Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Aussie Government ABC says there is nothing special about human beings.
The human race is not special. So why do we think we’re immune to mass extinction?
By Geoff Dawson
Updated Tue at 6:58amCould we face a mass extinction of human beings in our lifetime?
As global temperatures rise and this summer’s bushfires devastate the Australian landscape, it’s a worst-case scenario that is beginning to be seriously discussed.
The rapid spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks has also escalated the anxiety that people feel about their mortality.
However, there seems to be a difference in the way the public has reacted to these two threats. Global warming and potential mass extinction are seen as a vague threat somewhere out there in the distant future, whereas coronavirus is viewed as a clear and imminent danger.
The growing fear of a coronavirus pandemic appears to have quickly motivated Australian health authorities and governments into immediate and appropriate action.
By comparison, the anxiety around global warming and potential mass extinction seems muted.
Human beings have a naive optimism
A report written by Paul Gilding, a fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and commissioned by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, put forward the view that there is a “high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end in 2050” if action is not taken to curb climate change.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-03/global-warming-mass-extinction-psychological-impact/11923370
The reason people are not taking climate change seriously is the lack of evidence that global warming is a serious problem.
Climate scientists cannot credibly explain why a few degrees of warming, bringing temperatures at home closer to the warm sunny climate of Summer holiday destinations, would be such a bad thing.
The growing fear of a coronavirus pandemic is well-founded in health fears. Australian health authorities have done their job and taken immediate and appropriate action.
By comparison, the anxiety around global warming and potential mass extinction are entirely fictional and unsubstantiated. Australians have an inbuilt and natural Bullshit Detector which is active 24.7/.
I saw something earlier today where Chelsea Clinton was lambasting Donald Trump about the corona virus. Anyway underneath that was a comment that “you would be ten times more likely to die giving evidence against your mother”.
I loved it.
+1
You mean, the “ugly” Clintonista crime family, sprog ??
Last week I read that Chelsea had received an appointment to a public health position (Clinton, a member of the Weill Cornell Medicine Board of Overseers, ), … https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/02/chelsea-clinton-shares-insights-public-health
Stupid bigmouth is the new smart and well-educated.
Apparently they do not even know what the term mean. Extinction is a binary event, you don’t have small, medium and “mass” extinctions of one species.
So you cannot have “a mass extinction of human beings “. You have one single event when the last one dies. It is an extinction, not a mass extinction.
They seem to think it means lots of people dying.
Quite. It seems Flora and Fauna moving out of an area is defined as a local extinction, which is a wilful corruption of the meaning of extinction. Under this definition there have been 4 major mass extinctions in the last 500,000 years when the large ice sheets expanded.
I cannot get my head round the fact the people making these claims are supposedly scientists.
I’d just invoke the Betteridge’s law. If a tchurnalist needs a questionmark, there’s no fear the answer would be positive by any chance.
Could we face a mass extinction of human beings in our lifetime? … No dude, extinction is a ‘the’ event, not an ‘an’ event.
Similar to the oft used “Almost Unique” expression. Total lack of understanding of the word unique.
I can accept “almost unique” but the addition of other superlatives really grates. The ill educated have managed to degrade my language (and presumably the languages of other people, none of which I speak) almost to the level of grunts. I no longer am sure of the meaning of many statements even when the apparent language is clear and simple.
The growing fear of a coronavirus pandemic is well-founded in health fears. Australian health authorities have done their job and taken immediate and appropriate action
There’s another side to the coin on that too:
We Go from Hysteria to Hysteria
News cycle is now click bait. Whipping up panic is now major business.
At least if we are all going to die of nCov19 we can stop worrying about “carbon” and enjoy the little time we have left !
Even the worst case scare stories have fatality rates for Cov19 at 10%.
Absolute worst case, everyone in the world gets infected and 90% survive. Not exactly an extinction event.
More likely worst case scenario. 10% become infected, 1% of them die. 99.9% of the world’s human population survives.
There are credible reports that at least some people that once had the COVID-19 active in their body and then recovered from it (testing “negative” for COVID-19) were later re-infected by COVID-19.
It is not clear if the virus went dormant to undetectable levels and then later reappeared, or if recovering from once having it does not bestow any body immunity against reinfection.
If this is true, your statistics don’t apply.
