Thanks for the help!

1. Population Control: In 1968 environmental alarmist Paul Ehrlich predicted that, due to an expected population explosion, 65 million Americans would die of starvation by the mid 1980’s. It didn’t come true.

2. Global Warming: In the 1970’s Al Gore wrote a book (Earth in the Balance) about the effects of global cooling, now he’s warning people about global warming. One of many dubious acts by Gore.

3. Rain Forest: In 1985 Green Peace activist, Ruy de Goes, stated that in the previous four years, parts of the rain forest the size of France had been destroyed. He lied.

These “experts” need to be held accountable. Fear Mongering is as old as mankind. A lot of people who post on these boards accuse a current political body of profiting from people’s fears. Maybe they should look at their own cultural and political leaders with the same degree of cynicism.

.. of each of these claims, but I would not doubt them. The fact that several fringe folks have made "cry wolf" prognostications doesn't mean anything.

I can find equally ridiculous pronouncements from the other side of the debate, and I'm sure you could as well.

The quote about an area of rainforest "the size of France" is quite demonstrably wrong, and it's something that never should have been said in the first place. This is my fundamental problem with Greenpeace as an organisation - they are more than happy to bend the truth to fit their agenda. And every single time they do this, they are called on it, and then their bullshit is used to tar the entire environmental movement, which is exactly what's happening with the freeper in the OP. No, the random prognostications of a few loonies should not be the starting point for the discussion, but they make for good propoganda. As usual, the science is being ignored in favor of the propoganda.

How many people lost their lives to this "fear mongering"? :grr:

1. Population Control: In 1968 environmental alarmist Paul Ehrlich predicted that, due to an expected population explosion, 65 million Americans would die of starvation by the mid 1980’s. It didn’t come true.

Incorrect. He did not "predict" anything. This is specifically mentioned in the book:

The possibilities are infinite; the single course of events that will be realized is unguessable. We can, however, look at a few possibilities as an aid to our thinking, using a device known as a 'scenario'. Scenarios are hypothetical sequences of events used as an aid in thinking about the future, especially in identifying possible decision points...Remember, these are just possibilities, not predictions."


2. Global Warming: In the 1970’s Al Gore wrote a book (Earth in the Balance)

Earth in the Balance was published in 1992.

about the effects of global cooling, now he’s warning people about global warming. One of many dubious acts by Gore.

The book actually deals with global warming, amongst other environmental problems.


3. Rain Forest: In 1985 Green Peace activist, Ruy de Goes, stated that in the previous four years, parts of the rain forest the size of France had been destroyed. He lied.

He was certainly wrong and very stupid. Whether or not he lied is another matter.

Edit: formatting.

It's partially concerned with Global Warming and the depletion of the ozone layer - not at all with global cooling. From Amazon's review:

When Earth in the Balance first came out, it caused quite a stir--and for good reason. It convincingly makes the case that a crisis of epidemic proportions is nearly upon us and that if the world doesn't get its act together soon and agree to some kind of "Global Marshall Plan" to protect the environment, we're all up a polluted creek without a paddle. Myriad plagues are upon us, but the worst include the loss of biodiversity, the depletion of the ozone layer, the slash-and-burn destruction of rainforests, and the onset of global warming. None of this is new, of course, nor was it new in 1992. But most environmentalists will still get a giddy feeling reading such a call to action as written by a prominent politician.

Amazon's review

You should start there. Next up: demand actual links to the text in context for both Ehrlich and Gore. My guess is that this will end the discussion.

For all I know to the contrary, the first one may be true - if Ehrlich did say that, then he was wrong.

I've never read "Earth in the Balance", but a brief search on google suggests its topic is far wider than "the effects of global cooling". I've never heard of global cooling; I suspect it's at best an oversimplification/distortion of whatever Gore actually said; however, it does not strike me as at all implausible that the process referred to as "Global Warming" *could* lead to parts of the Earth's surface getting cooler due to knock-on effects, at least temporarily (I have no idea whether this actually is happening, though).

