Matt Ridley has just had a tremendous essay published in WIRED magazine, one that everyone should take a few minutes to read, because it sums up the issues of all the end time fears, fallacies, and failures we have collectively experienced in one tidy little package. – Anthony
By Matt Ridley
When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end of the world, to the thousands who believed in Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who forecast the final rapture in both 1994 and 2011.
Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Consider some of the environmental cataclysms that so many experts promised were inevitable. Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.” Or best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.
In the 1970s [“and 1980s” was added in a later edition] the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now … nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Or Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in 1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic promises. If anything, the rhetoric has ramped up in recent years. Echoing the Mayan calendar folk, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight at the start of 2012, commenting: “The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere.”
Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening predictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us warnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.
So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize. To see the full depth of our apocaholism, and to understand why we keep getting it so wrong, we need to consult the past 50 years of history.
The classic apocalypse has four horsemen, and our modern version follows that pattern, with the four riders being chemicals (DDT, CFCs, acid rain), diseases (bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease), people (population, famine), and resources (oil, metals). Let’s visit them each in turn.
Read the entire essay here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all
Be thankful for all the good things we have, and worry not for the future as described by alarmists.
I say stop crybaby Anthropogenic Global Whining (cAGW) now . . .
http://tinyurl.com/bpevfgp
Fear, hate and guilt, the use of negative feelings in order to manipulate control a population. A primal urge of leaders throughout human history from the first tribal groups to today and the primary method of social control. Make people frightened and guilty enough and they will do almost anything, the central aim is of course to bypass rational thought and caution and dissent. You would have thought that our leaders might have evolved a different set of governmental principles, a more civilised method of engaging with those they lead? Not at all, we have simply not yet evolved enough yet.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, some of the most wicked crimes imaginable have been committed with the best of intentions, we are now beginning to see the results of the latest crime against humanity and it all began with the best of intentions. Those who believed that we should change our ways had two options, the easy and quick(plan A) versus the slow and hard(plan B) and obviously they chose plan A. This method of instilling fear and guilt promised fast results and those behind the choice did it with the best of intentions, as they say in the old country, there is always some muppet who thinks he can ice skate uphill.
The slow difficult method is the 2nd option, telling the truth regardless and being honest no matter what the inertia encountered, its slower and is much more difficult and has to appeal to the positive aspects of human nature but the changes that occur from using this method are far more lasting and beneficial. Why is it that our leaders always choose option A? It could be that option A brings faster results, that it is tried and tested, that it promises greater adherence and obedience but I have come to the conclusion that we simply have not yet evolved sufficiently to choose plan B as a matter of principle.
Our leaders still believe that the ends justify the means, that somehow they are immune from the natural and proven consequences of their actions, that they can ice skate uphill. I believe that is a lack of mental maturity, the absence of the rational capacity to learn from past mistakes. Mankind is still in its mental infancy. There will come a time when plan B is the only plan, that plan A is not only unthinkable but viewed with horror and when that time comes the social evolution of the human race will take one of its quantum steps to a better world.
Great that someone mentioned the Wired article that led to Bjorn Lomborg’s research. As I recall, Lomborg said he was at the LA airport and saw the Wired issue with Julian Simon on the cover. He read the article and, as a leftist statistician, believed that Simon’s claims could be easily disproved. And that is how he converted himself to optimistic and reasonable views on progress and technology (Lomborg had his graduate students crunch the numbers). Simon similarly converted himself when he tried to verify and promote the problems of overpopulation. Here is link to the Doomslayer article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html w
Don’t foreget the great toilet paper shortage…
An interesting article but it is still rather one-sided, in some ways taking the opposite extreme. Often, I find that when someone comes up with a reasonable hypothesis about something, one group will take the extreme point of view that emphasizes the worst scenario while an opposing group will take the opposite extreme point of view. Mr Ridley’s examples demonstrate that, while in reality the truth is somewhere in between.
On another note, I am, what I like to call, an amateur historian. I recall an article about the occurrence of Doomsday cults and the cyclical nature of when they happen. This article showed a link between the cults and times of natural disasters like droughts, and man made disasters like economic depressions/recessions, and demonstrated that they they follow a cycle, much like climate change but on a shorter frequency (about 70 years if I recall correctly). I can’t find the article but I’m sure that it will turn up again somewhere – if I can find it again I will provide a link.
Good article, nice title. May I suggest a follow-up in December with the minute hand on the clock at a minute PAST twelve? He could call it ‘The Doomsday Crock’. Had we stuck to the biblical remedy for false prophets there would be far fewer of them. But not even the religious doomsayers get it right. The Apocalypse is followed by 1000 years of peace and justice with nary a self-serving politician in sight. What’s not to like about that?
