Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/12/2009 7:30:23 PM PST by neverdem
A corollary of Murphy's law ("If something can go wrong, it will") is: "Things are worse than they can possibly be." Energy Secretary Steven Chu, an atomic physicist, seems to embrace that corollary but ignores Gregg Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no sooner than five years hence but no later than 10 years away, soon enough to terrify but distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong.
Chu recently told the Los Angeles Times that global warming might melt 90 percent of California's snowpack, which stores much of the water needed for agriculture. This, Chu said, would mean "no more agriculture in California," the nation's leading food producer. Chu added: "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going."
No more lettuce for Los Angeles? Chu likes predictions, so here is another: Nine decades hence, our great-great-grandchildren will add the disappearance of California artichokes to the list of predicted planetary calamities that did not happen...
--snip--
Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon.
When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.
An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser. Credentialed intellectuals, too — actually, especially — illustrate Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."...
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
I never even listen to George Will anymore. He’s no Conservative, he’s merely an enabler of the Liberofascist regime.
?
Chu chu’s train doesn’t go all the way to the station.
Jimmy Carter said the world wll be out of oil by the year 2,000. And Iran’s Mullahs were really nice people.
missed it by that much
Chu, The USA imports 78% of it's food. And as far as California being the nations leading food producer, that's BUNK as well. They grow a lot of fruits and vegetables however, which are you?
Gloom and DOOM! It’s all the Communist “DemocRATS” have to offer. Gloom and doom and more doom. DemocRATS suck!
Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals --chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined. An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser.Thanks neverdem.
June 30, 2008
In 1968, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a synthesis of scientific research and personal observations that offered a disturbing account of a world with too many people and too little food. The book was a national bestseller. Now 40 years later, Ehrlich, still at Stanford, and his wife, Anne, have come out with a new book, The Dominant Animal, in which they seek to explain how man’s rapid rise to dominance has spawned a series of interlinked woes: soaring energy demand, agriculture crises, and, above all, environmental degradation. No longer, the Ehrlichs argue, can these issues be viewed as independent of one another, nor will a single response suffice as a remedy. U.S. News recently spoke with Paul Ehrlich. Excerpts:
You say that our energy supply is adequate. So what’s the problem?
“We’re not running out of fossil fuels—we’re running out of environment. We could go a long time if we could just burn up fossil fuels and dump the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We’d be in good shape at least for long enough to carefully consider our future. But when you see what’s happening with the climate, you realize we can’t do that. One of my colleagues went to Norway recently. She said it was horrendous to see global warming actually in action. Almost all the lakes they used to ice skate across in summer are gone. Everything is just melted. We don’t have the time to continue what we’re doing now and hope to change later...
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/06/30/we-are-running-out-of-environment.html
Weather for Norway - TODAY!
-13°C
Excellent piece. Well-researched and devastating.
Up to 300 feared dead; over 1M animals dead; around 1M+ acres burned, and this A-hole envorowhack "professor" is worried about addressing CO^2 from forest fires...while Chinese, Indian, etc 'dirty' coal plants get a pass.
Maybe if we outlaw all fire, including internal combustion, mesoternal combustion, and external combustion...
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