Earth Day Hysteria: Most Original Predictions Were Stunningly Wrong
Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet.
Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975.
Read more here from the Washington Policy Center.
11 Comments:
So this is suppose to prove that global warming is not happening? Using quotes from the past that did not end up to be true is not an argument that current statements are also not true.
By the way, • “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” is actually true. 40,000-64,000 Americans die each year because of air pollution.
I do not understand why supposed free-market conservatives continue to want to prop up our government subsidized fossil fuel economy. Oh yeah, I forget - these are the same ones who have applauded growing the government so much for the last 7 years.
What an interesting estimate: 40,000-64,000 Americans die each year because of air pollution. I was under the impression it was 40,000-66,000. Perhaps I'm mistaken.
The hysteria never ends.
Earth Day is about the stupidest celebrated day of the year.
I read that most Earth Day celebrations leave behind more pollution and trash then they help to clean up.
It is all one big con job.
Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire
There's only one thing certain about global warming / global cooling / climate change - it's going to make lots of politicians and their friends incredibly rich. Oh yeah, and billions of new taxes on us, more affectionately known to Al Gore as "the little people."
"So this is suppose to prove that global warming is not happening?"...
Well its obvious that the so called, "human induced climate change" is a gigantic fraud perpetuated by the same folks who fed us the previous myths based on their junk science...
"40,000-64,000 Americans die each year because of air pollution"...
Hmmm, according to which credible source should we bow down to regarding this claim?
Gee, I wonder how many of those alledged, "40,000-64,000" deaths had congenital defects that inhibited their breathing?
"I do not understand why supposed free-market conservatives continue to want to prop up our government subsidized fossil fuel economy"...
Hmmm, propping up?!?! On what planet is this happening?
While they were recording record profits last year, they were also writing checks to Uncle Sam to the tune of $100.7 billion -- two and a half times what they made in net profit. In fact, previous Tax Foundation research found that from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion...
"I forget - these are the same ones who have applauded growing the government so much for the last 7 years"...
Hmmm, one wonders if you applauded
LBJ's War on Poverty with the same enthusiasm?
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> hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone
This was not the meaning of the rhetoric. It was talking about people dying in the streets choking on foglike 100-ft visibility smog, not old people getting a few extra years chopped off their lives due to emphysema (not that that's nothing but it's not what is being suggested by the quote).
I recall a newspaper article that ran ca. early 70s, with a picture of a guy in a hazmat-type suit, only fuzzily visible from 10 feet away due to the heavy pollution... and this was a B&W newspaper photo, mind you.
Further, a huge percentage of the harmful pollution would long since have disappeared if it weren't for the Greens constant blocking of the use of nuclear power, since a very large percentage of it comes from coal-fired plants, which have literally nothing to do with a "subsidized" fossil fuel economy. Coal is cheap, and has always been so.
Sulphur compounds are one of the harmful pollutants which cause early deaths due to pollution, usually via emphysema.
Nitrous compounds are the other problem ingredient -- and those are caused by auto exhausts... but, despite your wishes to the contrary, there is no cost-effective alternative to the qualities of gasoline as an automotive fuel, esp.:
1) Quick refueling times (ca. 5 mins)
2) Moderate range (200-400 mi between refuelling)
3) Good acceleration from 30-60 mph, as well as 0-20 mph.
There are no other existing technologies which can provide the above at less than US$50 per "charge" and a cost within 20% of the range of what a car currently costs -- not even with a reasonable development impetus.
As far as "subsizing" goes, if hybrid cars weren't heavily subsidized, both directly and indirectly, even their current adherents wouldn't touch them. And they don't get any better economy than a Honda VTEC engine did 10 years ago, with almost the same power-to-weight and performance.
> So this is suppose to prove that global warming is not happening?
No, it's to make the point that right up front, any rational person would take predictions and claims from any group with such an abysmally lousy track record as subject to readily demonstrable proof, not "vague guesstimates" and half-assed computer models that can't predict the most basic features of the overall climate over the next half-dozen years (as it has failed since 1998, actually). When they began pulling a bait-and-switch with "Climate Change" because everyone was asking "Uh, where the f*** is all this warming?", that should also be a heads up that they are just as totally full of bovine fecal matter as they have ALWAYS been.
Here's a clue: Global Warming isn't happening, and even if it were, the measures being advocated have no chance of doing anything even vaguely useful -- if anything should even be done, something which is far more debatable than any of them have ever acknoledged. Not only have CO2 levels been far higher in the past than they are now, but global temperatures have been, too. So even IF we are doing something, it's easily debated whether or not it would even be particularly bad (as an example, while heat stroke deaths would presumably rise, more people die from cold exposure than heat stroke -- so fewer may die as a result of a warmer climate. It's not an argument for GW, it's just saying that the issue is anything but trivial).
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The advocates of GW depend greatly on the ignorance and foolishness of everyone who listens to them not to ask blatantly obvious questions, mostly because they've been taught in government schools that asking hard questions -- the ones the teacher can't answer -- is bad for them. So asking even obvious questions -- "Where's the warming?" "Why aren't the oceans warming up?" "Why has the Antarctic ice building up over 80% of it for the last 30 years (as opposed to the 30% which has lost icepack)?" and the ever popular, "Why is it that satellite readings of global temperatures for the last 30 years, the most reliable ones we have, show no actual warming?"
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OBloodyHell says: "I recall a newspaper article that ran ca. early 70s, with a picture of a guy in a hazmat-type suit, only fuzzily visible from 10 feet away due to the heavy pollution... "...
I remember that picture and if memory serves it was later a photo debunked...
None the less what is amazing is that when those pushing the hoax of human induced climate change are shown to be totally ignorant of the subject they are espousing they automatically shift to air pollution...
