Posted on 04/24/2024 8:57:08 AM PDT by bitt
Tomorrow is Earth Day 2021 and marks the 51st anniversary of Earth Day, so it’s time for my annual CD post on the spectacularly wrong predictions that were made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970…..
In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now: The planet’s future has never looked better. Here’s why” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 51st anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 21 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey. Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis that 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 issue of 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 [by 1980].”
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.
...more
None of that came true, so Bill Gates is helping out.................
I predict they’ll never stop making Spectacularly Wrong Predictions
Sounds like a low number to me. Or are we just talking the spectacular fails. 😂👍
If you factor abortion, then this is true.
Although that's more of a "Great Murder-Off".
For more such fun, wattsupwiththat.com has a feature, “failed climate predictions timeline.” Many more predictions of doom, along with expiration dates and outcomes.
Remarkable how the left’s history of spectacular wrongness in ecology and every other aspect of human existence doesn’t disqualify it from holding political power.
The hurricane forecasters use the same checklist when making their dire predictions. It’s funny when they have to adjust their numbers midway through the season. If a big one does hit, then they get to say “I told you so.”
That reminds me a caution sign on Interstate 90 in Spokane, WA a few weeks ago. It was one of those temporary diamond-shaped orange warning signs they put up to protect people working on the road. There was a crew of people picking up the accumulation of winter litter that becomes visible after the last snow melts. The sign read something like:
LOL...litter picker-uppers are now "ecologists."
Paul R. Ehrlich is still alive at the ripe old age of 91. He has an amazing ability to avoid all the disasters he predicted.
#1 certainly was on the money.
Civilized behavior certainly has died....................😎
The “scientists” of the time proved they were witch doctors in disguise.
Indeed. It's the result of mental pollution, not environmental pollution.
On the contrary, looking at the condition of the people around me these days, mass starvation is NOT an issue.
Wow! Look at that. We've had the cure for global warming all along.
U.S. Constitution
Article 1. The Congress Shall:
Construct a thermostat to control the temperature of planet earth;
Every hour, adjust that thermostat;
Set the maximum level of the oceans;
Set the miles per Kilowatt;
Set the rotational speed of the planet earth;
Set the size of The Ozone Hole;
Plug every methane gas leak on the planet earth;
Ban animal flatulence (cow farts, but also "for other purposes");
Set the size of glacers;
Include bears, wolves, multiple personalities, and reflections in the census.
“glacers” -> glaciers
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