Scientific predictions that did not come true

Friday, April 22, was Earth Day. On April 22, 1970 more than 20 million Americans took part in Earth Day events, eventually leading to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Those who were alive in the 1960s-70s may recall predictions of an apocalypse that would end life as we knew it by the beginning of the 21st Century. • One such prediction made in 1967 claimed: “Already too late... Dire Famine Forecast by ’75.” The prediction was from a Stanford University biologist. The predictor: Paul Ehrlich.

• He said in an interview with George Getz of the Los Angeles Times that the “population of the United States is already too big, that birth control may have to be accomplished by making it involuntary and by putting sterilizing agents in staple goods and drinking water....”

• Ehrlich wasn’t alone in predicting our demise. Back in 1970 James P. Lodge Jr. (a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.) issued a warning that if the current rate of increase in power generation continues the demands for cooling water will drive the entire flow of the river and streams of continental United States. Net result, according to Lodge, a new ice age by the 21st Century. Yep, ice age!

In 1971, the Washington Post published an article predicting: U.S. Scientist sees new ice age coming. Dr. S.I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University stated: “In the next 50 years (2021),” the fine dust constantly put into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees. If sustained over “several years — “five to 10,” — he estimated — such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!” Even TIME magazine got on the bandwagon by publishing in its June 24, 1974 issue “Another Ice Age?” “Telltale signs are everywhere— from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees.” • Back in the 1980s acid rain was killing lake life, according to climate prophets. • Then, in 1988 there was a sudden turn. “Prepare for long, hot summers,” a Lansing State Journal headline declared. “If you like last summer’s record temperatures, you’re going to love the 1990s, says James Hansen, the NASA scientist who, during congressional hearings on the Midwestern drought, linked greenhouse warming to the heat wave.”

• An Associated Press article on rising seas could obliterate nations: U.N. officials stated. In 1989 the headline was “Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000.”

• (I do not recall any nation being destroyed in 2000 or the 22 years since that target date passed.)

• Minnesotans should perk up with this headline in the United Kingdom’s Independent: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

ELON MUSK

Rumor has it that Elon Musk has offered to buy CNN and MSNBC. Here’s his offer: $1,000 cash, two bags of Doritos and two liters of Mountain Dew.

—The Patriot Post