Fetch some cold water – the hot air merchants are up and about again

Brian Mackie — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:56:38 +0000

Our world... where the eco-frighteners are back, with their heads still in the clouds

Now that the kerfuffle surrounding global financial meltdown is cooling down, the Gloaming Warblers are creeping back with more climactic predictions designed to scare the living daylights out of the gullible. Their latest hot news is that the UK can expect its temperatures to rise by 2 deg C by 2050. This has caused not alarm, but instead some quiet rejoicing among Britain’s teeth-chattering classes, who already fear the imminent end of their all-too-brief summer and the onset of the usual grey and damp, six-month-long winter of discontent.

No doubt the dire warnings will shortly arrive in New Zealand, edited and amended to strike terror in the hearts of the local populace. But before we consider replacing sheep and cows with camels, or growing dates instead of grapes, it might be helpful to look at some of the forecasts made when primitive environmentalists first emerged, to announce their first Earth Day. It happened way back in 1970, and we’re grateful to the UK’s Grumpy Old Sod for collecting these now hilarious predictions.

We have about five more years at the outside to do something – Kenneth Watt, ecologist

Civilisation will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind – George Wald, Harvard biologist

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation – Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

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 – Paul Ehrlich

It is already too late to avoid mass starvation – Denis Hayes, chief organiser for Earth Day

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, 30 years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine – Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

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 … – Life Magazine

At the present rate of nitrogen build-up, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable – Kenneth Watt, ecologist

Air pollution… is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone – Paul Ehrlich

We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the non-renewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones – Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

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.” – Kenneth Watt

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 – Senator Gaylord Nelson

The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age – Kenneth Watt

In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish – Paul Ehrlich

And they didn’t stop in 1970. Finding that newspapers were suddenly taking notice and their own kudos was increasing, pundits carried on making up rubbish and various silly scribes got in on the act…

1971: The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WW2 is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialisation, mechanisation, urbanisation and exploding population – Reid Bryson

1975: There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it – Newsweek

1976: This (cooling) trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century – Peter Gwynne

1976: This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000 – Lowell Ponte

Will we never learn? Why, nearly 40 years later, are we still listening to these people, who have blown hot and cold for so long?

Paul Ehrlich: Proof that to err is human

Notice how Paul Ehrlich keeps cropping up? We Googled him, and found that he was already spreading environmental hysteria well before Gaylord invented Earth Day. In 1968, he published The Population Bomb, which contained this little gem: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

The vast majority of intelligent people value their world, enjoy their life in the most ethical way they can, and want to leave the planet in good shape for their descendants. To all the gloomy doom-sayers, they have a simple message:

Get a life, and kindly get out of ours.

Gog.org.nz » Lowell Ponte

Fetch some cold water – the hot air merchants are up and about again