TRUST UNWORTHY

Eddie toasts New Yorkers for making it
as long as they have.

There's been a lot of repetitious chatter recently regarding the 1973 dystopian movie Soylent Green. While I know of it only because it features Edward G. Robinson's final performance, these days it's due to it taking place in New York in the year 2022. 

And while things here aren't as good as they were during the Bloomberg years, the population is currently 32 million fewer than predicted in the movie. Nor are we, as far as I know, chowing down on our fellow humans (sorry if I gave it away).

You can tell they know what they're
talking about.

Soylent Green was a work of fiction, meaning you didn't have to believe it if you didn't want to. But what if scientists at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology ran a few numbers in their super-duper computers in order to give you the what-for on a problem they were working on? Would you take them at their word? Would you, as the current saying goes, trust the science?

Wait! Think before you speak. Those same scientists, using the most up-to-date technology, came to the conclusion society would collapse in the middle of 2040. 

Skeeter Davis was saying it in 1963.

Again, I ask: do you trust the science? What if you knew that the study was
done in 1972? That'd be a relief, right? My smartphone puts the technology of 50 years ago to shame. And I have an Android!

Perhaps you're feeling better now. Let me disabuse of that. Scientists ran the same tests in 2009 and got identical results. I'll bet you're not feeling as smug as you were 15 seconds ago.

We've all seen the conspiracy nuts and religious fanatics who predict the exact date when the world will end. If you haven't noticed, they've been wrong every goldang time. Because they're not MIT scientists. 

If I were 40 years younger,
I'd trust anything Gaya Herrington
told me.

But these MIT scientists are MIT scientists. Do you trust the science? Or more to the point, do you want to trust the science? 

Perhaps you'd rather trust Gaya Herrington, who's described as a "Dutch sustainability researcher". She ran the same tests two years ago. Her computer spit out the same result.

Herrington isn't one of those MIT brainiacs. She works for the accounting firm KPMG. Trust the accountants!

While advice regarding COVID has been changing on a regular basis for two years, the MIT-engineered end of the world has been consistent for a half-century, no matter who's studying it. 

We have, then, 18 more years to trust the science. When the clock of doom strikes its final hour at the MIT-appointed time, I'll be 84. By then, Alec Baldwin, still a free man, will be watching this nightmare unfold on a 150-inch 12K HDTV from the safety of his brownstone on the Moon with his 18 children, while his wacky wife practices her new Venusian accent. Trust me!

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