By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Many people think that the threat of ‘global warming’ arose only towards the end of the twentieth century…. Climate change, either natural or anthropogenic, has been discussed from the classical age onwards, evolving from the expected benefits of climate engineering to today’s fear of global disaster.”
– Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, “Climate Change in Perspective,” Nature, June 8, 2000, p. 615
It is all gloom, what Michael Mann cautioned against as “doomism.”[1] Such alarm has been the mainstream narrative—and wrong—since the 1960s. And warnings about how exaggeration can backfire (New York Times: “In Climate Debate, Exaggeration Is a Pitfall“) have been thrown to the wind in the futile, costly pursuit of Net Zero.
This post presents the climate alarm quotations of today with the quotations from Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome in the late 1960s/early 1970s for historical perspective.
Guardian (May 8, 2024)
We begin with The Guardian US story by environmental editor Damian Carrington, “We Asked 380 Top Climate Scientists What They Felt about the Future … They Are Terrified, but Determined to Keep Fighting. Here’s What They Said
An exclusive Guardian survey of hundreds of the world’s leading climate experts has found that:
- 77% of respondents believe global temperatures will reach at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels, a devastating degree of heating;
- almost half – 42% – think it will be more than 3C;
- only 6% think the 1.5C limit will be achieved.
So the Guardian contacted every available lead author or review editor of all IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied – 380 out of 843, a very high response rate.
Quotations in Article
“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken. After all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change, and after the fury of Hurricane Otis in Mexico, my country, I really thought governments were ready to listen to the science, to act in the people’s best interest.”
“We have seen these extreme events happening everywhere. There is not a safe place for anyone. I find it infuriating, distressing, overwhelming…. I got a depression.”
– Ruth Cerezo-Mota (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
“I’m relieved that I do not have children, knowing what the future holds.”
Anonymous expert
“It looks really bleak, but I think it’s realistic. It’s just the fact that we’re not taking the action that we need to.”
“Scientists are human: we are also people living on this Earth, who are also experiencing the impacts of climate change, who also have children, and who also have worries about the future. We did our science, we put this really good report together and – wow – it really didn’t make a difference on the policy. It’s very difficult to see that, every time.”
Lisa Schipper, University of Bonn
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south. The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
African scientist (anonymous)
“Running away from [unescapable reality] is impossible and will only increase the challenges of dealing with the consequences and implementing solutions.”
Joeri Rogelj, Imperial College, London
“Humanity is heading towards destruction. We’ve got to appreciate, help and love each other.”
Scientist, Pacific Island nation (anonymous)
“It is the biggest threat humanity has faced, with the potential to wreck our social fabric and way of life. It has the potential to kill millions, if not billions, through starvation, war over resources, displacement. None of us will be unaffected by the devastation.”
James Renwick, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
“I am scared mightily – I don’t see how we are able to get out of this mess.”
Tim Benton, Chatham House
“Most people do not realise how big these [tipping point] risks are.”
Wolfgang Cramer, Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology.
“[Climate change] is an existential threat to humanity and [lack of] political will and vested corporate interests are preventing us addressing it. I do worry about the future my children are inheriting.”
Lorraine Whitmarsh, University of Bath, UK
“The tacit calculus of decision-makers, particularly in the Anglosphere – US, Canada, UK, Australia – but also Russia and the major fossil fuel producers in the Middle East, is driving us into a world in which the vulnerable will suffer, while the well-heeled will hope to stay safe above the waterline…. Civil disobedience [is the next step].”
Stephen Humphreys, London School of Economics
“The enormity of the problem is not well understood. So there will be environmental refugees by the millions, extreme weather events escalating, food and water shortages, before the majority accept the urgency in reducing emissions – by which time it will be too late.”
Ralph Sims, Massey University, New Zealand
“I feel resigned to disaster as we cannot separate our love of bigger, better, faster, more, from what will help the greatest number of people survive and thrive. Capitalism has trained us well.”
US scientist (anonymous)
“… our societies will be forced to change and the suffering and damage to lives and livelihoods will be severe.”
Michael Meredith, at the British Antarctic Survey
Paul Ehrlich: 1960s Forward
A half century ago, the Malthusian mainstream, the establishment, was equally alarmed.
