Robert sent in the link to https://mises.org/mises-wire/acid-rain-scare-and-science-industrial-complex ….. not sure what MISES is all about. It ia Austrian. However, this story is interesting as in the 1970s scientists in North America [Canada as well as the US] and Scandinavia [mostly Sweden] became alarmed at what they believed amounted to a massive environmental degradation caused by sulphur dioxide levels in rainfall with an origin in coal generated power stations to the south of them. The media went into full frenzy and teased the population with apocalyptic scare stories. Some things in the modern world never seem to change. According to the Readers Digest and others such as Time magazine, it was a ‘scourge from the sky’ – and the klaxon levels shot up with a never ending doom laden message. In 1980 the EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency in the US] claimed acid rain had acidified lakes in the North East. Not just by a percentage but by a hundredfold. Now, that is a massive claim – and no doubt designed for maximum impact. Jimmy Carter’s Democrat party decided to set up a proper scientific study into the subject. Shortly afterwards he lost the election and it fell to Ronald Reagan to beef up the study into acid rain – by increasing the number of scientists involved. It turned out that acidification was mostly confined to lakes and streams in the Adirondack Mountains. They discovered these lakes, once a prime location for sport fishing, had become void of aquatic life. Or mostly so. Acid rain was assumed to be the cause as that is what the media had been blabbing. Unfortunately, once the scientists began to dig into the issue they found all was not as reported. They went on to demonstrate, in a scientific manner, that it was land use around the Adirondacks that were to blame and acid rain itself had a negligible effect. Acid rain did not really have much impact on the lakes, rivers and streams in the region. They went on to discover they were actually acidified prior to the arrival of Europeans – because of the acid soil in the region, and run off. It was thickly forested. They became more alkaline in the early 20th century as a result of logging activities which uncovered the subsoil regime. Fish began to thrive. All that had happened was that after logging came to an end the acidic soil gradually came back and run off once again affected the acid levels in the water system of the Adirondacks. No wonder this particular scare story went abruptly quiet.
However, the EPA and media had learned a lesson. That is to avoid a proper scientific enquiry. When the global warming scare story erupted the scientists were left out of the picture – and any that challenged the idea co2 could actually change the world climate were ostracised and left to stew. No matter how many times the real story was retold the media and the alarmist faction shouted it down. They are still trying to do that, even nowadays – even though no independent scientific enquiry has ever been set in motion. Meanwhile, a lot of people have got rich on the back of it. Most of them without scientific qualifications.