Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Professor-emeritus Guy McPherson of University of Arizona, speaking in New Zealand, thinks we don’t have to worry about climate change, because the “6th mass extinction” will finish us all off in the next 10 years.
Humans ‘don’t have 10 years’ left thanks to climate change – scientist
There’s no point trying to fight climate change – we’ll all be dead in the next decade and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, a visiting scientist claims.
Guy McPherson, a biology professor at the University of Arizona, says the human destruction of our own habitat is leading towards the world’s sixth mass extinction.
Instead of fighting, he says we should just embrace it and live life while we can.
“It’s locked down, it’s been locked in for a long time – we’re in the midst of our sixth mass extinction,” he told Paul Henry on Thursday.
But Professor James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University, says people should not use his words more as an excuse to give up.
While he agrees that climate change is possibly the “biggest issue humanity has ever faced”, he says “giving up is not really helpful”.
Instead, Prof Renwick says he hopes Prof McPherson’s 10-year claim will encourage people to take action.
…
Read more (includes video): http://www.newshub.co.nz/world/humans-dont-have-10-years-left-thanks-to-climate-change—scientist-2016112408
It is difficult to see why “its locked in, we’re all going to die” should be construed as a call to action.
On the other hand there might be a silver lining to this mass extinction business. With any luck the mass extinction event will take out all the mosquitoes and other annoying pest species first, giving us a last few happy years of bug free outdoor BBQs.
Maybe the alarmists, whose golden goose is about to be roasted, will first to go.
To be fair, it’s better to die trying than just waiting for death.
Trying to do what, “control” climate? So better to die beating your head against a wall? Got it!
You don’t have to “control” climate. There is realism but you can stop or reduce things that affect the climate. Making some change is better than doing none. You sound pretty defeatist.
DavidTheEntertainer,
Even the most ardent AGW scientists, in a moment of candor (and actually in print in the IPPC reports) admit that reducing CO2 output to pre-industrial level *immediately* would only lower global temperature a fraction of 1 deg C over the next 100 years. And that, of course, relies on the same theoretical models that failed to predict the 20-year “pause”. None of the young snowflakes entering college today have experienced any significant warming in their lifetimes.
I hear the wailing: “But, we have to do SOMETHING!” No, we don’t. Not if the most draconian “something” imaginable would have, at best, a negligible effect on natural climate change, and revert human existence to subsistence in caves, for those who survive the collapse of modernity.
So you are saying that all of this is natural? Funny how the figures provided by agencies such as NASA can be wrong.
Not funny. Tragic. Look at any graph of historical global temperatures. You do realize that technically we’re still in the tail end of the most recent glacial period? The world has been warming for a very long, and thank God for that. But it has naturally been a lot hotter in past interglacial periods.
Please don’t invoke the tiresome logical fallacy “appeal to authority” (NASA). Recall that for decades 97% of medical nutrition “experts” agreed that eating eggs and butter was akin to slow suicide. Last week my doctor told me to eat all the eggs and butter I like, and not because I have low cholesterol, I don’t. It’s just that eggs and butter aren’t the culprits, most experts now agree. In fact, many now question the cholesterol number itself actually predicts. And after decades of “fat kills” many are now admitting a low-fat diet can be dangerous for the heart. Genetics trumps dietary components and lifestyle factors. Anyone saying that twenty years ago would have been labeled a “fat denier” and laughed out of his field. Meanwhile, a trillion-dollar low-fat food industry clings doggedly to the “fat kills” narrative, which is analogous to the “CO2 is a dangerous pollutant” narrative the EPA hangs it’s planet saver hat on.
Not funny. Tragic. Look at any graph of historical global temperatures. You do realize that technically we’re still in the tail end of the most recent glacial period? The world has been warming for a very long, and thank God for that. But it has naturally been a lot hotter in past interglacial periods.
Please don’t invoke the tiresome logical fallacy “appeal to authority” (NASA). Recall that for decades 97% of medical nutrition “experts” agreed that eating eggs and butter was akin to slow suicide. Last week my doctor told me to eat all the eggs and butter I like, and not because I have low cholesterol, I don’t. It’s just that eggs and butter aren’t the culprits, most experts now agree. In fact, many now question the cholesterol number itself actually predicts. And after decades of “fat kills” many are now admitting a low-fat diet can be dangerous for the heart. Genetics trumps dietary components and lifestyle factors. Anyone saying that twenty years ago would have been labeled a “fat denier” and laughed out of his field. Meanwhile, a trillion-dollar low-fat food industry clings doggedly to the “fat kills” narrative, which is analogous to the “CO2 is a dangerous pollutant” narrative the EPA hangs it’s planet saver hat on.