Friday, April 23, 2021

Climate Change Prophecies

The Biden administration is going all-in on its war against the weather. Led by pompous buffoon John Kerry the administration has decided to reconfigure the national economy in order to prevent some lame prophecy from coming true. And they are doing it in the name of science. Fancy that.

To commemorate the first Earth Day, Mark Perry has put together a list of predictions, that is, prophecies, that serious climate scientists proposed over five decades ago. By now it's time for a reality test. We can evaluate the evidence and judge whether these scientists were right or wrong.


It is sobering, to say the least. Consider a few of them, herewith:


1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”


2. “We are in an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.


8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China, and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”


9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”


17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so [by 2005], it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”


18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an Ice Age.”


One notes, in #9, that scientists have enough evidence to make predictions. In truth, they have enough evidence to formulate hypotheses. But, do they allow the evidence to falsify their outlandish predictions.


So, hysterical apocalyptic prophecies all turned out to be worthless. Naturally, those who do not believe in science have decided that this does not mean that said scientists are crackpots. It means that the end is approaching, faster than ever.


6 comments:

  1. On Slashdot today, there was an entry claiming that "climate change" was responsible for an observed shift of the earth's axis in the past 40 years. https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/04/23/1637209/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis .
    Of course, the "observed" shift is something like 4 meters, which strikes me as well into the noise level of any meaningful observation of the earth's axis.

    This is not science. It is what I call "catastrophe porn." My question is where have all the scientists gone?

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  2. I used to post similar collections of egregiously failed eco-prophecies every Earth Day. Gave it up because the blowback from environmentally-orthodox friends and acquaintances was getting unhinged. One (a self-described 'libertarian socialist') excused the belly-flops by writing, "Well, science fiction writers get things wrong all the time." That 'un was so weak I didn't bother to reply.

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  3. As I keep saying, the "climate" has been changing ever since our planet has had an atmosphere. It doesn't CARE what we say about it. Or try to do something about it. It does what it damned well pleases. It's bigger and stronger than we are.

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  4. Microclimes in urbane spaces, and over Green farms. Climate change, perhaps, irregular and recurring. Political, social, economic climate change, definitely. Meanwhile, natural hazards have been mitigated, observable and reproducible through progressive catastrophic events, human viability, and property damage. All's not quiet, but rather normal, on the terrestrial sphere.

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  5. The ice extent fluctuates. The oceans rise and fall with historical precedent. Polar bear fathers and mothers are having nooky and an unPlanned Posterity are increasing diversity. That said, save the birds, the bats, whack a wind turbine. Clear the environment of the intermittent/renewable Green blight.

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