do you care about global warming? THIS HOW MUCH I CARE. 0% 0 Votes
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%26gt; -----
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt; Into the wild green yonder
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt; May 11, 2008
%26gt;
%26gt; By Walter E. Williams - Now that another Earth Day has come and gone,
%26gt; let%26#039;s look at some environmentalists%26#039; predictions they would prefer we
%26gt; forget.
%26gt;
%26gt; At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel
%26gt; Calder warned, %26quot;The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside
%26gt; nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for
%26gt; mankind.%26quot; C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said,
%26gt; %26quot;The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and
consistent enough
%26gt; that it will not soon be reversed.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore%26#039;s hero
%26gt; and mentor, predicted a major food shortage in the U.S. and %26quot;in the
%26gt; 1970s... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.%26quot;
%26gt; Mr. Ehrlich forecast 65 million Americans would die of starvation
%26gt; between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have
%26gt; declined to 22.6 million. Mr. Ehrlich%26#039;s predictions about England were
%26gt; gloomier: %26quot;If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England
%26gt; will not exist in the year 2000.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; In 1972, a report for the Club of Rome warned the world would run out
%26gt; of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and
%26gt; petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
%26gt;
%26gt; Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book %26quot;The Doomsday Book,%26quot; said
Americans
%26gt; were using 50 percent of the world%26#039;s resources and %26quot;by 2000 they
%26gt; [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, %26quot;The
%26gt; World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, %26quot;civilization
%26gt; will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken
%26gt; against problems facing mankind.%26quot; That was the same year Sen. Gaylord
%26gt; Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 %26quot;somewhere between 75
%26gt; and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; It%26#039;s not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers
%26gt; have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced
%26gt; there was %26quot;little or no chance%26quot; of oil being discovered in California,
%26gt;
and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In
%26gt; 1939, the U.S. Interior Department said American oil supplies would
%26gt; last only another 13 years. In 1949, the interior secretary said the
%26gt; end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.
%26gt;
%26gt; Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the
%26gt; U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year
%26gt; supply of natural gas. In fact,, according to the American Gas
%26gt; Association, there%26#039;s a 1,000- to 2,500-year supply.
%26gt;
%26gt; Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making
%26gt; predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and
%26gt; millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government
%26gt; policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
%26gt;
%26gt; When Mr. Ehrlich predicted England would not exist in the
year 2000,
%26gt; what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent
%26gt; such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the Interior Department warned we
%26gt; only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should
%26gt; President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think
%26gt; environmental alarmism is any more correct now the tune has been
%26gt; switched to manmade global warming?
%26gt;
%26gt; Here are a few facts: More than 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is
%26gt; the result of water vapor in Earth%26#039;s atmosphere. Without the
%26gt; greenhouse effect, Earth%26#039;s average temperature would be zero degrees
%26gt; Fahrenheit. Most climate change is due to the orbital eccentricities
%26gt; of Earth and variations in the sun%26#039;s output. On top of that, natural
%26gt; wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all
%26gt; human sources combined.
%26gt;
%26gt; Walter
E. Williams is a nationally syndicated columnist and a
%26gt; professor of economics at George Mason University.
%26gt; 22% 2 Votes
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt; -----
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt; Into the wild green yonder
%26gt;
%26gt;
%26gt; May 11, 2008
%26gt;
%26gt; By Walter E. Williams - Now that another Earth Day has come and gone,
%26gt; let%26#039;s look at some environmentalists%26#039; predictions they would prefer we
%26gt; forget.
%26gt;
%26gt; At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel
%26gt; Calder warned, %26quot;The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside
%26gt; nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for
%26gt; mankind.%26quot; C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said,
%26gt; %26quot;The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and
consistent enough
%26gt; that it will not soon be reversed.%26quot;
%26gt;
%26gt; In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore%26#039;s hero
%26gt; and mentor, predicted a major food shortage in the U.S. and %26quot;in the
%26gt; 1970s... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.%26quot;
%26gt; Mr. Ehrlich forecast 65 million Americans would die of starvation
%26gt; between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have
%26gt; declined to 22.6 million. Mr. Ehrlich%26#039;s predictions about England were