From IPA REVIEW ARTICLE, this list doesn't even include the biggest, scariest, most profitable of all.

Dr Kesten Green lists the 20 most unscientific scares.

There is a long and dismal history of alarming forecasts that were literally too bad to be true. But many people believed these predictions that human actions would harm the environment and thereby cause disaster for people. As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that the human population would grow beyond the ability of the environment to support it. Before him, Socrates bemoaned the loss of forests around Athens. Arguably the most harmful alarm was about DDT, the banning of which has cost many millions of lives.

The alarms were based on forecasts, but not ones from proper scientific forecasting methods. The alarmists make their alarming forecasts in three broad ways: by using unrealistic mathematical models, such as Malthus'; by extrapolating the genuine effect of a large dose to a near-zero dose; and by hypothesising that a weak effect exists and extrapolating that it will become important over time or over a large population. The third of these unscientific forecasting methods is the one most favoured by alarmists.

Because the alarmists fail to use proper forecasting methods, there is no reason to expect their alarming forecasts to be accurate, except by chance. The unscientific methods that alarmists use are biased towards making alarming forecasts. Most of the alarmists' forecasts were categorically wrong. The rest were wrong in degree: the effects the alarmists were concerned about turned out to be too trivial to cause problems.

The media are culpable in promulgating these false alarms. Though regrettable, the weakness is understandable: alarms are news. Rational sceptical responses require time and effort to assemble, and don't have the same emotional urgency. We have to follow closely to ever learn that an alarm has been shown to be false, and most of us are too busy to do that.

Alarmists are often rewarded for their efforts. They typically ask government to ‘do something'. As a result, laws are often passed and regulations implemented that decrease the freedom of people to use their own judgement and to make their own decisions, in ways that the alarmists prefer. These policies inevitably impose financial costs and have unforeseen consequences.

Moreover, government research funds and recognition tends to flow to alarmists. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, is evidence that a record of raising false alarms is no obstacle to obtaining awards, and may help. Yet there is no evidence that paternalistic policies implemented in response to alarms save us or make us better off.

Here then, in brief, is a Top 20 of environmentalist alarms and their outcomes. Please, let's learn from them by not being so gullible! 20 environmentalist alarms.

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