Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Former NSW Premier and Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr thinks even though Paul Ehrlich was wrong about global starvation and resource depletion, we should have listened to his warning about global warming.
Everybody’s scared’: The first mention in Australian media of global warming could only gesture to the future
Bob Carr
Industry Professor of Climate and Business at the University of Technology Sydney
August 30, 2021 — 5.58amIt was 50 years ago — August 30, 1971. I was 23, watching US ecologist Paul Ehrlich on the ABC’s Monday Conference, being interviewed by Robert Moore. Ehrlich said the world’s population was 3.7 billion and we were adding 70 million people a year. This was degrading the life support systems of the planet.
The prophet had spoken. At last, I thought, someone has identified the driver of all environmental decline: the explosive growth in human numbers.
Recently, I consulted the 33-page transcript. I saw a question from the audience I hadn’t noted at the time. An unidentified person asked Ehrlich about a cover story in New Scientist that said the world’s temperature had increased by a degree and, if it rose by 3.5, we would flood most of the earth.
Ehrlich replied he knew this research. “If we continue on the long-range energy course we are on, sooner or later we will melt the polar ice caps.” He said “atmospheric dynamics” were now being studied and “everybody’s scared”.
…
Ehrlich was wrong to talk up the threat of world starvation, to overlook the new plant varieties and farm techniques that enabled food to keep pace with population. Critics have made much of this alleged Malthusianism. But 50 years ago a lot was unknown, not just in environmental sciences. Western leaders believed in wage and price controls. China and Russia were locked in dogmatic Marxism.
Ehrlich was right about the biggest thing: the dramatic rise in world population that would lift numbers over 50 years from 3.7 to today’s 7.8 billion. It’s happened, on cue. According to one physicist it explains at least half the warming – it, and the spike in consumption it brought with it, like the rise in vehicle numbers from 200 million to 1.5 billion. Or the doubling in per capita pork consumption. Above all, the doubling in power use.
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/everybody-s-scared-the-first-mention-in-australian-media-of-global-warming-could-only-gesture-to-the-future-20210828-p58mr6.html
Seriously Bob Carr, getting almost everything wrong is not a selling point for a prophet.
Paul Ehrlich frightened entire generations of kids with his failed prophecies, just as kids today are being needlessly frightened by empty global warming scares.
The damage to children from all this scaremongering is real, far more real than the fantasy terrors of slightly warmer weather. It is not just the Greta communists ruining their future career prospects by slacking off from school. There is evidence some kids are wrecking their lives with hard drugs, because they can’t live with what they have been told about climate change.
How many lives have been destroyed, and continue to be ruined, because self important prophets like Erlich and yourself continue to push empty scare stories? I am not suggesting you and others are deliberately setting out to destroy lives – but the destruction of young people is an incontrovertible consequence of the horror themed message you and other well meaning activists are pushing.
And after the climate story finally dies, there will be something else, some new panic. There always is. From witchcraft to resource depletion to global cooling to global warming, someone always tries to frighten the kids.
Please wake up, and quit being part of the problem Bob Carr.
Seems like some new panic is a daily occurrence.
Panic is the NEW PANDEMIC
DEM/PROGS, all over, are aiming to “REMAKE THE WORLD”, riding the coat tails of pandemics, and by widespread, massive, scare-mongered spreading of election confusion, mayhem and cheating, as in 2020, only even bigger, to “WIN”
Paul Ehrlich is Dr. Wrong. John Holdren also.
I, among my fellow students of PE, 1969-73, ridiculed him as a Marxist prophet of doom. The only thing he got right was that a plague would come out of the African tropics and spread around the world, as did AIDS.
A stopped clock is right twice a day..
Right!
I think it is time to revisit Nostradamus and dust off my Ouija board. (lol)
John Holdren was pointed to by science cranks as the ultimate example of a science crank in the late 1970s (the ultimate “it takes one to know one”). Obama naturally selected him as his science advisor. Ehrlich is so discredited that no one really cares about what he said on any subject.
Much like Neil Ferguson. Never been known to be right.
Somebody once described it as the ‘Ardnassac Effect’, the exact reverse of the Trojan seer Cassandra who was always right but never believed.
Holdren was also Mitt Romney’s science advisor. Did you ever wonder why only prophets of doom get to be science advisors to politicians? Because nobody ever gets to be powerful by telling people “Things are always getting better (without politicians)”
Also, stop listening to Bob Carr.
My vote is for disregarding the malarkey of all ridiculous jackasses.
Well, just in case some is interested, where the proof climate models are far off. Once the undeniable logic and evidence is widely enough understood, “climate change” is essentially over!
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-holy-grail-of-ecs/the-2xco2-forcing-disaster
Well, just in case someone is interested, here is the proof climate models are far off.
Where was my brain? Lost after a day of hard work 😉
day of… LOL
time to sleep
Climate panic will never end, because it is not about science, it is both political and a cult – some would say a religion. Can you really argue cultists out fo their belief with graphs?
It’s like several other modern cults, like critical gender theory and critical race theory. and critical
And, unsurprisingly, they all spring out of the same neo-Marxist source!
I like to call it the High Church of Progressivism, all the cool kids belong!
The religion is Secular Socialism, whose deity is government that came out of post modernism of the Frankfort school. It has 4 main denominations; the Churches are Warming, Feminism, Racism and Sexual Orientation. Although the analogies are massive with supernatural religions, it easy to identify the “Joel Osteen” of each respectively; Al Gore, Oprah, Al Sharpton and Ellen DeGeneres.
Don’t sweat it, these things happen
Earth’s energy balance is the consequence of upper and lower thermostatic limits on the ocean surface temperature. Beyond that, the global average temperature is the result of the distribution of surface water and elevation of land masses. The upper thermostatic limit has a slight sensitivity to surface pressure but that is not going to change with minuscule addition of a few carbon atoms.
Consider the absurdity of – the most powerful “greenhouse gas” is water vapour. It conveniently discards the other more important phrases of water in the atmosphere. Ice in the atmosphere reflects 30% of the incoming insolation near the top of the atmosphere before it even enters the climate system.
