Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born - 1975 'Endangered Atmosphere' Conference
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SPECIAL REPORT
1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference
Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
by Marjorie Mazel Hecht
ly reduce population—were
“Global Warming” is, and always
was, a policy for genocidal reduc-
Conference had settled this question:
At Bucharest it was affirmed that con-
defeated.2
tion of the world’s population. The pre- The North Carolina conference, which
tinuing, unrestricted worldwide popu-
posterous claim that human-produced took place Oct. 26-29, 1975, was co-
lation growth can negate any socio-
carbon dioxide will broil the Earth, melt sponsored by two agencies of the U.S.
economic gains and fatally imperil the
the ice caps, and destroy human life, National Institutes of Health: the John E.
environment.... The earlier extreme
came out of a 1975 conference in Fogarty International Center for Advanced
views that social and economic jus-
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Study in the Health Sciences and the
tice alone can somehow offset popu-
organized by the influential anthropolo- National Institute of Environmental Health
lation increase and that the mere pro-
gist Margaret Mead, president of the Sciences. (Mead had been a Scholar in
vision of contraception can sufficient-
American Association for the Residence at the Fogarty Center
Advancement of Science in 1973.)
(AAAS), in 1974. It was at this government-
Mead—whose 1928 book on sponsored conference, 32 years
the sex life of South Pacific ago, that virtually every scare
Islanders was later found to be a scenario in today’s climate hoax
fraud—recruited like-minded took root. Scientists were
anti-population hoaxsters to the charged with coming up with the
cause: Sow enough fear of man- “science” to back up the scares,
caused climate change to force so that definitive action could be
global cutbacks in industrial taken by policy-makers.
activity and halt Third World Global cooling—the coming
development. Mead’s leading of an ice age—had been in the
recruits at the 1975 conference headlines in the 1970s, but it
were climate scare artist Stephen could not easily be used to sell
Schneider, population-freak biol- genocide by getting the citizens
ogist George Woodwell, and the of industrial nations to cut back
current AAAS president John on consumption. Something
Holdren—all three of them disci- more drastic and more personal
ples of Malthusian fanatic Paul was needed.
Ehrlich, author of The Popula- Eugenics and
tion Bomb.1 Guided by luminar- The Paradigm Shift
ies like these, conference discus- Mead’s population-control
sion focussed on the absurd policy was firmly based in the
choice of either feeding people post-Hitler eugenics movement,
or “saving the environment.” which took on the more palat-
Mead began organizing for her able names of “conservation”
conference, “The Atmosphere: and “environmentalism” in the
Endangered and Endangering,” post-World War II period. As
shortly after she had attended Julian Huxley, the vice president
the United Nations Population of Britain’s Eugenics Society
Conference in Bucharest, (1937-1944), had announced in
Romania, in August 1974. She 1946, “even though it is quite
Jack Manning/NYTimes Pictures
had already bullied American true that radical eugenic policy
scientists with her Malthusian Anthropologist Margaret Mead gave global warming its start, will be for many years political-
view that people were imperil- as part of a movement to curb population growth. Here she ly and psychologically impossi-
ing the environment. She wrote poses at the Museum of Natural History in front of an Easter ble, it will be important for
in a 1974 Science magazine Island stone figure. Mead is famous for saying, “Instead of UNESCO to see that the eugenic
editorial that the Population needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.” problem is examined with the
64 Fall 2007 21st CENTURY Science & Technology SPECIAL REPORT
greatest care and that the public mind is protect the peoples of the world from
informed of the issues at stake so that dangerous and preventable interfer-
much that now is unthinkable may at least ence with the atmosphere upon which
become thinkable.” Huxley was then all life depends....
director-general of the United Nations What we need from scientists are
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural estimates, presented with sufficient
Organization (UNESCO). conservatism and plausibility but at
By the 1970s, the paradigm shift that the same time as free as possible from
obliterated the optimistic development internal disagreements that can be
policies of Franklin Roosevelt and of exploited by political interests, that
Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” will allow us to start building a system
program, was in full swing. The Club of of artificial but effective warnings,
Rome’s Limits to Growth, which warnings which will parallel the
removed the role of scientific advances, instincts of animals who flee before
was drummed into the public con- the hurricane, pile up a larger store of
sciousness. Nuclear energy, in particu- nuts before a severe winter, or of
lar, was under attack, because of its caterpillars who respond to impending
Stuart Lewis/EIRNS
promise of virtually unlimited cheap climatic changes by growing thicker
energy to support a growing population. Paul Ehrlich, a 20th Century Malthus, coats [sic].
