Popcorn

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Gassing Up

In the Feb.-March 1991 issue of Technology Review, Population Institute president Werner Fornos wrote (p. 46) that “… by the end of this century, the air we breathe will contain a third more carbon dioxide than now .…”

But the book Preserving the Global Environment, (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1991), issued by Columbia University’s American Assembly and the World Resources Institute, reports (p. 157) that “… the CO2 concentration [of the earth’s atmosphere] … now at about 352 ppm [parts per million … is] increasing at about 1.2 ppm per year.”

At that rate of increase, “by the end of this century,” less than 19 years away, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air would be increased by about 12 ppm, or just a bit over 3 percent, not the “[one] third more” claimed by Fornos.

Moreover, this new level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere would mean an increase in concentration of just 0.0012 percent.

Put Away Your Hipboots

Worldwatch researcher Jodi Jacobson, in her article “Holding Back The Sea” (The Futurist, Sept.-Oct. 1990, pp. 20-27), pulled together a number of scary predictions about future sea level rises due to global warming.

Citing maximum ocean level rises of “as high as two to four meters” over the next century, Jacobson concluded a rise of “one meter by 2075 is certainly plausible.” The resulting prognosis for “vulnerable, low-lying countries”: lands swept away, cities devastated, food scarcities, CIC.

Somehow Ms. Jacobson managed to overlook a far more reassuring study issued nine months prior to her article. That report, “Predictions Drop for Future Sea-Level Rise,” Science News, Dec. 16, 1989), has “revised rather drastically [downward]…estimates of how much [the] global sea level will rise due to greenhouse warming.”

The author, Mark F. Meier of the Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, had chaired a 1985 National Research Council committee investigating sea level changes, which predicted a rise of about one meter by the year 2100. Now Meier said a rise of only one-third meter can be predicted and in fact ocean levels could actually fall by 0.1 meter.

Thoughtfully, The Futurist printed Meier’s latest findings right in the middle (p. 22) of Jacobson’s article! That way she’ll be sure to see it.

One Million, More or Less

The June 9, 1991 Miami Herald ran an article titled “Study shows Million die annually from childbirth,” which was not headlined incorrectly, but also wrong on its facts.

The article claimed that “At least one million women worldwide die each year…from childbirth, unsafe abortions, and pregnancy complications.…” But the Worldwatch Institute study1 which is the basis for the Herald’s article, reported a half million women die annually from pregnancy related causes, including abortion.

According to Worldwatch the other half million deaths are attributed to cervical cancer (354,000), AIDS (100,000), and various sexually transmitted diseases. By no stretch of the imagination can these deaths be rightly categorized as “childbirth-related” or due to “pregnancy complications.”

Obviously, The Miami Herald misrepresented the total number of deaths as all being pregnancy related. But Jodi Jacobson, the report’s author, bears much responsibility here. After all, it was she who lumped together cancer and AIDS deaths the childbirth and abortion deaths. Jacobson has long been trying to inflate the toll of women who die from pregnancy and illegal abortions as part of her campaign for population control and yet more abortion legalization. The Herald provided her a helping hand.

More Mexican Abortion Death Baloney

The latest in a seemingly never-ending flood of phony abortion statistics from Mexico, appeared in the May 31st issue of The Sun (Baltimore, Md., p. 2A).

This time it was a “Dr. Juan Louis Alvarez of the Mexican Institute of Sexology [!]…[who] said the number of an [Mexican] abortion deaths might be as high as 100,000. Although a welcome comedown from the alleged 140,000-450,000 deaths previously advanced (See PRI Review 2 and 3), the statistic is just another in a long line of fraudulent abortion numbers designed to stampede Mexican legislators to legalize abortion.

PRI has instituted a $10,000 challenge to Alvarez, The Sun, and Sun reporter John M. McClintock, the story’s author prove their Mexican abortion deaths claim.