Moynihan 1969 : Seven Degrees Warming By 2000 – New York And Washington To Drown!

Just a few weeks after we landed on the moon, nutcase Democrats were setting NASA up to be destroyed.

nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/jul10/56.pdf

h/t to Marc Morano

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22 Responses to Moynihan 1969 : Seven Degrees Warming By 2000 – New York And Washington To Drown!

  1. chris y says:

    “Hugh Heffner knows a great deal about this,”

    ?!???!?!?!??????
    I checked the letter to see if it was dated April 1,…

  2. gofer says:

    “At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

    The Foundry

    • Andy DC says:

      The Environmental extremists were already to promote their AGW nonsense even in the late 1960’s. The only problem was that the weather did not cooperate, with some of the coldest winters on record during the 1970’s. Even during the 1980’s we had many extreme cold outbreaks in the US. Those made it all the way down to Florida with severe freezes in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1989. More severe freezes in the 1980’s than the whole rest of 20th and 21st Centuries combined!

      • PaddikJ says:

        The only “environmental extremist” I remember from the ’60s is Rachael Carson, whose silly, hysterical, and mostly factless “Silent Spring” is sometimes claimed to have launched the modern environmental movement (she was a Biologist – surprise, surprise). There weren’t many environmentalists at all in the late ’60, let alone extreme ones. Certainly no Earth-First!ers or Deep Ecologists like the eco-fascist Dave Foreman.

        OTOH, your mentioning the severe freezes of the ’80s was interesting – why have no skeptics countered the warmer b.s. cherry-picking of record-hot days with examples of record cold days and record cold spells post-1979? With his awesome data-dredging abilities, maybe Steve could do a post on this sometime.

    • PaddikJ says:

      That’s what it looked like then.

      And yet Calder, the journalist & science writer, has proved himself more scientific than many scientists – he allows his beliefs to be influenced by the data. Recently he collaborated with Henrik Svensmark on popularizing his Chilling Stars hypothesis (and documented Svensmark’s uphill battle to get funding, favorable peer-review, etc).

      The Climate Cabal of course does not want to hear about distant stars indirectly influencing our climate via cosmic rays, and has rejected it out of hand. After all, how do you keep snagging big government research grants year after year if your research indicates that the climate is beyond our control? How do you justify the existence of an IPCC?

    • Shooter says:

      Clearly, we must believe them, as 97% of scientists agreed that the Earth was to be frozen over.

  3. Steve Tabor says:

    Great post, Steve. This one goes to the top of my “Climate Craziness” file. I’ve been saying to my friends, “they’ve been screaming doomsday about CO2 since 1988 and it hasn’t happened”. I’ll have to modify the date on that.

  4. gofer says:

    Lyndon B. Johnson
    6/1965

    I AM PLEASED at the thoroughness with which the panel has investigated pollution. This report will surely provide the basis for action on many fronts.

    We have made much progress. Legislative action by the 89th Congress–the Water Quality Act of 1965, amendments to the Clean Air Act, the Highway Beautification Act–has moved us along the way to a cleaner world. Now we intend to move much more rapidly. The fact that there are more than 100 recommendations in the report is evidence that there is much to be done.

    I am asking the appropriate departments and agencies to consider the recommendations and report to me on the ways in which we can move to cope with the problems cited in the report.

    Ours is a nation of affluence. But the technology that has permitted our affluence spews out vast quantities of wastes and spent products that pollute our air, poison our waters, and even impair our ability to feed ourselves. At the same time, we have crowded together into dense metropolitan areas where concentration of wastes intensifies the problem. Pollution now is one of the most pervasive problems of our society. With our numbers increasing, and with our increasing urbanization and industrialization, the flow of pollutants to our air, soil, and waters is increasing. This increase is so rapid that our present efforts in managing pollution are barely enough to stay even, surely not enough to make the improvements that are needed.

    As we look ahead to the increasing challenges of pollution we will need increased basic research in a variety of specific areas, including soil pollution and the effects of air pollutants on man. I intend to give high priority to increasing the numbers and quality of the scientists and engineers working on problems related to the control and management of pollution.

    ——————————————————————————–
    Note: The report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee, dated November 1965, is entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” (Government Printing Office, 317 PP.).
    The President’s statement was made public as part of a White House release summarizing highlights of the report. The release stated that a panel of 14 outstanding physicians, scientists, and engineers, chaired by John W. Tukey of Princeton University and Bell Telephone Laboratories, and assisted by 11 subpanels, had spent 15 months in preparation of the report.

    Significant findings of the Committee, the release noted, include the following:

    Pollution is an inevitable consequence of an advanced society, but we need not suffer from the intensity and extent of pollution we now see around us. If we are to manage our pollution as we should, we must give more nearly the same attention to how we dispose of our waste materials as to how we gather and transform our raw materials. Society must take the position that no citizen, no industry, no municipality has the right to pollute.

    We must rely on economic incentives to discourage pollution. Under this plan special taxes would be levied against polluters.

    Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at present. Exhausts and other releases from automobiles contribute a major share to the generation of smog.

    Water pollution control decisions should not be based entirely on health considerations. Present water treatment practices, if vigorously applied, appear adequate to permit our use of almost all waters for domestic purposes.

    Shallow waters of our coasts and estuaries are essential in the life cycles of the fish and shellfish that provide nearly 60 percent of our total seafoods. The filling in of these shallow waters must be regarded as an important kind of pollution.

    The manpower, knowledge, and facilities now at hand are insufficient for the complete task of pollution abatement and management. Large numbers of well trained technicians, engineers, economists, and scientists will be needed (1 Weekly Comp. Pres. Does., p. 476).

    On November 17, 1965, the President signed Executive Order 11258 “Prevention, Control, and Abatement of Water Pollution by Federal Activities” (1 Weekly Comp. Pres. Does., p. 506; 30 F.R. 14483; 3 CFR, 1965 Supp., p. 188).

    602 – Statement by the President in Response to Science Advisory Committee Report on Pollution of Air, Soil, and Waters.
    November 6, 1965

    Lyndon B. Johnson
    1965: Book II

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    I AM PLEASED at the thoroughness with which the panel has investigated pollution. This report will surely provide the basis for action on many fronts.

    We have made much progress. Legislative action by the 89th Congress–the Water Quality Act of 1965, amendments to the Clean Air Act, the Highway Beautification Act–has moved us along the way to a cleaner world. Now we intend to move much more rapidly. The fact that there are more than 100 recommendations in the report is evidence that there is much to be done.

    I am asking the appropriate departments and agencies to consider the recommendations and report to me on the ways in which we can move to cope with the problems cited in the report.

    Ours is a nation of affluence. But the technology that has permitted our affluence spews out vast quantities of wastes and spent products that pollute our air, poison our waters, and even impair our ability to feed ourselves. At the same time, we have crowded together into dense metropolitan areas where concentration of wastes intensifies the problem. Pollution now is one of the most pervasive problems of our society. With our numbers increasing, and with our increasing urbanization and industrialization, the flow of pollutants to our air, soil, and waters is increasing. This increase is so rapid that our present efforts in managing pollution are barely enough to stay even, surely not enough to make the improvements that are needed.

    As we look ahead to the increasing challenges of pollution we will need increased basic research in a variety of specific areas, including soil pollution and the effects of air pollutants on man. I intend to give high priority to increasing the numbers and quality of the scientists and engineers working on problems related to the control and management of pollution.

    ——————————————————————————–
    Note: The report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee, dated November 1965, is entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” (Government Printing Office, 317 PP.).
    The President’s statement was made public as part of a White House release summarizing highlights of the report. The release stated that a panel of 14 outstanding physicians, scientists, and engineers, chaired by John W. Tukey of Princeton University and Bell Telephone Laboratories, and assisted by 11 subpanels, had spent 15 months in preparation of the report.

    Significant findings of the Committee, the release noted, include the following:

    Pollution is an inevitable consequence of an advanced society, but we need not suffer from the intensity and extent of pollution we now see around us. If we are to manage our pollution as we should, we must give more nearly the same attention to how we dispose of our waste materials as to how we gather and transform our raw materials. Society must take the position that no citizen, no industry, no municipality has the right to pollute.

    We must rely on economic incentives to discourage pollution. Under this plan special taxes would be levied against polluters.

    Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at present. Exhausts and other releases from automobiles contribute a major share to the generation of smog.

    Water pollution control decisions should not be based entirely on health considerations. Present water treatment practices, if vigorously applied, appear adequate to permit our use of almost all waters for domestic purposes.

    Shallow waters of our coasts and estuaries are essential in the life cycles of the fish and shellfish that provide nearly 60 percent of our total seafoods. The filling in of these shallow waters must be regarded as an important kind of pollution.

    The manpower, knowledge, and facilities now at hand are insufficient for the complete task of pollution abatement and management. Large numbers of well trained technicians, engineers, economists, and scientists will be needed (1 Weekly Comp. Pres. Does., p. 476).

    On November 17, 1965, the President signed Executive Order 11258 “Prevention, Control, and

    • PaddikJ says:

      People tend (or maybe never experienced) how dirty things were from the mid-60s – mid-70s – smog thick as pea soup in L.A., Cayahouga River in Ohio spontaneously combusting (Randy Newman lyric from the era: It takes God to make a river / but only we can make it burn!), people in N.Y.C. swimming in the Hudson at their peril, Chicago River dumping raw sewage into Lake Michigan. And of course, high levels of lead almost everywhere.

      It’s debatable how much environmental regs had to do with it vs. how much would have happened anyway as we became generally more prosperous & less tolerant of air & water pollution, but in either case, America & the industrialized western world is measurably cleaner than it was 40-50 years ago.

      • Shooter says:

        Greenies often make minor environmental disasters appear to be Doomsdays, and completely ignore real environmental disasters, as you point out here. They’re hypocrites.

