What to Wear at the Coming Eco-Apocalypse

 

Sure, the future looks dim: The sun will beat down on a crusted Earth, baby seals will have no ice to sit on, and the air will be filled with locusts, frogs, and the dreaded no-see-ums.

But that’s our future according to the climate scientists, so it just makes sense for the rest of us to take the appropriate steps to find a way to live with the global catastrophe that is here now (according to some) or coming our way fast. Forewarned is forearmed.

When I look back at the predictions of the prophesying pundits in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, I see that ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted that by the year 2000, “we will be using up crude oil at such a rate that there won’t be any more crude oil.”

I remember well, don’t you, when the oil wells ran dry all over the world? Happily, I had prepared for that terrible day: I sold my gas-guzzling car and bought a Pedicar, which I now pedal to the grocery store with the bounteous Marie perched on the luggage rack, Safeway shopping bag in hand.

In January of 1970, Life magazine breathlessly reported that scientists now have solid evidence to support the following prediction: “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.”

Naysayers, I can hear it now: Scoff, scoff, scoff.  That’s all you Republican naysayers do.  Science deniers!

Needless to say,  I bought a gas mask in 1980, the year Life predicted we’d have to wear gas masks to survive. That was 38 years ago, and I’m still alive due to my mask (though five years ago I switched to one of those chic little smog masks the Japanese wear. Mine is black). You naysayers are probably dead of carbon dioxide asphyxiation. Serves you right.

Kenneth Watt again: “If present trends continue. . . the world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

When the year 2000 arrived, I bought a very handsome pair of woolen onesies. As it turned out, that was a bit warm for Portland, but there was an upside: I now look as cool as a Portland hipster in my woolen onesie, black face mask, and pork pie hat. I attend all the eco-protests and am widely admired for my outfit.

Paul Ehrlich (April 1970), the greatest of all the prognosticators, had this to say about food resources in the future: “The death rate will increase until at least 100 to 200 million people per year will starve to death during the next ten years.”

As a result of Ehrlich’s prediction, I stocked my larder with Mormon apocalypse food — everything freeze-dried, canned, and hermetically sealed. It should be enough to keep Marie and me alive until it’s safe to emerge after the Gentiles and zombies are gone.

I am encouraged that Bill Nye the Science Guy agrees with Ehrlich’s warnings. But Nye goes Ehrlich one step further. Like Ehrlich, Nye thinks that people are having too many children. But Nye wants to penalize couples for having too many children. Raise your hand Ricocheters if you have too many children. OK, now turn one of them into the authorities. I would choose your least favorite.

The Science Guy may not have a Ph.D., but he does have a bow tie, a lab coat, and his last name rhymes with Science Guy. He may not be a scientist, but the guy does know how to brand himself.

Here’s a report from Harvard, home of the smartest people in the world. In 1970, one of those smartest people, Harvard biologist George Wald, predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken. . . .”

I don’t remember civilization dying off, but I’m pretty sure it did. I think I remember a story in The Oregonian about the Vandals and Goths sacking Rome, but I’m not entirely sure of that.

We now turn to the greatest eco-disaster predictor of them all, Al Gore, whose predictions of a catastrophic future were so spot on that the Nobel Committee gave him a Nobel Prize (every bit as deserving as Obama’s) for his 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth.  In that movie, Gore predicted that the polar bears would soon be drowning due to lack of ice to stand on.

Two years later, in 2008, Gore doubled down on his prediction: “The entire north polar ice cap,” Gore said, “will be gone in 5 years.”

I haven’t been up there, but I trust that the ice cap has now disappeared. It has, hasn’t it? What a terrible fate for the polar bears. They just swim and swim and can’t find a piece of ice. Then the poor things sink to the bottom of the warm water that the North Pole has become. Sad.

Once the ice caps have melted, according to Gore, “the oceans will rise 20 feet.” Once again, I trust in Gore’s visions — I have no doubt that New Orleans is now 20 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. I never liked New Orleans anyway, with their little beignets, crawfish pie (has there ever been a dish more unappetizing?), and corny Dixieland Jazz. Just in case the Pacific Ocean reaches Portland, I have bought scuba gear for me and Marie.

Lest we think that the climate scientists are gun shy because of the backbiting and scoffing by climate change deniers (mostly anti-science Republicans), just a few weeks ago the climate scientists of the US Global Change Research Program predicted that mosquitoes, ticks (but no locusts or frogs), and increasing depression and suicides are coming our way because of global warming. I have bought a case of Coppertone for the sun, Deet for the insect bites, and a gallon of Prozac for depression. I would follow my example if I were you.

I am a little confused, though. In the 1970s the climate scientists thought that the ice age was going to return. But now they think it’s going to be hot, hot, hot. So I don’t know whether to buy an air conditioner or a flint fire-starter in order to survive the coming apocalypse.

It’s been said that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Happily, our apocalyptic prophets have received honors galore. They have won Nobel Prizes, Harvard professorships, and government stipends.

