Ehrlich was Holdren’s closest associate. Holdren’s is Obama’s science adviser. Obama is president of the US.
Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
England does not exist! The people who claim to live there are imaginary! 😉
For virtual Enghish children, virtual snow is a thing from the virtual past.
I can’t imagine Ehrlich ever winning a bet, even if he took even money for a multitude of his predictions. I suspect he doesn’t gamble, or is in a huge amount of debt.
Never in his wildest dreams did he think that the problem of food would be obesity.
Got a citation? I’ll wager Ehrlich had several qualifiers on that “prediction,” if that’s in fact what it was.
Without a citation, it’s just gossip. With a citation to Walter Williams, it’s worse than gossip — it’s a probable smear.
You’ve never read Ehrlich, I take it.
I’ve read as much of Ehrlich as I can stomach……… He’s just a Malthusian misanthropist. Anyway, while wiki isn’t authoritative, and always slanted in this regard, this will give you the general gist of the wager……
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
The problem with people that believe we’re going to run out of something, is that they don’t understand the different dimensions involved. They view it linearly. It never happens that way. This is why history shows that Malthus and Ehrlich are wrong.
If you’ve read Ehrlich, can you give us actual citations for the claimed quotes, please?
The links provided by the wikiquotes aren’t good enough? What is it that you want Ed?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
Julian Simon also thought, and thought he was contradicting Ehrlich, that the relative prices of grain and oil would not rise in the long run. How is that working out? What’s the price of corn? What’s the price of oil? Up or down?
Why is the price of corn so high?
Lol, now Ed, you know you’re cherry-picking a specific point in time. The prices aren’t rising because there’s any shortage of either oil or corn.
Ed does cherry pick. Learned that in the discussion of Lake Powell.
Makes we wonder about the price of cherries…
Yeah, the 20th century is a specific point in time.
Yeah, Julian Simon was wrong about corn, too.
Yeah, whenever Gored loses out and knows it, he tries to change the subject. (Nota Bene: Just as before, you’re provided with the links, and I expect you to read them. I hope you’ll read them all, and not cherry pick snippets to snipe about — triumph of hope over experience.) If you have a citation to back the point, could you produce it? The Lake Powell discussion is another thread.
Corn is within 5% of the inflation adjusted price compared to 1970. April 1970 corn 137.75/100 bu, (736.94 inflation adjusted). Corn closed on friday for 756.50/100bu. Wheat is a bit lower in inflation adj. dollars, beef is over 50% lower and pork is over 60% lower. Wow, no wonder my brother the cattle rancher is so poor.
How is it a cherry pick to ask you for a citation which, it turns out, you cannot produce?
How is it a cherry pick to point out that, contrary to the insinuation of the Lake Powell post, the lake is still way, way below drought level?
Noting the facts is not “cherry picking,” at least, not in honest discussion, not outside the Bizarro World.
Where are you guys posting from, anyway?
Well Ed, I’m posting from a place where picking one of seven readings of river flow, which just happens to be by far the lowest, and using that ONE example to support your argument is called cherry picking.
What do you call it?
Don’t picnic along the Colorado River this June.
WTF Ed? How do you go from prices of oil to Lake Powell? Try to stay relevant.
The prices of corn and oil are close to all time highs right now. I am sure you know it is caused by 1, the unrest in the mid-east,(and much speculation) and 2, the reliance on corn for our ethanol. If you disagree with these assertions please state as much and then show me how you believe this isn’t the case. I’m prepared to engage in either. As to your Lake Powell, stay on that thread, you have your handful there. (Yes, it’s getting better, but it still sucks and its all your SUVs fault……sigh)
Oh dear Ed. You really are struggling today.
If you really think the nutter Ehrlich had qualifiers, go and buy the book and prove it.
I really am amazed sometimes how desperate some people are to defend the indefensible at any cost. It really does make you look ridiculous.
While you are at it, try to defend this comment from Ehrlich as well :-
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.
—Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968)
or this
In 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.
—Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
or this
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity…in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.
—Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
Yeah, I didn’t think you guys had any citations. Now we know for sure you don’t.
