I thought it might be fun to walk through a few of the apocalypses that were supposed to have happened since I was a kid.
Climate Change (pt 1)
A few years back, I was asked if I believed in Climate Change™. I said no, but that wasn’t exactly true. I don’t really have enough information to ascertain what’s going on. In all honesty, there probably IS some actual anthropogenic warming happening. What I can say is: I was told back in the mid 90’s that global warming would bring a massive heat wave over the earth in 15 years, and ( I was told this by someone I once worked with) THAT’S why (90’s) kids were so upset, and with good reason, and if I didn’t take them serious it’s because I was blind to the reality they were living, MAN!
Well I waited and 2010 came and went with no noticeable effects, at least that I could see with my untrained eye. My son would say: Are you kidding? Last year was the hottest year EVER recorded!
Ok, by .03 centigrade with a .3+/- differential, so… maybe, maybe not.
Do I believe in climate change? There may be something to it, but there’s an awful lot that seems fishy to me too. More about that in part 2.
For now, a brief recap of the various ends of the world.
Nuclear War
I was born at the end of the baby-boom. The threat of nuclear war, particularly with the evil empire- the commies, the ruskys, the old Soviet bloc, was ever present. That didn’t abate until after I was in college. But we grew up with bomb drills and people actually building bomb shelters in back yards and euro-pansies singing about 99 balloons. (I loved that song, by the way!)
Over Population
There was a book released in 1968 called The Population Bomb, written by Paul Erlich, that hypothesized that at the point the earth reached a population over 5 billion people, resource production would be unable to keep up with demand and by the 70’s hundreds of millions of people would starve to death. He argued it was already too late to do anything about it. None of the predictions came to pass, we’re at 8.5 billion now with more capacity to feed people than ever.
The New Ice Age
Would most young people today find it incredible that in the 70’s, we were taught there was a new ice-age coming? Not global warming? This was actually immortalized in the Clash’s catchy 1979 hit London Calling:
The ice age is coming
The sun’s zoomin’ in
Meltdown expected
The wheat is growing thin
Check out the groove here, if you’re not familiar with the song
Yep. Science had established it- and the data DID support it- temps had been cooling since the mid 40s and didn’t start up again until the 80’s, so…. we were entering a new ice age. As it turns out, it wasn’t valid to extrapolate all the way out to a new ice age.
Acid Rain
Then there was acid rain in the 70’s. Atmospheric pollution would turn the rainfall to literal acid that would burn your face off! cause irreparable environmental damages with the concomitant effects on everything else downstream.
Never hear about this anymore. Purple Rain we still hear about every once in a while, depending on what radio station formats you listen to.
The Ozone Hole
Then there was the hole in the ozone, indicative of widespread depletion, that was going to kill us in the 80’s. There is a layer of atmospheric ozone that blocks harmful UV from the sun. Remove that and you’ve got yourself a real apocalyptic event. Cancer, sunburns, general harm to plants and animals and earth…..I believe the hole was in Antarctica at the time. (It was too far for me to personally confirm… and too cold) Never hear about it anymore.
Air Pollution
When I was a kid in the 70’s we actually had pretty bad smog and air pollution. That was another source of climate disaster that was going to wipe us out. But it is actually much better now. We had regular smog alert days as a kid. I remember we did a time-capsule thing back when I was in junior high, and one of our concerns was explaining how much smog was choking and killing us all. Then it got better.
Global Warming (pt 2)
And then in the 90’s, Al Gore and his inconvenient truth- global warming.
I can probably write off most of the nonsense predictions as overzealous journalists who needed a catchy headline, without necessarily writing off the premise. But even then, there are anomalies.
So if this is truly an existential threat, then we should be switching away from carbon-based fuels at all costs. Even Greta knows this! It just so happens that, at least for infrastructure, such a technology exists: nuclear. I listened to one proponent say he thought we could literally move 100% away from carbon-based to nuclear, at least as far as power plants were concerned within 30 years, IF the world wanted.
Yet when I mention this to my son, the answer is: no way, not nuclear. It has to be green. Well, ok, I can get the preference for green, but if humanity’s existence is literally dependent on transitioning away from carbon, and it’s doable through nuclear, why wouldn’t we do it? Because nuclear is dangerous!
Well, yeah, there are risks, but our EXISTENCE depends on moving away from carbon-based, so in the cost/benefit analysis, it would seem to be worth it, at least until other means can be developed. Nope.
And then there are the curious accords whereby the western nations, which have the best standards of pollution in the developed world, are the most heavily penalized, while China and India, the worst polluters on the planet, are given a chance to ‘catch up’ to western industrial production.
If this were really an existential threat, then emissions need to stop at all costs, not allow the biggest polluters a chance to catch up on their industrial production.
And closely tied with that is the idea of ‘climate justice’, which is the final kicker and tells me that these accords probably have little to do with actually caring about the emissions, and mostly to do with transfer of wealth away from the west and towards developing nations.
So is climate change real? Maybe. But given these facts:
1. I’ve lived through nearly 60 years of wrong apocalyptic predictions
2. The apocalyptic predictions about global warming have failed too, as of yet
3. The anomalies suggest other motivations by the activists rather than protection from extinction
….I think I’ve earned the right to be a bit skeptical about apocalyptic claims. I also acknowledge that skepticism could be justified, and still wrong, so I’m open to suggestions about reducing carbon output, since I don’t want to see the actual apocalypse either.
By the way, if anyone wants an amusing ride down history alley, a bunch of old articles showing some examples of the exaggerations have been documented here:
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/