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.
“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.