Steve made the original claim, can’t back it. Now Paul H. joins in, with a half dozen more he can’t back.
Why not stick to the facts? Don’t you ever worry that someone will, indeed, have a copy of the book some day? What will you do then?
Not sure if Paul H can or cannot back his citations, but The Population Bomb has Look Inside in Amazon and for example the first quote (“the battle is over”) is 99.9% straight out of the Prologue of that book.
Also from page 53 (Scenario I, in the form of a short story. The year in the story is 1983): “Even with rationing, a lot of Americans are going to starve to death unless this climate change reverses […] Almost a billion human beings starved to death in the last decade”
Note his use of “climate change” in Schneideresque terms, as Ehrlich didn’t know if it was going to get cooler or warmer and so just hedged his words.
The wikipedia entry for Ehrlich is full of quotes by The Man. Anybody not called Ed, just go there and enjoy the reading.
It’d be far easier if Ed would provide meaningful quotes on stuff about which Ehrlich has been shown correct by the test of time
You can’t provide a single citation to verify that any quote you’ve given is real. Bluffs are expected at poker, but poor form in science.
You can’t verify your claims, can you.
I’ve published those links many times. Do you know how to use the search bar?
I know how to use the search bar — you refuse to give a citation to the book that works. Population Bomb is 199 pages, with several different scenarios laid out that I think you are misconstruing as “predictions,” despite Ehrlich’s clear warning in 1968 that they are not predictions.
I suppose I can find the quotes — but I gotta tell you, nothing you’ve quoted shows up yet. According to my copy of the book, you’ve made the quotes up whole cloth.
Now, I asked for citations. We got more “quotes” with vague references.
Do you know high school English citation rules? Do you at least have a chapter number, if you don’t have a page?
Without citations, I can confirm that nothing you’ve claimed is quoted in the book, so far. I don’t have time for fools’ errands, and I resent your disregard of propriety and manners in simply failing to provide a simple citation.
From the horse’s mouth, a chilling example of what it means to live a life of pure Academia, where reputation among colleagues is far more important than having a clue about what one’s talking about:
This is not “science”. This is a hellish version of Emile Zola’s bourgeoisie, absolutely inward-looking and where everybody is a prisoner of everybody else. Now I understand why they’re impervious to novel theories.
Sadly, Ed is too busy to follow this thread, but am sure we can all agree from Wikiquote that Ehrlich did say something profoundly silly, at least once 😎
I don’t know — Wikiquote has Ehrlich carefully qualifying what he said.
He didn’t say there are “too many people.” He said, instead, “there are too many rich people,” noting how rich people use and abuse resources much more than poor people.
Which statement there do you claim is “profoundly silly,” Maurizio?
And, are you at least nervous that your quotes above do not appear in that list of “sourced” quotes?
It was better when everyone was poor and lived in caves.
That’s your claim, not Ehrlich’s. Let’s be clear. Goddard says it was better when everyone was poor and lived in caves.
What did Ehrlich actually say? Goddard can’t say what Ehrlich said.
Slow down and use the search bar.
I slowed down and used the search bar. “It was better when everyone was poor and lived in caves” is from Steven Goddard, not Paul Ehrlich.
Don’t accuse him of your words.
You don’t have a good clue where those “quotes” came from, I gather. I’ve got the book here. I’m not finding anything close to what you claim.
Ed – are we living in the same universe? Have you noticed what happened to England by the year 2000? Have you bothered to read what the New York Times interviewer asked Ehrlich, and what he replied?
This is evolving into the second time you try to push a discussion in what the meaning of “is” is. What do you need to agree that Ehrlich has said something profoundly stupid?
So, you’re asserting that England really is still here? What? What are you going to believe? A super-duper smart scientist (albeit habitually wrong) or your own lying eyes?
Obviously, England remaining on the map is a Koch bros.** conspiracy to encourage the anti-science denial machine!
