Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Serial failed futurist Paul Ehrlich has warned that Australia will become a third world country, if we Australians don’t abandon one of our main sources of national income.
According to The Guardian;
Q&A: mining will turn Australia into a third-world country, says ecologist Paul Ehrlich
Ehrlich warns ‘you are destroying your life support systems here’ and says his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation will collapse in 50 years is based on ‘gut feeling’
Australia is “working to become a third-world country” through its economic dependence on mining natural resources for export and reliance on coalmining, according to doomsday ecologist Paul Ehrlich.
Ehrlich made the prediction on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, after dismissing the views of other panellists on the question of whether Australia was overpopulated as “mostly nonsense, unfortunately,” and before praising the economic theories of electronics retailer Dick Smith.
“Talk to your ecologist,” Ehrlich said. “You are destroying your life support systems here. You are working at it really hard. You are also working to become a third-world country, because your specialisation of course is to take your raw materials, like your coal, which will destroy the world of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and ship of as much of it unprocessed as you possibly can out to the rest of the world.”
Ehrlich told host Tony Jones, who seemed to be struggling to manage the octogenarian academic, that his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation would collapse in 50 years was based on a “gut feeling”, and freely admitted that a number of his predictions, such as the prediction the United Kingdom would be a small group of impoverished islands occupied by 70 million hungry people by the year 2000, hadn’t quite borne out.
Its good that Ehrlich is researching whether the rumbling of his digestive tract is a more reliable predictor of future events, than whatever he used to do. In fact, I must commend Ehrlich on choosing to study his own gut, rather than the entrails of slaughtered animals, to produce his forecasts – Ehrlich’s method seems a lot tidier and less wasteful than the ancient Roman method of fortune telling, and will in all likelihood produce predictions which are at least as reliable as an IPCC climate projection.
Serial nutter.
Yes, but with a commonly unappreciated real purpose. If you want to understand what Paul Ehrlich is really pushing read his 1989 book with Robert Ornstein called New World New Mind. Ehrlich lost the bet with Julian Simon, but his vision for a new type of education that would allow fervent belief in false narratives and politically useful misperceptions about how the world works has become the dominant focus in K-12 globally. In the US it goes by Common Core or more aptly now Competency-based education.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/learning-to-learn-or-how-to-replace-old-minds-with-sustainable-new-ones/ goes into the bet and how what is called double-loop learning is designed to neurologically restructure the brain over time. The McREL ed lab in Aurora, Colorado brags about using the same techniques to create ‘second-order change’ in students.
Ehrlich acolyte and protegee, John Holdren, heads the President’s Office of Science and Technology Promise. The League of Innovative Schools and the Digital Promise technology policy answer to him. Ehrlich remains on course to get what he wants until we understand his true agenda, what Foresight Knowledge is, and how his work with psychologist Albert Bandura has become so influential in education, influencing the Equity and Excellence agenda coming in under civil rights laws.
Scary! Like most of the bugs in Aus.
Yup just like this exemplar which I found on the New Zealand governments education site.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/exemplar-3-2008-exam.pdf
Besides Australia WOULD BE a third world country WITHOUT mining!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
I wholeheartedly agree….a complete nut job
In 1973 I went ( as young people tend to do) to a presentation by Suzuki. He said then exactly the same things about Canada, now I know where he got the meme from, literally word for word. Hey Ehrlich and Suzuki, we are living in abject poverty here in Canada! Yes we have problems but a third world country, my a.. and you both can kiss it.
Just happen to have a “selfie” of Paul “Suppository-Head” Erlich, engrossed in one of his celebrated gut-checks: “&”
#intestinal parasites
Probably true on this guy but you have to wonder about a country that exports coal and iron ore to China and imports Chinese steel. Same with cars and Japan. Same with Korea and offshore drilling, etc.
Australia is the most urbanized country in the world and prides itself for having a very socialized economy chock full of middle class welfare. I like Australia and live there part of the year but they only work hard at sports and BBQs.
Maybe you need to understand why its this way. The Unions have made manufacturing so expensive that all of the processing and manufacturing industries have gone offshore. Take a look at our car making industry, the government won’t pay each manufacturer over $300 million per year to stay here so they are all disappearing overseas. The average wage for car assemblers is about $90,000, by the time you pay for all the allowances that they get paid. They have also just declared Melbourne Cup day a public holiday. We had our own successful steel manufacturing businesses here, but steel manufacturing is seen as old dirty technology and we shouldn’t have it in our country, stupid labor and greens
+1. Erlich might be a card-carying ecotard, but he is on the money about our backward, she’ll-be-right-mate economic strategy.
And this economic reliance on digging stuff up and shipping it out comes from a country that was the fourth to launch an artificial satellite (admittedly on an unused US missile left over from test flights near Woomera), was also fourth to build a stored memory electronic computer, developed the combine harvester in its modern form, invented flame ionisation detection, was one of the pioneers of refrigeration, held patents to enabling technologies used in Wifi and in the 1970s was the world’s tenth largest producer of cars.
When the hell did we lose the plot so completely?
Expat
Have a Go responds to your entry with Melbourne Cup having just been made a Public Holiday.
The Cup was first run in 1861 and such a success that a Holiday was declared in 1877.
This year a public holiday was held for the first on the Friday before the AFL Grand Final. It was not universally rwell received in the state of Victoria and was generally considered a medium success in city turnout for a Grand Final parade and people getting out and about. I can understand why people overseas would consider it weird that we have a state of Victoria holiday for a horse race and a footy final. The first one works spectacularly and is a massive sporting and cultural event while the latter is ridiculous. As a news event the race was won by a 100 to one longshot and ridden by Michelle Payne. The first female jockey to win the event labelled as the race that stops a nation.
Cheers to all
Expat,
As Have a Go indicates, in Australia it is cheaper buy back those products (as manufactured goods, plus transport costs) than it is to produce them here for a variety of reasons. High wages for union members that effectively negotiate themselves out of a job is only one factor but a very large one. The Government also now recognises that it is not represent good value to subsidise such manufacturers to produce competitively priced goods, when it is obvious that our tax dollars are used to pay to keep the pricing ‘competitive’. Either way we pay extra for a similar item, whether the money leaves our pocket on the showroom floor or via taxes. Someone did a study on this in the US a few years ago and found that the US Government pays twice as much in subsidies to US car manufacturers as the average wage cost per person in the industry. So effectively if they shut the industry down and paid the same guys to stay at home doing nothing, they’d save several billion dollars a year… But there is much to be said for retaining manufacturing capabilities.
We also lack economies of scale to produce many manufactured goods competitively on a world stage. The Asian economies have stolen a march on us there. And the US too.