Earth is a HUGE dynamic system with multiple feedbacks/interdependencies among multiple “forcing factors” plus enormous physical “capacitance” (aka storage) of thermal energy such as in ocean water and the latent heats of water-ice and water-water vapor phase changes.
Heck, in just the course of a single year, the current eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the Sun means that each January has about 7% more incoming solar radiation reaching Earth TOA than does each July.
If one looks at just the Milankovitch cycle associated with changes in Earth’s orbital eccentricity over a ~100,000 year cycle period, when Earth’s orbit is most elliptic, about 23% more incoming solar radiation reaches Earth TOA at our planet’s closest approach to the Sun each year than does at its farthest departure from the Sun.
Finally, thick low-level layered clouds can reduce solar radiation intensity at Earth’s surface by 80–90% when compared to cloudless weather (Monteith and Unsworth, 1988). Most people know that clouds can develop and dissipate in timescales of hours to weeks over most of Earth’s surface.
Ergo, there really is no—nor has there ever been—such thing as an energy “balance” existing on Earth.
Bob Carr is not at all worried that Paul Ehrlich got every one of his predictions wrong as Bob Carr himself gets everything wrong too. Bob Carr is an enthusiastic ‘Climate Change’ Alarmist and gets that all wrong. This is not at all unusual as all Leftists and Socialists always get everything wrong. Biden’s rampage in Afghanistan is the latest evidence for this.
But they all seem to jag life-long gigs off the taxpayer teat.
and the other Bob,…brown
wouldnt give 2 bob for either of their opinions
Has Paul Ehrlich ever admitted publicly that he was completely wrong about the population bomb?
Though the world population doubled, there is far less people in poverty & less people starving today than there was n 1971, because capitalism.
He thinks he is right AFAIK, population did soar. But like all Malthusians he never considered ingenuity and innovation would keep pace with rising numbers.
Actually, population growth started declining in the late sixties, exactly when his book was published. With no understanding of economics, he could not understand the dynamics behind that.
Calling population growth wasn’t that hard.
The graph of pop v year was clearing pointing upwards. Calling an increase over the next 50 years was like looking at a calendar and claiming that within the next 12 months it was going to be December.
Stop giving him credit for basically tying his shoelaces.
“But like all
Malthusianspeople with no ingenuity or innovation he never considered ingenuity and innovation would keep pace with rising numbers.”“Ingenuity and innovation” – Mankind’s truly limitless resource, as demonstrated by eg. the progress of “yield per acre” records, including weighting for quanta of inputs.
because
capitalismfree enterprise.Please do not use that Marxist term unless combined with CRONY. The result of every over expansive government is crony capitalism, the destroyer of free enterprise.
Drake,
Please don’t be so disrespectful of the DemoKKKrats second favorite money making scheme! Kickbacks from crony capitalists, like Solyndra, are almost as lucrative as using foreign aid like an ATM machine!
How else can they pay for their extensive voter fraud system and it’s legions of operatives?
Real capitalism doesn’t involve cronies
Using government to take money from the workers and give it to you is socialism, not capitalism.
Just because someone has money, doesn’t make them a capitalist.
Marx was correct that there is an oppressor class and an oppressed class. Where he screwed up was in tagging productive people (the “bourgeoisie”) who provide goods and services people (the “proletariate”) actually want, as the oppressors, rather than correctly attributing oppression to the all-powerful and parasitic state.
No, he never admitted being wrong, only in being a bit off on the timeline. He maintained that he was right despite losing a bet to economist Julian Simon. Simon’s work showed that population growth overall benefits us and that market provide incentives to solve problems. Simon was right on everything and Ehrlich not only wrong on everything but nasty as well.
It’s ridiculous to say that Ehrlich got population growth right. He did not. Most demographers expected it to increase, as did Simon. Ehrlich completely failed to see the deceleration in population growth — which started about the same year as the publication of disastrous book, The Population Bomb.
Just how wrong Ehrlich was is shown by the Simon Abundance Index: https://www.humanprogress.org/the-simon-abundance-index-2021/
Some examples:
Ehrlich had published a claim that “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000”. When this scenario did not occur, he responded that “When you predict the future, you get things wrong. How wrong is another question. I would have lost if I had taken the bet. However, if you look closely at England, what can I tell you? They’re having all kinds of problems, just like everybody else.”
“What will we do when the [gasoline] pumps run dry?” After that question, gasoline became cheaper than it had in decades.
Ehrlich on DDT: “The US life expectancy will drop to forty-two years by 1980, due to cancer epidemics.” But both cancer incidence and the death rate from cancer fell steadily, falling 16% between 1950 and 1997, accelerating after that. US life expectancy at birth went up from 70.5 in 1967 to 74.4 in 1980 to 79.1 today.
1975: “In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” In 1968, in 34 out of 152 countries the food supply was under 2,000 calories per person. In 2017, that was the case in only 2 of 173 countries.
“India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” [The Population Bomb] By 1974, India was a net exporter of wheat.
I hadn’t finished….
“Dr. Ehrlich predicted… that the oceans could be as dead as Lake Erie by 1979. Today Lake Erie is palatable, and Dr. Ehrlich is not.” (P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores)
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” [From a 1969 magazine article.] “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by ‘the end’ I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.” [Ehrlich on CBS News in 1970]
“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.” [Mademoiselle, April 1970] A claim made in 1970, just before an agricultural revolution that rapidly increased the world’s food supply.
Ehrlich told readers of the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” At that time, he also warned that “[i]n ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”
Ehrlich provides an exceptional example of how not to behave when thinking and communicating about possible futures. He often attributes some combination of stupidity and scientific ignorance to those with whom he disagrees. Alluding to Simon’s book, The Ultimate Resource, saying ‘The ultimate resource – the one thing we’ll never run out of is imbeciles.” He often uses words like “ignorant,” “crazy,” “imbecile,” and “moronic”.
