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President
Booyah!!!!!a red letter day for science you betcha, and these are the folks and the salient points at the time that crafted the debate, such as it was
( except for the crafty few whom now have reversed themselves 180 degrees)
oh well the vagaries of 'settled' science eh?
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“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
“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
“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
“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
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
Earth Day, Then and Now - Reason Magazine
Oh and hey, who thought fashion of the day, would ever ever die, thats surely our greatest loss
Legend of USPO!
Among others, you can thank a relatively unknown man named Norman Borlaug for making sure that Paul Ehrlich, Denis Hayes and Peter Gunter all look like idiots today.
While they were preaching gloom and doom, Dr. Borlaug was - novel idea follows - actually doing something about it.
Matt
President
Actually we did do something.
Clean Air and Water acts.
Reducing emissions from automobiles, power plants, factories, etc.
Requiring sewage treatment, etc.
The air and water quality has improved since 1970, and not continued to deteriorate because we actually did do something.
Last edited by MattInFla; 04-22-2010 at 09:13 AM.
Legend of USPO!
BTW, cue Andrewl to arrive and attack you for your heresy against his religion in 3.... 2.... 1....
President
your hysterical and heretical, to boot sir, a 2 fer Ehrlich is visionary, he may be off by several centuries but you'll see!!....Borlaug? whats that? a Swedish toothpaste?
President
yea that bastard, tricky dick. What a chump eh?Originally Posted by goober
Moderator
Let's remember... all that was settled science too.
Paging Andrew!
President
Exactly. Who's to say that some of these predictions would not have come true, had we not changed course?
President
Well, there are those who insist the government can not do anything, for them, improved air and water quality is something that happened in spite of government action, as a natural result of the free market............
President
oh what friggin ever.......here, see you guys, see you in 40 and we'll add another disasters list together, so we can expand not the Ozone level but the hyperbole level to even newer heights, if thats possible.
100 places you better,say good bye to now.....
100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear - Newsweek Our Endangered Planet - Newsweek.com
:rolleyes:
Ooops, gotta go, my oxygen bottle is running low...
President
oh what friggin ever.......here, see you guys, see you in 40 and we'll add another disasters list together, so we can expand not the Ozone level but the hyperbole level to even newer heights, if thats possible.
100 places you better,
100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear - Newsweek Our Endangered Planet - Newsweek.com
:rolleyes:
Ooops, gotta go, my oxygen bottle is running low...
I'm confused. Would you rather we had to breath from oxygen bottles? I can remember the air being much dirtier when I was a kid. Had we not changed course, it stands to reason that the air quality would have continued to get worse. OK, maybe we wouldn't have been breathing from air bottles within our lifetimes, but still..
President
OUCH, someone stumbled into an area where the government averted a disaster by legislation, after being spurred to action by leftist hippies and tree huggers.
Reality seems to have a liberal bias.......
President
no I'm confused, did you take that hyperbole seriously? ala the link and what I posted?
I'm confused. Would you rather we had to breath from oxygen bottles? I can remember the air being much dirtier when I was a kid. Had we not changed course, it stands to reason that the air quality would have continued to get worse. OK, maybe we wouldn't have been breathing from air bottles within our lifetimes, but still..
Or think about the fact that, the opening of Copenhagen ( the opening movie alone was like, oh boy :rolleyeswas rife with the same over the top nonsense you see written in the OP? See my point now?
This is one of the main reasons why GW etc. has not only not gone far but is now moving backwards....
President
I know the hyperbole is rediculous, and it's fun to point it out as such. Science has predicted all kinds of stuff over the years - hell, we were supposed to have jet packs and hoover cars by now.no I'm confused, did you take that hyperbole seriously? ala the link and what I posted?
Or think about the fact that, the opening of Copenhagen ( the opening movie alone was like, oh boy :rolleyes
This is one of the main reasons why GW etc. has not only not gone far but is now moving backwards....
However, the fact remains that pollution has been reduced as a result of the environmental movement of the 60's and 70's, and I consider that to be a good thing.
President
In 1896 Svante Arrhenius predicted (using evil socialist scientific methods) that increasing CO2 into the air would warm the climate. Turns out he was right.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/imag.../Arrhenius.pdf
See what i did there? I referenced science instead of stupidly cherry picking absurd statements in an effort to create a cheap strawman argument.
**shrugs**
Andrew
“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”
-- Derrick Jensen
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