And we are not ‘the most urbanised country in the world’. Apart from the city states, such as Monaco and Singapore, many European and Asian countries are more urbanised than Oz. But we are up there at nearly 90%.
And we also pride ourselves on being one of the most innovative countries in the world, with many ‘mod con’s’ having been invented here, like Erny says. But we are disappointingly risk-averse so hardly ever commercialise those products domestically, rather leaving more visionary monied types to swoop in and take our inventions overseas to produce them there. Rinse, repeat. 🙁
You left out an important aspect of the risk averse nature of the Australian culture.
There is an unhealthy obsession with real estate. Oz would have a much healthier economy if the billions tied up in McMansions were invested in productive assets. Primarily this is a result of a broken tax system.
Australia is the worlds biggest exporter of coking coal for steel making so nobody value adds to coal as well as them. Australia does indeed export coal and iron ore to China and then buy it back as steel because this is the cheapest way to do it which is called “economics”. They have middle class welfare instead of pay rises which would hurt business.
Australia is the cheapest producer so as the price falls the competition flounders and Australia picks up market share.
Erlich points the way to the future….just reverse everything he says.
Expat, another thing you ignored is the fact that Australia has a very restrictive set of design rules that have to be met for any vehicle sold here. Most are unique to Australia, which, with a 23 million population, means that manufacturers cannot achieve the economy of scale needed to be profitable. Thus, for decades our car industry has been heavily subsidised by taxpayers, but thankfully that will end in the next 2 years.
Serial nutter.
While I agree, it should be remembered that, despite being serially wrong about just about anything, there are a lot of people that listen to his words and think that he makes sense.
Sad, I know, that he has such ‘form’. That didn’t stop the RS taking him on board recently…
https://royalsociety.org/fellows/fellows-directory/
(search last name Ehrlich)
So much for ‘science’ when ‘The RS’ pulls him out of the water and one of his acolytes, Holdren, is now advising the US President upon matters of science.
If you are not worried then you are not paying attention.
No, wait – Australia is NOT a Third World country?
The whole world will become a third world dump, if we do abandon mining.
Hey Paul; EVERYTHING comes out of the ground; well everything that we own anyway.
g
Well at least he is man enough to admit that his prediciton is only based on a “gut feeling.”
My “gut feeling”, after a dodgy takeaway, will be some fallout.
““gut feeling.””
tape worm !
90% though? Why put a number on a gut feeling? Might as well wear a sign “Idiot. Ignore him.”
Everyone will have to put up with his BS for another year about.
Will the USA ever stop allowing these nut case from obtaining important Government Positions??
“Will the USA ever stop allowing these nut case from obtaining important Government Positions??”
Only when we stop electing nutters to the highest offices in the land! As long as serial welfare types are allowed to vote we will have a non-stop chain of nutters!
Unfortunately there are too many with too little understanding of how the world works and look to imbeciles like him for guidance. The USA and Australia used to be guided by what was good for each country. Now they are led by the nose into areas that have no financial or social advantage.
We have been too successful and at the top of Masloe’s triangle all you can see are our arses as we struggle to full actualisation.
We need a complete new thought pattern based on wealth creation by the only method there is, selling manufactured stuff that others want to buy. With fully automated factories and software we don’t give away to the Chinese/Indians. The west needs to ensure that nuclear energy is developed where it was invented and not in China as that appears the only way forwards.
“Why put a number on a gut feeling?”
What’s next?
p-values based on gut feeling?
Guts can tell us a great deal about what the future holds.
“The seven towers of Agamemnon tremble. Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini. When, when cry the sirens of doom and love. Speckly showers on Tuesday.”
Manicholas — Laughing out loud. I post stuff like that occasionally — Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene, thank you but I cannot take the credit…it is from a very funny essay which was discussed here a few weeks back.
If his prediction is based upon a gut feeling, perhaps a bit of haruspicy is called for; will Ehrlich volunteer for the ritual reading of entrails? It could be the only thing that he is good for and the results will probably be more correct than all of his failed predictions.
You would think that someone would get tired of being constantly, consistently wrong, but not Ehrlich. The man has no shame and no one really calls him or Holdren on their miserable track records
Ehrlic and Holdren are just the paid mouth pieces of the aspiring rulers from the UN. Nobody would have the courage to tell lies and proven wrong so often if there wasn’t some form of monetary retribution involved!
Truly, completely insane.
Looks more like Jed Clampett every day. “Jethro! get out of that see-ment pond and shift this pile o’ money.”
But Uncle Jed, Granny sez I kin have a heap of her possum pot pie for lunch!
Well, Faversham to ya!
The quality of the intellectual left is epitomized by Paul Ehrlich — Eugene WR Gallun
The difference is that Paul Ehrlich is wheeled out as a comedy routine for the Left.
Donald Trump stands for the leadership of his party.
At least Trump is a builder. It sounds like Ehrlich hasn’t a clue where natural resources come from–they’re either grown, mined, or extracted. I wonder if Ehrlich would like to demonstrate a decade of getting along without any metals whatsoever–where would he live? In a cave? I can show him how to make stone implements if he’s interested in eating.
He would announce that chipping flint and making fires with flint is pure evil, too. 🙂
Trump is no conservative, and neither are most Republicans.
Trump know how to get attention. He is no fool.
Ehrlich is either a bedwetting fool, or a lying liar extraordinaire.
Since he seems to believe what he says, the evidence would indicate “fool” in Ehrlich’s case.
The man is perhaps the least optimistic person ever born, has a seeming black hole in his brain regarding the history of technology, believes himself to be wise and insightful in the extreme, but is a truly clueless nitwit instead.
Trump is a loud mouthed narcissist who believes he is never wrong and is someone who has no experience on how to run a government. Same as the guy we got in the White House now. Why would anyone want more of the same just because the color is different.
It is likely the case that everyone who seeks to be Preezy of the United Steezy is dangerously narcissistic, so that one goes without saying, but cancels out.
And only people who have been Governors can claim to have actual experience running a government, unless a Mayor runs. So I am not sure that must be a litmus test.
Being loudmouthed…who cares?
Believing he is never wrong?
I am not so sure of that…he freely admits he would delegate responsibilities and much decision making.
The best business leaders all learn to do this, or they do not get far. No one can successfully micromanage
large institutions or enterprises.
From your comments, might one infer that you think the only wise choice is a former governor?
I want someone who is going to clean house…many of the other arguments I have heard amount to just insisting that the way things are is how they must be.
BTW, I am not endorsing Trump…just observing and offering my thoughts on the current state of the process.
Bunk. Ehrlich’s mini-me has been corrupting science policy and counsel for most of this Administration. Trump stands or falls on his own. Gratuitously trying to compare a life-long parasite like Ehrlich with someone who actually has to at the end of the day produce something is not useful.
