Earth's Future Greener Than Ever, Says Policy Group

          http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/technologyandresearch/a/earthday.htm   The 1970s brought us many things, including the idea that Earth was going to pot. Gloom and doom predictions by those supposedly in the know have kept “Earth Day” a main focus for the environment movement. But the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public policy group based in Washington, D.C., and according to the Wall Street Journal, “the best environmental think tank in the country,” Earth Day is nothing more than a propaganda tool used to scare the public. As evidence, CEI cites the following advances, many of which go well beyond the 30-yr. history of “Earth Day.”

There is no “scientific consensus” that global warming will cause damaging climate change. In fact, global average temperature is only about 0.6o higher than a century ago. Outlandish claims that our earth is warming at an extreme rate mischaracterize the scientific research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences. The world is not in severe danger from rising sea levels.

Alarmists such as Paul Ehrlich made hysterical predictions 30-plus years ago about the world running out of food. However, worldwide, the amount of food produced per acre has doubled over the past 50 years. In the United States alone, more than three times the amount of people are fed on 33 percent less farmland than in 1900. In addition, death from famine dropped during the 20th century, despite the world’s population quadrupling.

“Tree huggers’” claims of mass de-forestation are completely unfounded based on the numbers. In the early part of the twentieth century, people cut down twice as many trees as they planted; now the United States grows 36 percent more trees than it harvests. Some researchers believe tree numbers are larger today than when Columbus arrived in 1492! In fact, less dependence on wood for fuel and construction has led to a decrease in wood consumption by half since 1900.