As to the third, the area of France is 675,000 Km2. According to Wikipedia, estimates for deforestation in the 90s range from 55,000 Km2 to 120,000 Km2 per year. If we assume that the rate was roughly the same in the 80s, that gives between 210,000 and 480,000 Km2 per four years, so if de Goes actually said that then he was probably exaggerating, but not perhaps by all that much.


I think the key point, though is that saying "some people have made predictions about environmental problems that turned out to be false" is not evidence for the claim "all/most claims about environmental problems are false".

warming--and if you don't believe me, check out Amazon. Mixed up weather patterns are also part of global warming...at any rate Al's work is always backed up with SCIENTIFIC facts and evidence. Tell your foolhardy friend on the other board that even Bush is now coming out and saying that this is a problem, of course, it's all for the midterm elections. His sudden interest in spouting off concern about a few things here and there and doing absolutely zero about it, while simultaneously loosening up all of our environmental laws like never before speaks loudly & clearly. Of course, anyone who keeps up with these things knows that, but the Bush people eat up his words like gospel truth, always worshipping in spite of the facts.

1992

SEARCH is your friend

A particularly popular solution to problems for most Americans.

Paul Ehrlich

Ehrlich has stated that despite his other work, the predictions of his first book are regularly cited as proof of extensive flaws in the environmental movement. At the same time, Ehrlich also notes that many things critics claim were "predictions" were actually scenarios. In the first edition of The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote: "The possibilities are infinite; the single course of events that will be realized is unguessable. We can, however, look at a few possibilities as an aid to our thinking, using a device known as a 'scenario'. Scenarios are hypothetical sequences of events used as an aid in thinking about the future, especially in identifying possible decision points...Remember, these are just possibilities, not predictions." (p. 72)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich#The_Population_Bomb

Al Gore

Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend was not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood. However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.

The term "global cooling" did not become attached to concerns about an impending glacial period until after the term "global warming" was popularized. In the 1970s the compilation of records to produce hemispheric, or global, temperature records had just begun.

A history of the discovery of global warming states that: While neither scientists nor the public could be sure in the 1970s whether the world was warming or cooling, people were increasingly inclined to believe that global climate was on the move, and in no small way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Ruy de Goes

In the widely viewed 1985 TV documentary Amazonia, produced by the World Wildlife Fund, the narrator intones that “in the brief amount of time it takes to watch this film, roughly 400,000 acres of forest will have been cleared.” Ruy de Goes of Greenpeace-Brazil says that in the last four years “an area the size of France was destroyed.”

A National Geographic documentary claims that, worldwide, “rain forest is being cleared at a rate of 20 football fields a minute.” Rainforest Action Network says the Amazon is being deforested at a rate of eight football fields a minute. Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief says that worldwide deforestation can be measured in seconds. “It may be closer to 2 - 3 football fields a second,” says Keating.

When de Goes of Greenpeace-Brazil is confronted with the disparity in numbers regarding these football fields, he replies, “ The numbers are not important; what is important is that there is huge destruction going on.” However, Moore says that the only way such huge numbers are generated is by using double accounting. “You would have cleared 50 times the size of the Amazon already if accurate.”

Luis Almir, an official with the state of Amazonas in Brazil, calculated using five football fields a minute and sarcastically concludes that, if the numbers were correct, “we would have a desert bigger than the Sahara.”

http://www.aljoma.com/enviromental03.htm

So de Goes was incorrect, but the others were distorted by the dickheads. I'll think about these "alarmists" the next time our great leader sets off another alert.

from any decent web site, and include a link to Gore's book and movie.

Link here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=284

(Be sure to title it something relevant to its content and then link back to this thread.)

Thanks! :hi:

seen the loss of 203,882 square miles of rain forest. Anyone who denys over population, global warming, and the loss of the rain forest are causing untold damage to the planet, is a fool.