For Tom:
What??? Modern European Australia is a mining boom-bust economy. Always has been, always will be. Now with Turncoat in the drivers seat (Truck! Will summat save us?), we are set to cross the finishing line to the race to bottom. Canada or the UK may pinch it tho…
If Corbyn gets anywhere near power the UK is a dead cert.
jbenton2013:
Your post implies that it is possible to do worse than Cameron, but I doubt that.
Richard
There really is no level of disdain great enough for our modern day Parson Malthus. This man has provided the justification for the murder of more millions than Hitler ever dreamed of.
His gut feeling is more of an Irritable bowel syndrome.
Why such nutters ever get any attention? The very same people that fight astrologers tooth and claw give credibility to slackers that suck out predictions from their toes. Argh!
The oracle of Delphi in Greece was the telephone psychic of ancient times: People came from all over Europe to call on the Pythia at Mount Parnassus to have their questions about the future answered.
The study, reported in the August issue of Geology, reveals that two faults intersect directly below the Delphic temple. The study also found evidence of hallucinogenic gases rising from a nearby spring and preserved within the temple rock.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0814_delphioracle_2.html
Some of the predictions were surprisingly accurate – according to legend. Croesus, the richest man of his time, performed a kind of scientific test on oracles, when he had messengers go out to all of them and ask what he would be doing on a certain date. Delphi got the only correct answer – cooking a tortoise in a pot. (Bold choice. I wouldn’t think of the richest guy in the world doing his own cooking.)
http://io9.com/5965349/what-really-caused-the-oracle-at-delphi-to-utter-mad-prophesies
I will go with the Pythia of Delphi and hallucinogenic gas versus Paul and ‘his gut’. At least she got ONE prediction right.
Ehrlich is just another anti-capitalism, anti-industrialisation, anti-human moron. Unfortunately, there are heaps of them.
His best before went 30 years ago and his gut feeling diarrheous interests no-one. Neext!
Further. Australia WILL be a 3rd world country. It does not refine raw materials like oil and iron ore. Oil is no longer refined in Aus. In 2016 car making will stop. Most industry has stopped in Aus. The only thing making Aus going is Govn’t and housing. And when people are out of work and cannot afford housing, what happens? Bubble. Burst. Recession. D’oh!
Thanks, Patrick! This are the consequences of Australia’s trade and industry mandarins enacting suicidal policies for 40-odd years, and we’re getting worse. Our agriculture debacle. The wastage of reservoir water to “save” “dying” rivers [whose natural state is to degrade in dry spells] denies irrigators from producing up to 40% of our national agricultural output. Australia will remain a net importer of food for the foreseeable future – a situation so absurd, but true, as to defy commonsense. http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=57118
Seems you Ozzies have adopted the California water management schem
I am not an Aussie, yet. I have not had the required lobotomy.
Never heard anything so ridiculous. of course, a country should exploit its main resource. that is what nations are build on.
Talking about resources, BP says that the world is not going to run out of oil and gas anytime soon. So it looks like all those doomsayers harking on about Peak Oil were wrong. See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11971280/The-Earth-is-not-running-out-of-oil-and-gas-BP-says.html
Yes, I have calculated that the volume of all of the oil ever produced would be a hill about the size of a single large mountain.
Compared to the size of the Earth, even Mt. Everest is of a size which, proportionally speaking, is to the Earth as a billiard ball is to a bacteria.
(Ok, I admit that I am referring to a rather large bacteria, but a real one.)
And another thing…Thailand has BETTER internet performance than Aus. Romania BEATS aus by shed loads… Ok lets ignore geography for a while, Aus is a lottle bit big. Yes New South Wales *IS* bigger than Texas (US). But we’re “first world” right?
This alone stand as testimony to our new PM’s workaday credentials – his previous portfolio was as ‘minister for the internet’ – where his promised $28 billion super fast FTN, has blown out to an impressive $56 Billion and change.
Failed as an opposition leader, failed as a communications minister, failed as a global warming advocate, failed as leader of the republican movement – but is apparently a great salesman – who has never worked in that role in his entire life.
A natural born narcissist!
Thanks, ahld! Turnbull gave us a disastrous “[no] water” policy : “Malcolm Turnbull, then minister for environment and water in the Howard government. His Water Act 2007 deregulated the supply of water in the Murray-Darling Basin, allowing financial institutions and companies to buy and trade water….farmers have to buy water from non-water users, speculative water barons, who are holding back on selling water in order to force up the price during this crippling drought. … Water that previously cost around $80 per megalitre (approximately what is held in a swimming pool), is now fetching $300 per megalitre, a ruinous impost for struggling irrigators who are battling historically low prices for basic commodities like milk, meat and fruit imposed by [their buyers] Australia’s supermarket duopoly” http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=57118
Malcolm Turnbull – ex Goldman Sachs & still working for Banksters for New World Order.
& aaahhhh… like father, like son:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-14/malcolm-turnbull-overthrows-tony-abbott-becomes-australian-pm
Sounds like some one here.
Well, he has a point. Third World countries do export raw materials, instead of processing them locally for higher value addition. And if Australia encouraged domestic use of coal, the country wouldn’t have to cater to unreliable power sources like wind turbines, right?
Do I need a /sarc here?
classic was this week when the power from Vic crashed and SA blacked out
because?
the greentards got the Pt Augusta powerstation near shutdown n replaced with?
wind/solar
ditto our smelters in whyalla n Pt Pirie,run down and being run outta town
and Geelong
and the alcoa plant in portland
et
etc
so we DID process n export but thanks to a$$holes like ehrlich we now dont
that pos should be BANNED from setting foot in aus!
figures the dimwits at ABC promote n support him.
Speaking of power outages, re the German joke of renewable energy:
“In 2014, production was stopped more than 70 times to maintain electricity supplies to domestic consumers. Although renewable energy is cheap when the sun shines and the wind blows, it cannot be stored for calm, cloudy days. To keep the power lines humming for ordinary households, large industrial users can be disconnected from the grid for up to one hour at a time.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/02/germanys-planned-nuclear-switch-off-drives-energy-innovation
Do not mock Mr Ehrlich. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 2012 so he must be a supremely credible scientist!
(sarc)
Being “honoured” by that lot is not something of which I would feel proud.
If I had a shred of respect (born of past deeds only) remaining for that institution, the knowledge that they have honored this charlatan has just erased it.
+1
…and a successful economy would doubtlessly be one in which people made their money from one another by selling books and talks containing completely erroneous predictions about the near future…
I see it now. The perfect utopia. Nobody would live in want or scarcity. All our problems would be solved. Forget mining or making stuff or growing crops. We don’t need all that stuff.
