This is considered the most likely interpretation of why the temperature increased between 1900 and 1940, well before industrial activity and population grew. Even if global warming does occur, any necessary adjustments would be small compared to the adjustments we make to temperature differences over the course of a year. If global warming is occurring, there s probably not much we can do about it anyway. Even without the benefit of modern technology, humanity has adjusted to much larger changes in the past millennia than we anticipate to happen in the next centuries. Just a few decades ago, climatologists were concerned about global cooling.
Scientists are obviously confused about the issue.
The first part of the statement is absolutely correct. In the Appendix, the Ehrlichs attack popular books that throw doubt on environmentalist claims. They stay away from the carefully researched The Resourceful Earth, edited by Julian Simon and the late Herman Kahn. It is interesting that they do not mention the widely publicized 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicts an exhaustion of all mineral resources in the 1980s and of oil soon thereafter. It would be too embarrassing to remind people of such failed predictions.