18 Apocalyptic Predictions Made During the Time of the First Earth Day in 1970 That Were Just Flat Out Wrong

WOW, COULD THE 1970′S GLOBAL ALARMISTS BEEN MORE WRONG?

Everyone who was old enough during the 1970′s remembers the constant predictions that there would be an ice age. There was gloom and doom of apocalyptic type catastrophes and that were were headed into an Ice Age. It is those same disingenuous people who now predict that man made global warming will be the end of times. Hey folks, can you people settle on your scientific lies? From the American Enterprise Institute comes the following 18 predictions made in the 1970′s around the time of the first Earth Day. Take a good look and see just how wrong these alarmists have been already. Now we are supposed to give their present day predictions any credence?

To watch these VIDEOS is just amazing. Interestingly enough, the media called Earth Day a failure.

EARTH DAY … A QUESTION OF SURVIVAL (Walter Cronkite)

How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey. Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started.

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” [Um, wouldn't this mean that the world would have ended between 1985 and 2000? If my calendar serves me correctly, isn't it 2015? As Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 would say, "missed it by that much".]

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. [Hmm, see prediction 1.]

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” [The 1970's editorial folks might want to visit Beijing, China.]

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” [Wow, some one really got this one wrong.]

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” [Paul Ehrlich was on a stuck on stupid role in the 1970's with his predictions.]

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” [Dude, the Great Die Off, really? The only thing that died between 1980 and 1989 was Paul Ehrlich's reputation and credibility.]

Earth Day 1970 Part 6: Boston … Boston Police break up protest at Logan Airport (CBS News with Walter Cronkite)

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness. [Good grief, even though his predictions were toal BS, this guy is still spouting his bovine scatology.]

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” [Wrong again, what was this fascination with famine? Or was it wishful thinking?]

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” [OMG, ROTFLMAO]

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” [Watt also predicted the world would run out of oil by the year 2000 and that humans would emit so much nitrogen light would actually be filtered out of the atmosphere. Where is my head shaking emoticon?]

Earth Day 1970 Part 11: White House Reaction (CBS News with Walter Cronkite) – What’s comical is that Pres. Nixon is the one who created the EPA

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. [These folks spread this BS and made a living out of doing so. UNREAL.]

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in his 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. [Oh no, its Paul Ehrlich again with another ridiculous claim of gloom and doom. This dude must have been a laugh-riot to be around]

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. [Damn, I hope this is not the case. Note to Ehrlich, the life expectancy in the United States as of 2012 is 78.74 years.]

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” [Oh no, I better go fill up the Chevy. Oh wait, its 2015. My prediction, by the year 2000 Ecologist Kenneth Watt had zero street cred.]

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. [I guess its good for him that he died in 1986 and wasn't around to see his bone-head wrong prediction.]

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” [His prediction should have been that 75-80 percent of the 1970 Earth Day predictions were extinct.]

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” [Paul, Paul, Paul ... sometimes silence is golden, especially with your predictions].

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” [What would Al Gore say ... Al said that the Earth had a fever, not the chills. From an Ice Age to Global warming and we experienced neither.]