All we need are more shitty predictions. It’s actually amazing to witness just how lucrative a shitty prediction can be.
Give a man a fish and he can eat today – teach a man to make unfounded but attention grabbing predictions and he can live forever in luxury like Paul Ehrlich.
I take it you mean a successfull GREEN economy?
I nominate ‘Frog as today’s internet grand prize winner!
The ignorance of economics is truly funny….
Sad but funny
Paul Ehrlich: Australia will become a “third world country” if we don’t abandon Mining, oddly I thought the ‘green dream’ was to turn back the clock on the modern world until it returned to what was in practice not the mythic rural ideal they dream about , but what we see right now in the worst of ‘third world’
He must be learning, although on a curve so glacially slow it’s movement must be tracked by time-lapse photography.
Having seen that peoples the world over actually, and to his surprise. distain the idea of reverting to stone age barbarism and deprivation, he must have decided to incorporate this revelation into his gloomy-gus pronouncements.
” distain the idea of reverting to stone age barbarism and deprivation,”
With the exception of Islam of course, perhaps Erlich is a closest Islamist???
Does anyone know of a single prediction of Often-Wrong Ehrlich that has even come close to reality?
Tim Flannery would give him a run for his money.
Am not sure either could run…maybe if their ice cream was melting and only if it was from New Zealand.
Are you talking of the same Tim Flannery whom our CBC has elevated to near-god status. He has been interviewed at length (and approvingly, or course) in the programs “Ideas” and “The Sunday Edition”.
Ian M
“Does anyone know of a single prediction of Often-Wrong Ehrlich that has even come close to reality?”
In 1968 he correctly surmised that eating the egg salad, which had sat in the sun all day, may not be such a wise idea.
Since then…nada.
And ever since that moment he has relied on his gut instinct, versus logical thoughts which he must mistrust for some strange reason.
As an old fart, and one who attended a second tier Australian university in the late sixties, I have a clear recollection of Ehrlich along with the pronouncements of the Club of Rome.
My lecturer in Economic Geology, in 1969, was a Californian PhD who proclaimed (not just claimed) that the world will exhaust its petroleum reserves in 30 to 40 years!
Ehrlich, like my lecturer, were (and are) deniers of the ability of humankind to not only adapt but innovate solutions to problems facing humanity.
This is reason enough for me to reject the mantras of the various Green/Socialist/Hippie groups who insist on working without the safety net of reason. They will be hurt by the eventual fall.
People like Ehrlich never get hurt by the “eventual fall”. They somehow always manage to weasel out of the blame. Look at Flannell-face. Still making a motsa off the old global warming fraud.
Damn, Flim Fannery was just on the CBC here in Canada yesterday touting a litany of record global warming records occurring throughout Ausieland over this last year. Record droughts, heat waves, violent storms, endangered Barrier Reef etc.
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+Sunday+Edition/ID/2678093470/
Given his track record that sounds like a solid reason to step up mining.
Yep.. not one thing this moronic cretin has ever got correct.
Yet somehow he passes for “intelligence” to the far left / ABC.
Makes sense I suppose.
So the fifth biggest world economy (UK) should have been an impoverished group of islands with 70 million hungry people 15 years ago? We mighty very well have been if we had relied on windmills and solar cells to power our homes, farms and industry.
“Gut feeling” just about sums up leftie “science”; a load of cr*p going in totally the wrong direction to be spewed from the mouth at any opportunity!
+100
Gut feelings – like the confidence levels that some climate scientists have in the forecasts of the climate models.
If you shut down your manufacturing, mining, and other industry, you will no longer be able to make the things you need. You will need to buy those things from other countries, which may not have your best interests at heart. When you can not make the things you need, you essentially become a third world agrarian country. And in short order, you will have the agrarian third world economy and society to match. That happens when you can no longer afford to buy the things you need.
I read “The Population Bomb” when it first came out. It scared the hell out of me, I was just a kid at the time. After just a few years, it was apparent to me that he was fantastically wrong, and that what he was really up to was scaring people, especially children.
After that episode, I have always felt that the man needs to be skinned.
“When you can not make the things you need, you essentially become a third world agrarian country.”
That’s providing you haven’t built all over your farmland. We are either building houses or solar farms on farmland which doesn’t seem the best solution to shortage of housing and energy. Either way we are losing farmland and water catchment at the same time.
… you become a third world agrarian country.
Isn’t that the logical, long term, outcome of adherence to “sustainability” movement standards. As such, It should be characterized as a good thing in the eyes of goofballs like Erlich.
Ehrlich has lost none of his arrogance and learned nothing from being so incredibly wrong.
When confronted with his prediction of:
“freely admitted that a number of his predictions, such as the prediction the United Kingdom would be a small group of impoverished islands occupied by 70 million hungry people by the year 2000”
he actually stated that he “was correct, except for the hungry bit”.
What a moron.
Journalists are always fascinated when a big name gives gloom and doom predictions. At some point they start drooling for more, as if dire and implausible prediction could not be too unbelievable to be taken seriously. You need to get the name first, but after that, you can basically claim anything, like famously West Side Highway will be under water, or Greenland will splash the sea and make a tsunami. It is interesting how incredible changes to credible and communicable.
And then, he’s forgotten. 30 years later someone sees the prediction, smiles and turns the next page.
Kind of says something about journalists, ya think?
After decades of predictions which have failed miserably, you think the guy might give the prediction game away.
Thank goodness he wasn’t around to prevent the development of the wheel.
Paul Ehrlich is a reverse Cassandra , he is always wrong, but people keep believing him.
“reverse Cassandra” – canard’s ass?
I think Canard’s ass is an inside out Cassandra.
Well, he does wear his guts on his sleeve…
Menicholas – you win.
Will become a 3rd World Country? Will?
It already is. Its just the utter arrogance of Australians that blinds them from the truth. Australia is a developing country and has been from since the first Aborigine arrived. Secondary industries that were once thriving are being killed off (take a look at the now non-existent car industry), and high-technology is imported, renamed/rebadged/retagged and hugely price inflated (which Australians so deliriously call “added value”) more so than exported. Third world countries have economies that are largely based upon primary industry and retail/commercial services, and that is what Australia is, a fancy Third World country.
When a country doesn’t know how build or create anything, and always realizes on foreigners to do the more sophisticated works, or imprisons refugees and their children on islands and in far away deserts, or worse yet sells their unwanted responsibilities to other countries, you’ve got a Third World country.
So what has Australia invented on note around the world?
