Legitimate Science At The Guardian

ScreenHunter_342 Mar. 05 22.18

Paul Ehrlich, a prophet of global population doom who is gloomier than ever | Environment | The Guardian

“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

Ehrlich forecast 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.

http://townhall.com/

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

14 Responses to Legitimate Science At The Guardian

  1. Well, at least he is sticking to his guns. If he was a certain flavour of climate scientist he would point to the obesity epidemic and characterise it as an “extreme food event” that he more or less predicted, sort of. David Appell could chime in as a victim.

  2. Larry Fields says:

    Ehrlich is apparently too stupid to wrap his brain around the concept of the Demographic Transition, which limits human populations in non-theocratic countries with non-corrupt governments. I wrote a long article about this stuff at Hubpages.

    Larry’s Take on the Population Scare

    LINK
    http://tinyurl.com/b2dqbdr

  3. Streetcred says:

    Is he considered sufficiently sane to execute his business and that of his family … maybe an application to the Courts to have his power of attorney placed in the hands of the state. LOL, he’s a fruitloop.

  4. Sundance says:

    I thought the definition of a prophet is someone who gets information from a deity? Only if one considers Paul Ehrlich’s ‘ass’ to be a deity can one consider him a prophet because that’s where his information emanated.

  5. tckev says:

    My favorite Ehrlich story –

    In 1980 Ehrlich made a bet with the economist Julian Simon of University of Maryland.
    Dr. Simon, who believes that human ingenuity holds the answers to population growth problems, asserted that if Ehrlich were correct and the world truly was heading toward an era of scarcity, then the price of various commodities should rise over time. Ehrlich utterly agreed with this assertion. Simon however predicted that prices would instead fall, as human ingenuity would prevail to keep a lid on runaway prices.
    Simon then challenged Ehrlich to back-up his assertion with a wager and Simon allowed Ehrlich to pick any commodity and any future date to illustrate his point. Ehrlich accepted the challenge. Thus in October 1980, Simon purchased $1,000 worth of five metals ($200 each) – tin, tungsten, copper, nickel and chrome. Ehrlich bet that if the combined value of all five metals he purchased was higher in 1990, Simon would have to pay him the difference.
    If the prices turned out to be lower, Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference.

    .

    Ten years later, Ehrlich sent Simon a check for $576 – all five metals had fallen in price.
    🙂

    • Jimbo says:

      I just hope that Ehrlich doesn’t predict global warming. Oh wait…. 🙁

    • Andy Oz says:

      Ehrlich was an idiot. 1980 was the end of a decade long commodity boom, where metal prices had already multiplied in price many times and US interest rates were spiking to kill off inflation. Had he bet in 1970 or waited till 2000 to start the bet, he’d have made a motza off Simon a decade later. In 1980, Simon would have known the only way commodity prices were going was down.

      • tckev says:

        I’m sure Dr. Simon understood the markets well enough, and was well aware that Ehrlich was too stupid to resist the wager.

      • Andy Oz says:

        Right on tk. Simon was obviously too smart to take on the second wager proposed by Ehrlich. And he was a skeptic. I’m beginning to like him already.

        From Wikipedia:
        “Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the perceived rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid 1970s) to the later fears of global warming.”

  6. Dave N says:

    The Guardian’s definition of “legitimate” is “being constantly, and spectacularly wrong”, as I suspected.

  7. Andy Oz says:

    “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future” – Niels Bohr

    Niels Bohr was a smart guy. Ehrlich, Gore, Hansen, Mann, Flannery and Combet have no idea other than playing political games.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *