A bookish blog post
In the fall of 1898 Sir William Crookes (right) gave his inaugural address as the incoming president of the British Academy of Sciences. Unlike the typical such speech, this one was prophetic and alerted the British populace for the first time to a real and growing problem. And the populace began to worry, because Sir William was the Al Gore of his day, alerting his country (and the world) to a looming danger.
Other than prophesying disaster, however, there were a few notable differences between Sir William and Al Gore. First and foremost, Sir William was a true scientist, not a bloated former politician with no technical training. He was the inventor of the predecessor of the tubes later used in televisions and radios and had discovered and added thallium to the periodic table. The second major difference is that his worries were valid. They weren’t concocted from a gibberish of people hoping to cash in on the public’s fears of an imaginary melting of the earth, but were born of a serious concern for the continued success of the human race. Or at the very least, the continued success of the people of Great Britain.
Sir William Crookes was deeply (and rightfully) concerned that the world would soon run out of the ability to fertilize crops, and that, as a consequence, millions would die. At that time Britain was importing guano (the droppings of sea birds) from islands off the coast of Peru and from the nitrate fields of Chile, but those sources were finite, and Sir William realized they would at some point run out. (He predicted sometime in 1930 as doomsday.)
