1970s The Population Bomb … 2009 Global Warming. Settled Science Then and Now?

Zombietime has unearthed some truly loathsome writings that Obama’s new Science Czar, John Holdren, coauthored with Anne and Paul Ehrich (of The Population Bomb fame). The book, published in 1977: Ecoscience, Population, Resources, Environment is filled with the same fearmongering the global warmists are promoting today. It alleges with certitude, if nothing is done rapidly and forcefully, humanity will be doomed to mass starvations. The rhetoric is eerily similar to the doomsday predictions of global warming. From the Holdren’s book: Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world. The solutions are draconian, including forced abortions: Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. And taking babies from mothers: One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. And birth control chemicals added to drinking water: Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals…. All enforced by an all knowing Planetary Regime: The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. Of course none of the dire predictions occurred. There were no mass starvations. What famines happened were primarily from wars or political oppression, such as North Korea, Sudan, Somalia and the Congo. Settled Science was wrong then, as it is now. The purveyors of warming pseudo science, now prefer to call it Global Change as major areas in the US and Europe shiver during a summer without a summer. Somehow snow in June in the Dakotas doesn’t conjure up an image of an overheated planet. The purpose of both these scenarios was and is to establish absolute power in the hands of those who think they have our best interests at heart -- those with infallible knowledge to do good. But as with the monarchies of old, these elites simply want the power to control those they look down on. Read the passages over again, read the book. Is this the world we want to live in? This country rid itself of absolutist rule over two hundred years ago. We don’t need it now.