EDMONTON/CMNN - In a fit of clearly overblown hysteria, some scientists are claiming that the world's growing population will wreak global environmental havoc within the next 50 years.

Ignoring the fact that such doom and gloom predictions have nearly always failed to come to pass, Dr. David Schindler, a University of Alberta ecology professor said, "While the green revolution has done some wonderful things, there's definitely been a dark side."

Dr. Schindler co-authored a paper published in the journal, "Science", that predicts that the need to feed the growing population will cause damage "worse than acid rain or stratospheric ozone depletion."

In the late 1800s Thomas Malthus, an English Economist, made the prediction that food supplies will never keep up with population growth. His projections showed that starvation and hunger would be rampant throughout the world before the middle of the 1900s. He failed to take into account technology's ability to keep ahead of population growth.

Professor Schindler's projections attempt to go one step further by claiming now that production may keep up but the environment will have to sacrificed. He fails to take into account modern trends in production technology that, in spite of increasing production in the US, have seen cleaner air, cleaner water, cleaner soil with less erosion.

Perhaps seeking to inflame fears among the public, the ecological report entitled, "Forecasting Agriculturally Driven Global Environmental Change projects catastrophic widespread problems. Recent memories of scientific claims include "global cooling" in the 1970s, claims of oil and coal depletion by 1990s and various other crackpot predictions. Credibility of scientists is on the wane and will not increase again until reports are investigated more thoroughly before publication.