“At the moment we cannot predict what the overall climatic results will be of our using the atmosphere as a garbage dump. We do know that very small changes in either direction in the average temperature of the Earth could be very serious. With a few degrees of cooling, a new ice age might be upon us, with rapid and drastic effects on the agricultural productivity of the temperature regions. With a few degrees of heating, the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps would melt, perhaps raising ocean levels 250 feet. . . . In short, when we pollute, we tamper with the energy balance of the Earth.”
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (Cutchogue, New York: Buccaneer Books, 1968, 1971), p. 39.
“As University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.”
Paul Ehrlich, The Machinery of Nature, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1986, p. 274
MIT/Club of Rome (1972)
“If all the policies instituted in 1975 in the previous figure are delayed until the year 2000, the equilibrium state is no longer sustainable. Population and industrial capital reach levels high enough to create food and resource shortages before the year 2000.”
- Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972), p. 169.
“Although we have many reservations about the approximations and simplifications in the present world model, it has led us to one conclusion that appears to be justified under all the assumptions we have tested so far. The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse.”
- Donella Meadows et al. The Limits to Growth, p. 142.
“Limits to Growth … ‘astonishingly young’ (the oldest was 30) authors were true believers. Dennis and Donella Meadows retreated to a New Hampshire farm after completing the book ‘to learn about homesteading and wait for the coming collapse.’ ‘We definitely felt like Cassandras,’ Donella Meadows added, ‘especially as we watched the world react to our work’.”
- Quoted in Robert Bradley, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (2009), p. 234.
And older …
“Climate apprehension did not begin in 1988 or in 1957, or even in 1896. There were colonial, early modern, and even ancient precedents. . . . We have arrived, late in the twentieth century, at a climate discourse that is again saturated with metaphor, values, and apprehensions.”
- James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 136.
“‘Something is wrong with the weather’ is the title of a recent article in U.S. News and World Report, and an article in Saturday Review asks, ‘Is man changing the climate of the earth?’ The layman, and the nonspecialist on reading these articles and the many others in the newspapers will probably be convinced that the climate is changing, for the accumulating evidence is considerable. He will probably be confused also, for the reasons given for the change are as varied as the authors. One author will blame the change on sunspots, another on the consumption of fossil fuels producing an increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Still another author will suggest air pollution as a significant cause, and another maintains that a complicated feedback of energy between sea and air is sufficient to produce irregular climate fluctuations. . . . Who is right?”
- Reid Bryson, “‘All Other Factors Being Constant . . . ’ A Reconciliation of Several Theories of Climate Change,” Weatherwise, April 1968; reprinted in John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), pp. 78-79.
“The debate over climate change, both from natural causes and human activity, is not new. Although the Baron C.-L. de Montesquieu is undoubtedly the best known Enlightenment thinker on the topic of climate determinism, others, notably the Abbe Du Bos, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson, observed that climatic changes exerted a direct influence on individuals and society and that human agency was directly involved in changing the climate.”
- James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 11.
“As public awareness of global warming reached an early peak in the mid-1950s, the popular press began to carry articles on climate cooling. Fortune published an article in 1954 entitled ‘Climate: The Heat May Be Off,’ and in 1958, just as the IGY was winding down, journalist Betty Friedan wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine on the coming of a new ice age. Her article was a review of a recent theory by Maurice Ewing and William Donn which held that climate warming could lead to a breakup of the Arctic ice pack.”
- James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 131-32.
[1] States Mann, “hot takes, hyperbole, and polarizing commentary best generate clicks, shares, and retweets. I often encounter, especially on social media, individuals who are convinced that the latest extreme weather event is confirmation that the climate crisis is far worse than we thought…. increasingly today we see it with climate doomists…. This is not true, or at best partly true.”
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The major advantage of being an old fart is to be able to say, been there, done that, and the Tshirt wore out long ago. Ehrlich and Holdren are still hysterical yahoos who have no more regard for evidence than they do for people.
They just need to wear masks, so the rest of us know to stay clear of them.
In the year 2025,
If Mann is still alive,
Planet Earth is doing just fine,
Now we all ignore the doomster party line!
Unfortunately Greta will still be alive wondering why she is.
