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No one was more influential — or more terrifying, some would say — than Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” sold in the millions with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply too many of us. Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”

As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India. Hundreds of millions did not die of starvation in the ’70s. Humanity has managed to hang on, even though the planet’s population now exceeds seven billion, double what it was when “The Population Bomb” became a best-seller and its author a frequent guest of Johnny Carson’s on “The Tonight Show.” . . After the passage of 47 years, Dr. Ehrlich offers little in the way of a mea culpa.

PFL

I was heartened that the NYTimes ran this article, which I take to be in indicator that some of the center-left elite are getting nervous that global warming will not pan out.

The following is a FACT and I urge all freepers to put this out there: in 2006, Al Gore appeared on Oprah and said, “Beijing will be underwater in fifteen years.” That means that the person who was awarded the Nobel Prize for pushing the Global Warming myth expects Beijing to be washed away within the next six years. Will Gore be called on his prediction in 2021?