In the guise of protecting the world from author of the prophetically wrong book,
potential terrorism, the Nuclear Non- The Population Bomb. Ehrlich’s ideology Mead deplored the fact that some scien-
Proliferation Treaty prohibited develop- is shared by the leading global warming tists might be so cautious to “protect their
ing countries from acquiring civilian scientists who attended Mead’s 1975 reputations” that they would not act. She
nuclear technologies. conference. described this as the “modern equivalent
In the United States, where nuclear of fiddling while Rome burns.” As for the
plant construction was poised for takeoff, The Endangered Atmosphere? thinking population, she deplored “those
the dream of a nuclear-powered economy Mead’s keynote to the 1975 climate who react against prophets of doom,
was under ferocious attack from the top conference set the agenda: Mankind had believing that there is not adequate scien-
down. The real “Dr. Strangelove,” RAND advanced over the years to have interna- tific basis for their melancholy prophecies,
nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter, tional laws governing the sea and the [for they] tend to become in turn prophets
counseled U.S. Presidents on his strategy land; now was the time for a “Law of the of paradisical impossibilities, guaranteed
for winning a nuclear war, at the same Atmosphere.” It was a naked solicitation utopias of technological bliss, or benign
time that he advocated an end to civilian of lying formulations to justify an end to interventions on behalf of mankind that
nuclear energy. In one report after anoth- human scientific and industrial progress. are none the less irrational just because
er, “experts” paid by the Ford Foundation, Mead stated: they are couched as ’rational.’ They
among others, argued that nuclear power express a kind of faith in the built-in
Unless the peoples of the world can
was not economical, not safe, and just human instinct for survival, or a faith in
begin to understand the immense and
plain no good. Thus was scientific opti- some magical technological panacea.”
long-term consequences of what
mism ushered out. What Scientists Need to ’Invent’
appear to be small immediate choic-
The rock-sex-drugs counterculture of Here’s what Mead wanted the atmos-
es—to drill a well, open a road, build
the ’68ers lapped it up. Man was seen as pheric scientists to do:
a large airplane, make a nuclear test,
just another animal, but an exceedingly
install a liquid fast breeder reactor, What we need to invent—as responsi-
greedy one, using up Mother Nature’s
release chemicals which diffuse ble scientists—are ways in which far-
resources and making a mess in the
throughout the atmosphere, or dis- sightedness can become a habit of the
process. The unique cognitive ability of
charge waste in concentrated amounts citizenry of the diverse peoples of this
the human being, with its power to create
into the sea—the whole planet may planet. This, of course, poses a set of
new resources, to develop more
become endangered.... technical problems for social scien-
advanced science and technology, and
At this conference we are proposing tists, but they are helpless without a
thus to provide better living standards
that, before there is a corresponding highly articulate and responsible
was trashed.3 Scientific pessimism invad-
attempt to develop a “law of the air,” expression of position on the part of
ed the scientific organizations.
the scientific community advise the natural scientists. Only if natural sci-
Mead played a central role in this
United Nations (and individual, pow- entists can develop ways of making
degeneration, from her obsession with
erful nation states or aggregations of their statements on the present state of
spreading the “free love” message, to her
weaker states) and attempt to arrive at danger credible to each other can we
participation in mind-control projects
some overview of what is presently hope to make them credible (and
(the Cybernetics group at MIT) with her
known about hazards to the atmos- understandable) to social scientists,
third husband, Gregory Bateson, intellec-
phere from manmade interventions, politicians, and the citizenry.
tual author of the infamous MK-Ultra
and how scientific knowledge cou- ...I have asked a group of atmos-
drug-brainwashing program.
