If you think the sky is falling, check out the prophecies of the 1970s

Washington Examiner ^ | 04/10/2014 | Michael Barone

[blu]

Is it “In The Year 2525” yet?

[uncitizen]

It’s always something.

[JRandomFreeper]

As I recall, India was supposed to experience widespread starvation, because there was no way they could feed their growing population.

Didn't happen.

/johnny

[ansel12]

The media had some hard left politics to push in the late 1960s and the 1970s, according to them mankind was teetering on the last moments of life, except for the soviet Union and Red China, they were no threat to us according to the media.

Not much has changed for the media.

[al baby]

What about the coming ice age and the coming heat wave

[Mastador1]

Forty years is roughly the length of a working lifetime

Except in the eyes of liberal elitists who want us all to work into our eighties so as not to burden society. Only problem is there are no friggin jobs for the people who want to work.

[samtheman]

But the leftists are smarter today than they were 40 years ago.

/sarc

[ansel12]

A final thing taken for granted in the 1970s was the enduring strength of the Soviet Union.

Immediately after Reagan brought down the Soviet Union, the media switched gears and said that he did nothing, that they were already collapsing and we all knew that.

It sure is funny that we can't find those 1970s stories and news though.

[truth_seeker]

“The Population Bomb” by Paul Erlich

https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=the+population+bomb+paul+ehrlich+summary&oq=the+population+bobm&gs_l=hp.1.8.0i13l10.953.8367.0.12115.24.22.2.0.0.0.236.3241.2j19j1.22.0.chm_loc%2Chmss2%3Dfalse%2Chmnts%3D50000...0...1.1.40.hp..2.22.2980.0.aMZi9qJMsjA

Predicted global freezing, famine, etc.

[JimSEA]

Catastrophism and particularly the ideas that something big is about to happen sells. For some reason a lot of us have fun with the idea that Yellowstone will blow, killing all or most of us. While it is certainly true that such things happen, the possibility that it will in our brief lifetimes is very small. One of the hardest things to mentally grasp is just how very long a million years are.

[DariusBane]

I remember being taught in that era in elementary school that we would be starving and out of crude oil by the time I was 18. I thought it was a load of poop then as a 7 year old. But they were trying to scare the crap out of a bunch of kids. Not sure why. They were a bunch of 70’s era libs (I went to a Montessori style private school full of crepe’s and croissant artsy types bent on saving the world).

[Little Bill]

My father was a Business Major during the depression 1933 - 1937, Jock Major. One of his Text Books from 1929 said we were going to run out of Oil in 20 years. I used to read them and give him a bad time.

[bigbob]

Oh that’s all called “climate change” now.

As someone maybe I think said, “the climate, she be a changin’...”

Can’t beat it with a hockey stick!

[Alex Murphy]

Forty years is roughly the length of a working lifetime—and long enough for history to have taken some unexpected turns. And to have proved that long-term forecasts based on extrapolations of existing trends usually end up wide of the mark. The list of failed prophecies from the 1970s is rather long. The conventional wisdom of the time was more than usually unreliable.

PFL

[Hugin]

Can’t believe they didn’t mention the coming Ice Age the scientists were worried about back then.

[cicero2k]

First, a great post. I find it more instructive to analyze predictions gone bad, rather than validating new ones.

Besides global warming:

1. Death of the Republican Party and the right.
2. The power of big media controls the political discourse.
3. Japan, Italy and Greece will disappear.
4. Alternative energy as more than a niche energy supply.
5. Litigation as means of control.
6. Multiple languages spoken throughout America.

I think most of these will not come to pass.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Watched “Plane That Disappeared” on Netflix last night. A vintage film chock-full of leftist BS “predictions.” A fun flick, though, because of the vintage methods and such.

We are a people who swallow fear-mongering hook, line, and sinker. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,” wrote the Holy Spirit through King Solomon. That is something that will never change while this creation holds out. Start with that and the rest takes care of itself, albeit with some fear and trembling along the way inasmuch as the Almighty is far more powerful than anything we can cobble up or down, yet fully involved, aware, and sympathetic to our condition. But to live one’s life as if doom is all there is? To run amok with fear and use it to accumulate political power? Screw that and the horse it rides in on.

[MrNeutron1962]

In the year 1 million and a half,
Humankind is enslaved by giraffes.
Mankind must pay for his misdeeds,
when the tree tops are stripped of their leaves.

[FreedomPoster]

>>4. Alternative energy as more than a niche energy supply.

I was involved just enough with alternative energy as an engineering undergraduate in the late 70s to become disenchanted with it. I found it especially dispiriting that we didn’t learn from the Carter-era DoE failures and boondoggles, and that I lived to see much of that nonsense repeated under Obama with Solyndra and many others.