**For the lunatic left that insist on leaving death threats,the Koch bros. referenced here are based in Wichita. Koch industries…..you morons.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110418/BUSINESS/110418022/-Koch-brothers-confusion-results-death-threat-Iowa-company
http://www.politicalwrinkles.com/open-discussion/19498-koch-brothers-confusion-results-death-threat-iowa-company.html
No, we’re not in the same universe. Over there in your Bizarro Universe, you can make unsubstantiated claims about people and gratify yourself that you’ve said something clever. Here in the real world, we look at what was actually said.
You still can’t provide any citations?
You still don’t know how to use the search bar?
Still got no citations, Steve? You really didn’t bother to read, or vet, the quotes you offered?
There is enough evidence by now to state with absolute certainty that Ed Darrell has never, ever, read Paul R Ehrlich, either before this thread or as a result of the numerous links, quotes, and linked quotes provided.
There is not a single citation here from Maurizio, nor Steve, nor anyone else, to suggest that they are not fictionalizing their entire claims against Ehrlich — none of them have read Ehrlich well enough to even point to the right book, let alone the right page. None have any knowledge about Ehrlich’s qualifications on any of the claimed quotations — and their grasp of what Ehrlich actually said is so weak that they use Wikiquote as a source — and it denies their claims.
There is enough evidence by now to state with absolute certainty that these claims against Ehrlich are almost wholly imaginary — Maurizio and Steve have failed to provide citations for any of their claimed quotes. We can’t check ’em, and it’s clear they haven’t read ’em.
Ed – can’t you read the wikiquote page? Can’t you read the New York Times? Can’t you read the wikipedia page?
You asked for quotes, I have provided quotes, and all you can reply is “you haven’t read Ehrlich well enough”. So you didn’t want quotes, did you?
For Paul’s sake, the guy himself admits he got some stuff wrong. Why can’t you?
I asked for a citation, Maurizio. You didn’t give any. You gave more claims, without citations. I asked for more citations.
I’m trying to confirm what you said. So far, no luck. From my copy, it appears you’ve made up the quotes, or you’ve been victimized by someone else who did.
Don’t yell at me for your lack of scholarship, please. Steve’s doing a good enough job of flailing on that score.
Y’all have made some serious claims against Paul Ehrlich. And now we discover that you didn’t give him the courtesy of reading what he wrote, nor even the courtesy of confirming that he wrote what you claim?
Here’s Ehrlich mentioned alongside his 22.6-million prediction, with the relevant citation of “The Progressive”, sadly not easy to find on the ‘net.
Your source — YOUR source, Maurizio:
Fictitious? You’re giving us fiction, pretending it was prediction?
You’ve never read Ehrlich before this moment.
Yeah, he liked to make up fictional stories to communicate a message: namely, tens of millions of dead in the near future.
I have no intention to squabble about 22.6 or 21.5. You’re more Ehrlichian than Ehrlich.
No, let’s not squabble about numbers — let’s focus on the “fictitious.” These are not predictions as Steve presented and you insisted.
Let’s focus on that.
Remember, these are just possibilities, not predictions. We can be sure that none of them will come true exactly as stated, but they describe the kinds of events that might occur in the next few decades.
Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (revised), Sierra Club/Ballentine Books, 1968 and 1971, page 49
Is this the same Paul R Ehrlich in Grist?
Note from the following paragraph how Ehrlich makes a distinction regarding population figures, about which he does claim he has never made any “prediction”.
Same one — same guy who qualified what he wrote 8 ways from hell.
You guys went straight to hell, didn’t bother to read the qualifications.
When you’re lost, it pays to stop and ask directions, or look for a map. Clearly you’re lost in Ehrlichiana. I can’t pull you out, if we can’t figure out where you are.
I didn’t put you in this fix — you guys are the ones who started making fantastic claims about how evil Ehrlich is based on quotes you didn’t verify, from sources you didn’t read and apparently don’t possess.
You think there’s no starvation in the world? You think Ehrlich grossly overstated the problems? How can you say that, when you don’t know what he said?
And there’s more!!
Actually, the more I research this topic the more I respect Ehrlich, for having shown intellectually honesty.
Exactly the point.
the point is that Ehrlich was and is in the prediction business and his intellectual honesty lies in the fact that he admits it. You haven’t yet.
