The predictions just keep coming. The scientific conspiracy to boondoggle people about Global Warming seems to be growing. At least it is growing louder. This one is really grim: Why is Near Term Human Extinction Inevitable?
So what does the expression ‘near term human extinction’ mean? In essence, according to those scientists who use the term, it means that human beings will be extinct by about 2030. For a summary of the evidence of this, with many references, listen to the lecture by Professor Guy McPherson on ‘Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction.’ Why 2030? Because, according to McPherson, the ‘perfect storm’ of environmental assaults that we are now inflicting on the Earth, including the 28 self-reinforcing climate feedback loops that have already been triggered, is so far beyond the Earth’s capacity to absorb, that there will be an ongoing succession of terminal breakdowns of key ecological systems and processes – that is, habitat loss – over the next decade that it will precipitate the demise of homo sapiens sapiens.
End of the world predictions have always seemed humorous to me. This one makes me nervous.
Having written about the very likely collapse of civilization some time in the future this makes us look conservative. I hoped to be long gone before this all really got going. Read on below for more on this.
I find it hard to find fault with this:
It is now widely accepted that we are living through the sixth mass extinction in planetary history. The last one occurred 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs vanished. We are now losing biodiversity at a rate similar to that time. But this mass extinction is driven by us. And we will be one of the casualties. The only real debate is when. And this debate is predicated on the unstated and highly problematic assumption that we can continue to avoid nuclear war.
It is the "when" that seems to be the only open question in the author's mind. That could be accurate.
One should not be surprised that even most scientists find these prediction extreme. For example: How Guy McPherson gets it wrong
Recently, a few Ars Technica commenters have been posting references to the work of Guy McPherson on climate articles. McPherson is a retired professor of ecology at the University of Arizona, and he runs a blog called Nature Bats Last. In recent years, he has turned his energies to dire warnings of impending climate catastrophe. Those warnings go far beyond what you’ll find anywhere else: McPherson believes humans will go extinct in as little as two decades.
Now, lots of people run blogs that make wild claims, so why am I spending time on this one? McPherson claims to simply be passing along scientific data to the public— data that most scientists are unwilling to talk about and governments are trying to keep secret. As a result, his followers (I mean to use that term more in the Twitter sense than a religious one) seem confident that they have the weight of science behind them. It takes careful examination of McPherson’s references, and a familiarity with the present state of climate science, to uncover that his claims aren’t scientific at all. I also get the feeling that his internet following might not be insignificant (as noted by climate scientist Michael Tobis) and could be growing, yet I couldn’t find any direct challenges with a web search. This makes one.
other than giving the deniers ammunition for their claims that science is all wet what good does this kind of debate do?
There is a weird kind of circularity involved here. In our book we point out that reductionist science has been a big factor in the systematic way we have developed to this point. Yet it is that same science we look to for understanding of our condition. Clearly that is not enough. Yet there is nothing else. I don't know about the timing, but the facgt that we are in big trouble is hard to miss.