1. First commercial successful rotary lawn mower.
2. Refrigerator.
3. Torpedo: as in underwater missile.
4. Electric Drill.
5. First full-length feature film.
6. Armoured Tank: yes the one they use in war, it was an Australian that came up with the design.
7. Marino wool: as from the Marino sheep.
8. Dual flush toilet
9. Polymeric Bank Notes.
10. Wi-Fi.
But…
Australia doesn’t even know how to make a refrigerator any more, they are all imported today, I recommend LG. Considering how much war is going on in the war you’d think being the creator of the torpedo and tank, you would have made a killing…so to speak (apologies for the bad pun). Electric drills? Makita, they’re imported too. First full-length movie? Hollywood, Bollywood, Australian movies are terrible. Marino wool? take a look at the exports, in another 20 years, the marino sheep will be extinct. Dual flush toilet? Go to San Francisco and smell the success of dual-flush toilets, its the fastest way to turn a society back into the medieval. Polymeric Bank notes, ah yes my favourite, you do know that the only way to dispose of them is by burning them? And that’s where the problem only begins, for the burnt gases are carcinogenic! Furthermore, have you ever tried using old polymer banknotes in hot climes, they are very difficult to use and can disintegrate in you hand (by that I mean it is not dissolving it is really falling apart , this has happened to me once! Try getting the note replaced….not going to happen! They shrivel up! I would add a photo here to show you what I mean, but that isn’t allowed. So just google it! You will see! Polymeric notes DESTROY YOUR WEALTH!
And for Wi-Fi. Knowing how the CSIRO operates, I used to work there as a grad student many years ago, read this:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million/
it will give you a better appreciation how things are really done in Australia, using lies/lawyers/governments. That’s only arstechnica, and they are writing with reserve, for fear of law suits. The truth is far far darker. In short, if the CSIRO can be credited for WiFi, then Heddy Lamar should be getting all the royalties. In short, the CSIRO did absolutely nothing more than Heddy Lamar!
All Australia is, is a big island, with a plentiful supply of minerals, sand, and racists. Oh and a lot of hard working immigrants who carry the WASPs. And that’s about it.
Actually, Australia has invented a wheel AU 2001100012 on top of the things above, but not the torpedo.
Torpedo was invented by a fellow Croat, and an Austrian naval officer. So with all due respect I must remind you that there are no kangaroos in Austria 😆
Not to jump all over you or anything, but I have studied the history of inventions for quite some time.
Although the first practical vapor compression refrigerator was built in Australia, the inventor was a recent immigrant from Great Britain.
And the concept already had a long history.
It was not like the light bulb exactly, as there were numerous “firsts” in between the machines that Harrison built and when the first recognizable home units were built by a guy from Indiana, and when the first built in freezers became available for home use.
Just sayin’.
Lies, lies, lies! Those were all invented by an American named Al Gore.
Oh of course. Australians are such raaacists that they’ve successfully established a multi-ethnic society that has absorbed waves of different peoples. My siblings and I all married the children of non-English speaking WW2 reffos. Such racists. I have an Asian daughter-in-law. Clearly we raised our children to tbe racists too!
Oz will become a Third World Country if it doesn’t imprison “refugees”, illegal immigrants and their children on islands and is faraway deserts. Simples.
Why is it that the rules seem only to be there for the WASPs?
A good probiotic and an occasional dose of pepto should
help out with that “gut feeling” of scientific methodology.
Perhaps a colonoscopy would help although the only thing they may find is his head.
I don’t think doctors can help a person who thinks with his arse.
Predictions of doom are popular. Imagine you are sick in bed with the flu. You feel miserable. But then you hear that an explosion levelled your workplace. Even if the report is false, you suddenly feel better.
A nut job perhaps but a very clever nut job. These doomsday prophets are little more than accomplished con artists who have crafted successful careers predicting the end of days over and over. That they are catastrophically wrong every time is irrelevant. Rather the bigger the miss the more it enhances their reputation. Small claims go unnoticed. Global extinction event predictions…now THAT gets people’s attention. And by the time the predicted extinction event date passes without a whimper, our heroes have already shifted attention to a new apocalypse. Read Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” for a primer on how this is done.
Sorry Dorian, but someone who confuses ” realizes” with “relies” (third paragraph) forfeits any right to serious consideration.
Telboy …. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the working of autocorrect ….
Sure Telboy, and letting a typo slip through proves a person is a numbskull too, right?
People who live in glass ” homes”, the ones that can’t manage to get their quotes in the correct location, shouldn’t be forfeiting the rights of anyone else.
Another Timothy Leary.
completely ridiculous survey, but note how the Coalition voters will listen to the Turnbull vibe and change their minds!
3 Nov: SMH: Peter Hannam: CSIRO survey: Most Coalition voters reject humans to blame for climate change
Barely one in four Coalition voters accepts climate change is mostly caused by humans, with more than half of Liberal voters believing changes to global temperatures are natural, according to a CSIRO survey.
The wide-ranging report, which summarised the findings of five surveys of Australian attitudes from 2010 to 2014 before the program was axed earlier this year, was released without fanfare on Tuesday.
As in previous years, just under 80 per cent of respondents accepted the climate was changing, with human activity viewed as accounting for 62 per cent of the change.
Assessments of the cause, though, appear closely tied to political leanings…
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, unlike his predecessor Tony Abbott, has spoken out strongly in defence of science particularly as it relates to climate change, and is expected to re-state the case for action at the Paris climate summit starting at the end of the month…
Andy Pitman, Director of ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of NSW, predicted that many Coalition voters will take their cue from the new PM and shift their views…
“My experience of the public service and right the way through to some media outlets, they absolutely listen to the vibe from the top and respond to it,” he said…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/csiro-survey-most-coalition-voters-reject-humans-to-blame-for-climate-change-20151103-gkpgf8.html
Given how poor his predictions have been I’d say that reflects badly on those that continue to believe this man’s disastrous predictions.
A fair number of contributions to the Guardian seem to written by people who not in touch with reality!
I love when ecoloons and Climate Liars like Ehrlich, who has his head so far up his arse that he couldn’t see his way out of a paper bag pretend to care about what happens to economies, either locally or worldwide, since it is their own anti-hydrocarbon policies which are, and will continue to torpedo said economies.
Like many Guardian contributors he has never run any that involved using his own money!
I thought the ding bats or is it wombats were all in the bush in oz.
Ridiculous!
But no more ridiculous than the idea being pushed by some here that Ehrlich’s ravings are due to his octogenarian status.
There are plenty of examples of older men having sensible ideas in relation to climate change for example (e.g. the physicist Freeman Dyson) and there are many examples of younger men having science-moving ideas.
I submit that age is not the factor which determines whether one is a fruit loop.
That is down to the way one thinks, the way one was educated, what one’s prejudices are etc etc.