pled with intelligent social action can pheric specialists to meet here to con-
SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Science & Technology Fall 2007 65sider how the very real
threats to humankind and Three of Mead’s scientists
life on this planet can be who have preached global
stated with crediblity and warming and population
persuasiveness before the control since the 1975 con-
present society of nations ference. All have worked
begins to enact laws of closely with Paul Ehrlich,
the air, or plan for “inter- who thinks the the U.S.
national environmental population should be cut
impact statements.” in half (not starting with his
family and friends, of
Throughout her presenta- course).
tion, Mead stressed the need George Woodwell
IISD
for consensus, an end-prod- Stephen Schneider
uct free from any troubling
“internal scientific controversies” that governmental Panel clusions, the AAAS stated,
might “blur the need for action.” on Climate Change “reflect the scientific consen-
Mead and her co-organizer William W. (IPCC), and setting the sus represented by, for exam-
Kellogg (a climate scientist from RAND standards by which it ple, the Intergovernmental
and later NCAR, the National Center for presents its opinions Panel on Climate Change....”
Atmospheric Research), edited a report to the public without Holdren is one of a small
on the proceedings of the conference into any hint of uncer- group of anti-nuclear “nuclear
a little book published a year later.4 (The tainty. At Stanford experts” who push technolog-
Mead-Kellogg team also came up, in University he has ical apartheid—the doctrine
1976, with the idea that carbon dioxide trained new genera- that poorer nations cannot be
emissions should be controlled “by tions of climate scare John Holdren allowed to gain knowledge of
assigning polluting rights to each clones. He is also a nuclear science.
nation”5—an early version of the cap- close friend of The • Dr. George Woodwell, a
and-trade program of Al Gore.) Population Bomb’s Paul Ehrlich and wife, member of the National Academy of
The conference proceedings identify Anne Ehrlich, both at Stanford, whose Sciences and a Fellow of the Academy of
the presenters and the rapporteurs for the anti-population philosophy he fully Arts and Sciences, is a global warming
sessions, but there is no list of all the par- shares. He and Paul Ehrlich co-authored fanatic whose stated beliefs indicate that
ticipants. Some discord is reported in the articles on the “limited carrying capacity” he abhors human beings in general, and
audience (more than is “allowed” today of the Earth, and challenged population whose zealousness in this cause leads him
in climate change circles!), and Margaret advocate Julian Simon with a bet on how to bend the truth. Woodwell works close-
Mead steps in to push for “consensus.” fast man would exhaust certain resources. ly with John Holdren at the Woods Hole
The editors note in their initial comment • John Holdren, another Ehrlich collab- Research Center, which Woodwell found-
on the proceedings, “... we believe that orator at Stanford, is now a Harvard-based ed and of which Holden is a director.
we have captured something very close energy specialist, and the president of the To get the flavor of Woodwell’s views:
to consensus.” AAAS. Holdren has co-authored several In a 1996 interview, he proclaimed: “We
Mead’s Propagandist Scientists articles and books with Paul Ehrlich, elab- had an empty world that substantially ran
A few of the 1975 conference presen- orating on their formula (I = PAT) that the itself as a biophysical system, and now
ters stand out today as leading spokes- impact of an increase in population and that we have filled it up with people, and
men for global warming: consumption (affluence), although modi- the sum of human endeavors which is
• Climate scientist Stephen Schneider, fied by technology, is degrading the envi- large enough to affect global systems, it
who was promoting the global cooling ronment. Therefore, population growth no longer works properly.”8 He attributes
scare scenario in the 1970s, made him- should stop. Their underlying assumption, climatic changes and warming to “the
self notorious by telling Discover maga- like Mead’s, was that technology cannot crowding of people into virtually every
zine in 1989: “To capture the public solve the problems created by “limitless” corner of the Earth.” “How will his plan
imagination, we have to offer up some population growth. (Ehrlich’s view, in fact, for a 50 percent cut in [carbon dioxide]
scary scenarios, make simplified dramat- is that the United States can sustain only emissions happen?” the interviewer asks.
