Failed Doomsday Predictions and Curing Cancer

Below are some failed doomsday, eco-pocalyptic predictions (source):

1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
21. 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World (from what?)
24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015
27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
31. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
32. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 1990s
33. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
34. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
35. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
36. 2006: Super Hurricanes!
37. 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
38. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
39. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
40. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
41. 1970s: Killer Bees!

42. 1975: The Cooling World and a Drastic Decline in Food Production
43. 1969: Worldwide Plague, Overwhelming Pollution, Ecological Catastrophe, Virtual Collapse of UK by End of 20th Century
44. 1972: Pending Depletion and Shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Aluminum
45. 1970: Oceans Dead in a Decade, US Water Rationing by 1974, Food Rationing by 1980
46. 1988: World’s Leading Climate Expert Predicts Lower Manhattan Underwater by 2018
47. 2005: Fifty Million Climate Refugees by the Year 2020
48. 2000: Snowfalls Are Now a Thing of the Past
49. 1989: UN Warns That Entire Nations Wiped Off the Face of the Earth by 2000 From Global Warming

Now what has all this got to do with curing cancer? It has recently been claimed that with 10 Gigawatts of power, Artificial Intelligence will provide a cure for cancer. This claim has been made by a person who is not a scientist, has never worked in drug discovery and who doesn’t understand that cancer is not one disease but hundreds. Just like the above doomsday predictions mostly made by individuals who have no idea about building models, science or the complexity of Nature and its laws. However, when the above predictions were being made, many people took them very seriously, more so if they came from ‘prestigious sources’ or were made by famous, influential individuals.

It is unclear how Gigawatts correlate with information they help to generate, or with scientific discoveries they potentially help make. Is the relationship linear? If you double the Gigawatts do you double the number of scientific discoveries? Where does the “10 Gigawatts = cure for cancer” come from? To be sure, 10 Gigawatts is a nice, large, round number, that sounds impressive. And what could one cure with, say, 5 Gigawatts? The common cold or flu? Frankly speaking, the 10 Gigawatt number looks like it’s just made up.

Before you say we will have one million people living on Mars by the 2040s first put one man on the Moon. Or get one to orbit! Statements like “give me 10 Gigawatts and I will find a cure for cancer”, or “we have 96 months to save the World”, are what separates genuine, scientific work from standup comedy.