Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 February 2002
Dr Belinda Medlyn (Letters, February 21) audaciously accuses Dr Stone (Letters, February 20) of lying about whether or not snow is melting on the summit of Kilimanjaro. By using different sets of dates they are both able to support their hypotheses and reach different conclusions.
However, Dr Medlyn’s assertion that it is likely that “at the current rate of melting the icecap is likely to disappear entirely within 15 years” is very bold indeed.
Would she care to back that up with a wager?
These sorts of alarmist predictions have a terrible track record. Start with Malthus’s claim in 1798 that Britain faced impending starvation due to overpopulation, and move on into the 20th century, when the Club of Rome made in the ’70s that the world would run out of oil by 1990.
Mencken got it right when he said: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Nicholas Kerr,
Manly, February 21.
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