Earth Day aka, Harold Camping Day

The original Earth Day (1970) predictions have become a joke just like the prognostications of Harold Camping except perhaps to his true believers. Those of us who have caught on to the fear mongering of our leaders (do they feel obligated to dare people to see that they have no clothes?) can reflect back and have a hoot at the dire predictions that have gone before us or accompanied us on our journey through life. Senator Gaylord Nelson predicted that by 1995 “between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” I understand that date has passed and been pushed further into the future. They don't give up. Sooner or later 'they' might be right. Gaylord passed in 2005 so he did live to witness the folly of his prediction. 

Kenneth Watt had some good ones back in 1970 including this doozy:

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist


Can we speculate that present trends didn't continue?

Here are some good omens from oracle Paul Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame:

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . [AND] hundreds of millions of people [including Americans] are going to starve to death.” (1968)
“Smog disasters” in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
“I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)
“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)

How much pain have they caused us, the evils that never happened. ~ Thomas Jefferson

But wait! We have people today who are predicting the end of the world and they are saying it is all the fault of CO2 produced by our burning of fossil fuels which is overheating our planet to the detriment of life on earth.

"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable." ~Maurice Strong


"Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late." ~Club of Rome: Mankind at the Turning Point 1974


Now that is scary! Except that 1994 has passed and we are still here. Why should we believe the next prediction of doom? The fearmongers haven't got one right yet.

Let's look at James Hansen's predictions from 1990 regarding the current fear crisis de jour - CAGW. Hansen came up with his three future temperature projections based on assumptions about how the world might respond to CO2 emission cutbacks. Scenario A assumed no cutbacks and predicted a year 2100 temperature of  X. Scenario B assumed cutbacks to a constant level of emissions and predicted a year 2100 temperature of Y with Y less than X. Scenario C assumed, unrealistically but it provided a base point, that we would have zero human emissions after the year 2000 with a temperature in 2100 of Z, with Z less than Y. The reality is that temperature measurements are tracking below Hansen's Scenario C. This means that the models vastly over-estimate the sensitivity of the climate to the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is good news and the alarmists are still batting 1.000 for failed predictions. The fearmongers still haven't got one right. Is it unreasonable to expect them to score before we go off wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money on what turns out to be a non-problem?

CO2 emissions in the US have not been able to stop the decreasing temperatures in the US over the last 15 years? This is a disconnect between CAGW theory and reality. Is it not self-delusional to maintain a belief in CAGW in the face of this evidence?

But they do reveal their true intentions with their emphasis on sustainability and a new economic order. If only there were fewer people we wouldn't be is such dire straits. Hmmm. In the year the Mayan calendar ends should we adopt their practice of human sacrifice to make life more sustainable for those left behind?

"...the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million people but less than one billion." ~ Club of Rome


Any volunteers? Will the Club of Rome lead by example?


In 2011, Harold Camping, was given prime time news attention by the MSM for his prediction of the end of the world on May 21, 2011. When, happily, that didn't occur, undaunted, he revised his admittedly erroneous timeline to October 21, 2011. We are still here so we know how that worked out for him. It seems to me that our environmentalists deserve to be recognized for their own predictive abilities by immortalizing Earth Day with a more accurate moniker in honor of Harold Camping. We could have counter rallies to mock the unscientific fear mongering of HC impersonators. Perhaps we could ask them to put their money where their mouth is and collect a few bets with winnings going to charity. We could all dress like Harold and wear Harold masks to herald the arrival of the new spring ritual of mocking the new set of ominous predictions. Some of us could dress like Johnny Carson's Carnac while we mimic the importation of portentous predictions from the universe through an envelope. 

It will be great fun to impersonate Al Gore and make grave revelations of a future climate apocalypse with 20 feet of rising sea levels. We could show pictures of airports in the low lying Maldives to illustrate how the island nations are preparing for an oceanic uprising. How about the advertising in Vanuatu (backup here) that urges us to visit and get away from global warming?

We could show pictures of early blooming cherry trees in Washington due to warm spring weather and late blooming cherry trees in Japan due to cold weather in the same year in the same month and blame them both on too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Our SUVs are confusing the cherry trees. Stop that! 

Or how about pictures of celebrity environmentalists and their beachfront property?

