"Earth Day": The Joke Goes On......

"The Joke" you say?  Yes, the joke is on us, all of the people on Earth who believed and the many who continue to believe these environmental doomsday predictions.  The predictions are often initially made by self-serving academic "scientists" seeking grant money to further their careers.  These scientific "truths" are then picked up by environmental "non-profit" organizations (e.g. Sierra Club) and used to frighten and motivate the public to contribute money and join the panicked rush to "save the planet".

Once politicians smell the blood in the water of public opinion, they do what they do best.  They jump on the popular bandwagon, act is if they know what they're talking about, and with sincerity oozing from every pore they plead with the public to help them save Mother Earth, whales, polar bears and everything in between by what else, donating to their campaigns and voting for them.  (Think buffoons like John Kerry, Al Gore, and now Obama.)

Finally, the liberal mainstream media picks up on the emotional sensationalism surrounding the repeated threats of impending doom and prints claims like those made in the following article and publishes them as if they were the gospel itself.  It is a tried and true method of manipulating and fleecing the public, and unfortunately, it is unlikely to end any time soon. 

Meanwhile, we can only hope to help educate and inform those who will listen and learn, and perhaps, if people must tighten their belts enough, they will recognize this environmental fraud for what it is and vote these self-righteous, hypocritical environmental opportunists out of office.
Peter

Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970?


April 22, 2011 ·
What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.

For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.

Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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


“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

“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

“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

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

“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

Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.

And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.

Source: Reason.com

Something To Think About: Air Quality

The following is an example of how misled the public is about air quality and the folly of predicting the future of climate change. What else are we misled about?
Peter

Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance

Monday, March 08, 2010

40 Years Later: Air Quality Has Never Been Better

Earth Day (April 22) is only six weeks away, and I just noticed that the EPA recently updated air quality data for 2008 and thought it was worth featuring now in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day:

Predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970:

“Air pollution is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich in an interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 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,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

MP: Here we are 40 years later, the U.S. population has increased by more than 50%, traffic volume (miles driven) in the U.S. has increased 160%, and real GDP has increased 204%; and yet air quality in the U.S. is better than ever - nitrous dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead have all decreased between 46% and 92% between 1980 and 2008 (see chart).

Many Consensus Environmental Predictions Have Come And Gone

Are there any examples of past environmental predictions being wrong? Yes, many, and they have been outrageously, grossly, dangerously wrong. Just so no one thinks that man-caused global warming "must be true" because there is a "consensus", and the United Nation's IPCC says so, and a failed Presidential candidate is spending $300 Million in an advertising (propaganda) effort to convince us it is true. Beware, look at the historical record of environmental and "scientific" predictions.
Peter

source

Environmentalists' Wild Predictions
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

The Scare Tactics About Global Warming Continue.....

The politics and the media collusion concerning global warming and climate change continue. I forecast it will only increase in intensity. There is too much money to be made and lost. Witness this irresponsible article.....If these are not scare tactics, what is? MSNBC should be ashamed for publishing such sensationalistic so-called journalism.
Peter



Study: Warming will worsen inland storms
Twisters, hail, lightning 'likely to happen more often,' NASA expert says

Geography makes the central United States vulnerable to twisters like the one that ravaged the town of Greensburg, Kan., on June 4. A new study predicts more severe storms, and twisters, if global temperatures continue to rise.

WASHINGTON - As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.
While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming.
The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.

And when that happens, watch out.
"The strongest thunderstorms, the strongest severe storms and tornadoes are likely to happen more often and be stronger," Del Genio said Thursday from his office at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The paper he co-authored was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Other scientists caution that this area of climate research is too difficult and new for this study to be definitive. But some upcoming studies also point in the same direction.

With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world's climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms.
A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world's hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere's jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.
Updrafts could be the keyDel Genio's computer model shows global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways.
"The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail," he said.
On a normal sunny day, updrafts are less than 1 mile per hour. In a big rainstorm that is not severe, it's about 2 mph. In a severe storm they could be 20 to 30 mph. The faster that updraft, the worse the storms.

The Southeast and Midwest lie in the path of most of the most dangerous of these storms.
However, the new study also forecasts danger for the Western United States. It predicts lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide — the chief global warming gas — doubles.

Previous studies have shown that the West will get drier, making it a tinderbox for more wildfires. This study shows that there will be more matches in the form of lightning strikes to start those fires, Del Genio said. One general benefit of global warming is decreased wind shear, which is the speed of side-to-side wind as the altitude rises, Del Genio said. That would moderate the effects of updrafts.

However, during certain times of the year and under the right conditions in the Midwest and Southeast, wind shear will increase. Combine wind shear and updrafts, and damaging winds result, the scientist said. Related research, concernsOther pending and recent research, especially from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, point in the same general direction, said several scientists who weren't involved in Del Genio's study. But they said research in this area is so new that the NASA study is not the final word.

"It's certainly a plausible result," said Leo Donner, a climate modeling scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton, N.J. Donner earlier this year came out with a study predicting more heavy rain as temperatures rise. Harold Brooks, a top scientist at NOAA's severe storms laboratory in Norman, Okla., has soon-to-be-published studies finding results similar to the new NASA study, especially when it comes to hail. Some of the severe hail that should be increasing could be baseball-sized and come down at 100 mph, "falling like a major league fastball," he said.

He said it's not possible to predict more tornadoes will result from climate change, however.
Jerry Mahlman, who used to be NOAA's top climate model expert, said that a decade ago then-Vice President Al Gore asked if global warming could cause more tornadoes. Then as now, Mahlman said that's something that's just too detailed to derive from complex climate models.
Mahlman, a scientist who has long warned about the dire consequences of global warming, cautions against going overboard on climate change links: "I'm beginning to suspect that global warming is dynamically much less sexy than people want it to be."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.