they critiqued the expert’s predictions for the previous year.

Adam Grant, the author of Think Again, an excellent book, recently had an Op-Ed in the New York Times. The first line, "Humans may be the only species that can imagine an unknown future." But that does not mean we’re good at it." In the op-ed, he references a study of predictions by psychologist Philip Tetlock. In evaluating decades of predictions on politics and economics, he reported that "the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart- throwing chimpanzee." So, if the projections are so poor, why do we make them? Then again, there are some intelligent chimpanzees.

Maybe if we are optimists, our predictions reflect a positive view of what we would like to see. Conversely, if we are pessimists, predictions may portend gloom and doom. I am not saying that we should not make predictions since we need to plan for tomorrow. If we fail to look forward, what will our future be like?

"As the Olympic torch neared Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980, signaling the opening of that year's Winter Olympics, newspapers and magazines throughout the world offered predictions on who would win medals in the major sports. Not a single publication gave the American men's hockey team a chance against the world powers." - Don Yaeger