"The Boy Who Cried Wolf" Redux

Here are some quotes of famous people from a few years ago. For some reason, when I read these, I was reminded of that old story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." See what you think.

'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, The Population Bomb (1968)

'I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.'

~~~~~ Paul Ehrlich (1969)

'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)

'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 (1976)

'This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.'

~~~~~ Peter Gwynne, Newsweek (1976)

'There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon ... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it.'

~~~~~ Newsweek, (April 28, 1975)

'This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.'

~~~~~ Lowell Ponte, "The Cooling" (1976)

'If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000 ... This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.'

~~~~~ Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

'The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.'

~~~~~ Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man" (1971)

[Hat tip: David C. Kifer, who posted these to alt.quotations.]