| A misquoting of Paul Ehrlich |
| this page was created by me, Jeff Opal, on 9-FEB-2004, and was last updated on 12-FEB-2004 |
| Note 244, on page 359 of The Skeptical Environmentalist says this: |
| 244. Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1974:33. They also pre- dict a stock market crash for 1985 (p.176). |
| However, page 176 of the referenced book (The End of Affluence, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, 1974) actually says this: |
| Probably before 1985, a general recognition of the changed economic status of the nation will lead to a stock-market collapse even more severe than the one that preceded the onset of the depression of the 1930s. |
| This misquoting thereby changed Ehrlich's claim from one merely speculating about what is probable (more than 50% likely to occur) to a claim about what will surely occur within a delimited range of time: a falsifiable prediction. Moreover, Lomborg gave his strawman "prediction" a sharply reduced trial period, falsely reducing the primary range of time from 11 years to only 1 year. Note: this sharp reduction certainly has an effect of causing readers to view Ehrlich as being excessively certain his conclusions are correct. |
| A Final Note: I checked all of Lomborg's quotings of The End of Affluence. All the others seemed to be accurate quotings. |