Memory Lane, revisited
Update **** Fish notes in comments that the whole cholorfluorocarbon controversy was utterly unproveable in the laboratory.
And that's true, like global warming, the cholorfluorocarbons scare story claimed there was absolutely NO natural explanation for an ozone hole.
BUT it could be explained by cholorfluorocarbons. Thus, every spray bottle in existence had to be rid of cholorfluorocarbons and also, by the way, we couldn't use air conditioning either.
That, apparently didn't go over that well because, as Gayle and Pamela point out, there are still propelled spray bottles but a flurry of legislation made special regulations for air conditioning and other such nonsense.
The environmental scare stories (and culprits) are just getting bigger and the hystrionics are laughable. Not only is there a hole in the ozone, but YOU and YOUR SUV and your very existence are snuffing out life on this planet!
And the solutions are just draconian. I've read some idiots who say there should be no flush toilets, no cars of any kind (well... they environmentalists will need them, of course). Some of the extremists say humans should stop reproducing all together. The sort of claims that really simply scream 'insane.'
There was lots of idiocy going around in the 1970s surrounding environmentalism: Global cooling; global famine, global extinction of all species ending with humans (the food chain scares). But I rather doubt that ANYONE would claim at that time that humans could warm up the earth's climate and, if they did, it did take 30 years of propaganda before people stopped rolling on the floor and laughing. We should still be laughing.
And that's true, like global warming, the cholorfluorocarbons scare story claimed there was absolutely NO natural explanation for an ozone hole.
BUT it could be explained by cholorfluorocarbons. Thus, every spray bottle in existence had to be rid of cholorfluorocarbons and also, by the way, we couldn't use air conditioning either.
That, apparently didn't go over that well because, as Gayle and Pamela point out, there are still propelled spray bottles but a flurry of legislation made special regulations for air conditioning and other such nonsense.
The environmental scare stories (and culprits) are just getting bigger and the hystrionics are laughable. Not only is there a hole in the ozone, but YOU and YOUR SUV and your very existence are snuffing out life on this planet!
And the solutions are just draconian. I've read some idiots who say there should be no flush toilets, no cars of any kind (well... they environmentalists will need them, of course). Some of the extremists say humans should stop reproducing all together. The sort of claims that really simply scream 'insane.'
There was lots of idiocy going around in the 1970s surrounding environmentalism: Global cooling; global famine, global extinction of all species ending with humans (the food chain scares). But I rather doubt that ANYONE would claim at that time that humans could warm up the earth's climate and, if they did, it did take 30 years of propaganda before people stopped rolling on the floor and laughing. We should still be laughing.
Labels: End of the world
posted by Walker at 2:23 PM
4 Comments:
I must admit that in the 70s I was very afraid.... because the scientists said we were heading into an ice age.
Now I wasn't expecting the end of the world, but I was worried about famine and my children's future in muck lucks.
Carbon-Smarbon! I think of the future and what it holds for my children's children and their children and the ozone is the least of my concerns.
Now THAT'll put a cork in your reproductive system.
So many pronouncements of horror in our immediate future - then it doesn't happen, gives us the same faith in the so-called experts as the little boy that cried wolf.
1957 America is behind on missles, everyone should build a bomb shelter.
1970, we're heading into a new ice age.
The "Jupiter Effect". Planets will align, polarity will reverse, mankind may be wiped out in '82.
"The Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich - everyone starves by the 90's.
Y2K, society comes crashing down at midnight December 31, 1999.
There's a hole in the ozone, we're going to be crispy critters any day now.
Al Gore's "Earth in the balance" says we're wiping out rain forest at such a rate, none should be left by 1990.
Put every creature on the endangered species list but mankind.
One tends to lose faith in the "Experts" and "Scientists" when one dire prediction after another comes up as empty hystrionics. Chicken Little has many faces.
Doomsayers will be always with us, united only by the common fact of always being wrong and usually being immune to the provable wrongness of their earlier predictions.
As with most things in life, if the worst every does come to pass, nobody will have ever predicted it.
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