The reason The Population Bomb was so terrible is not that its predictions were wrong; most scientists make incorrect predictions. No, the book is terrible because of how it made people in the developed world feel about people in the developing world. Namely, that they are little more than hungry cockroaches who shouldn't be fed.
apocalypse
In what's become an eagerly anticipated tradition, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns us that we're all moments away from annihilation. The international media uncritically reports this nonsense, even though the Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947. Yet we're still here. Guess there's something wrong with the clock.
Dr. Hawking's recent turn toward morbid pessimism is unfortunate. He is saying things that, if they weren't coming from him, most scientists would laugh at. It's sad that such a great physicist and science communicator is tainting his legacy with nonsense.