  5. ozspeaksup says:

    cute!
    they had a whole One? or two?
    Co2 measuring stations yet already??? could predict so early that poor co2 was THE guilty party?
    the thing that hasnt changed is the ridiculous overestimating of temp and seas.
    gotta scare em into submission after all.
    club of rome, etc etc.

    • PaddikJ says:

      Atmospheric Chemist David Keeling (of Keeling Curve fame) had been tracking CO2 levels from atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii since the mid-50s. I believe almost everyone accepts the Keeling Curve as a reliable measure of world CO2 concentrations.

      Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius generally gets credit for predicting the greenhouse effect, although his original 1896 paper is considered to be flawed. I believe Fourier also speculated that “carbonic acid” could trap heat in the atmosphere.

  6. Ours is a nation of affluence.

    47 years ago, that was a true statement.

    • PaddikJ says:

      The whole world is more affluent today than 47 years ago, and the U.S. still leads (although our growth rate probably hasn’t been as great as some of the up & comers).

      You have only to look around to see this with your own eyes: More and better parks & other public amenities per capita, and our once-strictly utilitarian publics works such as bridges, canals, etc, are built to a higher aesthetic standard, in fact, design standards across the board have been elevated – have you seen any plain-jane “big box” retail stores such as were built up to the mid-80’s lately? This isn’t just because planning boards & departments have mandated it – it’s mostly because we can afford it.

      And of course, avg. life expectancy continues to rise. There can be only one root explanation for this, whether the proximate causes are more intensive health care or healthier life-styles, and we know what that is: wealth. (also, the rate of birthrate increase continues to fall – if the present curve continues, world population will stablise at about 10 billion by 2050. That is directly attributable to better access to education for women in third world countries, which is enabled by . . . well, you know).

      I see no reason why that trend shouldn’t continue indefinitely, barring excessive interference by government and neurotic busy-body activists.* The essential paradox of the successful high-tech, high-energy civilization: As excess wealth increases and more & more people feel secure about the essentials, they start looking for greater significance in their lives; some of the really wealthy establish NGOs, providing employment for those neurotic busy-bodies who see disaster lurking around every corner; this is a growing and dangerous trend. A lot of them come from the “humanities” and are truly offended by what they see as the crass materialsim all around them. “There must be something fundementally wrong with this,” they think. Scientists are also prone to this superiority complex.

      Also, as the percentage of the population required to provided the essentials decreases, providing “meaningful” employment for the rest becomes more of a challenge.

      The most challenging task of the realists (both climatic and economic) in the coming century will be to keep busy-body governments & NGOs in check. Good luck to them; I won’t be around.

      =============

      * Willa Cather had a good phrase for it; I don’t remember it word-for-word but it goes something like “The neuroses people are prone to whose first concerns aren’t putting a roof over their heads and food on the table.”

      • _Jim says:

        From the Bond movie: “The World Is Not Enough” the character Electra King summed it up poignantly I think: “What’s the point of living if you can’t feel alive”

        Some of these people are looking for an ‘edge’ or redemption (or excitement) – anything really … to achieve that ‘feel alive’ thing in large part to offset an otherwise ‘pasteurized’ and even puerile life where one no longer faces the challenges or ‘threats’ faced a generation, maybe two, ago … and all the while having more ‘time’ on one’s hands some begin to look inward for answers … some begin to imagine more than just a little guilt when they stare inward and seek something to do in the way of penance for atonement of perceived guilts hence sometimes inexplainable actions ranging from donations to the usual ‘charitable’ causes e.g. ‘save’ the whales to (nowadays) save the earth (from CAGW) campaigns …

        .

      • _Jim says:

        Bringing it home:

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cOjY3M2ZAg

        Elektra King: “What’s the point of living if you can’t feel alive”

  7. Sparks says:

    5 March 1984,
    UK: “Scientist warn of the Green House Effect; Concern is growing that carbon dioxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, will affect the climate. Carbon dioxide acts like the glass of a green house, trapping the suns heat, and the amount in the atmosphere is growing. The latest pointer to its effects comes from scientists at the University of East Anglia who have found that 1981 and last year were among the warmest on record. A warmer climate could damage agriculture and cause flooding by melting the polar ice caps. “

  8. PaddikJ says:

    I would hardly call Moynihan a Democratic nut-case; he did after all write that memo to a Republican administration, and in a friendly, non-adversarial style. As I recall (I was a H.S. Senior in 9/1969), Moynihan was considered a conservative Democrat; W.F. Buckley once praised him for telling “the little creeps” to piss up a rope (“little creeps” being those third-world whingers in the U.N.), and was generally an admirer.

    Best guess: He was merely relaying to the Nixon Admin. what he’d being hearing from scientists & science advisors who were (then) thought to be reliable.

  9. Billy Liar says:

    No-one’s pointed out he was wrong on all 3 counts – CO2, only up 16% by 2000, temperature only up a fraction of a degree and sea level, 2″ at most.

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