Philip, who is a great dude if you get to know him, insists that Idiot is “correct on all accounts” with regard to his prophecy that within three to four decades, the earth will be eight degrees warmer, crops will be unable to grow, most of the population will be dead, and the rest of us will be eating each other.<\/p>\n
There’s no way to conclusively prove him right or wrong, I suppose, but it’s worth examining the track record of similar statements made by alarmist blowhards over the years.<\/p>\n
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?<\/p>\n
Let’s begin with easy pickins:<\/p>\n
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.<\/span> In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.<\/span> Moving on:<\/p>\n “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”<\/span> Could, but it didn’t. Not even close. Next:<\/p>\n “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. \u2026 This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”<\/span> I love that phrase “If present trends continue.” It sounds so scientific, but it’s so preposterous.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n Present trends don’t tend to continue into the territory the doomsayers anticipate.<\/p>\n “In a decade, America’s mighty rivers will have reached the boiling point.”<\/span> And this was back when the earth was cooling! Not sure how this genius came up with that one, but there you go.<\/p>\n “Quickly capping 363 oil well fires in a war zone is impossible. The resulting soot might well stretch over all of South Asia. Beneath such a pall sunlight would be dimmed, temperatures lowered and droughts more frequent. Spring and summer frosts may be expected… This endangerment of the food supplies… appears to be likely enough that it should affect the war plans…”<\/span><\/div>\n Well, they were set ablaze, and billyuns and billyuns of gallons were burned, but they were quickly capped with minimal environmental damage. (Actually, I doubt it was billyuns. Maybe just millyuns.)<\/p>\n “We have ten years to save the world’s oceans.”<\/span> At last check, twenty years on, the oceans seem to be doing fine. Wish I could say the same for Danson’s career.<\/p>\n “The environment is in trouble \u2013 and the more it suffers, the tougher it is on your skin….”<\/span> Do they still print Seventeen<\/span> magazine? At least something’s disappearing, anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n I could go on, but you get the point. I’m not sure if Philip or yesterday’s Idiot will, but Philip is still a good guy.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philip,who is a great dude if you get to know him, insists that Idiot is \"correct on all accounts\" with regard to his prophecy that within three to four decades, the earth will be eight degrees warmer, crops will be unable to grow, most of the population will be dead, and the rest of us ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4895,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/4895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2014Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968)<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.<\/span>
\u2014Paul Ehrlich (1969)<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2014Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>
In the coming decade, we could expect to lose all of Florida, Washington D.C., and the Los Angeles basin…we’ll be in rising waters with no ark in sight.<\/span>
-Paul Ehrlich on global warming floods, May 1989<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2014Lowell Ponte in \u201cThe Cooling\u201d, 1976<\/span><\/p>\n
\u2014Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day, 1970<\/span><\/p>\n
-Edwin Newman, Earth Day 1970<\/span><\/p>\n
– Ted Danson, 1988. <\/span><\/p>\n
– Seventeen<\/span> magazine, 1991, warning about the dangers of the then-disappearing, now-reappearing ozone layer.<\/p>\n