There is a distinct difference between water vapor (the largest component of greenhouse gas) and particulate matter and aerosols in the air that can be pollution...
"The advocates of GW depend greatly on the ignorance and foolishness of everyone who listens to them not to ask blatantly obvious questions, mostly because they've been taught in government schools that asking hard questions -- the ones the teacher can't answer -- is bad for them"...
Amen!
The Left is always trying to scare us into becoming Leftists. If it is not DDT, Alar, smog, global warming, plutonium, PCBs, nuclear winter, mutual assured destruction, tap water, bottled water, polycarbonate water bottles, ice ages, overpopulation, overindustrialization, land use, the bermuda triangle, asteroids, aliens, or wrath of the volcano gods, it is the Jews, organized religion, the vast right wing conspiracy, our allies, Walmart, George Bush, people making over $200k a year, or some other such symbol for the other, or sucess, or the bourgoiesie. Even things that are a real threat are inflated into massive threats to our very existance. All to scare us into becoming vegetarians, wearing sandals, smoking pot, being "tolerant" of intolerable behavior and voting our economic rights and liberties away while making friends of our enemies, enemies of our friends and singing kumbaya. Real threats, such as the Soviet Union, Malaria, militant Islam, etc., are given short shrift because fighting them doesn't move us closer to the left.
And they have the NERVE to say we are the fear mongers??
> I remember that picture and if memory serves it was later a photo debunked...
It was in the paper suggesting what the hyper-polluted future would be like, not a "real picture". That was my point -- the claims about how awful pollution was going to be -- those "hundreds of thousands of deaths" wasn't based on statistical estimates of people dying from aggravated emphysema -- it was to come from flat out poisoning from exposure to airborne toxic chemicals. Anyone who actually lived through the 70s would realize this.
BTW, as far as the 40-60k deaths, I'll accept that when you allow for people, already sickly, who already have lung problems having emphysema and bronchitis and such which get aggravated by it. These people already have problems, though, so it's more a matter of losing a couple years than dying at 25.
> And they have the NERVE to say we are the fear mongers??
Of course they do. These are the same people who have perpetrated one of the biggest, longest running frauds of the 20th Century (no, silly, not Social Security, although that does qualify): The notion that the GOP is the party of racists.
On behalf of the GOP I will cite the 1940 Republican Party Platform:
We pledge that our American citizens of Negro descent shall be given a square deal in the economic and political life of this nation. Discrimination in the civil service, the army, navy, and all other branches of the Government must cease. To enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness universal suffrage must be made effective for the Negro citizen. Mob violence shocks the conscience of the nation and legislation to curb this evil should be enacted.
Contrast this with the stance of the platform of the Dixiecrat offshoot in 1948:
We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.
We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.
Also consider the actions of the Democrats at the 1964 convention, where duly elected southern black representatives were blatantly disenfranchised -- which certainly was a substantial factor in the events at the 1968 Dem convention and the subsequent racial tensions around the nation in the late 60s.
"All in the past -- things aren't like that now!" you'll hear in response. So why is it that not a single negative word was heard from the left when Liberal cartoonists, including G.B. "Doonesbury" Treudeau, openly called Colin Powell a "stepinfetchit" and an "Uncle Tom", and depicted Condi Rice as a "pickaninny" and a "mynah bird", denigrating everything they had accomplished as utterly meaningless?
Cartoons which, if the same sort of depictions were made about Obama, now, would be the cause of massive outrage from the Left?
The people on the Left are closet racists, and have always been.
Q.E.D. -- Clearly, they would not hesitate to try and paint anyone they chose with a brush more suitably applied to them.
Some people predicted that the housing bubble would burst in 2003. It didn't. Therefore, the housing bubble will never burst.
leonsp,
You might want to try re-reading the old original version of Chicken Little. Chicken Little and all his friends get eaten by Foxy Loxy. The moral of the story was that by focusing on an imaginary danger (the sky falling) they ignored the very real present danger of a fox in their midst and were destroyed.
You seem to prefer the boy who cried wolf, in saying that just becase the boy was wrong, doesn't mean the wolf might not come.
I, and apparently many others, think global warming is much more like many of the chimeral scares the left has cooked up in the past, and causes us to ignore real problems, so is more like Chick Little. Economic Prosperity so far is the best solution to air polution and infectious disease, from a purely empirical standpoint. We need to get the world rich (and free), and things will be much better for a VAST majority of humans. If this means it gets a bit warmer (and I don't think the two are really related), then I still think on balance a huge majority will be better off.
Maybe the sky really is falling, or will fall 100 years from now, or maybe not, but the fox is among us and we need to attend to that first.
To me, all of this left wing scare mongering
Look, instead of making it a left-right debate, or even a man-made vs. natural-caused global warming debate, how about we look at the big picture here?
Real problems include a bill called HR875 which is supposedly for "food safety" but will subject small to medium-sized farms AND backyard gardening to government oversight, leaving big agribusiness (the true source of past food recalls) sacrosanct.
How about the looting of America by the banker take-over? What about FEMA camps being used to house the growing ranks of homeless all over the country? What about the growing military presence in civilian settings (e.g., auto accidents, DUI checkpoints and storms)? What about the 100-fold increase of autism after mercury, aluminum and other sludge has been added to vaccines? What about the mass-exodus of heavy industry from our country to China? What about the media's lies being told to us in order to keep us contentedly snoozing in our slumber?
We're squabbling over exactly what we're supposed to be squabbling about with these stupid and irrelevant debates about global (a.k.a., Gore-bull) warming. Meanwhile we're not looking, and the mega-rich elites are taking away not just our money but our very freedom to survive.
We need to work together, not divide ourselves over issues the spin us in interminable circles. Check out this web site: http://www.infowars.com and other alternative sites for more eye-opening reality.
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