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18 spectacularly wrong predictions from the original "Earth Day"
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:14 pm
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:14 pm
quote:LINK
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in his 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out.
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:19 pm to blueboy
I know Paul Ehrlich is a dummy but does he really need to show up six times to pad the list
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:19 pm to blueboy
Some of these could still come true, even if I don't think they will. So calling some of these wrong isn't really fair.
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:21 pm to blueboy
Eco-nuts were intolerable. We were told in third grade we would not live to see graduation by some nut wearing a gas mask. Freaked me out.
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:23 pm to blueboy
"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad." - -The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903
"There will never be a bigger plane built." - - A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
"It'll be gone by June." - Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955
"And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam" - -Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.
"There will never be a bigger plane built." - - A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
"It'll be gone by June." - Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955
"And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam" - -Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:23 pm to blueboy
This is the year damnit!!!
This post was edited on 4/22/17 at 8:30 pm
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:32 pm to blueboy
Humankind will inevitably suffer the perils of overpopulation, with or without climate change. The foolishness is to think that mankind can intentionally manipulate the climate either way. Nature will dictate to us when we've done enough damage. Better that, than a government-imposed "solution".
Posted on 4/22/17 at 8:33 pm to Iosh
quote:He was one of the go to pundits of the day.
I know Paul Ehrlich is a dummy but does he really need to show up six times to pad the list
I know it's hard to argue the current scientific merits of global warming when they are accompanied by these gloom and doom predictions, and "solutions" that have nothing to do with the climate.
Posted on 4/22/17 at 9:23 pm to _Hurricane_
That is the whole fricking scam.
"If you don't do our left wing shite there will be a disaster in 50 years!" (So you have no way of proving us wrong)
Every God damned idea the left pukes out is dishonest
"If you don't do our left wing shite there will be a disaster in 50 years!" (So you have no way of proving us wrong)
Every God damned idea the left pukes out is dishonest
Posted on 4/22/17 at 9:55 pm to gthog61
I remember watching this creepy video in library in grade school that said we would run out of water by the year 2000. The environmental nuts have been using fear saying the same bs for years.
Posted on 4/22/17 at 10:33 pm to Iosh
quote:
I know Paul Ehrlich is a dummy but does he really need to show up six times to pad the list
Oh, you say that now.
And my grandchildren will say the same about AGW. "We know AGW was a stupid concept. Do you have to keep talking about it?"
Posted on 4/23/17 at 9:54 am to LSUMANINVA
What would also be fun is if the OP would post pics from past "Earth Day" marches and show how the Proggies, like they always do, trash the ever living frick out of the grounds they are using to protest.
The fact that they trashed Earth Day is wonderful. Even better than when they trashed the National Mall for the Obama gatherings.
The fact that they trashed Earth Day is wonderful. Even better than when they trashed the National Mall for the Obama gatherings.
Posted on 4/23/17 at 9:56 am to blueboy
Yeah I remember 23 years ago when I was 15 my high school environmental science teacher telling me global warming was going to kill us in 20 years.
Posted on 4/23/17 at 10:15 am to blueboy
quote:
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
A consensus among scientists?
Posted on 4/23/17 at 10:15 am to blueboy
quote:Damn, that sounds awfully familiar.
Demographers agree almost unanimously
Posted on 4/23/17 at 10:15 am to gthog61
It's not a scam you paranoird moron, some people have certanily been wrong, but saying CO2 isn't hurting our ozone is ridiclous. Not to mention all the pollution and health problems it causes. Just look at China or LA.
Posted on 4/23/17 at 10:17 am to blueboy
The earth day/love the planet protestors are some of the most hypocritical pieces of crap out there.
Look at what they did to the land they were squatting on to protest the pipeline.
Look at what they did to the land they were squatting on to protest the pipeline.
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