It should also be humbling. But as a practical matter, it is more useful to evaluate forecasts made a mere 20 years ago, since many of these same people and organizations are still around to take the heat. These folks weren't just out in left field. They didn't even make it into the ballpark. Instead, however, a period of energy abundance followed OPEC's unwise short-lived price escalations of the 1970s, driven by market forces and ongoing improvements in technology.
Price is the bottom-line indicator of the effects of technology.
Consensus forecasts in 1975 for coal, oil, and natural gas prices in 1995 overestimated reality by a whopping 200 percent to 500 percent. Clearly, they were wrong. Highlights of those techno-goofs of two decades ago were predictably preoccupied with solar energy and similarly silly. Nuclear energy made up most of the rest with renewables accounting for less than 2 percent if we generously count burning wood. So they were wrong about the energy crisis two decades ago.