>> every available lead author or review editor of all IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied – 380 out of 843, a very high response rate.
Uh and not a single one in this group considered that the numbers might be overstated.
How many of those 843 and in particular 380 reviewers gained a significant part of their private wealth promoting climate alarmism?
Always keep in mind Richard Feynman´s argument (in his “cargo cult” speech) that an expert behaving ethically MUST mention any argument contradicting his idea!
If they do not do that, why should I or a Guardian reader care, what they say?
Talk about a biased pool to sample from.
Yes, my very first thought – “selection bias.”
The Finance sector pays the best for people who can model the future and assess uncertainty. Because they have the money.
The only reasons for Climate Scientists to not be using the cutting edge resources and taking the best rewards are:
A) They are second raters who couldn’t get the job.
B) They believe that the environmental cause is more important than their own prosperity.
If A, they can be ignored. The city whizz-kids have not down graded the 10-Year bonds of the Netherlands to junk so they don’t agree with the alarm.
If B they are pre-selected to be close-minded and a biased sample.
A less than 50% response rate. That might be good for polls on general, but is not good enough data to draw a valid conclusion. And do you imagine that self-selection by true believers had an influence?
When I was in my early 20s I knew a fellow that was all wound up about what the Club of Rome had been saying. He was a somewhat successful businessman who believed there would be famine around the year 2000, so we had to prepare for the coming apocalypse. He built himself and family one of those home (in an isolate area) that would be self-sustaining, with a bunker, weapons for self defence, and a store of food.
None of what was predicted came to be, but he lived his life as though it was on edge. I would suggest to him that the advancement of science and technology would result in advances, but he would have none of it. It got so bad that I stopped seeing him.
I have disliked dystopian fiction since that time. I prefer to believe in the resourcefulness of humanity, and that will lead us to a better future (though sometimes I am uncertain when I see support for irrational ideas or hateful ones, like antisemitism, even though I am not Jewish). I have the same dislike for the global emergency crowd.
I believe dystopian fiction serves the purpose to warn of us of present tendencies which might undermine the human effort. Also, utopian fiction would tend to be less dramatic and thus uninteresting for most readers.
I would hope it is not necessary to be Jewish to be repulsed by the current wave of antisemitism being exhibited by the purple haired crowd. You don’t need to be the victim of prejudice in order to condemn it.
Utopian fiction is also frightening, it is a totalitarian state resembling a forced labor camp. All people wear the same clothes (get the same new one every two years), cannot move around without permission, must change living location when ordered (rotate between city and countryside every two years or move to a totally different place like a new colony), all have guaranteed work 6 hours a day, guaranteed food, the type of work one does must be approved by authorities, private property is abolished, the supreme ruler is elected by patriarchs for life…
In some ways utopian and dystopian converge.
Frightening thing is that there are a lot of people who believe that a world like that, would be there idea of utopia.
It seems from news reports that Israel is killing people in Gaza that are not affiliated with Hamas, women and children for example.
What news reports?
The ones from Hamas.
That’s what I figured.
A few months ago, this same poster claimed that the accusations of rape against Hamas had been disproven.
Basically all Palestinians and many far-left agitators are affiliated and/or supports Hamas.
Just look at the “gatherings” all around the world in strong support of Hamas terrorism.
It seems that there are some people who will believe anything, regardless of how unfounded, so long as it’s put out by their side.
When America carpet bombed Germany and Japan- I wonder if anyone other that enemy soldiers were killed or injured?
First off, Hamas started the war.
Secondly, the Palestinians have had the offer of an independent state on the table for decades. They won’t accept a two state solution, they want one state, themselves in charge and all the Jews dead.
Thirdly, Hamas has always operated out of civilian areas, knowing that as soon as the first civilian is hurt, the anti-semites in the rest of the world will start demanding that Israel stop trying to defend themselves.
I agree. My point was nobody told America and the UK to not injure any civilians when carpet bombing those nations – ’cause it was a war started by the other side and we told them they must unconditionally surrender. When they did, we stopped bombing them. If Hamas unconditionally surrenders, the war will be over. I’m sure that’s the Israeli goal. Of course the Arabs are pissed about the mere existence of Israel. But if they had accepted it from the beginning, it would have been a win-win for everyone. By the way, I’m not an Israeli and not Jewish. I just happen to have a good understanding of modern history- and especially of war.