I am 70. That does not seem to have caused me to change my mind in relation to rubbish science (think climate alarmism here). Nor has it caused my mind so far to become closed to persuasion on the basis of the evidence. Surely it is not possible that in another 10 years (should I survive so long) my thought processes will become moribund; logic will desert me; the very physical structure of my brain will alter so that I no longer can determine which set of facts or evidence put to me are correct or more likely to be correct, and which are not.
Balderdash!
So let us have no more of this age based analysis. The evidence is that it is wrong. If you are going to be stupid, you will be stupid no matter what the age you have attained.
In general agree, however being young and stupid is more forgivable and understandable than being old and stupid, which Ehrlich certainly is.
Who is dumber, the fool, or those who give airtime to these fools over and over again?
That really is the nub of this whole lunatic boondoggle, the bloody media and their utter irresponsibility and unquestioning behaviour.
Who will pick up the mining slack, China or India?
warns ‘you are destroying your life support systems here’ and says his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation will collapse in 50 years is based on
My ‘gut feeling’ is that Ehrlich is an empty headed loon who makes a living by scaring people with dire predictions. The difference being my “gut feeling” has much more evidence behind it than Erlichs.
Sure, civilization could collapse in 50 years, or 500 or 20 or 2000. Predictions like these are a dime a dozen from climate zealots, religious zealots, and misc zealots. Unfortunately opportunists like Ehrlich actually get paid more than a dime for worthless predictions.
Alx November 3, 2015 at 5:14 am
Hey!… I resemble that remark.
Would like to see popular media do a good retrospective on Erlich and his many failed predictions. As to the post using Erlich vs Trump as a means to smear a US political party you don’t know our system. Anyone can claim membership at anytime. It’s very informal. Sanders is not even a registered Democrat.
True, you are a member when you say you are.
I think he is more of a tool….
There are only five industries in the entire world that create original wealth, mining is one of them, and all of them are under attack by the lunatic left. The crazies would turn the entire world into a third world backwater.
Why do they continue to give malthusian scare mongers with totally failed track record a platform to sell their message of doom time after time. The guy belongs in a mental institution.
Because they serve a useful function for the Warmunist enlightened ones, warning us of dire consequences unless we do their bidding.
The world would be a much better place if the mothers of people like Ehrlich and Gore and Obama had been enthusiastic supporters of late term abortion and had used it for themselves.
If a country becomes a third world when they run out of fossil fuels, surely wont the same thing happen if they do it voluntarily ?
Only faster
And with more inequalities on the way down
A 90% gut feeling, is the a consensus gut feeling? I believe this gut feeling will produce nothing but crap yet again.
I mean, sure – he sounds like a loon. But the key point is Q&A did not bring him on as a nut to be mocked – they deserve that for people of Christian beliefs and conservative politicians. He was picked as a guest because they actually believe this tripe on TheirABC.
“A gut feeling?” I think it is a bit further down the intestinal tract, close to the exit.
“… freely admitted that a number of his predictions, such as the prediction the United Kingdom would be a small group of impoverished islands occupied by 70 million hungry people by the year 2000, hadn’t quite borne out.”
Yeah, but he was close, right?
I mean, in the morning when they just wake up, they are hungry people are they not?
And they are islands.
And the year 2000 happened.
I think we are being entirely too hard on this obviously gifted individual.
Now, I’m basing this on my “gut feeling”, something I often get right before I, uh, eliminate solid waste.
I think it is a fair assumption, given his track record, that if Pal Ehrlich has a “gut feeling” civilisation will collapse then civilisation will enter a period of unprecedented prosperity and good fortune.
“A 90% gut feeling…”
Given Mr. Ehrlich’s track record, perhaps it’s time that he rely more on the remaining 10%. I’m curious? Has Mr. Ehrlich ever recanted and/or amended any of his predictions? And if the answer is no, how does he explain abysmal failure?
No, he is as unrepentant as he is foolish and just plain wrong.
As usual, the Malthusians never tell us what they’ll give up to save the planet. Moving back to the stone age is for the little people I guess.
I had to read Ehrlich (and The Fate of the Earth, Entropy, etc., and watch shows like “The Day After” about how Reagan was going to nuke us all) back in high school back in the 80s. It was pure left-wing indoctrination, and according way too many of my friends on Facebook, they’re still drinking the Kool-Aid. Then again, they went on to university and were educated beyond their IQs, and I went to community college. What do I know?
It never occurs to them that we weren’t even supposed to make it to the Millennium without facing a zombie-like apocalypse let alone make it 15 years past, and living a life of great leisure…
IN today’s London times, it is reported that you can make thin mice fat by sticking the enteric bacteria of a fat person up a thin mouse’s arse.
So if in future you tell someone you don’t like to ‘shove some shit up your own arse’, you can tell them that you are telling them to go on a healthy diet……..as long as the shit comes from a thin healthy person and the recipient is slightly more rotund than advisable….
Really. I do not jest……
In fact, tell your own children to stick their fingers in shit – it’ll stimulate their immune systems, make their gut ecosystem more healthy and they’ll be as fit as a fiddle for 40 years of productive adult life……
I do not think just sticking a finger in it will do the trick. The research is regarding actual transplants of fecal material.
So, one would then have to stick that finger where the sun does not shine, theoretically.
In fact, to faithfully reproduced the procedure which found this correlation, it must actually be deposited within the G.I. tract…not just smeared at the entrance or exit point.
Is this a promotional thesis for gay activity ???
Incredibly, this was actual research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy
I know we are veering OT, but this interesting.
Both sides of the story:
While intending to treat serious medical conditions and infections, it was found by accident that the bacterial profile of a persons gut may be a primary cause of either a healthy body weight or being morbidly obese.
Of course, once discovered by accident, this apparent correlation was then looked at as a potential weight loss therapy:
Skinny person who accidentally was made fat by being given stool transplant from an obese person:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150204125810.htm
And the converse proposition:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/researchers_hope_control_obesity_through_fecal_transplants
Ok, I’ve just had another endoscopy. Like the first one I wrote about this one was also accomplished without any sedative. You see I can’t get a ride home and they won’t let you drive home if you’ve been given a sedative. So, no sedative.
I thought I knew what I was in for because I’d already endured the previous one. But, this time, since they’d had an experienced endoscopy victim (me), well, they just might use me as an endoscopy training tool for a new doctor.
