CBS trots out a "doomsday" dinosaur
He's been making ridiculous predictions for more than 50 years.
In case you missed it …
Protesters turned up at the offices of the College of Psychologists of Ontario to support Dr. Jordan Peterson’s free speech. Peterson is facing demands by the licensing body that he be “re-educated” after he made several comments they didn’t like.
The Heartland Institute, which was censored by YouTube before their live broadcast even started, is turning to Rumble instead.
There was an awkward moment on MSNBC when host Andrea Mitchell scolded a colleague for using “pro-life” as a descriptor. She said the term was not an accurate description.
Dear Friends—
CBS celebrated the new year by interviewing Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich to again tell us we’re all going to die.
Ehrlich: "I and the vast majority of my colleagues think we've had it; that the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we're used to."
I might give him more credibility if he hadn’t been saying this for more than half a century.
Who is Paul Ehrlich?
Ehrlich first gained public attention with his 1968 bestselling book “The Population Bomb.” The book predicted,
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's 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. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."
The death rate has actually dropped since his prediction. And while there have been famines, they’re far more a result of politics than climate. There is enough food in the world, it’s just a matter of getting it to the people who need it.
60 Minutes leans in to Doomsday
Correspondent Scott Pelley did admit Ehrlich was wrong on some counts.
"The alarm Ehrlich sounded in '68 warned that overpopulation would trigger widespread famine. He was wrong about that. The green revolution fed the world. But he also wrote in '68 that heat from greenhouse gases would melt polar ice and humanity would overwhelm the wild. Today, humans have taken over 70% of the planet's land and 70% of the freshwater.”
He went on to repeat Ehrlich’s latest dire predictions without much skepticism. Ehrlich says the world is now undergoing a Sixth Mass Extinction, thanks to his old archnemesis – rising populations and overconsumption.
Not likely
When doomsday predictors like Paul Ehrlich issue their death pronouncements, they fail to account for human ingenuity. Since people like to stay alive, more people find creative solutions, often involving technology, for our problems.
Smog in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s was worse than it has ever been since. Advances in birth control and global health care have naturally dropped population rates to the point where we’re no longer replacing ourselves.
Reason magazine argues that in the case of Ehrlich’s warnings,
“just as positive trends in global agricultural productivity that were already underway 50 years ago nullified Ehrlich's prophecy of inevitable famines that would kill hundreds of millions, current trends in agricultural productivity, population, urbanization, and dematerialization will likely negate his extinction auguries and predictions of civilizational collapse. Why? Because an increasingly wealthy and technologically adept humanity will be withdrawing from nature over the course of this century.”
As we get more efficient with farming, we may even end up with more natural areas that revert back to the way they were pre-human. Cities and improvements in housing also mean humans can occupy less area, freeing it up for farming or natural spaces.
The older I get, the harder it is to take doomsday predictions seriously. There have just been so many, and we’re all still here. Considering the age of the 60 Minutes reporters, I’m surprised they haven’t reached the same conclusion.
–Ken
Lame predictions, No science.
No excuse
More lies
& no wonder Dems look like fools