The irony is that that original deep thought hippies of the 60s in fact adopted an anti-Malthus philosophy of profound optimism the likes of which went on to develop Silicon Valley. The two most influential leaders they had were artsy futurist Timothy Leary and technology guru Buckinster Fuller, both featuring very prominently in The Whole Earth Catalog which was the bible of alternative living. Fuller very specifically and bluntly pointed out Malthus had been proven wrong again and again with his “doing more with less” mantra. It was those who had rather psychotically bad acid trips, I’m afraid, that went onto populate academia and liberal political organizations hell bent on artificial resource rationing.
Even Jesus Christ told his closest followers that he did not know the time or the date for when this would happen….. ONLY The Father Knew…… my advice is watch for the signs of the times…. don’t be like the foolish Virgins….. stay close to the lord at all times.
I believe we may very well be doomed, but by a different set of Four Horsemen: proliferating busybody laws; increasingly militarized police who recognize no limits on their powers to bully; an astronomical, unsustainably expensive welfare state; and “mainstream” media who are too busy making up each week’s new phony emergency to recognize the real crisis we face: the police state.
I will be surprised if this year’s election is even close to honest.
Whats next?
Good article, as far as it goes.
It needs to mention two other items – Charles McKay’s 1840 book ‘Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’, which neatly summed up all that the article says. Interesting quote from it (I write from memory):
“…It will be seen that when men go mad, they go mad in herds, and when they recover their senses it is slowly, and one by one…”
The other item is Julian Simon’s ‘cornucopia’ theory. He used this in the 1970s to show Ehrlich and the others that they were completely wrong about impending disaster – and famously won a bet with Ehrlich who didn’t believe that things would actually get better. Nowadays, everyone still remembers Ehrlich and forgets Simon. Quote from him, talking about people WANTING to believe in disasters, even though the data says they will not happen:
“It seems as if they have been vaccinated against the truth…”
There are existing texts describing panics in Greek city-states from 500 BC, worrying about overpopulation and expecting the end of the world as a result. Men have ALWAYS panicked in this way, and clever fraudsters will continue to make money out of this failing…
Yardbird says:
August 17, 2012 at 3:51 pm
“And of course, all these disasters, like Noah’s flood, caused by our sins; by the fact that humans are unnatural and do not belong on earth.”
“Humans are unnatural”??
What are you smoking??
Amazing article which manages to be right on almost all its points and be wrong overall. But then again, it is a rather easy exercise when you mix the absurd and the real and use the former to ridicule the later.
Nothing much will happens on Dec 22, but it doesn’t mean that 7 billion people are not putting a huge stress on the planet increasing the risk of their own demise. The more we learn, the more we realize that ancient civilizations succumbed to climate or ecological changes, sometimes man-made, think Easter Island, sometimes natural as for ancien Egypt. Ours is different as it covers the whole planet but just as fragile in the end.
Peak oil is a joke? Maybe. But since we reached peak production (excluding “liquids”) in 2005, prices have gone up inexorably disrupting our economic model relentlessly.
Warming is not real? Might be. For what we know, it is more likely that we are heading towards the next glaciation. Nevertheless, the few glaciers I have seen in the Alps and the Rockies are in dramatic retreat, the permafrost in Russia is melting faster than ever and freak events are on the rise everywhere.
What is very real is that we have created an incredibly “lean” society with almost no stocks anywhere and the chance that a shock, even minor will destabilize everything is increasing every year. Last week, by accident, I found myself lost in a huge poultry factory thinking: Is this really where all the eggs and chicken wings come from nowadays?
So yes, we should probably worry less about the coming asteroids, the stone “predictions” of people who could not see their own imminent demise, and all the scares of the day which vanishes almost as fast as they appeared. Still, civilizations are mortal. None have survived more than a thousand years and ours (since the renaissance) is just closing on 500 …
Galane says:
August 17, 2012 at 7:13 pm
“In fact, as the results of a famous wager between Paul Ehrlich and economist Julian Simon later documented, the metals did not run out. Indeed, they grew cheaper. Ehrlich, who claimed he had been “goaded” into the bet, growled, “The one thing we’ll never run out of is imbeciles.”
Well, there you go. Paul Ehrlich admitted he’s an imbecile.”
That was not the only daft and wrong prediction by Ehrlich: ..
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a group of impoverished islands inhabited by some 70 million improverished people…If I were a gambler I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Speech at Bristol Institute for Biology, September 1971
But, of course he was a gambler, otherwise why accept a bet with Julian Simon. Ehrlich’s problem was that his ” predictions” were not forecasts at all…they were simply statements of what he wished to happen….or even just statements to gain attention and momentary fame.
It doesn’t matter how many times an idea fails, some people will always adhere to it. It’s like our error-correcting mechanism has bugs in it.
