In Case You Were Tempted To Have Any Respect for Arizona's State-run Universities: Professor Says Human Extinction in 10 Years is "A Lock"
There's no point trying to fight climate change - we'll all be dead in the next decade and there's nothing we can do to stop it, a visiting scientist claims.
Guy McPherson, a biology professor at the University of Arizona, says the human destruction of our own habitat is leading towards the world's sixth mass extinction.
Instead of fighting, he says we should just embrace it and live life while we can.
"It's locked down, it's been locked in for a long time - we're in the midst of our sixth mass extinction," he told Paul Henry on Thursday.
....
"I can't imagine there will be a human on the planet in 10 years," he says.
"We don't have 10 years. The problem is when I give a number like that, people think it's going to be business as usual until nine years [and] 364 days."
He says part of the reason he's given up while other scientists fight on is because they're looking at individual parts, such as methane emissions and the melting ice in the Arctic, instead of the entire picture.
"We're heading for a temperature within that span that is at or near the highest temperature experienced on Earth in the last 2 billion years."
Instead of trying to fix the climate, Prof McPherson says we should focus on living while we can.
"I think hope is a horrible idea. Hope is wishful thinking. Hope is a bad idea - let's abandon that and get on with reality instead. Let's get on with living instead of wishing for the future that never comes.
BobSykes:
I taught environmental engineering for 37 years at the college and university levels. I had to do a lot of reading in the ecological literature, and I was regularly surprised at the amount of obvious lunacy that got published in even the most prestigious ecological journals. So, McPherson's inane babbling does not surprise me in the least. You might recall Paul Ehrlich and the great famine of 1975.
By the way, Ehrlich and his wife co-authored "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment" with John Holdren in 1970, just before the Great Famine. In that book, they proposed mandatory birth control (by the water supply) for everyone except those very few licensed to have babies. Obama appointed Holdren to be Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
December 1, 2016, 6:58 amCC:
If we are already doomed, where are the dead bodies? Oh, and the mass extinction he is talking about is of wildlife, but their demise (much much less than he claims) is due to our success, not our failure.
December 1, 2016, 7:35 amjoe:
My first thought when I read the article a last week was another population bomb expose. Lunacy at its best.
December 1, 2016, 7:46 amYou mention the obvious lunacy that gets published - same with much of the AGW.
Take the Hockey stick . One of the carnards is that the MWP was only "regional" . That ability of the believers to believe that there was a 300 year weather event over a small section of the globe which was responsible for the regional nature of the MWP is astounding. Sheer lunacy to believe that was possible.
Nathan:
The guy is a loon. Here's the evidence:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01732.x/full
December 1, 2016, 7:56 amNathan:
He's not a professor. He quit five years ago: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01732.x/full
December 1, 2016, 7:58 amcraftman:
The Onion couldn't have done any better.
December 1, 2016, 8:46 amIke Evans:
I actually have respect for this point of view.
The single most significant fallacy regarding the zealots of climate change isn't necessarily the science but rather the means by which they want to fix the problem. Whereas the science is extremely complicated, it's much easier to ascertain numbers like: how many nuclear power plants do we need to build bring CO2 back down to 350 ppm?
Answer: a hell of a lot. We are screwed.
I'm not personally so pessimistic as the "professor", but at least he understands that climate change isn't an issue we can fix with modern technology.
December 1, 2016, 8:48 amJason Calley:
The man is a nutter. He says, "We don't have 10 years. The problem is when I give a number like that, people think it's going to be business as usual until nine years [and] 364 days."
No, the problem is that we do NOT think it will all happen on the last day. If what he claims is true, surely we would be seeing populations dying off now. Yes, we have wars, localized weather events and various natural disasters -- but nothing unusual or unprecedented. Where, oh where, are the early massive climate killings?
December 1, 2016, 10:10 amNehemiah:
The human race is more likely to become extinct due to the accumulation of mutations in the human genome. The process is known as Genetic Entropy. Currently the advances in medicine, physical therapy, nutrition, etc. are keeping pace with the deteriorating genome. However, there will be a tipping point.
December 1, 2016, 11:04 amSamWah:
See? Not all the idiots live in California.
December 1, 2016, 12:35 pmMcThag:
Woo hoo! Cheated the mortgage company out of ten years of payments! Take that student loan!
December 1, 2016, 12:51 pmmlhouse:
Guy McPherson. back in 2008 he predicted we would all starve within a year because oil was going ot go to $400 a barrel. I sent him numerous emails were he defended his position!!!
December 1, 2016, 1:38 pmDonald:
Man, I really was hoping that this was an ASU story when I saw the headline...damn...Perhaps he was speaking at an all womens tennis club in New Zealand and he was hoping to make people drop their inhibitions and go for that oh well, might as well party with this guy routine. that's more believable than the junk he's spewing.
December 1, 2016, 1:40 pmdonald:
From http://cals.arizona.edu/~grm/teaching.html
..."Until very recently, I taught a senior/graduate-level course every spring semester, Wildland Vegetation Management (RAM 446/546). But I expected students to ponder politically incorrect information in the class, so after the 2006 offering I was banned from teaching it, along with all other courses in my home department (as a result, the course website is no longer maintained)."
This points to the fact that a University went against the norm and reined in a nutty liberal, instead of protecting and promoting them. Arizona should be applauded for banning this guy from teaching. Other universities would have circled the wagons around this guy and made a safe space for him. Coyote, living in the valley you must be exposing yourself to too many Tempe Normal graduates. Maybe this article was pay back for not tipping your ASU grad pizza delivery guy the other night..
