A history of scientific alarms
From the IPA Review
A history of scientific alarms
There is a long and dismal history of alarming forecasts that were literally too bad to be true. But many people believed these predictions that human actions would harm the environment and thereby cause disaster for people. As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that the human population would grow beyond the ability of the environment to support it. Before him, Socrates bemoaned the loss of forests around Athens. Arguably the most harmful alarm was about DDT, the banning of which has cost many millions of lives …
The media are culpable in promulgating these false alarms. Though regrettable, the weakness is understandable: alarms are news. Rational sceptical responses require time and effort to assemble, and don’t have the same emotional urgency. We have to follow closely to ever learn that an alarm has been shown to be false, and most of us are too busy to do that …
Here then, in brief, is a Top 20 of environmentalist alarms and their outcomes. Please, let’s learn from them by not being so gullible!
Read the 20 most unscientific scares at the IPA Review
Academics and others who dare to question the majority view are brutally told the science has been settled. Many such dissenters from catastrophist orthodoxy have lost their jobs, been denied promotion, or subjected to constant harassment and ridicule. This not the way science should be done
Aug 25 2024
3 mins
There's a veritable industry of academics raising alarm about how global warming and a polluted, dying planet will leave humanity and the animal kingdom in such a state that cannibalism will be a matter of survival. I'll spurn schoolyard puns and cheap gags except for one, and that by way of good advice: don't give them a big hand
Aug 09 2024
13 mins
I thought initially that this topic was a bit of fun. But it turns out that entomophagy, as the eating of insects is called, is an essential component of the Western lemmings' race to net-zero. Need it be said that one of the biggest and most enthusiastic lemmings is our very own climate crazies at the CSIRO?
Jul 31 2024
15 mins