In this post, Dr. Walter E. Williams hits it all the way to China. As I was reading, I thought that this information would look great in a more chart-like form. Here it is:

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget:

C.C. Wallen, World Meteorological Organization, 1969:

* "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
* "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, 1968:

* "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
* Predictions about famine in the US:
* 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989
* By 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million
* "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

Club of Rome Report, 1972:

* the world will run out of gold by 1981
* the world will run out of mercury and silver by 1985
* the world will run out of tin by 1987
* the world will run out of petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992

Gordon Taylor, The Doomsday Book, 1970:

* Americans using 50 percent of the world's resources
* "By 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of [the world's resources]."

The Environmental Fund, 1975:

* "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

George Wald, Harvard University biologist, 1970:

* "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."

Sen. Gaylord Nelson, 1970:

* 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 ...

U.S. Geological Survey:

* "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California (1885)
* little or no chance of oil being discovered in Kansas and Texas
* only a 10-year supply of natural gas in the US (1974) actual figure is somewhere between 1000 and 2500 years, says American Gas Association

U.S. Department of the Interior:

* American oil supplies will last only another 13 years. (1939)
* end of U.S. oil supplies in sight (1949)


So here are Dr. Williams' 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?
* What makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?


Some important (and overlooked) 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.
* Natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Let the enviro-Nazis suck on THAT for a while!

RWR