UPDATE: less than 24 hours after posting this, we already have an end of the world prediction naming global warming, see below.
Weston, FL — (SBWIRE) — 07/16/2012 — The end of the world is not going to happen within our lifetimes. That’s the word from Justin Deering, author of The End of the World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society.
“We’re bombarded with end-of-the-world scares practically everywhere you look,” Deering explains. “You hear about it in church, on the news, in the movies. These doomsday scenarios have actually bankrupted people and destroyed their lives. A few people have gotten rich at the expense of the more gullible.”
Last year was a big year for end of the world talks, as Family Radio’s well-publicized prediction of May 21, 2011 as the day of the Rapture and subsequent day of wrath on October 21 came and went without incident. This year will be even bigger as the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, which many think will lead to something big happening.
Many are spending their life savings getting ready for the end. Doomsday Preppers and Doomsday Bunkers are two shows that have come out this year, showing people spending their hard-earned cash on survival kits and underground bunkers. They’re ready to weather out the Apocalypse.
As for Deering? He’s not worried at all. “The world’s not going anywhere,” he says. “There are always people who fall for this stuff. This survivalist mentality we’re seeing is Y2K all over again.”
“The Maya themselves didn’t think 2012 was going to be a disaster, either,” Deering added.
People have been worried about the End Times for thousands of years, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that there was nothing to worry about. The author of the End-of-the-World Delusion contends that there is still nothing to worry about.
“All that happens when one of these predictions is proven wrong is the doomsayers go and pick another date. They haven’t called it right yet.”
Deering doesn’t care whether the claims arise from religious beliefs or scientific concerns. “It doesn’t matter to me whether they’re a preacher or a scientist, a shaman mystic or an expert researcher. If they’re saying the end is near, they’re wrong.”
The End-of-the-World Delusion is available now at Amazon at Barnes and Noble. The eBook is priced at $9.99, the hardcover at $24.95, and the paperback at an appropriate $20.12.
A Kindle version is also available.
About Justin Deering
Justin Deering graduated from Lynn University with a degree in business, and is a member of the honor society, Sigma Beta Delta. He worked his way through college as a tutor and has experience in conducting research and presenting it in a logical manner. Deering and his wife, Megan, live in Florida.
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Full disclosure: I have not read this book, but I find the press release interesting. To get a feel for the author, here’s another article by Deering below. – Anthony
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Global Warming: Changing Hearts, Changing Minds
By Justin Deering
A few months back, noted climate skeptic Richard Muller reversed his position, saying that temperatures on the earth are indeed rising. After conducting a study partially funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, noted for funding global warming skeptics and tea party, Muller declared that while it made sense to be a skeptic two years ago, there was no longer any reason to do so.1
More recently, noted environmental leader James Lovelock, formulator of the Gaia Hypothesis, reversed his position as well. While once he claimed that man-made global warming would lead to the deaths of billions and billions of people by the end of this century, he has since noted the lack of warming and had this to say:2
I was “alarmist” about climate change and so was Gore! The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books—mine included—because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.
If these were just politicians flip-flopping on an issue, well, that’s to be expected. But take notice, because these are prominent individuals in the field who have made a living based on their previous assertions; changing their stances threatens their very livelihood. These two examples should cause everyone to question and reassess their own beliefs when it comes to issues such as climate change.
It’s easy to get the idea that global warming skeptics aren’t familiar with the science, that if they were more educated they would accept the idea catastrophe is right around the corner. A new study dispels this myth, in fact demonstrating the opposite—an increase in scientific literacy actually leads people to challenge the prevailing scientific wisdom concerning climate change.3,4
To illustrate this fact, consider that recently, a group of 49 former NASA employees, including astronauts and engineers, have written to the agency and asked them to discontinue making “unproven and unsubstantiated remarks” regarding manmade global warming. They feel that the science is not settled, and that taking a position that agrees with carbon dioxide emissions as the cause of climate change would reflect poorly on the agency in the future.5 Would anyone be willing to say that these NASA scientists were ignorant or anti-science?
NASA’s response:6
NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate. As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue “claims” about research findings. We support open scientific inquiry and discussion.