For those of you who’ve had an endoscopy with a sedative, which means just about everybody except your’s truly, let me describe the true reality. First, after the attending nurse holds the soon to be agonized patient’s hand, they put this big plastic mouth piece in your mouth (where else would they put a mouthpiece?). You couldn’t take this mouthpiece off if you tried; it’s strapped on. Then, they thread the endoscopy torture device down your throat. Now, if you think, in this age of fiber optics, miniaturization, and micro circuits, that the endoscopy torture device (ETD) is some delicate, sensitive, unobtrusive piece of equipment, well, think again. It’s the diameter of a garden hose. Except it’s stiffer than any other garden hose in the world. And, just watching the (inexperienced) doctor manhandle it makes it clear it weighs a ton. Of course, that assumes one can watch it much between irrepressible, body racking gagging; and outright desperation to stop the whole procedure.
And, this travels me right on over to Ehrlich’s statement of having no more than a gut feeling. Listen, Paul, unless you’ve had a sedative-less endoscopy you ain’t got a clue as to what a gut feeling is. Yes, I could feel that damn instrument in my stomach. But, only after having my gag reflexes go nuclear.
And, I’ll tell you Paul, after having had something rammed down my throat, and having experienced what a true, genuine (not mythical), gut feeling really is I’m not about to let a consistently wrong know-it-all ram his beliefs down our throats based on ‘his’ gut feelings.
OK all you Australians, this is the most depressing set of posts in the history of WUWT. The only good thing I take out of this is that I’m on the other side of the planet.
Gloomy predictions are a dime a dozen. Some folks have been predicting that the USofA was going to break up. example Maybe you Aussies can research that a bit and feel better.
W.A. would be a Third World province within six months if it STOPPED mining.
He has a point. Shipping unprocessed coal is very inefficient. Coal should be used as close to production as possible. It would make more sense for Australia to use the coal and export its more energy dense Uranium.
Processing coal means burning it.
if anyone finds a buyer for “processed” coal, hold on tight…you got a live one!
That is why production should be moved back to Oz, everything from steel to car manufacturing. The left killed manufacturing in Ontario and are now shutting down the oil patch by raising royalties to “provide” for the “poor”, typical socialist destruction. If anybody is to blame it is the left!
McClatchy DC, Nov.3, 2015
‘Obama intends to decide Keystone despite TransCanada bid for delay’
TransCanada has asked for a delay pending the outcome of pipeline decisions in Nebraska.
TransCanada has provided Obama with a reason not to make a decision and leave this to the new President. Will he take this opportunity?
Environmentalists claim that Canadian oil produces 17% more CO2 than other sources of oil.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article42718377.html
Canadian banks are invested in oil companies that are involved in the Alberta oil industry.
There’s a lot of prophets of doom but just a very fortunate few that can actually make a living from it which Erlich has managed to do. Call me cynical but I don’t think he believes any of it.
Great thing about his age is he’ll be long gone when his predictions have failed.
His pattern of failed and alarming predictions is characteristic of a personality type that operates on a foundational assumption of no consequences from the prediction error rate. I think it needs more study to define other characteristic behaviors and better illuminate the behavior for observers, lest they waste their time watching it.
When will Paul Ehrlich receive the humiliation and rejection he so richly deserves?
If it never comes, then we need to study why and bottle it as an elixir formula.
Look on the bright side. He can’t have too many years left.
I don’t know about that, but a concern I have is the following. Because Oz relies far too much on selling raw materials to Communist Red China, Oz tends to adopt a very wussified approach to dealing with Chi Com induced geopolitical problems. Whatever happened to the old fighting spirit of Oz?
Paul Ehrlich; just go with your gut.
Literally, leave and take your gut with you. Thinking people do not need your baseless ruminations.
I get it…ruminations!
Funny!
What’s really disturbing to me is the number of people in the comments over there going along with this. Ehrlich has repeatedly been proven wrong, admits that he is working on nothing more than a ‘gut feeling’, and they are all over it saying how much they agree and how they need to change things. And the few who point out his failings (those who haven’t been deleted) are attacked.
No rational thought whatsoever. It is quite dismaying.
Actually, it’s quite disturbing !!!
Translation: mine second and third world countries. So-called “green” technology is manufactured from recovery of mined minerals. Renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind) is frivolous without disruptive technology to convert it into a useful form.
Australians are dumb when it comes to liberal propaganda. They’ll end up abandoning mining over this bs.
Maybe they’ll start an “Abandoned Mine” tourist industry.
Elmer:
Why not? Following closure of the UK coal mining industry for political reasons, Wales has established an “Abandoned Mine” tourist industry.
Richard
Huh and to think that’s where this all started with Margaret Thatcher creating the IPCC to go after the striking British coal workers.
We need more categories (or labels) than just ecologist or environmentalist. Most people are concerned bout the environment, but the most vocal and active among those who want to preserve the environment insist that humans have zero footprint (good or bad)—as if we didn’t exist—and these folks seem not to have any problem employing virtually any mechanism—lying or deliberately misleading, and exaggeration, “by any means necessary” to achieve their goals. It’s why we get these outrageous predictions that are simply updated when the last one fails, and why facts are conflated to fool people, like the 97% number for warming alarmism.
We’ve had plenty of people who predict doom, but when it doesn’t come, they’re still taken seriously. Why?
. .It is well known that in a liberal mind , the end justifies the means , no matter how many innocent die !!
“Serial failed futurist..”
Isn’t his15 minutes like so totally over?
With the right Nobel committee in place he could win it in the category of gut feelings or world peace chants.
Yes, let’s all shut down the regulated mining of iron, copper, uranium, bauxite, and coal that Australia produces and move the production to unregulated countries to meet global demand. That should fix it and satisfy the blind gut feelings. But it will be done with twice the energy inputs, pollution, and regional wars.
Just yelling “Fire!” in a theater might be just as much fun and not as disruptive to the sane people in the wider world.
Paul Ehrlich believes that he is the smartest man alive. Because he can’t think of a solution to a given problem, it naturally follows that no one can. Therefore, the problem is unsolvable. QED.
My theory on the guy is that he took a bad hit of acid back in the sixties, and is just in a constant state of dread and internal panic.
He is not a rational person.
And yes, he think he is very intelligent.
Probably someone told him he was when he was a kid, and has internalized it 100% into his psyche.
Given Ehrlich’s track record, Australia should definitely increase their mining activity.
This is, by the way, why “academic” has a common secondary meaning of “unrelated to reality.”
‘Ehrlich’ in German means ‘Really?’. So Paul Ehrlich translates as ‘Paul? Really?”
Not quite. “Ehrlich” means “honest”. When used as a question – “ehrlich?” – it is short form for “are you being honest with me right now?” The translation of “really” is “wirklich”, and it can be used in the same way.
Shouldn’t entomologists whose specialty is butterflies be recognized as experts on energy, pollution, population, biodiversity….
I have to credit Ehlich for his admission that he should have taken more math in high school and college, for his personal contribution in demonstrating the importance of mental illness in NWO policy decisions, and for his 60s contributions to the Santa Barbara Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions publication “A Proposed Constitution for the Newstates of America, funded by $10 million from the Ford Foundation; an excellent example of anti-constitutional US citizenship.