Ehrlich has been evasive in acknowledging errors he made, while being intellectually dishonest in taking credit for things he claims he got “right”. Despite being demonstrably and repeatedly wrong, somehow people continue to quote him approvingly and his books sell in large numbers. When confronted with his failure to revise his predictions, in 2009 Ehrlich actually responded: “perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.”
Much of the above is from an article I wrote that’s about to be published.
It’s a kind of Armageddon porn practiced by him and other doom-sayers, like John Holdren and David Suzuki. I believe they get off on sounding out massive natural disasters brought on by human thoughtlessness. I picture them glassy eyed with pleasure trying to out do each other with greater applications of Malthus’ prognostications.
Rory,
Think of them as televangelists for the science impaired! They preach to the true believers who blindly follow the Credo of Gore!
Amen to that, brother … or as the Democrats now say in The House; “Aperson“.
Borlaug certainly played a substantial role in India’s success. Of course Borlaug fell on the wrong team because he thought transgenic crops had benefit in feeding the worlds’ hungry, so now he’s one of the bad guys.
Norman Borlaug wasn’t a capitalist, He was a Christian most concerned about the miseries of hunger of the vast multitudes of poor peoples. Classical, and today’s “American Business Model” capitalism would have ‘captured the market’ and sold to the most profitable, available market at prices “as much as the market would bear”.
I get the impression you have a habit of misusing words you don’t understand.
First off, socialists often go on and on about how capitalists are “capturing markets”, yet the only examples they can ever find of this happening, is when governments are behind the capturing.
As to pricing your goods based on market conditions. So what?
I contend the real reason Ehrlich was wrong is because he did not account for the significant increase in plant growth which would result from the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
He was wrong because his guesses included an outcome that would yield him the fastest & highest personal gain/recognition.
He took advantage of the ability to hype a story, utilizing other parallel hype. He and others fed off of each other.
He is like the dumb gambler that bets red because the little ball landed on black five times in a row. That’s all there is to it. “This time it is coming due, and I am here to call it.” The ignorant gambler, even when he loses, can’t give up his logic.
You answered your own question – “because capitalism”. To admit he was wrong means that the next question asked will be “Why were you wrong?” and Ehrlich could never answer that question although he probably knows the answer. Hell, even Bono knows the answer to that.
There’s a name for people like Ehrlich and Carr: Chicken Little. We learned it in grade school. After that, once a Fool, always a Fool. Neither are worth any more consideration.
They don’t teach kids to be skeptical and question authority anymore in Western schools :-(.
Eric,
Western school kids neither learn to THINK, nor how to LEARN anymore! Like something from the Matrix, they are plugged into the education machine, and the “accepted wisdom” is pumped into their weakened brains, like the drug cocktail an addict injects into his veins! Think millions of little Loydos or griffters!
I came across a very good example of this some years ago. A teacher in an American school had used the trial of Galileo to indoctrinate his pupils into believing the ‘the Church’ was totally opposed to science. It’s on the school website, complete with pupil work showing that they had not been taught to critically assess the issue.
https://historyteacher.typepad.com/sophomore_humanities_2011/2010/10/chapter-13-dbq-trial-of-galileo.html
Bob Carr a Professor of Climate and Business ?
Is the barrel that empty a former journalist turned politician gets a personal Chair ?
or is it more like a law practice where some ‘grey head’ gets hired to become a ‘rainmaker’ but for the University
When I was in my teens and very early 20s (late ’69 to mid ’70s), I bought into the doomsday crap, including Ehrlich’s schtick. The next Ice Age was coming!
And…….. nothing happened.
I’m not hopelessly stupid, so I checked my emotions at the door and started thinking. ACGW came along and the Goracle was pushing it.
Whoa. Time to take a close look if the Sex Crazed Poodle was involved.
Thanks to WUWT and my bog standard ’60s education, I was able to conclude that this was a money grab by the Powers That Be and had nothing to do with science. It is ALL about power, money, and control.
“The Science” is the ultimate fig leaf for our overlord wannabees.
Somebody convince me I’m wrong.
I used to think it was all a big fraud, until I read some of the Climategate emails.
Now I just think they are delusional. If they reap money out of it, they seem to think it is their due, because after all, they are heroes who are trying to save the world.
Even when they make in my opinion questionable scientific decisions, that is because they don’t want to give ammunition to their opponents – in their minds they know they are right, even if in some cases they are waiting for the evidence to catch up.
That’s an interesting viewpoint, Eric.
Same result for slightly differing reasons. “It’s our due.”
They are still frauds, though. Just wearing different silly hats from our different perspectives.
In my opinion, that is being VERY kind. I have observed serious intent in the action against people like Bob Carter, Peter Ridd and some others.
The administrators of the academic institutes and government funded scientific bodies will protect their income streams with any legal means. They no longer have a moral compass and their integrity it below the basement level.
The UN is a global dictatorship supported by dictators in countries where they curry favour. In no way could these people be regarded as delusional. They are feeding off a system of embedded legalised corruption that is becoming self-supporting.
The UN should be defunded.
Except, people like Ehrlich, Maurice Strong, Gutierrez, and many others were not in the climate gate emails.
Something is seriously wrong in the background of all these activities?
It was not an accident that Hansen had insider assistance with his hot day in July presentation/interview.
There are movers and shakers setting all of this up over the long term and ensuring the alarmist miscreants get full funding, protection, commercial publication support and freedom from in depth investigations by legal entities.
Addendum:
The Federal government used to be extremely cognizant about all monies used for budget requests, research, agencies, grants, projects, capital installations and usage. For some very odd reason, all of that attention has been turned off.
IGs used to assess every dime used for travel and exactly what the traveler accomplished during their trip.
Frequent trips to posh resorts was not only frowned upon, it was a red alert to travel voucher fraud.
One agency, a few isolated directors is normal. Across the board refusal to challenge budget requests, activities, expenditures, accomplishments, etc. is not normal.
The climategate email dump itself should have been enough to gain intensive attention from legal and news entities.
Just the fact that public discussions regarding those emails and suggested wrongful intentions/actions supplied ample evidence for legal entities to serve subpoenas for entire servers, user computers and all physical documents whether in desks or file cabinets.
Utterly ignored.
Not just in the UK, but ignored in the USA and every other country with participants in those embarrassing emails.
ATheoK,
Our ruling elites have been shown to be not only nefariously delusional, but mindlessly incompetent; that is the greatest gift of Trump! He showed how easily the economy and world affairs can be improved; you take whatever the “experts” say, and do the opposite!
The defining characteristic is authoritarian; they know that the “real problem” is to control the plebs/deplorables. I get an allergic reaction to people who know what is good for everyone else.
Having been involved in fighting back against the acid rain scam and the ozone hole scam, I was not inclined to believe them when the same idiots came out with the global warming scam.
When I had the chance to examine the data, it was quite easy to show that once again, there was nothing there.
Science, the spirits, the pope, the oracle, the gods, … whatever is popular at the time.
In the early 1960’s my dad was working in India on what was then called “appropriate technology” and my mum on women and children’s health. I saw what small changes could do to agricultural output – the real beginning of the Green Revolution. When mum got the Lippies Loop (courtesy of Ford Foundation) young women with 1 or 2 kids came to space/limit families.
Returning to Canada aged 17 in 1965, it was obvious that Ehrlich was full of SH11T, because I had seen what changes were possible. This year India has a grain surplus and a population growth rate less than 2.4, and will be at replacement levels within the decade.
A broken analog clock is correct twice a day, this man only dreams of such accomplishments.
I was in high school when he peaked, I’ve matured since then.
I was lucky, as a kid I had an uncle who experienced the joys of living under Hitler, then under Stalin. To say he was a skeptic of anything big government and official organisations had to say would have been an understatement.
Never met your uncle, Eric, but I love him to pieces already.
Me to. Used to work on his Christmas tree farm in December, always had a big steak fry up and a few beers at the end of the day. Always worked his butt off, good values.
My friends and I, who enjoyed a good ramble, trespassed on his precious butterfly sanctuary in the Stanford CA foothills. We were promptly “busted” by multiple security dudes on dirt bikes. Seemed ironic even to my teenaged brain.
Eric, spot on! My parents were the same.
J S Mill in Chapter I of On Liberty uses an animal kingdom metaphor in somewhat vintage language:
“… as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty ...”.
The point is clear: whatever the system of government it is only genuine and effective opposition to state power that maintains individual freedom.
Eric,
I had an uncle who was a geologist for USGS. He was probably a classical Liberal politically, but he had been used as a witness for A-tests at the Nevada test site; and had a rather low opinion of most government bodies! He taught me great respect for science, and the skepticism that is required to actually think scientifically.
I wish I had spent more time doing fieldwork for him. Alas, my collegiate summers tended to be spent in the pursuit of sex, drugs and rock and roll; noticeably absent in the mountains of Utah!
I had an electronic watch while I was in college that one day decided that there was 99 minutes in an hour.
They did- meaning the French after the revolution- did try a metric clock, for a few years anyway.
The Chinese used a ‘centi-day’ (ke), 10 day week for 1000s years
The base 60 was inherited from the Babylonians.
For global-warming alarmists, the French revolutionary calendar still functions today–every month is Thermidor (heat month), which was the 1790’s revolutionaries’ name for July.
The French still have problems with Brumaire (fog month or November), since French drivers don’t slow down in foggy weather, leading to 50+ car collisions on foggy freeways.
The metric system was the one good invention of the French revolutionaries–conversion factors that are exponents of ten are a lot easier to use than those based on the length of a dead king’s arms or feet.
not a bug but a feature
so much more time to get stuff done 😉
Bobby, the Voice of ‘Diethnes’ and the Seer of Sussex Street.
It is this sort of Jehovahs Witness’ predicting Jesus is coming back in 1975 type of claim, which the True Believers ignore, which convinced me that the hard core greens were more of a cult than an ordinary political movement.
Fanatic political movements were the curse of the 20th Century, and it looks like the tendency has continued.
Yes it is . Demographics fit as well, any Professor of Religion will tell you the most common ages groups for strongest religious devotion are starting at 15-35 and then the 60 plus.
On the plus side, when you tell Jehovah’s Witnesses that you’re not interested and shut the door, they trundle off with no hard feelings.
In their eyes, it’s your loss and on to the next house.
Rabid “we’re-all-gonna-die greenies”? Not so much. Preachy, judgmental bastards, they are. They keep coming back and ringing the bell. “Buggar off!” does not filter through their thick skulls.
H.R.,
It’s much more fun to tell them that you are Catholic, and start talking about the Pope! They practically leave skid marks leaving so quickly!
I used to point to the blood Döner sticker in the back window of my car😅
I had been exposed to Greenpeace acolytes for many years but turned the tables on one who came to the door in the 90s. I invited him in and asked him to explain why his company was polluting Eastern Germany and Africa. Then I showed him news releases about Greenpeace’s purchase of an Eastern Germany manufacturer of dirty little refrigerators. Last time one came to the door.
I am feeling completely unloved these days when it comes to the GW door knockers.
I used to engage them in endless polite debate. They realised after a long but seemingly endless interest in their offered explanations and biblical quotes, that I was not going to be either bored into submission or won over.
They don’t call round anymore. 🙂
“but the destruction of young people is an incontrovertible consequence of the horror themed message you and other well meaning activists”
They are not “well meaning”. Ehrlich has been wrong for more than 50 years and NEVER set the record straight. If he were well meaning he would.
He is a misogynist who has made a very good living being an activist and has been wrong at every turn.
I think most of them are well meaning, but they’re also egotistical and wrong.
People whom history judges as bad or doers of great harm rarely look in the mirror an laugh at their own evil – they think they are doing good.
Take Rachael Carson and her book Silent Spring. James Delingpole calls her the 20th century’s most prolific mass murderer, because of her successful campaign to ban and restrict the use of DDT. But I doubt she meant to kill people.
