[Editor:This article was written by Professor Walter E Williams but captures the facts better than 99.999% of the media which does not know enough to research truth but simply believes the panic-makers and joins the chorus of "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
And now for the article by Professor Williams ....
Idiotic Environmental Predictions
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper,
“Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.”
Keep in
mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were
made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for
you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions
and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?
As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University
biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: “The trouble with almost all
environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to
convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re
extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20
years.”
In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University
of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years
winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children
just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon
warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be
beneath rising seas.
Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by
2020.
In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in
a mere 10 years.
A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy
predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.
In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a
joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500
days to avoid climate chaos.”
Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in
the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness:
“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.”
Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “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.”
He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice
age.”
Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and
professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint
campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time
of first Earth Day in 1970.
This time it’s not about weather. Harrison
Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a
chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated
that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc,
tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, “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.”
There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day,
too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that
American oil supplies would last for 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 energy claims,
in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a
10-year supply of natural gas.
However, the U.S. Energy Information
Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459
trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That’s
enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest
producer of natural gas worldwide.
Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as
true as yesteryear’s.
The major difference is today’s Americans are far
more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global
warming. And the only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason
University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features
by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.