We can illustrate the increasing temperature trend by selecting the Holocene maximum as our starting point and drawing a downward sloping line to the temperatures of today.It was warmer in the past? How did that happen without human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere?

Or how about satellite pictures that show no ice loss in the Himalayas for the last 10 years. 

Growing glaciers like the Hubbard in Alaska are always great fun to watch as they calve. Can we use this to prove that all glaciers are receding? Or would that cause confusion? Then there are the temperature records for the South Pole that show decreasing temps for the last 30 years that give the lie to global warming. 

We could show how CO2 is simultaneously causing record snow and cold in Europe and creating balmy conditions in Southern Ontario and the NE USA in winter 2011-2012. That heat trapping gas CO2 can do magical things like suck all the heat out of Europe and make it disappear only to have it reappear in North America. Does it use the jet stream as its conveyor? Amazing! We didn't realize that the greenhouse effect behaved in that manner. Perhaps this is a new scientific discovery. 

We could illustrate the settled science by pointing out all the places in the world that scientists and journalists have pegged as the ground zero of climate change, THE place that will be hardest hit by global warming. 

Various predictions for an ice free Arctic can be trotted out to further exemplify the consensus among scientists. A google search using 'ice free Arctic' as the search term will net a plethora of different dates when we can expect the unprecedented event to occur. Except that even if it does happen it won't be unprecedented.

We could dramatize the year 2000 prediction that "children won't know what snow is" by showing pictures from the 2012 European winter. We could illustrate that our current extreme weather is clearly unprecedented by showing newspaper clippings from the 1920s and 1930s that demonstrate the people back then were just as concerned about a melting Arctic as we are today. Wait, what? 

We can demonstrate how climate change is accelerating by showing the deceleration in contemporary sea level rise coming from the satellite data. 

We can reveal how extreme weather is increasing by showing how F3-F5 hurricane activity is slowing down as CO2 increases. We could reinforce that point with the graphs showing the decrease in severe tornadoes as CO2 increases. Similar trends can be found for forest fires, famine, drought and floods. Can we conclude that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere the weather gets better? Does it help to point out that the US hasn't been hit by a major (F3-F5) hurricane since 2005, the longest period without a major hit since records have been kept? Should that be happening as CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere?

How do we tell the difference between a low CO2 concentration snow storm, hurricane or tornado and a high CO2 concentration one? If they happen now and they happened in the past when CO2 atmospheric concentration was lower then perhaps the correct conclusion is that CO2 has naught to do with it.

And if we really want to cause mass confusion in the ranks of global warming alarmists we can show the results of the Ibuki satellite that the Japanese sent up to map the net CO2 emissions around the planet. It discovered that the industrialized countries are net CO2 sinks and that the developing countries are net CO2 emitters which is, of course, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to find according to the CO2-from-fossil-fuel-burning-is-bad school of thought. Oops, that's embarrassing. Better not mention it. Shhhhh!


CO2 is a trace gas (.039% of the atmosphere) essential to life on earth. Plants love it. We exhale it daily. And that is the real problem as some people see it.


"For the planet’s sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we’re doomed." ~ Susan Blakemore, science writer

“It’s a morbid observation, but if everyone on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem.”
— Newsweek Senior Writer Jerry Adler, December 31, 1990 issue.

Or we can hope for an epidemic.  And if people who think like that gain control we are doomed. 


FEAR is promoted. GUILT is cast in a supporting role. Alarmists peddle them. They use them to manipulate people to march their way to Rio and global governance.

"The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to – compliance” ~ Dixy Lee Ray, former liberal Democrat governor of State of Washington, U.S. 

 And they know they are selling snake oil.


"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe." ~ Professor Daniel Botkin


“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” ~ Timothy Wirth, former US Senator


"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." ~ Richard Benedict, former US bureaucrat

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!

Be bright. Show your might. Push back your fright. Improve your sight. Ignite the light.



Let's track this year's predictions of future doom and hold then up to the light of reality just like we did with the 1970 crop of crystal ball divinations. We can all use a good chuckle. 


Let's see them make a successful prediction before we go off spending billions of dollars on a non-problem. 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken

If the media is in full fearmonger roll we know we are safe. They haven't been right yet.