Eric:
Yes, Carson likely had good intentions however her methods were very
suspect. My copy of “Silent Spring at 50” (2012) Ed. by Meiners, Desrochers
& Morriss suggested she knew much of what she wrote was wrong at the time
she wrote it. Ironically, the Audobon Society bird numbers were not decreasing
which made the title of her book wrong as well. So errors of omission and commission.
Science has not confirmed much of what she espoused yet the myth continues.
As to Ehrlich, just bet on the opposite to happen: near perfect anti-correlation.
I go to some Audubon meetings because I am interested in birds.
However, the leaders are mostly Climate Cult members.
That makes me uneasy.
John,
I wish I could go to Audubon meetings, but their acceptance of wind turbines despite the decimation of raptor populations makes me fear that I would lose my temper! I’d be tempted to take my claymore and give them live demonstrations of the avian/windmill interface!
Well meaning is such a deceptive term Eric.
All those requiring the HEALTHY to isolate themselves claim to be so. Then, dementia Joe the pres takes illegal aliens from the southern US border, reported to be 40% with ACTIVE China Virus, and moves them around the country without quarantining them. Most are being resettled in states with REPUBICAN governors to help bump up their China Virus numbers.
Well meaning or evil, my choice for Ehrlich is evil. My choice for Carson is evil.
We need to stop allowing them to claim their intentions were SOOOOO GOOOOD. Their actions led to BAD results.
Rachael Carson IS A MASS MURDERER.
After over a year, I have not gotten the China Virus or any of the vaccines. BUT I finally am getting hydroxychloroquin in case I or my wife do get it. Cost for 90 tablets, $18.00 US. Those WELL MEANING a$$hats had it blocked for a year, and NEVER funded any legitimate studies of its use.
And now there is news out of Florida of people getting overdoses of Ivermectin because they are using veterinarian doses. I did a search for HUMAN use of that a week ago and could not find any information on dosing for the China virus.
So people are overdosing on that, because a drug at 20 cents a tablet has been blocked by the CDC, while they continue to push the vaccines that cost how much? And the vaccines are marginal at best. They claimed 95% efficacy, but the numbers do not match up. Out of Alabama today, 9% of the China Virus deaths were from “fully vaccinated” individuals. Over 15% of the hospitalized were vaccinated.
Sorry to rant on you Eric, but none of these people are well meaning. They may try to delude themselves into thinking they are, but they are just plain evil, and really good and honest people such as yourself should not allow them the benefit of doubt that you did today.
I consider myself fortunate to be comfortably retired. But I worked for everything I have, working any overtime offered and two jobs for almost 9 years to get what I have. But I don’t like to use the term “fortunate” because liberals translate that to “LUCKY”, like I didn’t earn it. So to you and others such as us, I will say fortunate, but to the greedy grifters I say: “I EARNED everything I have through hard work and I deserve a happy retirement”.
Finally, I really appreciate all that you post here. I think very highly of you, but like my comments about “capitalism” and Free Enterprise, I think we must be honest about such things and not allow the left to control the language.
Drake
Please tell the people overdosing on Ivermectin to try the generic asthma inhaler Budesonide instead. Even the UK national health has approved Budesonide – its cheap, it works, and its so widely used every pharmacist should already have it in their store room.
saline and iodine nasal sprays also do some good
new item marketed in israel and UAE is nitric oxide in nasal spray reduced viral load throat etc in 2 days to zero
saline placebo did the same in 5 days btw
I am in NV, I read about the Florida overdosing in the newspaper.
It is amazing that things like Budesnide apparently work but so many are still dying.
ivermectin in pill form is 12mg pills one a day for 3 days then top up a month or so later if required you CAN take 18 or even 48mg doses looking at various trials dose rates
average guide is 1ml of liquid (at 10mg per mL) per 50kg bodyweight if you happen to use the injectable cattle version Orally( the carrier is 2 forms of gycol/glycerine at 99% of the mix)
safer than the other additives in the horsepaste version
now for some GOOD data
Journal of Antibiotics(japan)
The mechanisms of action of Ivermectin against SarsCov2
an evidence based clinical review article
copy paste bolded and go read it
its amazingly detailed.
Thanks Oz.
I use DDG to search, but could not find what you provided. Now that I have the Hydroxy, I think I can at least feel reasonably safe and there are many studies now available with dosing for that. My insurance even covered that, so $5 for 30 tablets, enough for 2 courses of treatment.
I have been told that since I am over 65 AND diabetic, I WILL get the monoclonal antibody treatment if I get it bad, and that EVERY emergency room in the US should have access to that. I am active and otherwise healthy and am taking everything I have read about HERE to boost my immune system, D3, Quercetin, K, zinc, C, B complex. Funny thing is that the 3 years since I was diagnosed diabetic and started taking D3 and B complex with C, I haven’t even had any sniffles.
The wife and I will again be traveling across the US from Nevada to Wyoming (son) to Chicago, Ill, for the Red Sox at the White Sox and the Giants at the Cubs, scratch 2 more NLB parks off the list, to Mass, where my 91 year old mother lives, to Virginia where my brother and sister live, to NC for friends, then to the lower south tier states then back to NV. Probably 8 weeks and 10,000 miles by the time we are done, helping the FF industry by buying diesel to tow the 5th wheel. We did 8,000 miles to the east coast last year in June and July, nice when parked at family, but really tough with all the RV parks caught up in the stupid.
Thanks again Oz, such good info and people on this site.
“I think most of them are well meaning, but they’re also egotistical and wrong.”
Just as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol-Pot were, all well meaning, mass slaughtering & butchering lunatics, who were egotistical & wrong!!!
50 years later and a lot is still unknown, particularly in environmental ‘sciences’.
A recent news item was the psychological damage being done to children by the Covid lockdowns and the dangers of catching the virus and how we need to be promoting a more positive message to the children.
I have not heard any MSM news outlet promoting the benefits of CO2 (greening) nor how there are many scientists who disagree with the ’12 years to doomsday’ trope.
