| Perhaps the most famous mistaken prediction in recent times was the "Club of Rome" prediction that economic growth would grind to a halt, around the world, during the later part of the twentieth century. Both industrial output per capita and food per capita were to decline, along with a long-run decline in natural resources.67 In this model the "death rate rises abruptly from pollution and from lack of food."68 |
| Donella H Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind. (New York: Universe Books, 1973), p. 124. |
| A lie by Thomas Sowell about a prediction published by the Club of Rome |
| The falsehood described on this web page is a severe one, which is why I decided to fully document it. I invite curious readers to confirm all the details for themselves. The falsehood simultaneously, (1) is obviously false. Anyone who finds both The Vision of the Annointed and The Limits to Growth and examines the relevant pages (described below) can clearly see that Sowell has published a "clear-cut", blatantly obvious falsehood. (2) is obviously intentional. Its not a trivial error of proofreading, or something like that, because Sowell's claim uses too many fact-contradicting words and assumptions to be such an error. The main evidence: Sowell's surrounding text describes the prediction as "Perhaps the most famous mistaken prediction in recent times... ", which uses many words, and is and inherently impossible claim. No typing error could have innocently caused the wording of such a false claim, because too many letters are used.. Additional evidence of intent is the embellishment "latter part". The actual prediction is for an entire century. Again, a proofreading error could not explain this falsehood. Sowell surely believed that without this limiting adjective (making the prediction more reasonable) many readers would suspect him of misquoting the source. It is impossible for a prediction to be "mistaken" (i.e., to have been falsified by evidence) if the ending-year of the time period of the prediction is 105 years in the future. (Sowell's book was copyrighted in 1995, which is 105 years prior to the final year of the trial-period of the prediction: 2100). (3) it serves to unfairly ruin the reputation of a respectable organization. (4) is used by Sowell to support a sweeping generalization about persons/groups Sowell's book is obviously intended to sharply attack. |
| The lie: |
| Really? During the latter half of the 1900s? Wow! These words appear on page 77 of Sowell's book exactly as above, except for three minor differences: (1) The text color (there it is black, not blue). (2) The horizontal alignment of the words (in Sowell's book it is both left justified and right justified, which this geocities' editor is unable to do). And finally: (3) the citation numbers in Sowell's text is raised above the level of the surrounding characters. The citation for the page 77 claim appears this way on page 277: |
| Page 124 of Club of Rome's book shows a chart (called "figure 35") that plots the predictions of one computer run. None of the wording on this page describes the Club of Rome's overall conclusions. The horizontal axis represents the years 1900 to 2100. Eight lines plotted across the chart represent eight things predicted by the computer program: population (total number of persons), industrial output per capita, food per capita, pollution, nonrenewable resources, crude birth rate, crude death rate, and services per captia (dollar equivalent per person per year). Industrial output peaks at around 2008, food per capita peaks around 2009, and population peaks around 2055. |
| Wording of the main text (below the chart's caption) includes these words: "The scales are, however, exactly equal in all the computer runs presented here, so results of different runs...". These words make it obvious that the chart represents merely one of many computer runs the Club of Rome used as a basis for predicting. |
| Wording describing their famous prediction is on page 23 of the book's introduction, and again on page 126 of chapter 3. After careful searching I was unable to find the prediction repeated anywhere else in the book. These two pages state the prediction with these words: |
| Our conclusions are: 1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrial- ization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion con- tinue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrol- lable decline in both population and industrial capacity. |
| from page 23: |
| These words were published in 1973, so the "next one hundred" could mean either the 1973-2073 period, or the 2000-2100 century period. The century (2000-2100) seems to be clearly indicated by the second version of the prediction, on page 126, which is emphasized with italics: |
| We can thus say with some confidence that, under the assumption of no major change in the present system, population and industrial growth will certainly stop within the next century, at the latest. |