These prizes only prove my point. They wouldn’t hand out prizes if the eco-disasters the climate scientists predicted hadn’t panned out, would they? Would they? Also, the fact that the Nobel Prize Committee hasn’t taken back Gore’s Nobel Prize is just another indication that his predictions materialized just the way he said they would.

Repent, climate change deniers, the end is near!

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  1. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles
    Coolidge
    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

     

     

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    • #31
  2. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    I Walton (View Comment):

    We’re missing the most important projection that is coming true, e.g. that predictions of apocalyptic crises requiring big government solutions will increase exponentially and in spite of the absence of empirical verification over the years will be ever more widely believed until replaced by the next crisis that will also require big government solutions and will also be widely believed.

    And what solutions will there be when Bwando is traded at $ 455 a gallon?

    • #32
  3. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    We’re missing the most important projection that is coming true, e.g. that predictions of apocalyptic crises requiring big government solutions will increase exponentially and in spite of the absence of empirical verification over the years will be ever more widely believed until replaced by the next crisis that will also require big government solutions and will also be widely believed.

    I’m not convinced that apocalyptic paranoia increases over time, let alone exponentially. I’m more inclined to believe that fear of an impending apocalypse stays relatively constant over time, and that it’s only the purported cause of the impending apocalypse that changes.

    Look at all the people who built fallout shelters in their backyards in the 20th century. Those shelters were built at the urging of government, and yet they ended up being unused. There will never be an end to the debate over whether the fear of nuclear apocalypse was ever really rationally justified.

    It’s probably a matter of signal propagation. If the government, newspapers, radio, or internet is punching up the message, more gullible people will buy in.

    Also instructive is the very selective portrayal of how people react to official predictions of impending environmental collapse.

    For example, I am forever amused/bemused by the way preppers are portrayed as “right-wing lunatics” considering that their preparations would have been the most rational action if past predictions had been correct.

    Think about it. Imagine a world where:

    1. Paul Ehrlich had been right and 100-200 million people per year had been starving by 1980 and the USA had ceased to exist by 1992.
    2. Jimmy Carter had been right and the “whole world” had run out of oil in 2011.
    3. James Hansen had been right and the global temperature had risen by 0.45°C between 1988 and 1997.
    4. Al Gore was right and the Earth has been in a “True Planetary Emergency” since 2016.

    In such an alternate history of the planet, the preppers should be the only people left standing! So how come none of the most famous climate hysterics are all-in on the prepper phenomenon?

    One might conclude that either they have zero confidence in their own predictions, or else they’re supremely confident that the mitigation efforts already in place are working.

    (Addendum: To be fair to Jimmy Carter, the US did start depositing oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during the first year of his presidency, and FEMA was created in the second year.SNIP

    Plus why do the experts think that by making the predictions so dire that most in the populace won’t simply go, “Well, I might as well live a bit and turn the thermostat on to 66 in the summer, 84 in the winter, and buy the biggest monster muscle car I can get my hands on?”

    • #33
  4. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    CarolJoy (View Comment):
    “Well, I might as well live a bit and turn the thermostat on to 66 in the summer, 84 in the winter, and buy the biggest monster muscle car I can get my hands on?”

    I endorse this message.

    • #34
  5. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Well, there’s ‘satyr-worthy’….

    • #35
  6. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    CarolJoy (View Comment):
    Plus why do the experts think that by making the predictions so dire that most in the populace won’t simply go, “Well, I might as well live a bit and turn the thermostat on to 66 in the summer, 84 in the winter, and buy the biggest monster muscle car I can get my hands on?”

    This is precisely why there was (allegedly) some speculation in progressive cyberspace that the recent climate report released by the executive branch of the US government was intentionally hyperbolic so that Americans would be less likely to believe it.

    [Insert eyeroll here.]

    • #36
  7. She Member
    She
    @She

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    She is perfectly lovely.  And so are you.   Where is Bob?

    And I think “bounteous” is a lovely word.  Also, I realize you can’t help yourself.  It’s that seventeenth/eighteenth-century Lit Thing.  Beaumont & Fletcher:

    Arnoldo: Bounteous Lady,
    If in your sex there be that noble softness,
    That tenderness of heart, women are crown’d for–
    . . .

    Make me your slave, I give my freedom to ye,
    For ever to be fetter’d to your service–Beaumont & Fletcher, The Custom of the Country, 1647, Act VI, Scene i

    • #37
  8. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    I read this aloud to my wife and she laughed aloud as well.

    But she had one strong comment: I want to know what kind of house he’s living in.  If he’s not living in some kind of underground bunker then he’s wasting his time!

    So, what is it?

    PS: Wife has no interest in preparing for any apocalypse.  While I’m hoping to get a cheap fixer-upper Minuteman silo.

    • #38
  9. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    She (View Comment):

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    She is perfectly lovely. And so are you. Where is Bob?

    And I think “bounteous” is a lovely word. Also, I realize you can’t help yourself. It’s that seventeenth/eighteenth-century Lit Thing. Beaumont & Fletcher:

    Arnoldo: Bounteous Lady,
    If in your sex there be that noble softness,
    That tenderness of heart, women are crown’d for–
    . . .