I predict…that one day….one day the earth will be hit by a large asteroid….hopefully it will hit the deep ocean. I also predict that one day….a super volcano will erupt and cause some degree of “nuclear” winter. OK, your turn Ehrlich.
Oh no – where should I send the cheque? 😉
So nice of you to give Anti-griff a break, Eric. It takes a while to catch on to the money grubbing scheme, neh?
FWIW, estimated pop of the earth, 7.6 billion.
from http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mgb02
Texas sq miles = 263,644, water surface in Texas 3,695, usable sq miles in Texas = 259,949
Ft in mile = 5280, sq ft in sq mile = 27,878,400
usable sq ft in Texas = 7,246,962,201,600
divided by 7.6 billion people = 954 sq feet for every person on earth, the rest of the world would be empty.
I’ve given this number to others who’ve said the earth is over populated to show that we really aren’t.
We have resource distribution issues, we have over crowding in many locations, we have greed and corrupt government issues, we have lack of education issues, we have environmentalists who’ve corrupted institutions to limit resources (energy, fuels, water, housing, etc.) but overcrowding isn’t one of our problems.
I’ve done back-of-the-envelope calculations that suggest that, based on food alone, the earth could easily support a trillion humans. As you say Sam, we have lots of problems, but population isn’t one of them.
I knew Texas was a popular destination for those fleeing the ravages of Progressivism; I didn’t think that the WHOLE world was moving there!
Dang! That’s gonna make finding all those pretty, Texas women even harder!
Who says water is unusable?
https://www.floatingstructures.com/product/floating-homes/
A classic MacGyver home? Seriously, there were a couple of cheap ones in the Portland area and the water would hopefully make it harder to torch.
The Aussies have more problems that “Climate Change”. For example the Chinese.
The Australian government and particularly the Victoria state government, have a fix for that Chinese problem. They have told China they are not allowed to invade any Australian territory unless they have a more Australian attitude to Man Made Climate Change.
That should stop the Chinese if nothing else will…..
The Ehrlich must be the worst loser in history if none of his one hundred or so predictions turns out to be correct. Bob Carr took Ehrlich failed prophecy. He decided not to have any kids (he is no hypocrite) and still hoping the climate change prophecy is correct. It is not Ehrlich prediction it is Ehrlich prophecy as all Ehrlich is trying to promote is a dogma to “educated” people like Bob Carr, John Kerry, Boris Johnson, etc. and of course their voters. The purpose of a university is to “educate” people, it is not to make them intelligent. UTS, Penn and most research institutes just like any business look at the demand or where the money is and hence the profitability. Awarding a professorial chair to somebody with reputation that could attract “customers” is nothing more than public relations or advertisement to get the business growing.
Really?
Where is a record of Carr seeking a vasectomy?
Or, perhaps his preference is not women?
No sign of a personal choice.
And if he didn’t get a vasectomy or suffered infertility and he liked women, there may still be children, just not known.
He’s married. After seeing pictures of both him and his wife I could be very cruel about that, but I won’t. Whatever his views, I hope the two of them remain happy together.
He is the Joe Biden of Science; they both get everything wrong.
One hundred and eighty years has not reduced Mackay’s relevancy. Humans are still just as credulous.
https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1539849589/
Neither experience nor memory are heritable — unless one reads enough. Everyone needs to learn anew for themselves in some manner. It is a lot of effort and too much trouble for most.,
We don’t listen to the people we voted for, why would anyone listen to such uneducated evil idiots?
Yeah, because Ehrlich’s been absolutely wrong on everything else that he has predicted to this point, we should believe Ehrlich on climate alarmism by 2050, or some such future date.
Bob Carr, What a putz.
The primary issue I see with ALL these warmists and their doom-saying, is that they have been getting everything wrong for 40 years and it doesn’t even give them pause. They never stop to re-assess their position.
No one could be that consistently wrong for so long by accident. Stopped clock twice a day and all of that. To be 100% wrong for decade after decade exceeds all possibility of chance.
Occam’s razor says it has to be done on purpose. And in fact we have lots of candid quotes from major players saying it’s all about “changing the world’s economy”, and not for the better at all !
All of these doomsayers almost always get almost everything wrong. Check out Prof. “Lockdowns don’t apply to me” Ferguson.
The study of science should begin with failures like Ehrlich and how they can make a career of being wrong and somehow not lose credibility. Such people were the model for AGW true believers and the beginning of massive, global fraud.
This article brings to mind H.L. Mencken’s apropos quote:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
The list of “hobgoblins”, just in the past half century is astounding, even more so considering the numbers who have bought into them … lock, stock and barrel.
I’m not so sure they’re well intentioned, as you say. Well intentioned people don’t relentlessly promote unnecessary fear, or unproven, worst case disaster scenarios that are very unlikely to happen
Scaring and scarring the kids is nothing to such propheteers. But frightening their horses, that’s another matter.
An intelligence test.
Prediction 1, false
Prediction 2, false
Prediction 3, false
Prediction 4, false
What is the apriori probability that prediction 5 is not false? That it is not a prefiction.
Erhlich published his book at the point where world population growth turned: if it had continued at mid 1960s levels, yes, there would have been a problem.
anyway, why the continued Erhlich obsession among skeptics?
There is much more recent science and evidence to consider…
You’re not different from Erhlich, and the science doesn’t make you smarter
The population growth did not turn, it continued to grow, just at a slower rate.
Ehrlich claimed that 100’s of millions would be dead with a decade or two.
Just how does the fact that population grew by 1.9 billion instead of 2 billion prevent that prediction from becoming true?
It’s relevant because the same idiots are still making claims of doom and despair, and those new predictions are also failing, for exactly the same reason.
There is much more recent science and evidence to consider, quoth Griff.
There is indeed, and it all goes to disprove Ehrlich’s predictions.
There is 5.5 times the body mass of termites than there is of man kind on earth, apparently.
Anyway, man made CO2, thats increased crop yields by about 35% I have read, since 1900. Thats one reason Erlich was wrong, but principally he falls into the human ‘the end is nigh!’ trap.
