Or they could, erm, actually be inflammatory. -Kate

Projections are not the same as predictions. Projections are calculated using a range of hypothetical values for different factors influencing the result if don’t yet know what path these factors (often societal in nature) will take. Predictions are made when scientists have confidence in what path they will take.

In the case of Ehrlich, society managed to prevent these influencing factors from creating a worst-case scenario. Therefore, it is misleading to say that his projections, which were based on hypothetical values, were incorrect. Let me know if you find a peer-reviewed modelling simulation (probably a biogeochemical model for DDT in the oceans, I’m not sure what kind of model would be used for agricultural production) that uses the same worst-case values for influencing factors, but has a less extreme outcome than Ehrlich found. -Kate

The point is that a sufficiently motivated and scientifically informed society and its governments can act in the general good. I suspect that if we were to try and ban DDT today that we would face a similar barage of claims and counter claims as occurs now with AGW, but fought over the internet, not debates brought forward by placard-carrying university students and others at rallies, or book signings (Rachael Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’). And funding for the science behind the green revolution would be opposed because ‘why should my taxes be used to feed people in a Muslim country?’

An unfortunate consequence of the green revolution was a heavier reliance on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which are made from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on oil products.

I obtained some of the above from the US EPA here: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/ddt/01.htm
and a Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

I paid close attention to Dr. Ehrlich’s claims back then and was quite alarmed. I dropped out of school and considered emigrating to Australia or New Zealand. Little came of Dr. Ehrlich’s scenarios and since then I have had a rather jaundiced view of scientific claims about the environment. I don’t find Dr. Schneider’s quote in this topic encouraging of trust either.

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You can find these quotes all over the net — I assumed they were common knowledge in the previous version of this post, but here’s one link for both at Stanford, where Schneider and Ehrlich worked as professors.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970′s and 1980′s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
– Dr. Paul Ehrlich, “The Population Bomb” (1968), p.1

“This vast tragedy, however, is nothing compared to the nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s) … A situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.”
– Dr. Paul Ehrlich, “The End of Affluence” (1974), p.21

“Hundreds of millions of people will soon perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles…the oceans will die of DDT poisoning by 1979…the U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics.”
- Paul Ehrlich, 1969 in Ramparts.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/quotes.html