When Will Alarmists learn to stop making silly, dire predictions?

Question

•“...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

Answer 1

Well as everyone knows the prediction of an ice age in the 1970's came from the founder of the denieristsi movement.  The others seem like pretty accurate predictions to me, unless you consider that only consequences affecting white Americans are real, proven, or important.

Answer 2

They have.  

These are quotes from a few individuals with strange views.  EXACTLY like today's "skeptics".  You have to look at what large groups of scientists say, now.  The following all say global warming is real, and mostly caused by us.

The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

Answer 3

End of the world in 5 minutes, details on the 12:00 news.

Answer 4

Its all about money, brother. The media, environmentalists, and big corporations (including big oil) are all in on these scams to push the American public into purchasing and acting a certain way. Next year will be the birth of global dehumidification.

Answer 5

The worst consequences of air pollution haven't come about because we have done something about it.

The IPCC climate scientists have not made any wild claims.  The fact is that they have purposely understated the threat of global warming.

The cooling in the 70s was predicted by 7 scientific papers.  At the same time there were 42 papers predicting global warming- AGW

So the vast majority did not predict cooling. It was just something that the mass media got a hold of and publicized.  That's why you should stop believing what you read in the popular press, as it rarely reflects the ideas of the majority of climate scientists.

Any intelligent person can see that we in fact are threatening every ecosystem on earth.  Since we are an interdependent part of the interconnected web of nature, we are threatening our own existence.  And I am hardly just talking about global warming.

In fact, we were putting much more SO2 and other aerosols into the stratosphere, which cause cooling.  Since we cut down on these emissions with pollution controls, CO2 a greenhouse gas has become the more dominant man made forcing.  That's why warming speeded up after the 70s.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Comparin...

Answer 6

Dire, yes.  Silly, no.  

Why is it that the exploiters and destroyers are given free reign, never having to prove their actions will be inconsequential, even after mounds of evidence is gathered that shows the opposite; but the conservatives who argue for caution have to prove their claims beyond the shadow of a doubt?  Neither side can be proven.  

If we are cautious, the worst outcome is less growth.

If we are reckless, the worst outcome is Armageddon.

If we wait for absolute proof, it will come in the form of a collapsed system, from which there is no recovery.

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• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

- Species are going extinct now at a rate equal to past mass extinctions.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

- Aerosols, primarily from jet exhaust, have changed solar insolation on a global scale, the eventual effect is unknown.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

- We are in an environmental crisis, this is unequivocal.  It’s a slow motion collapse so it may not be apparent to the less insightful among us.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

- This is a simple logical fact that follows from geometry and thermodynamics.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

- Ditto.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

- 100’s of thousands of people do die from air pollution every year.  

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.  

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

- People are starving now.