Milton Banana wrote:
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
Have that time to do something about what? The taking of quotes out of context really ruins the credibility of the claim about said quotes.
Quote:
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
would this be the pollution which was acted against, or food shortage, which was also acted against, or .... context is a wonderful thing.
Quote:
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
It appears of face value to be a failed prediction, but again context is critical for other sentences could have qualified these statements.
Quote:
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970
Again the context is critical especially since there seems to be sections not quoted.
Quote:
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Again without context, which would have been correct if there had been the qualifier of no action being taken to mitigate the pollution and with the portion not quoted there is a question.
“By the year 2000, [b]if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist[/b]
So if the present trends did not continue?
Quote:
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson
An interpretation of a prediction by a politician .... the quote from Dr. Ripley would be better.
Quote:
“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
Again if present trend do not continue .....
Quote:
All of these quotes are from the year 1970. None of these came true. These wild predictions have been going on forever. The OP is just another sortie into the time honored scare tactic.
Especially if the context of the quotes is removed and any qualifiers ignored.