That is the missing bit in all of these doom laden prophesies, the astonishing ingenuity of man.
What is really laughable is that these so-called “climate scientists” think a 2.5 degree warming will somehow be disastrous.
I’ve been watching a series on Netflix lately (“Life on our Planet”) about the evolution of life on Earth, narrated by Morgan Freeman. The producers and writers make it clear that climate change is normal and cyclical (without going into detail on many of the reasons why), and that the earth has indeed experienced drastic climate changes over geologic time, but involving vastly greater events whether driven by plate tectonics (like Deccan Belt) or asteroid hits. The point being that life was always more abundant and diverse when temperatures were far warmer and precipitation was far higher than they are now. And that life always adapts, even to climate change extremes, let alone the minimal changes that “climate scientists” are stressing themselves over in these interviews.
Of course, anybody scientifically literate (which apparently excludes “climate scientists”) has of course been aware of these processes and effects going back at least to Darwin’s time, and throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st century evolution of modern paleontology, dating methods, and more recently, the awareness of plate tectonics as well as measured temperature and precipitation reconstructions.
The bottom line is and always has been that warming is good, and cooling is very very very bad. We are in a relatively cold period now, the Quaternary.
Anybody who is also familiar with human history (archaeology as well as documented history) since the start of the Holocene is also very aware that cold (and therefore also dry) eras are much worse for plants and animals, particularly humans. Non-cold adapted species simply die out, while even species that are tolerant of cold climates like humans still do relatively poorly, with crop failures, disease pandemics, and wholesale population crashes and/or large scale “climate migration” the natural results of cold/dry eras.
It is no coincidence that human population and quality of life has greatly improved since the end of the Little Ice Age.
It is gobsmackingly mystifying why people who call them scientists think otherwise, in the face of all this proven knowledge, still believe that warming is bad for humans and the planet. They must be mentally ill, suffering from neuroticism, which is a personality defect, not an indication of scientific awareness.
It’s not really mystifying Duane.
If research grants and academic tenure were being offered exclusively for papers that pushed that wearing of clothes would induced a blindness pandemic, governments everywhere would be making it compulsory that everyone walked around buck naked under penalty of indefinite time in Gitmo.
It really is difficult to come up with anything that could be
construed as a negative aspect of increasing CO2 in the
atmosphere.
Regarding increasing temperature the
IPCC’s AR4 Chapter 10 page 750 pdf 3 says:
Almost everywhere, daily minimum temperatures
are projected to increase faster than daily maximum
temperatures, leading to a decrease in diurnal
temperature range.
Hardly recipe for extreme weather.
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
The “Climate Change” narrative that is being
promulgated by the media, public education
and academia is total bullshit.
Once again, the reason…
About 4.6 million people die from heat-related causes compared to about 500,000 who die from cold-related causes each year.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
5X as many heat related deaths as cold related deaths? Did you read the source closely?
You have it exactly backwards. Even “climate scientists” admit to that fact.
That is outright garbage! Actually, the factor of heat/cold deaths is1in 5. So, you have the figures wrong way round, Your comments are not even funny, just ignorant.
Excellent comment.
At risk of being simplistic, there nevertheless is no doubt that “Happiness is a Warm Planet!”
All the great die-offs were from cold. All the eras of high CO2 and warm temps occasioned thriving and diversifying Life on Earth.
The Climate Alarmists are not Cassandras (in the myths, she foretold real disasters and was doomed to be ignored). The Climate Alarmists are just complicated versions of the Hale-Bopp Comet crowd, but nowadays smart enough to put off their predictions of calamity well into the future so that confirmation/denial is difficult.
Malthus make more sense when you live in a country the size of a US county that has ten percent of the entire USA’s population crammed into it, and one more being born every minutes.
And all with bad teeth.
Thanks Leo.
I was wondering what had happened to the UK.
It fled the invasion by the mohammeds?
Your map of the USA uses the Mercator projection, which does not render scale properly. You should have used one of the equal-area projections. I can’t tell by inspection what projection the UK map is on, but I suspect it’s equal-area.
