Showing posts with label Human Survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Survival. Show all posts

Thursday, December 9, 2010

What the Predictions of Greens, Luddites, and Doomers are Worth

CagleCartoon via Historian

The climate of doom generated by greens, Luddites, and doomers of 2010 sounds remarkably similar to the climate of doom generated by the same groups in 1970. Here is some food for thought on the reliability of such predictions:
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” – George Wald, Harvard Biologist

...“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

...“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

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

...“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” – Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, 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

“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

“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
... _Historian_Predictions from 1970
More from Paul Ehrlich:
"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (Population Bomb 1968)
"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)
"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)
"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." (1969)
"By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million." (1969) _igreens
Even more revealing quotes from our green, dieoff.orgy, and lefty-Luddite friends:
"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of
economic socialism and environmental policy." Timothy Wirth, former U.S.
Senator (D-Colorado)

...Global Sustainability requires: "the deliberate quest of poverty . . .
reduced resource consumption . . . and set levels of mortality control."
Professor Maurice King

..."Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of
giving an idiot child a machine gun." Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University _Source
Here are more proclamations from your elitist betters:
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
- Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
- Christopher Manes, Earth First!

“The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.”
- Ingrid Newkirk, former President of PETA

“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal _Telegraph_quoted in Wiseup
You can find several more equally damning quotes here. Decades after they have been shown to be foolish frauds, these morons still do not know when to shut up (read the comments and weep). And the media does not hesitate to give them a "megaphone of doom" whenever they request one.

Universities, media rooms, and government bureaucracies are full of this type of idiot. If you send your children to university, chances are good that they will be taught crudely updated versions of the same message. The less intelligent of your children will take these ideas to heart, and never give them up. They will be good little lambs to the slaughter.

You, on the other hand, can see the duplicity, the lack of credibility, and have the opportunity to decide for yourself.

Monday, November 15, 2010

How the E-Book Saved Civilisation

Many of you may be familiar with the story of how the Irish monks and scribes saved civilisation from the dark ages, by way of their scrupulous record-keeping and manuscript copying. Others may remember how an astrophysicist saved civilisation in the book "Lucifer's Hammer," by carefully storing hundreds of important books in an underground cache in the hillside above his house.

The world of books and manuscripts has changed since the Dark Ages -- even since the science fiction world of Pournelle and Niven's Lucifer's Hammer. Now we have e-books, which may have an important role to play in saving civilisation all over again.

US ebook sales are headed for $1 billion in 2011. The NYTimes is to begin publishing e-book bestseller lists next year. Librarians are beginning to help clients download library ebooks onto their personal devices. E-books are beginning to go multi-media, for a more varied and potentially intense reading experience. And just in time for the 2010 holiday sales season. A number of blogs and websites have sprung up to assist readers in keeping up with ebook and ebook reader trends, including teleread and good ereader.

The dream of ebook visionaries is to be able to carry the Library of Congress inside an ebook reader the size of a Kindle. As memory and storage continue to shrink, that dream is becoming much less wacky than it once would have been. With the assistance of solar re-charging, long-lasting batteries (with ample spares) and advanced power management tools, a sophisticated survivalist may well be able to store most of the relevant knowledge and history of civilisation through even an extended coming anarchy or dark age.

Consumer Reports recently ranked the Kindle 3G as the best of the readers, although the new Sony reader is supposed to offer some features that surpass the Kindle. More on the Kindle 3G:
All-New, High-Contrast E Ink Screen – 50% better contrast
Read in Bright Sunlight – No glare
New and Improved Fonts – New crisper, darker fonts
New Sleek Design – 21% smaller body while keeping the same 6" size reading area
15% Lighter – Only 8.7 ounces, weighs less than a paperback
Battery Life of One Month – A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off
Double the Storage – Up to 3,500 books
Books in 60 Seconds – Download books anytime, anywhere
Free 3G Wireless – No monthly payments, no annual contracts
Built-In Wi-Fi – In addition to the 3G wireless, you can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots
20% Faster Page Turns – Seamless reading
Enhanced PDF Reader – With dictionary lookup, notes, and highlights
New WebKit-Based Browser – Free 3G web browsing (experimental) _Amazon
3500 books is not quite the US Library of Congress, of course, but if you are selective you should be able to store a fairly solid start to a new technological civilisation. And as memory and storage sizes are reduced, you will be able to store that many more thousands of additional books. Be sure to store your ebook cache in a protected environment from fire, shock, EMP, water, heat, chemicals, theft, and other environmental and human-caused damage. Store your springboards to new civilisations where the brown-shirted book burners and dieoff.org Luddites of the far left and far right will never find them.

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