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May 8, 2008
Environmental Doomsayers Have Been Wrong Many Times Before
Every day the media screams about some new terrifying prediction having to do with the nonexistent global warming crisis. Although the smart hoaxers predict catastrophes far down the road, quite a few doomsday prophesies have already proven false. Walter E. Williams lists a few:
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "… civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "… somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Fortunately for global warming hoaxers, the liberals who drink their Kool-Aid are not known for their ability to learn from experience.
On a tip from Burning Hot.
Posted by Van Helsing at May 8, 2008 8:58 AM
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Comments
by 2000 england was no more that prediction came true :)
Posted by: furballz at May 8, 2008 9:26 AM
While I don't think it will be another ice age, I do think it is going to get a lot colder. When it does get colder, 4 things are going to make me mad.
1) The moonbats will go from global warming to new ice age without missing a beat.
2) The moonbats for the most part, have stopped power companies from building new plants, which means I will get cold and I can't even imagine what my bill will be.
3) God gave us 20 years of nice weather and for the most part, we cursed it.
4) The moonbats will blame everybody else.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 8, 2008 9:27 AM
Worth noting that Nigel Calder, unless it's another Nigel Calder, isn't an "environmentalist", but a science journalist who was editor of the New Scientist magazine for 4 years. He was indeed one of those responsible for breaking the "ice age" and indeed "CO2" stories back in the 70s but he's now a sceptic who has argued robustly against the Hoax and indeed appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle arguing robustly against the abuse of science by environmentalists, politicised scientists and their fellow travellers.
Posted by: Ian from the EUSSR at May 8, 2008 9:28 AM
Ehrlich and the Club of Rome is always good for a few laughs! I love these predictions that were so wildly inaccurate yet the same sort of kooks expect us to believe them now about what will happen over the next 100 years. Funny stuff.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 8, 2008 9:28 AM
The moonbats will go from global warming to new ice age without missing a beat.
This time they're going from global warming to "extreme local climate changes" without missing a beat.
Posted by: Ian from the EUSSR at May 8, 2008 9:31 AM
But how could they possibly have been wrong about a global ice age and mass starvation in the 1970's... There was a scientific consensus!.
Posted by: V the K at May 8, 2008 9:55 AM
When I was very young, people used to attribute anomalous (as they saw it) weather to "those A-bomb tests." I guess before then the weather was totally consistent and predictable.
Bottom line: everyone talks about the weather, but no one does - or can do - anything about it, for good or ill.
Posted by: Jay Guevara at May 8, 2008 10:23 AM
On this day in 1960 it was 85 degrees in Honolulu.
On this day in 1990 it was 85 degrees in Honolulu.
It is 85 degrees today in Honolulu.
It will be 85 degrees in Honolulu tomorrow.
This weather roller-coaster is making me dizzy!
Posted by: Jimbo at May 8, 2008 10:42 AM
Finally on topic! Profiles in Counter-Moonbattery: Pat Sajak
Posted by: White Cane at May 8, 2008 11:05 AM
Posted by: V the K at May 8, 2008 11:16 AM
More socialist-environmentalist catastrophe; Socialism Kills 100,000 in Burma. The death tool of Marxism creeps ever higher.
Posted by: V the K at May 8, 2008 11:24 AM
Latest on the Burma disaster is the Secretary of Defense doesnt like the idea of airdropping supplies without the ok from Burmas thug government? Bah! Just send cargo planes to parachute the supplies in and if any of their crappy aging fighter planes make any move against them bomb all of their military bases. Im sure the Navy fighter pilots could use some target practice.
100,000 dead in a week - amazing - sort of puts our Iraq losses over 5 years into perspective.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 8, 2008 12:33 PM
All I have to say to the gloomy environazis is that they're having Bassmasters tournaments in Pittsburgh.
Posted by: forest at May 8, 2008 3:10 PM
That's one of the most understated headlines that I've seen in this blog. Wrong many times? I'm hard-pressed to think of an issue that the environmentalists have been right about.
Check out this link for a sampling of past scares:
BAD ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE SCARES
Then check out the rest of the work:
The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment
I don't know what's up with the strange formatting, but it's also available from Amazon.
Posted by: ent at May 8, 2008 7:32 PM
While I don't think it will be another ice age, I do think it is going to get a lot colder.
Indeed. If that giant ball of burning hydrogen our planet orbits doesn't start putting out more sunspots we might be facing the return to a Dalton-type Minima. Worst case scenario would be a return to the Maunder-type Minima. Better be prepared for food riots.
Posted by: Brooklyn Red Leg at May 9, 2008 6:02 AM