(Today’s contribution from the department of pickiness and pedantry, for your erudition…)
Most of the aviation navigation charts used in the US Navy are Lambert Conformal.
Malthus never made any sense.
Except to those who have a pathological hatred of people.
Many traditional religions include visions and prophecies of doom and gloom, catastrophes and apocalypse. Secular progressive religions have the same need.
Doom/gloom and apocalypse are peculiar to Christian tradition. Many other religions have not focused on the end of the world as intensely, if at all.
You mean like Gotterdammerung?
Well, how many of these activists come from a Christian culture? Many seem to be non-believers but you cannot help but be influenced by the culture where you were raised.
“… a Christian culture?”
Does not require being a practicing or even a believing Christian. Richard Dawkins claims this to be the case.
Forgive my phrasing. If you were raised in the US, Europe, or Australia, for example, you were raised in a culture with Judeo-Christian traditions. That’s regardless of your professed religion or non-belief.
A small percentage of Christians focus on the end times. It’s not a major concern for the vast majority.
Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows came up—scrawny and very ugly and lean. . . . In my dream I saw seven heads of grain, full and good, growing on a single stalk. After them, seven other heads sprouted—withered and thin and scorched by the east wind. “
That was a warning of a coming drought, not the end times.
And the Egyptians adapted to the drought by being prepared. Trying to change weather is a fool’s errand. Joseph also said that he dreamed that his brothers would bow down to him, and they got rid of him. But eventually they did bow down to him.
Enjoy the weather whatever it may be. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer and very variable this time of year. Luzerne in upstate NY was 32 below zero New Year’s Eve 1960 when I was courting my wife and it didn’t stop us from going out to dance.
Whatever the weather, enjoy every day you are alive. It is still better than any alternative.
Humans live in all types of long-term climates, from Anchorage Alaska at around 20F(-7C) in the Winter to Dubai at around 97F(36C) in the Summer. A 1.5C change is minimal compared to natural temperature change.
Everyone outside the Tropics has to live in heated houses and apartments to survive most of the year.
“We Asked 380 . . .”
Actually, 843 were asked, only 380 responded.
Meaning 55% didn’t think this was worth responding to.
It is all gloom, what Michael Mann cautioned against as “doomism.
That does not sound like the Michael Mann vis-vis hockey stick Mann.
This link goes to the original piece, written by Mann, from which that quote is a snippet.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202310/backpage.cfm
Yes, Mann is playing PR for the public to not give up on the futile anti-CO2 crusade.
Proof the Catastrophic Global Warming (CAGW) is not even a problem, besides being a wrong prediction since 1979:
The IPCC says CAGW, based on climate confuser games, will average +0.3 degrees C. warming per decade
.
The UAH global average temperature satellite record reflects +0.15 degrees C. warming per decade since 1979, half the warming rate predicted since 1979.
The best US weather station network, USCRN, with all rural, properly sited locations, not affected by economic growth, reflects +0.34 degrees C. warming per decade since 2005, when it began operation.
That means the US has been having CAGW since 2005 and no one even noticed. 19 years of a climate catastrophe that harmed no one. How is that a climate catastrophe? It’s not.
It would have helped if The Guardian had supplied the details as to where these scientists received their funding from. Besides, what other type of articles or surveys could one expect from such a publication or its partner in alarmism, the BBC?
The “scientists” quoted simply shows how useless the label “climate scientist” is.
None of them have had a professional career outside academia. They are sucking on the teat of government largesse.
It is wonderful working in a field where you get paid to make dire prediction of the future that always fail the test when the future comes.
The best collective term for this mob is “soothsayer”. Science requires evidence and this mob has none.
How scientific is this statement:
Said by an academic biologist now called a “climate scientist”.
They are the useful idiots creating the mess in the developed countries.
“The best collective term for this mob is “soothsayer”.”
The Julius Caesar “soothsayer” was actually correct: “The ides of March was a bad day for Caesar.”
I would say “soothsayer” is too good a term for these “climate” charlatans.
Mann is portrayed as reasonable?
Amazing, isn’t it. Mann is doing PR damage control with his false optimism. A bit of a civil war in the alarmist movement.