Sadly, we have outstripped our corrective mechanisms in a way – we’ve become so good at being apex predators we don’t need to hunt, so good at controlling our immediate environment we don’t need to light fires or wear skins, so good at communicating we don’t need to travel.
Now, all of these are *good* things, they just have bad side effects. One of which is insulation from the consequences of your ideas – you can live through life with totally non-functional ideas, and no reason to change them.
It has also been postulated that people often hold ideologies because it personally serves them psychologically – an observation that doesn’t solve any problems, but there you are.
Isn’t he forgetting the Bible as the ultimate doomsday document? Or is this too delicate to mention; after all, believers claim the unique the right not to be ridiculed.
michaeljmcfadden 6:12:
” picturing the remake of Dr Zhivago shot somewhere in the Bahamas.”
Much of the original was shot in Spain, with the snow provided by marble dust!
A little adrift on Malaria, where he appears to give credence to the claim of increases due to global warming, otherwise excellent.
People may not know about the Peak Coal fears of the 19th century:
The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines, Author: William Stanley Jevons
Edition Used: London: Macmillan and Co., 1866. (Second edition, revised)
First Published: 1865 http://www.eoearth.org/article/The_Coal_Question:_Opinions_of_Previous_Writers
“ONE of the earliest writers who conceived it was possible to exhaust our coal mines was John Williams, a mineral surveyor. In his “Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom,” first published in 1789, he gave a chapter to the consideration of “The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain.””
There were pertinent comments about windmills:
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when and where and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.
Before the era of steam-engines; windmills were tried for draining mines; “but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle. From this cause, the contingent expenses of these machines were very great; besides, they were only applicable in open and elevated situations.”
And energy taxes:
“A FEW pages may be given to considering the policy of imposing duties and restrictions with a view to limit the consumption of our fuel.
The character of a general tax on coal was truly stated by Robert Bald. “It would unnerve the very sinews of our trade, and be a death-blow to our flourishing manufactories. Were our determined enemy set in council, to deliberate upon a plan to wound us in a vital point as a nation, the advising the imposing of this tax would be the most successful he could possibly suggest.”
And again he says truly, “A small tax on the ton of coal would be a heavy tax on the ton of iron. The whole of our mining concerns depend as to their prosperity upon the abundance and cheapness of fuel, and if the price be increased by means of taxes, the utility of the steam-engine will be greatly abridged.”
Sydney Smith described how a man in former days was taxed at every step from the cradle to the coffin. But through coals we shall be taxed in everything and at every moment.
Our food will be taxed as it crosses the ocean, as it is landed by steam upon the wharf, as it is drawn away by the locomotive, as the corn is ground and the bread mixed and kneaded and baked by steam, and the meat is boiled and roasted by the kitchen fire. The bricks and mortar, the iron joists, the timber that is carried and sawn and planed by steam, will be taxed.
The water that is pumped into our houses, and the sewage that is pumped away, and the gas that lights us in and out, will be taxed. Not an article of furniture or ornament, not a thread of our clothes, not a carriage we drive in, nor a pair of shoes we walk in, but is partly made by coal and will be taxed with it.
And most things will be taxed over and over again at each stage of manufacture. Materials will be burthened in the cost of steam-carriage, and the want of outward coal-freight—in their steam conveyance here—in the machinery that is to manufacture them—the engine to drive the machinery. At every step some tool, some substance, some operation will suffer in cost from the use of taxed coal.”
Prescient or what?
The alarmists would never get a hearing if there weren’t gullible people out there to give them support.
I enjoyed the article and saw nothing controversial in it. The absence of alarmist comments here suggests that its contents struck home.
As for resources, at least for the next few hundred years market forces will sort out the problem. For example, the world is running out of tin – which it is – and over the next few years the price will soar which will encourage exploration, so new deposits will be found and the price will then fall. Tin, oil, gas, copper, it’s all the same – the only threat to our future supply of resources are the greenies who are anti the development of just about everything.
The media love a good scare story, after all it sells lots of copies, or attracts more viewers, and therefore more advertising revenue. As each successive scare story is proven to be ridiculously exaggerated – CAGW for example – the story slowly dies, but there is never any retraction by the media. Why? Any story with the concept of “Business as usual” does not generate advertising revenue, or in cases where this is not relevant, such as the BBC, no reporter is going to: i) admit he was duped, or ii) think of anything else other than dreaming up ‘proof’ for his next scare story. .
I have just noticed I kept using the term ‘his’, is alarmism, especially in climate matters, purely a masculine trait? Are their any female alarmists?