Ehrlich wasn’t in the prediction business. He’s a population biologist — entomology, generally. He observed that population dynamics tend to work on all species (no one’s indicated any differently in more than 30 years).
Ehrlich warned of population crashes, with millions, or billions of people dying because of stupid stuff we did.
There are a lot of brownies yelling that Rachel Carson is a mass murderer because of millions of malaria deaths. Of course, she did nothing but work to decrease those deaths — but that doesn’t stop the complaints.
Which is it: Are there millions of unnecessary deaths, or not?
Whatever the details, it’s very clear that the charge against Ehrlich in the post is dead wrong. In four days you can’t find anything even close to a quote like that.
Just admit error and move on. I’d say stick with what you know, but that would be fruitless.
congratulations Ed. We have a direct quote (Grist’s) with PRE stating “some things I have predicted did not come to pass”. Despite that, you are unmoved on your “just scenarios” hairsplitting, even if the Ehrlichs didn’t shy from admitting those were “way off’ too. This demonstrates that nothing will ever make you change your mind, therefore invalidating any further attempts at making you agree with Ehrlich himself.
btw I doubt the original point was about “evil” Ehrlich. Foolish, perhaps, and obdurate, but not evil.
Congratulations, Maurizio. You’ve managed to take a direct quote, which is usually considered valid evidence, and turn it instead into a whole cloth misrepresentation.
“Some things I predicted did not come to pass” is a far cry from “I predicted 65 million deaths and was wrong.”
Despite your — it’s not “hairsplitting” to turn an accurate statement into a whole cloth — meat cleavering of your own case, this demonstrates that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Steve tried to smear Ehrlich — what in God’s name for? — and you joined in.
But neither of you has the goods to back up your smear. And the more we dig, the more it becomes clear that the original post was a whole cloth misrepresentation of what Ehrlich really wrote, at best.
At worst it’s complete fiction.
Ehrlich didn’t say what was claimed, and it’s unfair, unkind, and grotesquely inaccurate, to claim he did.
I imagine, though, you’ll never agree with anything in Ehrlich’s books. In the forward to the 1971 edition, David Brower wrote:
You guys don’t agree with any of that, do you.
Oops. That wasn’t Brower’s forward. That was Ehrlich himself, edited slightly — Population Bomb, page 171.
I’m curious. Do you believe in the Holocaust? You seem to find historical records unconvincing.
Gee, Steve, you’re the one who claims holocausts like those claimed here can’t happen. You seem to find it unreasonable to provide a source for your smear against Ehrlich.
Retract the post. Williams made the claim, but Ehrlich didn’t say it. You should be more accurate than that.
Yea, Bill McKibben the famous denier is just trying to smear Ehrlich ROFLMAO
Where did McKibben say anything on the topic?
I posted a quote from his book in the last few days. Don’t intend to rewrite everything again.
The quote you posted, claiming it to be from Ehrlich, is bogus. It should be retracted:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/pure-political-smear-from-walter-williams-or-is-there-any-factoid-to-back-his-claim/
ROFLMAO. You really aren’t keeping up.
Most of this way too vague, and borderline crazy.
Mankind’s inalienable rights:
The right to eat (eat what? what if you wanted to eat poison?)
The right to drink pure water (pure water? 100% H2O is very expensive and corrosive to plumbing)
The right to breathe clean air (how clean? my definition of clean or yours)
The right to decent, uncrowded shelter (this is crazy, should everyone live on an acreage?)
The right to enjoy natural beauty (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how do you quantify this?)
The right to avoid pesticide poisoning (OK, unless you want to eat it, see above)
The right to freedom from thermonuclear war ( everyone has this option now, move to Greenland or Antarctica)
The right to limit families (Limit families? your own family or can I limit other families? The neighbour kids make lots of noise can I limit them?)
The right to have grandchildren (how the heck can you do this? force your kids to have babies? send them to the government impregnation centre?)
The only source I can find for this claim is Walter Williams. It appears the only copy of any work in which Ehrlich may have said what is claimed is in Williams’ personal gluteal library.
You should retract the claim, Mr. Goddard.
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