Happy Earth Day!

The following are quotes from predictions made in 1970, when the first Earth Day was celebrated. I am not commenting on them because they so ridiculous and at the same time so sad. For those of you too young to remember, the scientists quoted were the top authorities of the time, and their predictions were discussed on the three TV networks (yes, we survived with only a dozen channels) and the printed media as factual and scientific.

The media has changed, but their gullibility and desire for sensationalism has not:

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. 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.”• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, 1970

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” • Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day, 1970

“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….” • Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, 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.”• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University, 1970

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day, 1970

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” • Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist, 1970

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” • Kenneth Watt, ecologist, 1970

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” • George Wald, Harvard Biologist, 1970

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” • Martin Litton, Sierra Club director, 1970

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist, 1970

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist, 1970

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that
in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living
animals will be extinct.”• Sen. Gaylord Nelson, 1970

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist,
1970

"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..."Life Magazine, January 1970

"There is growing doubt that the agricultural ecosystem will be able to accommodate both the anticipated increase of the human population to seven billion by the end of the century and the universal desire of the world's hungry for a better diet." Lester Brown, founder, Worldwatch InstituteScientific American Magazine, 1970

"I'm scared... I'm 37 and I'd kind of like to live to be 67 in a reasonably pleasant world, and not die in some kind of holocaust in the next decade." Paul Ehrlich, biologist, Stanford UniversityLook Magazine, 1970 Earth Day issue

Paul Ehrlich is 76, and still alive. Population has increased by a couple of billions, famine does not exist, except when food is used as a weapon. The world has not become colder, and the only threat is from global warming caused by the hot air of environmentalists and their cohorts in the media.