ic statements and little mention of any 150 million people; there are now 302 Woodwell says it will require “a concert-
doubts one might have. Each of us has to million of us.) ed effort on the part of the scientific and
decide the right balance between being In December 2006, Holdren shepherd- scholarly community; the public will
effective, and being honest.”6 ed a radical global warming resolution have to be sufficiently enraged....” He
Schneider has been one of the most through the AAAS board of directors, stresses that the scientific community is
visible and voluble scientist-lobbyists for which was announced at the organiza- going to have to exert pressure on the
global warming, testifying to Congress, tion’s annual meeting in February 2007, government to act.
playing a prominent role in the Inter- the first ever of such resolutions.7 Its con- Woodwell’s 1989 article on global
66 Fall 2007 21st CENTURY Science & Technology SPECIAL REPORTwarming in Scientific American was illus- “What will happen to the
trated with a drawing that showed sea- mean sea level and the
water lapping at the steps of the White coastal cities around the
House. world?” Kellogg asks.
Another example of his “bending” the Increased carbon dioxide
truth: During the environmentalist cam- was high on the list of man-
paign against DDT, Woodwell wrote a related climate change dis-
technical article for Science magazine in asters. It was admitted that
1967 purporting to show that there were there might be other factors
13 pounds of DDT per acre of soil. He involved, but, “It is con-
neglected to mention, however, that he cluded that, in cases where
measured the soil at the spot where the the societal risk is great,
DDT spray trucks washed down! This one should therefore act as
detail came out in his sworn testimony at if the unaccounted-for
the official EPA hearings on DDT in 1972, effects had been included,
but neither Woodwell nor Science maga- James Lovelock, a global warming alarmist, has since we have no way of
zine issued a retraction.9 advocated nuclear energy as a preventative measure, dismissing the very possi-
• Dr. James Lovelock is best known as which has grieved his fellow greens. Behind him is bility that the calculated
the inventor (in the 1970s) of the Gaia a statue of Gaia, the Earth goddess for whom he effect will prevail.”
thesis, which views the Earth as a whole named his theory of the Earth as a biological being. In the Conference sum-
as a living biological being. Lovelock’s mary of recommendations,
worry about global warming has led him for scientists there is no possibility for Kellogg’s thrust is repeated: Scientists and
to make dire predictions about what will inaction, except to stop being scientists.”) policy-makers must act now on man-
happen: “Before this century is over, bil- ‘Anticipating’ Global Warming caused climate change. “To ignore the
lions of us will die, and the few breeding Mead’s co-editor of the proceedings, possibility of such changes is, in effect, a
pairs of people that survive will be in the climatologist William Kellogg, notes that decision not to act.”
Arctic where the climate remains tolera- “the main purpose of this conference is to John Holdren repeated this idea: “How
ble,” according to one of his scenarios.10 anticipate the call that will be made on close are we to the danger point?” of eco-
But unlike the three other scientists scientists and leaders of government logical collapse, he asked. But then he
above, who attended the 1975 Mead con- regarding the need to protect the atmos- went on to say that it doesn’t matter,
ference, Lovelock has called for nuclear pheric environment before these calls are because we need to act now. He stated:
power to slow the disaster that he warns is made.”
We already have reached the scale of
coming. Again, unlike the three others, Kellogg outlines the difficulties of com-
human intervention that rivals the
Lovelock sees mankind as a “resource” for puter modelling of climate change and
scale of natural processes....
the planet, its “heart and mind.” man’s role because of the nonlinearities
Furthermore, many of these forms of
During the 1975 Mead conference, involved in climate, but he concludes
intervention will lead to observable
Lovelock occasionally pooh-poohed that climate models “are really the only
adverse effects only after time lags,
some of the more hysterical suggested tools we have to determine such things.”
measured in years, decades, or even
disasters of man-made warming. In a dis- He then states, “The important point to
centuries. By the time the character of
cussion on ozone depletion, for example, bear in mind is that mankind surely has
the damage is obvious, remedial
Lovelock strongly criticized the National already affected the climate of vast
action will be difficult or impossible.
