Funny Earth day predictions of the 70's
- Thread starter miraclefan
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"I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."
Actually most of those predictions are not absurd, and not even necessarily wrong, although a bit alarmist. For example:
How can you deny any of that?
How can you deny any of that?
Because they are alarmist BS propaganda that ignores history as well as man's ability to persevere.
“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
Someone get Al Gore on the phone..
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Someone get Al Gore on the phone..
Alarmist propaganda yes, BS no, in my opinion.
Yep. It seems like every decade I've been alive there's been some kind of life-threatening event just about to happen. You can only cry "Wolf" so many times until people just start ignoring you.“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
Someone get Al Gore on the phone..
Depending on one's definition of "computer", this was actually nowhere nearly as silly as you're making it out to be. Ever hear of cloud computing?
Maybe not the five richest kings of Europe - more like five of the wealthiest companies in the world.
Ever heard of Professor Frink?
It does remind me of this quote that I saw a while ago and had to look up, "Where a computer like the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons." - March 1948 Popular Mechanics.
“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
Someone get Al Gore on the phone..
I thought this one was hilarious.
“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
Someone get Al Gore on the phone..
Well, the world *has* been chillin' for quite a while...
Pretty soon, it'll be chillaxing.
I'm not sure what in the heck you think he has to do with any of this, and
the proper response to this would probably get me warned, at the least!
Um, you do realize that a great deal of environmental protection legislation was passed and extensive clean-up work did in fact take place following 1970, yes?
In other words, these idiots at that website are looking at these statements as if both the and the present happened in a vacuum. They did not. Shit changed between then and now that mitigated some of the things people saw as possible then. I see this list as testimony to the efficacy of environmental legislation and motivation to campaign harder for more. Thanks for posting it.
They did do something. In 1970, rivers were catching on fire. Then, within 5 years, they did something called the clean water and clean air acts, among others, which gave us more time to maneuver.
Virtually immediate action was, in fact taken. Who knows what would have happened if water had continued burning.
But for the Clean Air Act and emissions standards on cars, who knows?
Present trends did not continue. CAFE standards were established and the fuel crisis led to the introduction of much smaller and more efficient cars, at least for a good long while.
In other words, these idiots at that website are looking at these statements as if both the and the present happened in a vacuum. They did not. Shit changed between then and now that mitigated some of the things people saw as possible then. I see this list as testimony to the efficacy of environmental legislation and motivation to campaign harder for more. Thanks for posting it.
That was "his" quote regarding the future of computers.
There are a few eye-rollers in that list, but an awful lot of them seem to be on target. The famine predictions, for example, are pretty much correct, though exaggerated for effect.
Oh. That's what I get for not actually reading the article linked in the OP.
Then i guess you don't watch the Simpsons and don't realize that it was a joke.
TheLonelySquire
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