Its nothing new, and every culture going back thousands of years, has suffered from it. In fact religion, which Climate Changism is an example of, is just another ‘the end is nigh’ scare story.
The end is not night, the earth has about 8 billion years before our sun goes supernova on us and mankind and all of life, will continue to evolve. The future, what we will achieve, will be quite staggering. What we must do though is rid ourselves of this fear, this straightjacket, that we are inherently guilty of some sin, that we must be punished. We are not, we are free, we have the right to live and use the planet as every species has. We must stop limiting ourselves.
If you look at the comments on that SMH article you’ll find almost complete agreement with Carr and Erhlich. Why? Because its comments section is one of the most censored of any “media” I’ve come across. I haven’t managed to get a comment published in more than a year, mainly because I (politely) point out the glaring mistakes in the articles. SMH isn’t a newspaper, it’s a propaganda sheet that only allows groupthink and on no occasion does it ever to any mathematical calculations to back up its claims.
SMH is dedicated to making the Sydney bourgeoisie feel good about their hypocritical virtue signaling. All champagne socialists.
About Bob Carr, this guy fashioned himself as a modern day Marc Aurelius, an enlightened despot way above everybody else
anyone wonder what was going through the heads of the folks who created the Sahara, just as they were finishing their self-appointed task
or the Minaoans as they put the finishing touches to the vast expanse of desert that was The Fertile Crescent. (Made it a great place now for playing with Boys Toys and squabbling about Oil)
or the Aborigine as a continent-sized rainforest was reduced to the dust we all know and love
I know what what going through their heads: Sugar was going through their heads
There’s one, arguably,Galactically Great Thing about Sugar – it makes its consumers happy; it blinds them to reality.
As in Climate Science’s endless confusion with Heat/Temperature/Energy..
Do not confuse Calories with Food
edit to PS
Somewhere I saw the word ‘Pig’
Get this and cry
Peta; where did the sugar come from? Given the history of sugar, I doubt those people had any at all before the spread of Islam and the Aborigines not before western colonialism. It must have been something else.
As to the pig article it’s a sad thing, the knock-on effect of lockdowns and the pingdemic, but I guess David Cameron might be interested?
Eric,
While the Prophets of Doom have been part of the human experience for countless millennia, they have never had the power to destroy young minds like they do today! The Internet and the multiple devices, that most are addicted to, are not just crippling our ability to think, they are destroying our ability to communicate; one of the most important human characteristics that sets us apart from other animals! Most animals communicate in some way or other, but human communication is many orders of magnitude greater!
That’s why disinformation and it’s purveyors, like Professor Paul, are so damaging to society! Human communication gave us the ability to work together to find food and shelter, and avoid danger. Now we have vast swathes of the public believing in the nonexistent dangers of a climate apocalypse, while living in luxury and feasting like the royalty of old! It is going to take generations to clean up all the garbage that Ehrlich and his fellow priests have dumped into our society!
Perhaps in the future Humankind will stop allowing this sort of child abuse, and keep the pushers of panic porn separated from society until they start speaking rationally!
The profits of doom also control the media and the schools. That’s never happened in the past either.
“China Bob” [he’s fallen conspicuously and completely silent on the CCP’s vast, on-going Crimes Against Humanity] wrote, “…Ehrlich was wrong to talk up the threat of world starvation, to overlook the new plant varieties and farm techniques that enabled food to keep pace with population.” But, Bob, food production has not just kept “pace” with population growth, food production has far outstripped it, despite governments seriously suppressing food production in different ways.
Paul Ehrlich IS NOT a biologist.
I expect that this assertion will be shocking and will trigger the immediate reaction of many people.
But, please, take a deeper look at it, give it some thought:
When Ehrlich started to make predictions and “deducing” from them his “no-alternative” political (and democracy disruptive) proposals, he ceased to be a scientist, a biologist, and became a politician. He changed his field and scope of inquest; perhaps he became a “social” scientist; in any case, he has been no longer a biologist.
It is crucial to be aware of this fact when evaluating political actions that are based on his arguments and try to anchor undemocratic, Malthusian policies in “the science of biology”: his arguments ARE NOT scientific, they ARE political or ideological.
I was one of that generation bast*rds like ehrlich n strong removed hope from and didnt see a future worth a damn for myself or kids so I didnt have kids and led a life of want n poverty, going without to save the planet
thats why i am So Angry at the same crap different era happening now, and keep trying to wake people up to the never ending LIES!
Seriously? Professor of Climate and Business?
I was born in 1952, and the big, perpetual and very popular imaginary peril of my childhood and youth was thermonuclear war. Smart people were building bomb shelters. Earnest and very bright people (Bertrand Russell comes to mind) were certain that there was a significant risk that human beings would destroy themselves in a global nuclear war.
Greenpeace was originally founded with the goal of nuclear disarmament. Of course, as years went by, and then decades, and it became obvious that mutual assured destruction actually did deter the use of nuclear weapons, and the general population fear of nuclear war subsided and became the province of neurotics and cranks, Greenpeace had to come up with a new way to monger fear and monetize it. And climate change was that new way. Very profitable too.
I hope they step up their alarmism as we probably enter a La Niña. It will make for some teachable moments. I also hope they start to actually follow through on zero carbon 2050 in key economies, so we can show what devastation that has.
I rather hope we get a clear La Nina signal that stops the decline to net zero – I wouldn’t wish that level of mortality and misery on any society.
Bob Carr the unelected Minister of the Left just loves his own voice believing he is relevant whereas really he is just another entitled lefty piggy with his snout in the trough gobbling up taxpayer funds on the good life.
Not to be listened to!
Well Erlich scared my pants off, literally. I was so frightened I immediately saw my doctor and had him do a vasectomy so I wouldn’t be part of the problem. My wife at the time thought it was a good idea, taking the pill was adding to her weight problem. (So she said) Years later my second wife wanted kids and the world starvation problem was gone so I had it reversed. Two kids and couldn’t be happier. Never trusted the man after that.
