Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions

[Sunsettommy]

I Hate The Media!

April 22, 2009, 4:00 am

EXCERPT:

For the next 24 hours, the media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza.

Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

LINK
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A nice list of incredibly wrong statements follows from the should be long discredited ago environmentalists.

[Richard111]

From 1968 thru 1970 inclusive I was working in the Persian Gulf on various oil projects. The oil men then were telling me the world would run out of oil in 25 years. This was from the horses mouth, not the media, and it was wrong as well.

[Sunsettommy]

Did the world learn from these "wise" predictions?

[HarpoSpoke]

These are some of my favorite things...failed predictions. Post them when you find them please.

(12-29-2009 11:23 AM)Richard111 Wrote:  From 1968 thru 1970 inclusive I was working in the Persian Gulf on various oil projects. The oil men then were telling me the world would run out of oil in 25 years. This was from the horses mouth, not the media, and it was wrong as well.

You'll be interested in this Richard.

Quote:From the moment oil first made it into the mainstream, peak oil and the imminent depletion of fossil fuels have been vehemently predicted.

A by-no-means exhaustive list of those predictions might run something like this:

“I take this opportunity to express my opinion in the strongest terms, that the amazing exhibition of oil which has characterized the last twenty, and will probably characterize the next ten or twenty years, is nevertheless, not only geologically but historically, a temporary and vanishing phenomenon – one which young men will live to see come to its natural end” (1886, J.P. Lesley, state geologist of Pennsylvania).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in California” (1886, U.S. Geological Survey).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in Kansas and Texas” (1891, U.S. Geological Survey).

“Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels of oil, perhaps a ten-year supply” (1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines).

“Reserves to last only thirteen years” (1939, Department of the Interior).

“Reserves to last thirteen years” (1951, Department of the Interior, Oil and Gas Division).

“We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade” (President Jimmy Carter speaking in 1978 to the entire world).

“At the present rate of use, it is estimated that coal reserves will last 200 more years. Petroleum may run out in 20 to 30 years, and natural gas may last only another 70 years” (Ralph M. Feather, Merrill textbook Science Connections Annotated Teacher’s Version, 1990, p. 493).

“At the current rate of consumption, some scientists estimate that the world’s known supplies of oil … will be used up within your lifetime” (1993, The United States and its People).

“The supply of fossil fuels is being used up at an alarming rate. Governments must help save our fossil fuel supply by passing laws limiting their use” (Merrill/Glenco textbook, Biology, An Everyday Experience, 1992).

And this. Maybe We Aren’t Running Out of Oil

[Sunsettommy]

Yeah I have seen that listing before and thought at how certain they were in what they stated,only to be very wrong.

Back in around 1880,Lord Kelvin opined that there was little left to discover in the field of Astronomy and science.

[HarpoSpoke]

(01-01-2010 08:39 AM)Sunsettommy Wrote:  Yeah I have seen that listing before and thought at how certain they were in what they stated,only to be very wrong.

Back in around 1880,Lord Kelvin opined that there was little left to discover in the field of Astronomy and science.

I remember reading about that somewhere. Got a link?

I think I found it:

Quote:"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

These were also interesting:

Quote:"This time next year,—this time ten years,—this time one hundred years,—probably it will be just as easy as we think it is to understand that glass of water, which now seems so plain and simple. I cannot doubt but that these things, which now seem to us so mysterious, will be no mysteries at all; that the scales will fall from our eyes; that we shall learn to look on things in a different way—when that which is now a difficulty will be the only commonsense and intelligible way of looking at the subject." ["Presidential Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers", 1889]

Quote:"Nothing can be more fatal to progress than a too confident reliance on mathematical symbols; for the student is only too apt to take the easier course, and consider the formula not the fact as the physical reality."

I gotta say those two aren't bad. The first seems to freely admit the ongoing state of what we think we know. Both could be a lesson to some AGW believers.