Academy of Sciences report of the com- regions, and quite possibly of the entire
Some kinds of adverse effects may be
ing danger of skin cancers from increased earth, and that its ever escalating popula-
practically irreversible....
ultraviolet radiation. “To speak of ultravi- tion and demand for energy and food will
olet radiation as analogous to nuclear produce larger changes in the years Should We Feed People?
radiation is most misleading,” he said. ahead.” One of the most telling discussions
(During this discussion, the report of Kellogg reviews the potential global concerned the view of man as just anoth-
the proceedings says, Mead called for a warming disaster scenarios, which are er species competing for resources. The
“ ’ceasefire’ in an attempt to avoid a pre- actually what then became the scientific report of the summary session of the first
mature polarization of the participants.” research agenda for the next 30 years. He day of the conference stated “that we as a
Referring to the uncertainty of potential himself had put forward arguments that species are trying to maintain ourselves at
effects, she stated, “The time interval the release of the energy necessary to the expense of other species; there seems
required before we begin to see clear evi- support a “large, affluent world popula- to be a conflict between preserving
dence of a particular manmade effect on tion could possibly warm up the earth nature and feeding the rapidly increasing
the environment may be long compared excessively.” population. Is our major objective really
to the time in which society has to act.... The issues Kellogg laid out are all too to feed the population, or do we realize
A decision by policy-makers not to act in familiar today: warming that will melt we cannot continue to feed the world at
the absence of scientific information or “the Arctic Ocean ice pack and the ice any price? Where do we strike a balance
expertise is itself a policy decision, and sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic.” between preserving nature and feeding
SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Science & Technology Fall 2007 67the world?” fact that the toxic effects of human become little else than vain attempts to revive
exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those
Stephen Schneider’s presentation, activities are spreading worldwide and of Mr. Malthus.” (Author’s introduction to “The
“Climatic Variability and Its Impact on reducing the structure of the biota is Revolt of Islam,” 1818.)
Food Production,” sounds the alarm: an indication that human activities at 2. Margaret Mead, “World Population: World
Responsibility,” Science, Sept. 27, 1974 (editori-
present exceed the capacity of the
There is a further fear that mankind’s al), Vol. 185, No. 4157. The only opposition to
biosphere for repairing itself. the Rockefeller/Club of Rome policy presented
industrial and energy production at the Bucharest conference came from Helga
activities may affect the climate and Zepp-LaRouche.
The Noösphere to the Rescue
lead to enhanced probabilities of 3. See, for example, “The New Environmentalist
Thirty-two years after this 1975 confer- Eugenics,” by Rob Ainsworth, EIR, March 30, 2007,
extreme variability. Thus the food-
ence, the world’s population, its science www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-
climate crisis could be very near-term 19/2007-13/pdf/36-46_713_ainsworth.pdf
and technology, and its industry are dan-
and of major significance.... The 4. The Atmosphere: Endangered and
gerously in the grasp of Margaret Mead’s Endangering, Margaret Mead, Ph.D. and
smallest impact, and one we have
minions, including those on the IPCC. A William W. Kellogg, Ph.D., eds. Fogarty
already seen, is the triggering of high- International Center Proceedings No. 39, 1976
good part of the population is scared, as
er prices for food by crop failures in (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
planned, by the potential effects of Office, DHEW Publication No. [NIH] 77-1065).
one nation, such as the USSR in 1972,
human-caused global warming. They are 5. Cited in P.C. Sinha, Atmospheric Pollution and
which had to be made up by North Climate Change (Anmol Publications PVT,
ready to react, as Mead demanded, to
America.... Simultaneous crop failures 1998).