Even so, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, continues to write things like “Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening.”7 Hansen continues to be a source of embarrassment for the agency, with his multiple arrests, the most recent one being to protest the development of the Canadian oil pipline.8,9
References
- Borenstein, S. (2011, October 31). Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real. Yahoo! News. Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/skeptic-finds-now-agrees-global-warming-real-142616605.html
- Morano, M. (2012, April 23). Alert: Gaia scientist James Lovelock reverses himself. Climate Depot. Retrieved from http://climatedepot.com/a/15621/Alert-Gaia-scientist-James-Lovelock-reverses-himself-I-was-alarmist-about-climate-change–so-was-Gore-The-problem-is-we-dont-know-what-the-climate-is-doing-We-thought-we-knew-20-years-ago
- Raloff, J. (2012, May 29). Climate skepticism not rooted in science illiteracy. Science News. Retrieved from http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341034/title/Climate_skepticism_not_rooted_in_science_illiteracy
- Lott, M. (2012, May 28). Global warming skeptics as knowledgeable about science as climate change believers, study says. Fox News. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/28/global-warming-skeptics-know-more-about-science-new-study-claims/
- Parry, W. (2012, April 12). Former astronauts & NASA employees’ letter on global warming. LiveScience. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/19643-nasa-astronauts-letter-global-warming.html
- Bedard, P. (2012, April 11). NASA rejects claim it endorses global warming. Washington Examiner. Retrieved from http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washington-secrets/2012/04/nasa-rejects-claim-it-endorses-global-warming/474416
- Hansen, J. (2012, May 9). Game over for the climate. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html
- Drajam, M. (2011, August 29). NASA’s Hansen arrested outside White House at pipeline protest. Bloomberg. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-29/nasa-s-hansen-arrested-outside-white-house-at-pipeline-protest.html
- Watts, A. (2011, August 29). NASA’s James Hansen arrested yet again. Watts Up With That. Retrieved from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/29/nasas-james-hansen-arrested-yet-again/
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UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. From the Huffington Post
@Dale Rainwater K.A. Rodgers
“..Can I recommned Charles Mackey’s: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. First published in 1841 it is still relevant….”
I second that recommendation. And wish that someone would update it past the 1840s. There is a lot of extra material still to come….
Mr. Deering is too optimistic. The world isn’t coming to an end, but civilization may be, if the likes of Hansen and Gore get their way.
The peculiar thing about eschatology is that there is a single element all apocalyptic predictions have in common.
In the course of time all practioners have been proven completely wrong.
Even a blind batter (Brit. “batsman”) could do better. The average weather forecaster has a far higher success rate. For a climatologist to forecast catastrophe he must be willing to accept a 100% failure rate in his forecasts.
Gail Combs says: “Some think it was a religious crisis in addition to the drought that caused the migration of the the Anasazi. For them a 24 year drought, the Little Ice Age and worn out farm fields were the ‘End-of-the-World’ as they knew it.”
I was thinking of collective memory, BIG memory of the sort Velikovsky talks about in “Mankind in Amnesia”. The human species probably does have memory of global cataclysm. Religious entrepreneurs exploit the fears, as you say, but the fear is not purely imaginary. And we all feel it if we are honest, even Deering, especially him since he is so intent on denying it!
Torgeir Hansson says:
July 19, 2012 at 3:26 am
Bill Tuttle: If all that was wasted during the reconstruction of New Orleans was $25 million worth of generators, I would be astounded.
Tip if the iceberg, but I concur on bagging it.
I also concur on the Mayas. Imagine what they could have accomplished with the tools we have today…
Gordon Richmond says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought it was pretty well accepted here that Richard Muller was never really a rabid skeptic of AGW, but more a Warmist, but less close-minded than most of that ilk?
You are wrong.
Richard Muller was never really any kind of skeptic of AGW, but more a rabid Warmist, but more scheming and willing to lie than most of his ilk.
And that is saying something.
George says:
July 18, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Yellowstone might not erupt for another few hundred thousand years or that hot spot might never erupt again, at least until it gets to thinner continental crust.
Is there any way to nudge it until it underlies DC?
See Karl Popper on narrative as science – it ain’t.
Torgeir Hansson says:
July 18, 2012 at 10:18 pm
I have allowed myself one off-topic response to Bill Tuttle, and hope it will be OK with one single response to Wagathon as well. Here it is:
“The Left hates free enterprise?” I’ll tell you who hates free enterprise. Free enterprise, as in the private sector, hates free enterprise….
_______________________________
I think you’ve got it!
