Apocalyptic climate-change predictions were box-office gold for Hollywood but they did untold damage to the public psyche, economy and the average man’s pocketbook. 

Now the United Nations’ influential climate change committee has quietly discarded the dire temperature-rise scenarios used in two previous reports predicting horrific consequences of global warming if greenhouse emissions weren’t curbed.

For years, lefty outfits — based on dubious climate science — screamed about the coming climate catastrophe: The New York Times warned that “Climate Change Is Harming The Planet Faster Than We Can Adapt,” “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe” and “A Hotter Future Is Certain.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) insisted the world would end by 2030 if we didn’t address climate change — by which she meant waste trillions on the Green New Deal and return to Stone Age-style living.

Democrats went full-tilt in accepting the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report’s forecasts of a dramatic rise in sea levels, rapidly melting glaciers, global crop failures and even the ultimate extinction of mankind. 

But let’s face it: The UN scenarios were overblown from the start, and the left’s climate crusaders hyped them even more.

The newest IPCC report credits renewables, global climate policy and recent emission trends for making the most dire forecasts “implausible.”

But even earlier IPCC reports, when read thoroughly, made clear the looming catastrophe the left predicted was nothing more than a politically useful fiction.

Last year, Dutch researchers refuted projections of calamitous sea level rises by actually looking at data gathered from coastal sites around the globe rather than on models extrapolating from biased assumptions.

None of which stopped the world from wasting trillions on futile climate-change “prevention.” Or scaring young kids our of their minds.

In New York alone, the disastrous Climate Action Plan requires the closure of reliable natural-gas power plants and replaces them with more costly — and less reliable — solar and offshore wind installations.

It’s sending energy costs through the roof.

Biased assumptions couched in scientific jargon for too long have been presented as fact in service of a politically motivated climate-change agenda.

Yet even now, don’t expect lefties to apologize or to stand down.

The good news? At least they won’t be able to credibly cite the IPCC to support their case.