An unidentified person asked Ehrlich about a cover story in New Scientist that said the world’s temperature had increased by a degree and, if it rose by 3.5, we would flood most of the earth.
I presume we’re talking in degrees Fahrenheit here as the world’s temperature had not risen by 1C in 1971. Therefore, Ehrlich seems to agree that the icecaps will melt if the temperature increases by1.94C (3.5F). And given that Ehrlich does not deal in really long-range forecasts (1971 – “everyone’s scared”, according to Ehrlich) I expect his timeframe for 1.94C and an icecap melt deluge has come and gone.
Ehrlich is a Professor of Wrongology.
Per the above article, Bob Carr stated “According to one physicist, it {the doubling of the world’s population and accompanying doubling of power consumption–GD} explains at least half the warming.”
That’s a lot to lay off on “one physicist”. ROTFLMAO.
Blood and Green. Planned population and phobic predictions. Diversity (e.g. racism), inequity, and exclusion. Political congruence (“=”) and wicked solution. The Pro-Choice (ethical) religion.
He was flat wrong on resource scarcity predictions and anyone who praises that is doubly stupid.
He was in fact making a prediction in an area that he had no expertise or training in and those he asked for help were not much better.
He was a man born ahead of his time – he fits in with the climate enthusiast crowd perfectly, or maybe Ehrlich was where they got the template.
So Paul Ehrlich is the Joe Biden of the social sciences. Never been right once in his career.
Nearly 100 years old and in radiant twinkly-eyed health typical of a wealthy pampered elite darling.
Happy to be condemning billions to poverty, ill health and short lives by the economic destruction flowing from his Malthusian dystopia that is such music to the ears of power-brokers determined to keep their elite small and reduce population any way possible.
Like Ehrlich they have it completely wrong, it’s economic growth and societal development that are resulting in smaller families and falling population growth – one word of Hans Rosling is worth more than 1000 of Paul Ehrlich.
Causing economic destruction under an environmental pretext is not the way to reduce populations and conserve the environment. It’s just a hate-filled political vendetta.
Email sent.
+++++++++++
Dear Mr. Carr,
It is a pleasure to be able to free you of fright about the climate and CO2 emissions.
Peer-reviewed, published, open-access, and correct, “Propagation of Error and the Reliability of Global Air Temperature Projections” demonstrates that climate models have no predictive value.
None.
See for yourself: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
The IPCC speaks from ignorance. Paul Ehrlich spoke (and speaks) from ignorance. So does your one physicist.
And, from the review process, I have 60 MB of evidence that climate modelers are not trained to evaluate the reliability of their own models.
No one knows what, if anything at all, CO2 emissions are doing or may do to the climate.
The effect of CO2 emissions, if any, is so far below their level of resolution as to be invisible to climate models.
As to the climate itself: nothing unusual in view.
Be reassured, Mr. Carr. Nothing is there of which to be scared.
Happy to help out.
Yours,
Pat
Patrick Frank, Ph.D.
email: XXX@xxxxxxx
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
These things are, we conjecture, like the truth;
But as for certain truth, no one has known it.
Xenophanes, 570-500 BCE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No reply as of 31 August. Pretty typical.
In another email episode, I wrote to Jim Kossin who was featured in a WUWT article 3 weeks ago. Jim’s a NOAA scientist, an IPCC author, and apparently is a professional advisor about climate risk. He wrote that we should all be scared about AGW.
So I sent him a reassuring message and a link to my paper. Jim wrote back that he’s “an empiricist” and that his views about climate are “based on observed changes and physical process understanding.”
After I responded that everything AGW relies on unreliable climate models, that radiation physics is not a theory of climate, and that the climate has varied significantly all across the Holocene, Jim reverted to type. Silence.
These people have no reasonable argument. Merely convictions.
I am not a psychologist, but I will hazard a guess here that the behavior of people like Paul Ehrlich and Michael Mann is the product of a emotional and psychological need for fame and fortune in front of large crowds and TV cameras.. I believe I read somewhere that Mann is worth over a million dollars.
With the letters ‘Phd’ after their names, all people like Ehrlich and Mann have to do to get the mass media attention that they crave is to create and/or nurture a gloom-and-doom narrative to which mass media with gladly attach themselves. They will do whatever it takes to attract viewers and readers. It works every time with the great masses of people who don’t know any better.
Ehrlich is approaching 90 years old now, so it is hard to say how much longer he will be around. When he is gone, all that will matter is that he obtained the fame he wanted. For him and Mann, the climate scare narrative was the dream of a lifetime.
Maybe they were both nobodies that thought they were entitled to be noticed and showered with accolades. When they didn’t get that as an automatic right, they wanted to tear down the system and replace it with one that was a better fit for their fantasy. Fantasists with delusions of adequacy.
Marx was wrong about everything but that doesn’t stop the Marxists. We are simply dealing with a broad class at people who live in an alternate world in which facts, reason and simple observation mean nothing.
Marxists were the first group of people who when given the choice between a model of reality, and reality itself, always choose the model.
It is madness to argue logic against emotionalism. I suggest that they mostly know their statements are BS but they have a stronger understanding of what drives the media and by that path politics.
Bob Carr is a slimy bastard but he knows how to get a run in the media. How many stories that we read here are going to make the front page news? Very close to zero I am guessing, yet we keep on banging on against brain dead ‘horror’ stories as if we are prophets of common sense, yet nobody is buying or reading common sense!
Attack is the best form of defence.
I remember when this population explosion scaremongering crap hit in the 1960s, I was born in 1962. We were all doomed – doomed! because there would soon be too many people, but here we are nearly 8 billion people later and people are living better, longer and healthier than ever before. You can take all the people on this planet and put them in texas and each person would have 100 square meters of living space…so you see there is plenty of room on this planet for more, many more people.
I for one look forward to the day when earth has 100 billion people living on the open oceans and colonies on Mars. The universe is vast and can support an infinite number of humans. Ever watch star trek?