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Environmentalists Are Dead Wrong
Townhall.com ^ | April 26, 2017 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on 04/26/2017 4:21:13 AM PDT by Kaslin

Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let's take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today's environmentalists' predictions.

In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of "The Population Bomb," declared that the world's population would soon outstrip food supplies. In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain's Institute of Biology: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, "In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct." Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' highest award.

In International Wildlife (July 1975), 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." In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within "a few years," snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event" in Britain. "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said. "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.

In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience: "The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."

Also in 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look magazine: "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

Scientist Harrison Brown published a chart in Scientific American that year estimating that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver were to disappear before 1990.

Erroneous predictions didn't start with Earth Day. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last for 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 said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that as of 2014, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Hoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda. Environmental activist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989: "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: "We've got to ... try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong ... we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: globalwarming

1 posted on 04/26/2017 4:21:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Taxman

Self ping.


2 posted on 04/26/2017 4:28:34 AM PDT by Taxman (Replace the income tax with the FAIRtax and abolish the IRS!)
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To: Kaslin

“Environmentalism” is a means to an end - totalitarianism.


3 posted on 04/26/2017 4:30:26 AM PDT by Flag_This (Liberals are locusts.)
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To: Kaslin
Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.

Amen! The crux of the problem is this: Americans (and by extension, the rest of the free world) will continue to pay that steep price unless and until these snake oil salesmen can be stopped. To do so will require legal action or violence. I advocate for the former but am able to do the latter.

4 posted on 04/26/2017 4:34:08 AM PDT by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
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To: Flag_This

Environmentalism also means an end to most of the world’s population, the ‘causes’ of Gaia’s increasing ‘sickness’ manifest in droughts, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanos, etc.


5 posted on 04/26/2017 4:36:43 AM PDT by spirited irish
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To: Kaslin

“George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University . . . gave this warning . . . “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

He’s not a gambler; he’s an academic. And there’s a reason he’s an academic and not a gambler - gamblers have to pay for their stupidity.


6 posted on 04/26/2017 4:39:53 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: spirited irish
"Environmentalism also means an end to most of the world’s population, the ‘causes’ of Gaia’s increasing ‘sickness’ manifest in droughts, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanos, etc."

Other than the fact that they're much more efficient at killing vast numbers of people (banning DDT, for example), they really haven't advanced much further than their ideological ancestors who tossed people into volcanoes to placate their "gods."

7 posted on 04/26/2017 4:42:51 AM PDT by Flag_This (Liberals are locusts.)
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To: Stosh
He did not say he is a gambler. He said if he was a gambler.

You missed the little word "if" and you deserve an F in reading.

8 posted on 04/26/2017 4:54:29 AM PDT by Kaslin ( The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triump. Thomas Paine)
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To: Kaslin

:: Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of “The Population Bomb,” declared that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies ::

Peak food!


9 posted on 04/26/2017 5:10:11 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic, Anthropogenic Climate Alterations: The acronym explains the science.)
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To: Kaslin

Post #8- Good response. :)


10 posted on 04/26/2017 5:30:09 AM PDT by ptsal
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To: Kaslin

Oh no, I didn’t miss the “if” - I said (in effect) there’s a reason that “if” is there - “if” he was a gambler, he wouldn’t be a gambler for long - not with judgments like that! But as an academic, you can spout complete nonsense (like England will be gone by the 21st century) and still enjoy a tenured position in the Ivy League.


11 posted on 04/26/2017 5:37:31 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: Stosh; Kaslin

Actually, Erlich bet Julian Simon at some point in the 70’s that metal prices for New York futures would be higher in 1990? 2000? than at the time of the bet. He had to pay. I also think it’s outrageous that a guy who’s been so uniformly wrong about so many things can step outside his house, much less be honored as he is by so many.


12 posted on 04/26/2017 6:59:09 AM PDT by McGarrett (Book'em Danno)
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To: Kaslin

The sign says “There is no planet B”. There IS a Plan B, though: U.N. Agenda 21 calls for the reduction of the human population on Earth by about 85%. Preserving the “elite”, of course, and enough serfs to serve them.


13 posted on 04/26/2017 8:08:36 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Building the Wall! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: Stosh
But as an academic, you can spout complete nonsense (like England will be gone by the 21st century) and still enjoy a tenured position in the Ivy League.

Academic: One who can't DO anything himself, but can tell everyone else what to do and how to do it.

14 posted on 04/26/2017 8:12:08 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Building the Wall! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: Kaslin

In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: “We’ve got to ... try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong ... we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

I wonder if I could make an idiotic statement like that & become as well-known?


15 posted on 04/26/2017 11:08:02 AM PDT by oldtech
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To: Kaslin

As per usual, Dr. Williams is spot on!

Here is the money line: “Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.”

And, he might have added: “We’ll continue to pay a steep price until sanity returns.”


16 posted on 04/26/2017 6:36:26 PM PDT by Taxman (Replace the income tax with the FAIRtax and abolish the IRS!)
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To: JimRed
U.N. Agenda 21 calls for the reduction of the human population on Earth by about 85%.

Well; on the one hand Planned UNparenthood and the rest of the CHOICE killers are taking out about 3,300 future American citizens a day.

Is THAT making a dent yet??

17 posted on 04/27/2017 2:42:22 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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