Because we're on the verge of riding the cap-and-trade road (to hell ?), paved with good intentions, of course, I thought I'd share some of the not-so-accurate predictions our environmental gurus made on the original Earth Day in 1970. Not that I'm saying Al Gore could EVER be mistaken now. Lord, no. He said "the science is settled," so…that's it. There will be no more science on global warming. Nada. It's over. The science stops here. We know all there is to know. That's the way all scientific achievement has been brought about, by stopping the science…..wait a minute. That doesn't sound quite right…..
Ah, no matter.
Anyway, as Reason Online states, when it comes to predictions, the environmental prophets of doom have not only been wrong, they've been spectacularly wrong.
I give you the 1970 Earth Day predictions from the leading Al Gore's of their day (except the following people REALLY WERE scientists, unlike the Goreacle, who is, in case nobody has noticed, a businessman, heavily invested in (guess what?) green technologies).
Check these out:
"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind" – Harvard biologist George Wald
"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, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich estimated that 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the 'Great Die-Off' in the 1980's.
"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation" – Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day 1970. The reality ? Since 1970, the amount of food per person globally has increased by 26 percent, as the International Food Policy Research Institute reported in October 1999.
"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 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" – ecologist Kenneth Watt
"Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out" – a 1973 Deparment of Health, Education, and Welfare study about the effects of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons.
"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" – ecologist 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" – Sen. Gaylord Nelson in Look magazine.
"The greenhouse theorists contend the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature, which if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood" – Newsweek, 1970.
"Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born" – Newsweek, 1970.
"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. 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" – ecologist Kenneth Watt.