December 1, 2016, 2:35 pmAhhh, you have love how those wildcat fans get a little more mouthy after beating ASU in football....
FelineCannonball:
Crazy dude proves tenure system is dumb.
December 1, 2016, 5:08 pmConqueror of All Foes Cheese:
Worse, evidently his wife and another couple believe him. Although I'm not sure what his decision to go off the grid does other than make all of them miserable [but smug in their feeling of moral superiority] and just as dead as the rest of us in 10 years. And how did he get to New Zealand? Walk?
December 1, 2016, 5:57 pmGranja:
Achieving lifetime tenure should be of little concern to him.
December 1, 2016, 7:16 pmjhertzli:
I just scheduled a blog post for ten years from now.
December 1, 2016, 11:13 pmCapitalistRoader:
I had a communist Philosophy 101 professor who hated industrialization, like this clown. I asked in class how tens of millions of doses of insulin would be created every day if there were no factories producing them and he replied "Science."
These professors are medievalists, yearning to return to a "purer" time when a man and his family lived an idealistic life on their plot of land, growing their own food, weaving their own clothes, and treading lightly on the earth. That half their kids would die before the age of five, and they themselves wouldn't live past 40 doesn't seem to enter in their fantasy.
December 2, 2016, 8:42 amNot Sure:
"These professors are medievalists, yearning to return to a "purer" time..."
There are places they could go that would get them close to that, if they really wanted to. But do they go? Of course not.
December 2, 2016, 5:14 pmThe Uhlan:
he needs to get laid.
December 3, 2016, 3:32 amtrangbang68:
Reverend Malthus and Paul Ehrlich say hello.
December 3, 2016, 5:22 amtrangbang68:
They don't subsidize idiocy with tenured professorships in Botswana and Cambodia.
December 3, 2016, 5:25 amTruthisaPeskyThing:
How do we know this is not "fake news?"
December 3, 2016, 7:37 amAlbert Williams:
I'm asscared !! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae8877cdb54c3783b946967fd397e8f2db5bb1ac2ed685b5f7849e44d59fc93d.jpg
December 3, 2016, 9:50 amGringo:
Those of us who remember Paul Erlich's warnings of mass starvation tend to be skeptical of prophecies of environmental apocalypse.
December 3, 2016, 10:29 amOttoMaddox:
What about the technology we'll have in a hundred years??
December 3, 2016, 10:36 amAChemPhD:
We're dead and yes we vote.
December 3, 2016, 11:10 amAnonymous:
The professor says these obviously stupid things because a classroom is a better work environment than mining coal for a living. A better question for the reader is, why do you voluntarily pay the professor a salary to lie? Why do you sit in the boxcar of having paid taxes, then whine about the situation you're in, after having put yourself in that position? How submissive are you? Do you actually fear some celebrity will scold you in an editorial?
December 3, 2016, 8:51 pmIke Evans:
The singularity is roughly 30 years away, +/- 10 years. This event is 1,000 times more significant that climate change and will either annihilate the human race, or lift us to be like the God who created us. Climate change, frankly, seems to be a silly issue.
December 4, 2016, 6:46 amdonald:
I actually do know one acquaintance that is living off grid but for for different reasons than many of the nuts. He has a generator, emergency supplies. But got cheaper land farther out from traditional services. Has a family, raising them on a ranch. Sells the, uh oh, methane producing cows and sheep that he doesn't eat himself. More or less He and his wife determined that they would rather ranch up in the mountains of northern arizona away from all the people, government, etc. and raise/home school their kids the way they want to without a bunch of influence, regulations, rules, and liberals. Quit the suit and tie grind, and bought a big ranch and truck. Not my cup of tea, but I sure don't mind the visit. It's tougher, slower, better, and worse all at the same time.
December 5, 2016, 2:18 pmobloodyhell:
A professor trying to look stupider than Paul Ehrlich? Why? You're not going to be able command higher speaking fees for saying something blatantly untrue. Ehrlich has a long history of finding and exploiting useful idiots. You don't stand a chance against that kind of experience.
December 6, 2016, 1:41 amobloodyhell:
We can solve the issue of mutant babies by giving them physical therapy?
This sounds like a productive field for a career....
December 6, 2016, 1:47 amobloodyhell:
Climate Change is an issue we can fix by changing the name yet again, to some even more vague phraseology...
"Climate Whachamajiggy"
December 6, 2016, 1:49 amobloodyhell:
Hey. Don't you doubt Whachamajiggy!!!
December 6, 2016, 1:50 amobloodyhell:
All this mention of Ehrlich, and no one remembers Simon...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
Proof that being a lunatic idiot is more valuable than being a rational economist?
December 6, 2016, 1:51 amIke Evans:
It's not so much a change in name as much as it is a clarification. If we are to accept the larger scientific consensus on climate change (I'm generally a fence sitter, personally) the net result of man's effect on the climate looks like general warming over the globe. But with the potential of shifting ocean currents in the process, this will result in portions of the planet getting cooler while others get warmer. As the argument goes, we understand that the climate has always been changing, the concern is how mankind is accelerating the change - hence the term anthropogenic climate change.
To be clear, I'm not interested in convincing you of the science one way or the other. But I don't believe you understand the argument of your opposition very well.
December 6, 2016, 6:55 amDolphinsRpersons:
He's an ass after attention and power
February 13, 2018, 8:27 pmDolphinsRpersons:
From all accounts he works on that regularly with women who need comforting "knowing" they have only 10 years.
February 13, 2018, 8:30 pm