I don’t think that “The Limits to Growth” deserves to be included with the crazies. It was a serious attempt to look at the very real issue of limits, both population and economic. There was no doubt that population growth had to come to an end, either by design or by disaster. I am sure that this book has helped save many lives by increasing awareness of environmental disasters that must result if population remained unchecked. In fact the world has made huge strides to stabilise population. I recommend Hans Rosling’s wonderful videos (on TED and YouTube) for those that want a rosier picture. Humans are making a lot of progress.
Let’s not go overboard with this celebration, please. All of our actions have consequences even if they may not be catastrophic to earth. We did poison over 10 thousand with Thalidomide, Millions of people are poisoned each year by pesticides. Acid rain does have effects on ecosystems even if they are not apocalyptic. Mercury, lead and other effluents from manufacturing regularly poison people. Rachel Carson’s warnings were hardly of a coming apocalypse and her message completely distorted and her warnings remain as valid today as they were when silent spring was published. Read. the. book.
There is ALWAYS a possibility that human activities DO have some effect on climate, even if human produced CO2’s effects are minor since there are lots of other possibilities like land use changes, etc which could have minor effects as well. I personally doubt it but it can not be ruled out considering how crappy the data is and it hardly appears to be significant at this time. But we don’t know crap.
Keep in mind that human’s seem to be extremely good at damaging or destroying habitats along with their evolved productivity. Consider all of the effectively destroyed fisheries in the world. How is the Atlantic cod fishery doing ? Atlantic Salmon ? Passenger Pigeons ? Buffalo ? Need we continue ? How many thousands of species have we introduced all over the world by our carelessness ?
Last but nor least, consider that we DO have the power to unleash an apocalypse on ourselves, even if the rest of the world hardly notices. There certainly is nothing wrong with being reasonable and responsible stewards of our home.
Friends:
This is an interesting thread where many posters unwittingly reveal more about their religious and political prejudices than about the thread’s subject.
In reality, apocalyptic fears are an inevitable by-product of a basic human instinct .
Humans are not suited to any specific climate, humidity or altitude, but we inhabit all of the planet except its polar regions (and we visit those). We.are a successful species because of our extreme adaptability, our desire for mutual support, and our unique ability to utilise fire.
Each advanced species has abilities and behaviours hard-wired into its brains. These hard-wired attributes are called ‘instincts’, and all attributes of every species have been honed by evolution.
The adaptability of humans has induced them to have an instinct of ‘fight or flight’.
Unknown threats exist in new territories and outside the light and warmth of the night-time fire. ‘Fight or flight’ maximises survival of a human group when confronted by unanticipated threats (e.g. attack by a large cat or a small poisonous snake), Some members of a group will tend to fight the threat which enables others of the group to flee from the threat: so, the entire group is not destroyed whether or not the threat is defeated.
Examples of this ancient behaviour are still seen at times of large disasters. Many flee to escape, but some take extreme risks (often sacrificing themselves) to assist the escape of those who have taken flight.
The instinct which provides this survival behaviour is hard-wired in everybody, so it affects everyone.
This instinct affects people who live ‘cosy’ lives so rarely – probably never – experience real threats. They have no experience by which to assess threats so their instinct to ‘flight or fight’ encourages a response to apparent threats.
Each claim that ‘The End Of The World Is Nigh’ is presented as a threat to human survival. It induces three responses among the human population.
1. People with experience of real threats will tend to reject the claim (it is merely the wind moving the grass and not the approach of wolves).
2. Some people have a strong proclivity to ‘fight’ so will tend to oppose the claim.
3. Other people have a strong proclivity to ‘flee’ from the threat so will act to distance themselves from the asserted cause of ‘The End Of The World Is Nigh’.
Please note that
fleeing from the threat does not require any understanding of the threat: it only requires a natural desire to act when told to “Run!” .
For example, many ‘greens’ flee from the threat of global warming by fervently supporting windfarms. They do not understand climate change, energy and technology, and they have irrational belief in (a) promoters of global warming and (b) those who say windfarms are a way to “run” from global warming. Their instinctual behaviour is immune to information which pertains to the realities of global warming (the threat), the effectiveness of windfarms (the need to run), and the promoters of global warming (the people shouting “Run!”).
Instincts are important but they are not rational.
Richard
Ray Tomes says:
August 18, 2012 at 1:54 am
“I don’t think that “The Limits to Growth” deserves to be included with the crazies. It was a serious attempt to look at the very real issue of limits, both population and economic. ”
Google Potomac Associates, the PR agency that hyped the book.
also: King, the guy who commissioned it, pointed out that it is a simple extrapolation, not a realistic model. Most fanboys took it as prophecy instead. Who’s to blame for this misunderstanding? The authors who didn’t make it clear enough? The PR agency that wanted to shift units? The stupid fanboys?
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/limits-to-growth-heres-what-you-never-hear-about-it-and-the-truth
richardscourtney says:
August 18, 2012 at 2:35 am
Very insightful. Thanks.