This is probably one of the best kept secrets and what has made CAGW and Globalization so confusing. Corporations, banks… are NOT capitalists, Not in favor of free enterprise, Not in favor of the freedom of individuals (can’t have them start a business and become competitors)
Big Oil, the World Bank/IMF, and the MSM are all pushing this latest Doom and Gloom and more importantly the UN’s Agenda 21 – grow smart designed communities – because it gives them complete control over us.
The latest US Supreme Court decision that the US government can order US citizens to BUY what they tell you must seem like a God sent to these Machiavellian Manipulators. I am sure they have all those “Smart metered” appliances waiting in the wings with big price tags for the soon to be captive buyers. – Up-grade to a costly appliance we can shut off at will or we will TAX you each year. – This also means the corporations get first dibs on any electric produced and not the individual.
The big difference between other ‘End-of-the-World’ delusions and CAGW is this one is global and the ‘Doom and Gloom’ is real because it is being manufactured. The Banker created 2008 Food Crisis is one example, the EPA shutting down utilities that use coal is another. I really do not want to be around as they herd us into those micro-mini 275 to 300 sq. ft. living spaces that “are smaller than currently allowed by building regulations…” The fact they are already being Beta tested in NYC should make everyone worry. (Doom and gloom for real)
orson2 says:
July 19, 2012 at 3:12 am
…But only a powerful state can deliver this. A weak state cannot.
And that’s why the Fall of Communism and the Soviet Union proves the impossibility of a single corporation controlling everything: it would be unable to coordinate prices and production without massive irrational waste – and even then, it would have to be totalitarian and dangerous to people to force their acquiesence.
_________________________________
That is why they pulled the plug on that experiment. The EU, another experiment, is the one they like much better. It gives the masses more of an illusion of “democracy” while leaving the actual control in the hands of the unelected.
This article from Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization shows where our “leaders” are headed:
Global Governance: Lessons from Europe
Lamy was former European Commissioner for Trade. He graduated from Sciences Po Paris, specializing in economics. He was France’s Economics and Finance Minister and a member of the French Socialist Party. He gives talks, along with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton at the London School of Economics started by the originators of the Fabian Society.
I suggest you look into the “Third Way” endorsed by Bill Clinton and the brain child of Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics.
The Fabian Society stain-glass window recently hung at LSE is also very illuminating.
Do not miss the wolf in a sheepskin on the Fabien Shield in the background. Or Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw striking the world with hammers to shatter it so the world could be “remoulded near the heart’s desire” the line from Omar Khayyam written underneath.
‘End-of-the-World’ delusion? I do not think so. There are some very powerful people intent on ending our world and installing theirs and CAGW has been one of their “Hammers”
“No, no, no. Justin Deering is quite wrong. Those clairvoyant Mayans definitely knew that 2012 was going to be a disaster of epic proportions. It’s just that we translated their supposed date of December 21, 2012 wrong. The correct date is November 2, 2012.”
Exactly what I was thinking!!! Except it will take 49 days to 12/21/12…
In religious terms this is called eschatology, and it has been a danger to mankind for millennia.
It is end-of-times beliefs that makes most of Islam apathetic, so it produces nothing. It is this same eschatology that allows president Armadinnerjacket to threaten nuclear war without any fear. Its what causes cults to commit mass suicide.
Eschatology is very dangerous, and no more so than when Greens preach it, and have command of some of the levers of world power too.
.
A mere five per cent were pessimistic. That’s two respondents. And one of them was a German octopus.
http://www.dangardner.ca/index.php/articles/item/89-2010-the-year-in-failed-predictions
To Coombs and Hansson re above comments:
It is a mistake to confuse the behavior of individuals and firms within an economy with the structure of that economy.
Individuals and firms seek their self interest as they understand it. This is well understood as part of free enterprise systems. Adam Smith wrote on this centuries ago.
That individuals and firms seek free handouts from governments at the expense of others is inevitable. Hopefully neither of you believe that there is some system of government is possible that avoids or negates these truths of human nature (firms being groups of humans acting in concert). The brilliance of free enterprise is that the interests of the individuals and firms is set by rule in competition in a manner that drives the best possible outcome for the most people. The process is not pretty, but the history of the world over the last couple of centuries show that all the experiments in socialism and other efforts that promise to defy human nature have resulted in impoverishment and loss of freedom especially for those whom the experiments promised most to help.
Most of the human population is now awakening from a long nightmare of socialist promises turned into socialist failure (China, Russia, India, Eastern Europe, etc.). The countries still clinging to socialist fantasies are going down (see North Korea, Greece, etc.). Obama and gang, showing a perverse ignorance of world history, are still trying to take us into the nightmare that the others are now awakening from.
