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Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

December 31, 2022

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

Photo Credit: Getty

Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience.

SUMMARY

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 1967

1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’

Source: New York Times, August 10 1969

1970: Ice age by 2000

Source: Boston Globe, April 16, 1970

1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.’

Source: Redlands Daily Facts, October 6, 1970

1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’

Source: Washington Post, July 9, 1971

1972: New ice age by 2070

Source: NOAA, October 2015

1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’

Source: The Guardian, January 29, 1974

1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’

Source: TIME, June 24, 1974

1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’

But no such ‘great peril to life’ has been observed as the so-called ‘ozone hole’ remains:

 

Sources: Headline

NASA Data | Graph

1976: ‘The Cooling’

Source: New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976

1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’

Noblesville Ledger (Noblesville, IN) April 9, 1980

But 10 years later, the US government program formed to study acid rain concluded:

Associated Press, September 6, 1990

1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend

Source: New York Times, January 5, 1978

But according to NASA satellite data there is a slight warming trend since 1979.

Source: DrRoySpencer.com

1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s

Rachel Carson’s Critics Keep On, But She Told Truth About DDT

September 11, 2015

Rachel Carson’s Critics Keep On, But She Told Truth About DDT

More than half a century after scientist Rachel Carson warned of the dangers of overusing the pesticide DDT, conservative groups continue to vilify her and blame her for a resurgence of malaria. But DDT is still used in many countries where malaria now rages.

Any time a writer mentions Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring or the subsequent U.S. ban on DDT, the loonies come out of the woodwork. They blame Carson’s book for ending the use of DDT as a mosquito-killing pesticide. And because mosquitoes transmit malaria, that supposedly makes her culpable for just about every malaria death of the past half century.

Rachel Carson

rachelcarson.org
Biologist and author Rachel Carson in 1963.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, devotes anentire website to the notion that “Rachel was wrong,” asserting that “millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm.” Likewise former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn has declared that “millions of people, particularly children under five, died because governments bought into Carson’s junk science claims about DDT.” The novelist Michael Crichton even had one of his fictional characters assert that “Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.” He put the death toll at 50 million.

It’s worth considering the many errors in this argument both because malaria remains an epidemic problem in much of the developing world and also because groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, backed by corporate interests, have latched onto DDT as a case study for undermining all environmental regulation. 

You Will Never Guess Who Was Really Behind Britain’s First Climate Denial Propaganda…

February 7, 2015

You Will Never Guess Who Was Really Behind Britain’s First Climate Denial Propaganda…

A humble pamphlet is the subject of DeSmog UK’s latest instalment in its history series. This pamphlet would prove critical in the relentless critique of climate science.

Julian Morris, research fellow at the Atlas Foundation – a libertarian think tank founded by Antony Fisher – started work on the infamous pamphlet Global Warming: Apocalypse or Hot Air? in 1994.

Along with Roger Bate of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London, the two co-authored the humble red pamphlet that would prove instrumental in attacking the science of climate change.

But it was also the first authoritative-sounding publication produced in Britain that the free market think tanks, journalists and policymakers could turn to that offered support to the sceptic attack on climate science.

Scientific Style

The pamphlet made significant use of the scientific work of Richard Lindzen – the sceptic whose testimony before the US senate had been funded by coal – and was presented in the language and style of a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

Fred Smith, then the president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in the US, recalls that his colleagues also helped with the research and writing.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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