News You Can't Use: 13 Worst Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970

What better idea for a holiday than something created by a convicted murderer to mourn climate chaos? Yes, climate chaos is, to the best of my knowledge, the new correct term, replacing new ice age, global warming, inconvenient truth, global cooling, climate change, and the sky is falling oh no as the accepted progressive language to communicate the fact that we're destroying the environment. How bad is it? Well, let's look at what 1970 thought, because there's no better source of good ideas than 1970.

In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded. Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

All right, no need for the smart mouth Mr. CONservative. The predictions can't be that bad, right? I mean, they might have guessed gas would be $4 or that we'd have nuclear disasters or something similar. That all happened. I bet these 1970 tree-huggers will be completely vindicated.

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."  — Harvard biologist George Wald

Remember when civilization ended in 1985? Leave it to the Cambridge diploma-mill to produce this sort of intellectual light-weight, but we've still got some really nice universities, like Stanford, to pick a random example.

"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." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

You know what? Let's just move on.

You'll fool everyone...until you open your mouth.

"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

I'm not sure why 1985 was such a favorite for doomsday predictions. I guess 15 years was long enough for people to forget the crazy stuff you printed in a magazine...then that dang internet had to come and ruin everything. Stop holding us responsible for our deeply cynical alarmism!

"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." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

Now this guy at least thought this through. It's sure to happen...eventually. Just a matter of time. Might be tomorrow, might be a thousand years. Whatever, just get scared and give up your rights so we don't end up in endless darkness with no usable land (I'm assuming he means for farming. We could still stand on it or make a baseball diamond or the like).

"Usable land" is over-rated, my SUV is thirsty!

"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.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

The most ridiculous part of this prediction is the idea that there would still be gas station attendants and polite people in 2000. Also, we still have oil, so there's that.

"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

...and you thought I was joking with that "new ice age" wise-assery earlier. 

Original Article

When you can take an idea like "let's not destroy our planet" and actually make it unsympathetic that's quite an accomplishment. Maybe a more common sense approach and less doom-saying could lead to sensible reforms instituted in a equitable manner. On the other hand, I didn't go to HARVARD!!!!111oneoneone so let's just say if we don't shape up we'll all be dead by 2020, at the latest.

Komment Korner  

And yet, despite being totally wrong about everything he's ever predicted, Paul Ehrlich still has credibility among the Chicken Little Left. 

put the vicks formula 44 bottle down

"if present trends continue" The above caveat is the problem. We have never been able to predict if trends will continue or change. Why would anyone think that temperature trends or other climatic trends would be any different? 

We are pitiful creatures indeed. 

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.