“warnings which will parallel the
in North America and the USSR could 6. Schneider made this statement in an interview
instincts of animals who flee before the with Discover magazine, October 1989.
lead to even higher prices and wide-
hurricane,” and in the process tear down 7. The text of the shamefully unscientific AAAS
spread starvation throughout the
the very institutions and technologies that resolution, which closely follows Mead’s 1975
world. Some estimates predict that prescription, reads in part: “The scientific evi-
can obviate the perceived “limits to dence is clear: global climate change caused by
upwards of 100 million people in
growth.” human activities is occurring now, and it is a
developing countries could starve, growing threat to society. Accumulating data
In the intervening 32 years, most of our
while the more affluent countries from across the globe reveal a wide array of
scientific institutions have been taken effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization
would be just inconvenienced by a
over by an anti-science ideology, typified of major ice sheets, increases in extreme
significant crop failure in North weather, rising sea level, shifts in species
by the views of a Stephen Schneider or a
America. ranges, and more. The pace of change and the
John Holdren. How can there be a sci- evidence of harm have increased markedly over
As a gauge of the immorality of the con- ence when the mind and its capacity for the last five years. The time to control green-
house gas emissions is now.
ference participants, Schneider felt com- creativity is denied, when man is put “The atmospheric concentration of carbon
pelled to assert that “national energy and equal to beast, and when man’s advance- dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than
food policies must start with the assump- ments are perceived as ruining the pris- it has been for at least 650,000 years. The aver-
age temperature of the Earth is heading for lev-
tion that population control by mass star- tine confines of a limited world? Such els not experienced for millions of years.... As
vation or nuclear war is untenable”! pessimism is a formula for a “no future” expected, intensification of droughts, heat
waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is
Like the other presenters at the confer- world. occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable
ence, and the global warming faction The question remains, will the reser- ecosystems and societies. These events are
today, Schneider fails to see how curbs voir of sanity, in particular in today’s early warning signs of even more devastating
damage to come, some of which will be irre-
on science and industry will kill people youth, who did not live through the versible.
by preventing the economic develop- greenwashing of the 1970s and 1980s, be “Delaying action to address climate change
ment that permits a higher relative poten- able to force reality—climate reality and will increase the environmental and societal
consequences as well as the costs....
tial population density. Advances in sci- financial reality—on the rest of the popu- Developing clean energy technologies will pro-
ence and technology are mentioned, but lation? Will the Noösphere, man’s cre- vide economic opportunities and ensure future
energy supplies.
usually in the context of better energy ative ability to change the Biosphere, pre- “The growing torrent of information presents a
savers and conservation, not in allowing vail? clear message: we are already experiencing
more people to be supported at a better global climate change. It is time to muster the
Notes ___________________________________ political will for concerted action. Stronger lead-
standard of living on a given amount of ership at all levels is needed. The time is now.
1. The Population Bomb, published in 1968, was a
land. campus bestseller among the 1968er genera-
We must rise to the challenge. We owe this to
Woodwell’s presentation, “The Impact future generations.”
tion. Ehrlich employs the repeatedly discredited
argument of the British East India Company’s 8. www.annonline.com/interviews/961217/
of Environmental Change on Human
Parson Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) that popu- 9. Woodwell’s original article is “DDT Residues in
Ecology,” is even more alarmist. He lation increases geometrically while food supply an East Coast Estuary: A Case of Biological
writes: increases only arithmetically. Malthus was Concentration of a Persistent Insecticide,”
proved wrong in his own lifetime by the devel- Science, May 12, 1967, pp. 821-824. His admis-
A careful analysis of the extent to opment of fertilizers and scientific farming, and sion that there was only 1 pound of DDT found
which the earth’s net primary produc- repeatedly thereafter by the application of suc- per acre appears in the transcript of the EPA’s
cessive advances in mechanization, chemistry, 1972 hearings on DDT, p. 7,232. He also man-
tion is being used directly in support and biochemistry to agriculture. aged to measure DDT in the forests at a site near
of man leads to the conclusion that, at Describing the spirit of “gloom and misan- an airstrip where crop-dusting airplanes tested
thropy” into which the English population had and calibrated their DDT spraying equipment.
present, as much as 50 percent of the fallen following the dashing of their hopes for 10. Lovelock’s commentary in the Independent,
net production is being used in sup- progress in the French Revolution, Malthus’s Jan. 16, 2006, summarizes his views. http://com-
port of human food supplies.... The opponent Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote: ment.independent.co.uk/commentat o r s /
“Inquiries into moral and political science, have article338830.ece
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