Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Turing_Machine | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Turing_Machine

Close. He said that 4 billion people would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, including 65 million Americans.

Other Ehrlich scenarios (he gets prickly nowadays if you call them "predictions", as well he might):

"Smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles, claiming of the order of 200,000 lives.

U.S. life expectancy falling to 42 years by 1980.

All "important animal life" (whatever that means) in the oceans being extinct by 1980.

Why anyone still pays attention to this chucklehead is a mystery to me.

View on HN

He also "predicted" that a basket of five common commodities would become more scarce in the face of increased demand contrary to classical economic theory[1]. He was thoroughly defeated.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

On the "other scenarios", he made these projections before the EPA came into existence in 1970. Regulation DRAMATICALLY dropped levels of pollution, very rapidly.

https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning...

He can be counted on for reliably projecting the worst case scenario if nothing changes. If something changes he pats himself on the back for saving the world by sounding the alarm and does it again.

This doesn't mean that he should be entirely ignored as an idiot. But it does mean that his projections should be doubted.

His projections should be understood in the same way that you understand the mental exercise of projecting the current exponential population growth a few centuries in the future and wind up with a sphere of writhing humanity expanding into the universe at the speed of light.

(If human beings achieve relativistic spaceflight and start colonizing the universe, would more advanced beings see this as a sphere of writhing humanity expanding into the universe at (some fraction of) the speed of light, then come and squash us as a pestilence?)

"On the "other scenarios", he made these projections before the EPA came into existence in 1970."

The EPA is a U.S. government agency. It had (and has) no authority in the Third World countries that were the subject of Ehrlich's most extreme "scenarios".

IIRC Al Gore was predicting as recently as in early aughts that ice caps would be gone by now and we'll all be underwater. And look at him, still the authority on global warming, private jetting all over the world from his 5000sqft mansion.

Close.

He predicted ice-free arctic summers by 2014. We are not quite there yet -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#/media/...

He did not predict that ice caps would be gone by now.

What I gather is that he came out just around the time global population growth changed from ~exponential to ~linear.

This was a big topic on many minds back in the late-60s to late-70s, because if growth would have continued exponentially, we'd all be very much more screwed today. What else falls in the time window, popular attention to "The Limits to Growth", "Peak Oil", and introduction of China's one-child policy.

As often, historical context I think aids perspective =)

To add, the winner of the Hugo award that year was Stand on Zanzibar [1], although Brunner successfully guessed the population growth rate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar

This was a big topic on many minds back in the late-60s to late-70s, because if growth would have continued exponentially, we'd all be very much more screwed today.

Pretty much the same kind of mistake Malthus made. Exponential growth will eventually change the conditions that enabled the exponential growth. One of these changes in a human societal context will be the formation of an opportunity for people to get rich by solving the problem. Malthus didn't take this into account.

"All "important animal life" (whatever that means) in the oceans being extinct by 1980."

The 'all' was an exaggeration, but if herring fishing in the North Sea wasn't completely stopped from 1977 to 1983, herring likely would have become extinct there, fishermen would have moved to other species, and things likely would have ended disastrously.

Also, to this day, the EU limits the amount of fish caught in its waters because, unregulated, the North Sea would have long been effectively empty of cod, herring, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Fisheries_Policy)

> "Smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles, claiming of the order of 200,000 lives.

And in fact air pollution kills about 7 million people per year.

Almost entirely in developing nations from indoor cooking smoke. Dirty coal plants and electric ovens (or better, gas ovens and natgas fraking) would vastly improve the average air quality for these people.

Things would've been far worse, had the green revolution not happened, and if we didn't have things like the Clean Air Act.

With all the current attempted and actual dismantling of the factors you mention, perhaps his predictions just need to be time shifted a few decades. Obviously, I hope not.

So I went to look at the EPA's global greenhouse emissions data. I couldn't readily determine when the passage of any major environmental regulation occurred just by looking at the chart. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

It turns out the Clean Air Act was passed in 1955. Not even a blip on the radar. Then in the 60s they amended it significantly to apply to motor vehicles. Not even a blip on the radar.

Basically, the Clean Air Act doesn't seem to have done one iota of good with regards to total global greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore nothing for Global Warming. Mostly it has helped move dirty jobs overseas.

I don't know why you're focused on greenhouse gas emissions with regards to the Clean Air Act. So far as I'm aware, the Clean Air Act didn't attempt to address greenhouse gasses.

Does social/political smog not count?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com