Environmentalists' Wild Predictions

The latest from Walter E. Williams on the failed predictions of doom by a legion of lying lefties (but I repeat myself):

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.



At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."



In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."



Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."



It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Source: Walter E. Williams (please read the whole thing)

Commentary

My favorite passage from the column is the following Glittering Jewel of Colossal Ignorance:

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It is the same with the Global Warming Hoax, and lefties (and their useful idiots) try to use that lie to enact various schemes designed to kill capitalism and institute socialism in it's place...even trying to use carbon as currency.

It is my hope that we can hold them off long enough for the effects of the current cooling cycle to become evident to all...and wake people up that the very efforts of lefties to stave off Global Warming will only worsen the effects of the coming cool down of the globe.

We should be Exploring and Drilling for Oil, mining coal, building oil refineries, coal gasification plants, coal and nuclear power plants as fast as humanly possible to mitigate the catastrophe that will see bitterly cold winters, and shorter growing seasons that may see millions starve.

Liberalism and it's sister ideology of Communism aren't satisfied with 100 million dead in the 20th century...their false gods demand millions more in the 21st.


Previously:

Global warming Update: Spring Snow in Britain

The Sun is Dimming and Scientists Fight for Funding to Study for Harbingers of New Ice Age

Russian scientist says Earth could soon face new Ice Age

More Inconvenient Truth for Algore
Warming Much Less Than Previously Thought

Fire and Ice--Journalists Can't Decide

A Global Temperature Chart
Not in Al Gore's Movie

There's more...but you get the picture.