Back in days of yore. people knew how to deal with such people:
Whipped cream pie in the face in public.
Humiliation therapy.
One could argue that Australia is already a third world country.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/31/julie-bishop-wants-to-co-chair-green-climate-fund-derided-by-tony-abbott
Martin writes: “One could argue that Australia is already a third world country.”
A lousy 33 minutes too late to make this observation.
You only found one ?
He won’t be around to see it anyway will he.
I have an idea.
Let’s all just stop using the resources we have have around us.
Then we can have true economic equality.
We”ll all be living in a third-world world!
(Well, maybe not ALL of us will still be living.)
That will require a few other accessories, like huge murals with forward leaning green leaders, patriotic music, and designated evil ones to poke sticks at and brand as traitors, while preparing the next round of purges.
Paul Ehrlich is the author of the cheap paperback The Population Bomb.
An entire generation read this book and adopted a false morality based on overpopulation theory.
This was convenient at the time because of the sex-drugs-occult cultural revolution which popularized mechanical and pharmaceutical culling of the next generation. Very very convenient at the time.
If the topic of this thread were overpopulation, the tone would be entirely different. Most here would repeat what they read in Ehrlich’s book 40 years ago by rote. Again, so very very convenient at the time.
I guess being from the Cannabis Generation means never having to say you are sorry. Or to recognize the true nature of your cultural makers, which is now being revealed. No personal decisions should have ever been made based on this evil man’s philosophies, and yet I see no genuine regret here. But there is an opportunity to look back and see mistakes, be sorry, repent, and remember more kindly the people who loved you and tried to warn you what you were doing back in the 60’s.
…or remembering you have something you should be sorry about?
I know Gunga Din! (: Everyone here read Ehrlich but didn’t inhale!
You are very clearly insane Paul. You need to seek some professional counselling.
Define “insane”.
Even better, talk your way out of insane asylum.
Ehrlich like Suzuki is a completely failed prophet. Whatever they say is always false, and the opposite will come to pass. In 1973 Suzuki said much the same about Canada. It was wrong too. I feel a lot more confident about the future of Australia, now that Ehrlich has spoken out.
The Kardashians won’t go away either.
I don’t know about the UK being “70 million hungry people by the year 2000”, but the way energy prices are being driven up by the green fanaticism of renewables subsidies, there’s an increasing number of people having to choose between “heat” and “eat”.
He always was a nutter. Unlike good wine he hasn’t aged well. I think he’s corked.
Just how many failed predictions is Ehrlich allowed? Oh, those protective walls of
Academia. In a Hammurabi world of actions have consequences, they’d come
crushing down on him.
What’s up with these freakin (socio- ) Biology elitists!!
Ehrich.. Loves butterfies and hates humanity. Operates by gut feel.
E.O. Wilson.. Ant lover and disdain for humanity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/17/climate-change-is-sucking-funding-away-from-biodiversity/#comment-1664385
Don’t Listen to E.O. Wilson
Math can help you in almost any career. There’s no reason to fear it.
E.O. Wilson is an eminent Harvard biologist and best-selling author. I salute him for his accomplishments. But he couldn’t be more wrong in his recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (adapted from his new book Letters to a Young Scientist), in which he tells aspiring scientists that they don’t need mathematics to thrive. He starts out by saying: “Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate … I speak as an authority on this subject because I myself am an extreme case.” This would have been fine if he had followed with: “But you, young scientists, don’t have to be like me, so let’s see if I can help you overcome your fear of math.” Alas, the octogenarian authority on social insects takes the opposite tack. Turns out he actually believes not only that the fear is justified, but that most scientists don’t need math. “I got by, and so can you” is his attitude. Sadly, it’s clear from the article that the reason Wilson makes these errors is that, based on his own limited experience, he does not understand what mathematics is and how it is used in science.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/04/e_o_wilson_is_wrong_about_math_and_science.html
Erlich was very fashionable among the academic community when I was working at a university in the 1970s. Some realists saw him as a something of publicity-seeker who was promoting himself as much as his causes – I tended to agree with them and have learnt nothing that convinces me of his veracity or accuracy in the years since. Much of Australia is ‘wasteland’ but it does have an amazing array and abundance of mineral wealth – I can see no good reason not to mine whatever is needed.
Yea, better abondon all mining now and become poor, than waiting to the mines are empty.
Does these guys ever think that their comfortable lives are based on most of what they dislike.
It’s dangerously foolish to dismiss Paul Ehrlich as a fool, a nutter, or an imbecile. I don’t know what motivates him and other intelligent educated people to propose policies that would collapse national and global economies and reduce civilized life to a daily grind of unending taboos around every aspect of living.- a police state run by the green version of the Khmer Rouge. Aliens from outer space are holding his loved ones to ransom, perhaps?
I do agree with his original tenet that human overpopulation would become a threat to the continued existence of civilization. We continue to crawl out further and further onto a branch that can’t support our weight indefinitely, and meanwhile, any major global or perhaps even just hemispheric or continent-wide disruption of our food or energy distribution systems threatens a death spiral from which we may never recover.
This is the inevitable effect of recklessly unfettered globalization and “just-in-time” production and distribution – the Alfed E. Neuman “What me worry?” approach to prosperity.
Fortunately, a prediction by Ehrlich of Oz becoming 3rd World is a safe bet to be totally wrong. I think I will invest long term in the Oz mining industry!! On second thought, he could be right for the wrong reasons. Oz is busy trying to destroy its economy and has peopled its universities with useful fools.
@Gary Young Pearse November 4, 2015 at 2:02 pm
Fortunately, a prediction by Ehrlich of Oz becoming 3rd World is a safe bet to be totally wrong.
Absolutley right Gary.
This person (Paul Uhrlich) thinks that be experting goods Australia will become a third world economy. He needs to be protected or give a larger level of medication. Check this!
Ehrlich told host Tony Jones, who seemed to be struggling to manage the octogenarian academic, that his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation would collapse in 50 years was based on a “gut feeling”, and freely admitted that a number of his predictions, such as the prediction the United Kingdom would be a small group of impoverished islands occupied by 70 million hungry people by the year 2000, hadn’t quite borne out.
______
Thanks to Angela Merkel, Ehrlich may have just been wrong in his timing and his prediction may still come true for the UK and Western Europe. Of course, not for the reasons Ehrlich imagined in his fevered brain.
Paul E. Anything he claims is likely to BOMB. Oh wait, the “Population Bomb”. Yeah Paul, lots of massive starvation going on RIGHT NOW. NOT! NOT! NOT!