The Wisdom Of Skeptics

So many times before, I've identified all the catastrophes--and just the ones in my lifetime--that were supposed to spell doom for the human race, yet here we sit with a higher percentage of humans on the planet not living in poverty than at any known time in human history.  The left has unjustly cried "wolf" so many times that I wonder if there will ever even be a wolf attack.

The author of this post identified some of the most egregious (and grossly incorrect) environmental claims of the past few decades and justified skepticism of today's Chicken Littleism this way:

“Perhaps children and young Americans are more likely to buy into the extreme environmentalist doomsaying due to the fact that they weren’t around for the laughably wrong predictions of the past that never came true,” he said.

Stepman went on to say that nearly every big prediction made by the environmentalists ends up being proven wrong. Remember in the 60s and 70s when enviros were all worried about overpopulation…

Stepman concludes saying, “If there’s a lesson to be learned from all of these predictions, it’s not that scientists are always wrong or that we shouldn’t be good stewards of the environment. Instead, we should treat extreme predictions with skepticism, especially if they mean upending our way of life.”

There's a (very cynical) reason the left always tries to scare the children.

Update, 3/16/18: Let's not forget the rabid panics of this past, including this one from 1989:

A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday...

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

We're at 30 years now.