The CAGW gang is part of the residuum of Marxist thinking, justified under the general terms of Post Normal Science and the Precautionary Principle. Even though recent history shows that it is precisely in socialist countries that environmental degradation is rampant, The CAGW crowd and the general enviromental movement would have us believe that is greedy corporations that are the evil agents of environmental destruction. They would have us turn it all over to governments to save the world. This is not intelligent.
I certainly agree that we should fight every effort by people and firms (corporations) to rent-seek from the government at our expense. At least half the people in America are now on the take. They are freeloaders, riding in the wagon while the rest of us are trying to push it up the hill. Whether in corporations or as individuals, people who take, using the power of government, from those who work for what they have are wrong and should be stopped.
kwinterkorn says:
July 19, 2012 at 3:08 pm
To Combs…
_____________________
I am all for capitalism. However I am NOT for Neo-Corporatism which is an unholy alliance between corporations and government. As individuals that is what we have to be ever vigilant against. (My distinguishing between the two confuses the heck out of a lot of people)
I also have a major dislike for fractional reserve banking that has evolved into a US Banks Operating Without Reserve Requirements I consider it out right theft (legalized) and a form of hidden slavery. This is because most homes/businesses have mortgages and whether the property is owned or leased the bankers get the first cut of the profits of your labor and with a zero reserve requirement it is ALL profit except for a bit of operating expenses you mostly pay as points.
One could consider the USA as the history of the struggle of people against the central bankers from day one. link (We lost a hundred years ago)
Since we seem to be on the subject….
I have another book to add everyone’s last summer on earth before the Big Surprise reading list. Richard Landes, a professor of history at Boston University, and who blogs at TheAugeanStables.com, had a new book out last year, “Heaven on Earth, The Varieties of the Millennial Experience” [Oxford University Press]; which treats on the end of the world subject from a more scholarly frame of reference. No, he has no impacting planetesimal on the cover [he could probably use help with the graphic design] and his writing style and general focus may not be as popularly engaging as Mr. Deering’s fine book, BUT he comes up with some of the greatest new terms like: “semiotically aroused” – probably worth the cover price by itself. To quote:
(mwhite)
Ha-ha-ha…
it’s the end of many environmentalist and climatologists’ ‘world’ as they know it…
the world and I feel fine.
Gail Combs:
I am all for capitalism. However I am NOT for Neo-Corporatism which is an unholy alliance between corporations and government. As individuals that is what we have to be ever vigilant against. (My distinguishing between the two confuses the heck out of a lot of people)
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Bill Hicks in Hell, taking questions from callers…
~~~~~~~~~~~~
CALLER: Aren’t you maybe afraid that you really will go to hell, for all the thangs you say bad about your country?
HICKS: Well, I didn’t know that was one of the requirements for going to hell. Where did you read that?
CALLER: Well some of the thangs you say aren’t very nice.
HICKS: Well, actually Sir, if you listen closely, everything I talk about is true freedom and true democracy. It so happens that we’ve swayed so far from the true values of this country, that to right-wing fundamentalist reactionaries–such as yourself–seem to hear that I’m talking about the opposite. What you don’t realize is you’ve been duped by the capitalistic system, you think capitalism is what America’s all about. Theres’ a difference between capitalism and free enterprise.
I believe in free enterprise and I believe in America and I love it for it’s true values. Is that stated clearly enough?
CALLER: Well, it just doesn’t seem very American to me..
HICKS: Ha Ha HA! Should I drink a beer and watch American Gladiators and just shut up?
CALLER: …[hangs up]….
~~~~~~~~~~~~
RE “Torgeir Hansson says: July 18, 2012 at 10:18 pm”
In http://www.keithsketchley.com/monopol3.htm I explain why monopolies cannot occur without initiation of force.
But some people insist on peddling fixed-pie drive-to-the bottom thinking popularized by Karl Marx.
Almost every industry you refer to is heavily regulated by the government. (Retail is not, I don’t see any monopolies there, indeed the once strong department stores failed while Amazon and some rinky-dink store outfit from Arkansas succeeded by serving customers while operating efficiently.
mwhite;
couldn’t follow, so looked up REM’s lyrics. Not much help!
>:-O
Big corps and govs try to minimize and suppress uncertainty and risk and unknowns. But that’s exactly the territory where freedom and innovation originate and operate. So their success would/does/did kill the base and ground of their own survival.