Walter E. Williams: Environmentalists Are Dead Wrong

Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let's take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today's environmentalists' predictions.

In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of "The Population Bomb," declared that the world's population would soon outstrip food supplies. In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain's Institute of Biology: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, "In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct." Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' highest award.

In International Wildlife (July 1975), 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." In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within "a few years," snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event" in Britain. "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said. "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.

In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience: "The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."

Also in 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look magazine: "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

Scientist Harrison Brown published a chart in Scientific American that year estimating that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver were to disappear before 1990.

Erroneous predictions didn't start with Earth Day. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said 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 claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that as of 2014, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Hoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda. Environmental activist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989: "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: "We've got to ... try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong ... we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.

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.

That's the beauty of Science though. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

That's the beauty of Science though. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

And a lot of those opinions are dead wrong.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

That's the beauty of Science though. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

And a lot of those opinions are dead wrong.

That's why the Scientific Method was developed - to remove opinion from the result.

Doesn't stop people from having an opinion, but it does draw the line between opinion and reality.

So, essayists can critique all they want. Science still wins.

Mr. McIntyre conducted a review of Dr. Schmidt’s claims (https://climateaudit.org/2016/05/05/sch ... e-christy/) noting that his analysis evaluates the diagram used by Schmidt allegedly supporting his claims against Christy by “first discussing the effect of some sleight-of-hand and then showing that Schmidt’s diagram, after removing the sleight-of-hand and when read by someone familiar with statistical distributions, confirms Christy rather than contradicting him.”

Additionally Mr. McIntyre provided expert findings of his review of the statistical results of Dr. Christy’s work as showing that climate models were indeed “over warm” in their projections as follows:

a model run will be warmer than an observed trend more than 99.5% of the time;
will be warmer than an observed trend by more than 0.1 deg C/decade approximately 88% of the time;

and will be warmer than an observed trend by more than 0.2 deg C/decade more than 41% of the time.

McIntyre concluded:

“The bottom line is that Schmidt’s diagram does not contradict Christy after all, and, totally fails to support Schmidt’s charges that Christy’s diagram was “partisan”.”

Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylo ... 9895cf2892

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.

Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. (Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.)

NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.

A 10-percent decline in polar sea ice is not very remarkable, especially considering the 1979 baseline was abnormally high anyway. Regardless, global warming activists and a compliant news media frequently and vociferously claimed the modest polar ice cap retreat was a sign of impending catastrophe. Al Gore even predicted the Arctic ice cap could completely disappear by 2014.

In late 2012, however, polar ice dramatically rebounded and quickly surpassed the post-1979 average. Ever since, the polar ice caps have been at a greater average extent than the post-1979 mean.

Now, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average.

During the modest decline in 2005 through 2012, the media presented a daily barrage of melting ice cap stories. Since the ice caps rebounded – and then some – how have the media reported the issue?

The frequency of polar ice cap stories may have abated, but the tone and content has not changed at all. Here are some of the titles of news items I pulled yesterday from the front two pages of a Google News search for “polar ice caps”:

“Climate change is melting more than just the polar ice caps”

“2020: Antarctic ice shelf could collapse”

“An Arctic ice cap’s shockingly rapid slide into the sea”

“New satellite maps show polar ice caps melting at ‘unprecedented rate’”

The only Google News items even hinting that the polar ice caps may not have melted so much (indeed not at all) came from overtly conservative websites. The “mainstream” media is alternating between maintaining radio silence on the extended run of above-average polar ice and falsely asserting the polar ice caps are receding at an alarming rate.

To be sure, receding polar ice caps are an expected result of the modest global warming we can expect in the years ahead. In and of themselves, receding polar ice caps have little if any negative impact on human health and welfare, and likely a positive benefit by opening up previously ice-entombed land to human, animal, and plant life. Nevertheless, polar ice cap extent will likely be a measuring stick for how much the planet is or is not warming.

The Earth has warmed modestly since the Little Ice Age ended a little over 100 years ago, and the Earth will likely continue to warm modestly as a result of natural and human factors. As a result, at some point in time, NASA satellite instruments should begin to report a modest retreat of polar ice caps. The modest retreat – like that which happened briefly from 2005 through 2012 – would not be proof or evidence of a global warming crisis. Such a retreat would merely illustrate that global temperatures are continuing their gradual recovery from the Little Ice Age. Such a recovery – despite alarmist claims to the contrary – would not be uniformly or even on balance detrimental to human health and welfare. Instead, an avalanche of scientific evidence indicates recently warming temperatures have significantly improved human health and welfare, just as warming temperatures have always done.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And a lot of those opinions are dead wrong.

That's why the Scientific Method was developed - to remove opinion from the result.

Doesn't stop people from having an opinion, but it does draw the line between opinion and reality.

And the reality is that a lot of these 'scientific' opinions are wrong.

Their science is flawed due to their inherent bias for alarmism.

a model run will be warmer than an observed trend more than 99.5% of the time;

And there's the bias that reflects opinion shaping the science.

Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylo ... 9895cf2892

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.