Instead of issuing lurid predictions of disaster, they'd be studying the safest ways to extract oil.

Here's an 1895 newspaper account in which critics of commercial fishing issued dire predictions and calling for government action to solve the problem:

But a number of weather forecasters issued longer-term predictions yesterday for warmer and drier-than-normal weather in parts of the Midwest.

The most contentious provision of the legislation attempts to ease the way for a company to issue predictions about future performance.

The site now issues predictions to 1.5 million people each month, for locations from Bude to Maui.

But they say they are compelled by their audience - mainly investors in stocks, bonds and currencies - to issue predictions anyway.

The bill seeks with good reason to protect corporate officials who issue honest but unintentionally optimistic predictions of corporate profitability.

The Government issued confident predictions that hazards posed by the disaster would be contained.

But just a few weeks ago, oil analysts and forecasters were issuing bleaker predictions still.

He said the Budget Committee might issue broad-brush predictions of what Federal spending would be in 2001 and 2002, but only if they were "intellectually honest."