    Make me your slave, I give my freedom to ye,
    For ever to be fetter’d to your service–Beaumont & Fletcher, The Custom of the Country, 1647, Act VI, Scene i

    Great quote, She.  Just great.  I wish I had thought of it first.

    • #39
  10. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Haha! Hilarious! And don’t forget renowned scientist Ted Danson who told us in 1990 that we had only ten years to “Do Something.”

    So what did you do?

    • #40
  11. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Haha! Hilarious! And don’t forget renowned scientist Ted Danson who told us in 1990 that we had only ten years to “Do Something.”

    So what did you do?

    I drove around all day in my SUV and turned the A/C up as high as I wanted to, and here I still am 30 years later. Who’s the science denier?

    • #41
  12. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    According to the news and the RSOE site…..the previously stone cold Antarctic seems to have hot rocks underneath melting things….I did a post on it – called Hell Freezes Over – look it up….then a few days ago the earth rang a bell….or rattled an unusual seismic roll – called rock and roll across the world. No one heard it or felt it – just geological geeks noticed it and said Whoa Nellie!  Maybe nature is just taking its course.  Or the devil is just firing up the furnaces down below, and making more room….

    Ken – I’m with you – I’m not going to stock gold, cause you can’t eat gold, I’m tired of buying a year’s worth of water, and canned goods that expire…..I like my 18 year old Rover…. I have a compost bucket – what more do you want?

    https://nypost.com/2018/11/29/nobody-knows-why-the-earth-just-rang-like-a-bell/

     

    • #42
  13. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Oh crap!  Here’s the headline on weather.com

    https://weather.com/news/news/2018-12-03-cop24-poland-climate-summit

     

    • #43
  14. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    Oh crap! Here’s the headline on weather.com

    https://weather.com/news/news/2018-12-03-cop24-poland-climate-summit

    Oh good grief. And who is that stupid perky girl narrating. — “Humans!”

    • #44
  15. Matt Balzer, Straw Bootlegger Member
    Matt Balzer, Straw Bootlegger
    @MattBalzer

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Quietpi (View Comment):

    KentForrester: with the bounteous Marie perched on the luggage rack

    I trust this is a typo, and you meant to say, “beautious.”

    You got something against Rubenesque women?

    The sauerkraut, mostly.

    • #45
  16. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    KentForrester: I am encouraged that Bill Nye the Science Guy

    I prefer Dr. Science:  http://drscience.com/wordpress/

    • #46
  17. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I was only half joking.  With time, interests build up around these issues and they grow and can’t be undone except by the next systematically promoted fear.  Since the constant is the requirement for top down big government solutions,  growth is growth.  All growth is exponential until it becomes decay which is also non linear.

    • #47
  18. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    KentForrester: I am encouraged that Bill Nye the Science Guy

    I prefer Dr. Science: http://drscience.com/wordpress/

    I didn’t know he had a web presence – I remember him from the radio in the eighties.

    Edit: Also, thank you for the tip!

    • #48
  19. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore?  Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti?  Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    • #49
  20. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Kent is a National Treasure.

    • #50
  21. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Cat, this was taken in Berlin as my 80th-birthday approached.  Two posts previously, I had written about the graffiti in Hamburg and Berlin. 

    • #51
  22. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Kent is a National Treasure.

    Ms. RightAngles, you’re too sweet.  (You’re not jiving me, are you?)

    • #52
  23. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Kent is a National Treasure.

    Ms. RightAngles, you’re too sweet. (You’re not jiving me, are you?)

    No!

    • #53
  24. Matt Balzer, Straw Bootlegger Member
    Matt Balzer, Straw Bootlegger
    @MattBalzer

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Kent is a National Treasure.

    Ms. RightAngles, you’re too sweet. (You’re not jiving me, are you?)

    No!

    Yeah, you were a stewardess. You don’t even know how to speak jive.

    (Or did you just work the desk?)

    • #54
  25. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Matt Balzer, Straw Bootlegger (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Coolidge

    KentForrester Post author

    I’d better set the record straight lest Marie get ahold of this. Here is what she actually looks like at age 75.

    In my eyes, she’s perfectly lovely and so wonderfully Rubenesque that any satyr would be happy to chase her around the meadow.

    Men. She’s so pretty but I recommend a new adjective. She is certainly not fat.

    Lovely couple, and what a great husband – so full of compliments – do they make those anymore? Was this in Germany when you posted about the graffiti? Great post – that one and this one Kent.

    Kent is a National Treasure.

    Ms. RightAngles, you’re too sweet. (You’re not jiving me, are you?)

    No!

    Yeah, you were a stewardess. You don’t even know how to speak jive.

    (Or did you just work the desk?)

    Hahaha!  I worked in the sales office on Michigan Ave. in Sales Promotion as a Group Coordinator. I wouldn’t have made a very good stewardess (ME: “Get your own damn pillow! What am I, the maid?”)  and anyway AF hired only citizens of EU countries as flight attendants. I did go to France several times a year, usually escorting groups of travel agents.

    • #55
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