The same was said about... - Thomas Malthus' 1798-1826 warnings about population growth leading to mass poverty and societal collapse... - Rachel Carson's 196

The same was said about... - Thomas Malthus' 1798-1826 warnings about population growth leading to mass poverty and societal collapse... - Rachel Carson's 1962 warning about a silent spring as a consequence of the use of pesticides (especially DDT) leading to the extinction of wildlife and cancer in humans... - Paul Ehrlich's 1968 warning about mass starvation, he obviously read Malthus and thought he could do better. He didn't, his report has been widely debunked since the world has shown to be fully capable of producing enough food for the population - the problems lie in corruption and distribution, not production... - The Club of Rome (Meadows, Meadows & Randers) followed Malthus and Ehrlich in 1972 with a twist, ecological instability would lead to an uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity... - Norman Myers' 1979 prediction about mass extinction... - Jimmy Carter's (et al) 1977-1981 predictions of oil running out... - Al Gore's 2007 'hockeystick' Nobel Prize with the associated prediction of an ice-free North Pole by 2014... - Greenpeace's 2008 prediction of the oceans being picked clean, GMO foods causing a wave of new food allergies... - The WWF 2012 report predicting the need for at least another planet based on subjective assumptions and unsubstantiated data... Keep in mind that what I'm referring to here is only a small part of the doomsday predictions, there are far more on just about any subject - from climate catastrophe (from ice age to heat death) through nuclear winter past tectonic instability via death by UV due to a lack of ozone to... etcetera. Also keep in mind that it is the doomsday aspect of these predictions which is the problem, not the research (if any) itself. Research is fine, go ahead and publish it, if there are warning signs of some impending catastrophe make sure to verify your model and data by sharing it with the world for verification. What should not be done is the scientific equivalent of tabloid publishing by embellishing the conclusions to attract eyeballs - like the former publications did. Nearly all mentioned doomsday predictions contain a core of truth somewhere but that truth is hidden in the noise when compared to the exaggerated conclusions. When those conclusions turn out to be overblown the core truth also ends up losing credibility. Malthus, Ehrlich, Meadows, Randers et al were not totally wrong in warning about unbridled population growth, Carson was not lying when warning about the dangers of pesticides, Carter et al were right when they pointed out that oil is a finite resource, Greenpeace is not totally off-base in warning about the problems related to overfishing, etc. The problem lies in the exaggerated doomsday predictions they use to attract attention since these (fortunately) never come to fruition. There is a reason tabloids are seen as less trustworthy than traditional broadsheet newspapers - 'EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT, MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS AT DAWN SPOTTED, ALIEN INVASION NIGH?' is the tabloid equivalent of this type of prediction.