Are you worried that the immune system, having defeated the virus and eliminating it from the body, somehow forgets how to deal with the virus in a matter of days or weeks?
From what I’ve read, many of the early tests are having problems with false negatives.
That’s a much more likely scenario than the immune system forgetting how to deal with a virus it has already defeated.
Meh. People survived the bubonic plague, smallpox, and polio for thousands of years. Pretty sure the coronavirus isn’t going to cause an extinction event. It might suck, but it’s not going to wipe us out. Contagious fear, that’s all this boils down to.
It doesn’t look like COVID-19 in its current form is going to be a big problem. It appears to mostly be dangerous to the very old, and the very sick. It also appears that they are having some success in holding the spread down.
I listened to a White House conference with the drug manufacturers yesterday which was very interesting.
The company, Regeneron, said the work they had been doing on an Ebola cure using “neutralizing” antibodies might be effective against COVID-19, and they were starting testing and the product could be available in a matter of months.
Gilead Sciences said they are currently involved in double blind tests in China of the anti-viral drug remdesivir and are expecting results from China in April, and Gilead is starting its own double blind test in the U.S. with results expected in about eight weeks.
They also said they are preparing manufacturing centers for the new drugs that will be needed.
Pfizer thinks it has treatments and compounds that may be effective on COVID-19.
All the broadcast networks cut away from this conference. I guess they didn’t think it was very important, or rather, their advertising revenue was more important. So I turned over to CSPAN to watch the rest of it. Didn’t see any of those network commercials.
Weaponized fear, that is, in service of a last-ditch effort to muster us all into a totalitarian world government “for our own good,” read, “survival.” Populism and rejection of establishment elites is rising much faster than the COVID-19 virus worldwide, that’s why they’re freaking out and using ANY crisis, real or imagined, to try and spook the human “herd” off a cliff–so they can “save” us from ourselves. The said part is that most people (with very few actual problems) seem to ENJOY being scared out of their wits, hence the perennial popularity of chainsaw-masscre hockey mask (stick!) movies.
Meh+2 This episode will become known as the great toilet paper war in times to come
“A report written by Paul Gilding, a fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and commissioned by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, put forward the view that there is a “high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end in 2050” if action is not taken to curb climate change.”
Agreed Nicholas – the above statement is clearly false alarmist nonsense, written by wolves to stampede the sheep.
I have two engineering degrees with significant focus on the Earth Sciences. Based on my knowledge of Earth’s changing climate history, I knew that the alleged catastrophic human-made global warming (“CAGW”) crisis was a false hypothesis when I first heard of it in the early-to-mid 1980’s. I formalized that rejection of the false CAGW hypothesis in my first papers on the subject, written in 2002 after ~2 decades of intensive study of the subject.
Since then, further studies have confirmed and detailed these scientific conclusions – the only major change is that it is now clear that the alleged catastrophic global warming (aka “climate change”) crises are not only false, they are deliberately fraudulent, and that fraud is being perpetrated for the most heinous of political objectives – the destruction of capitalism, democracy, and freedom.
Simply put, once you control energy, you control everyone – and that is the climate fraudsters objective – totalitarian control of society and everyone in it. The climate fraudsters are politicized criminals who belong in jail.
Following is a summary of my conclusions from five years ago. The science is moving forward slowly, but all these statements are still holding correct-to-date.
TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ON ALL TIME SCALES
By Allan MacRae, June 12, 2015
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/icing-the-hype/temperature_drives_atmospheric_co2_on_all_time_scales/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Saying things like “…“high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end in 2050” if action is not taken to curb climate change.”…” is the new “Sinners repent, and heed my warning, or ye shall all burn in eternal Hellfire!”
IOW…do as I say or else, with an expiration date on the warning that makes it unfalsifiable.
It used to be you had to find a mentally ill cult leader to get a date for the supposed end of the world.
Now the University of Cambridge is in the Doomsday Death Cult game.
“Australian health authorities have done their job and taken immediate and appropriate action.”
Not according to JoNova. See her latest Jeremiad at http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/coronavirus-war-room-time-mortality-rate-1-3-and-the-experts-that-dont-add-up/
From your link:
“WHO announced their estimates of 3.4% global mortality today. All the caveats apply — it includes rubbery-figures-from-China and comes from the Useless UN and a group headed by a star apologist-for-Xi. But here’s the thing, look at the numbers outside China (see the big table below), and its a similar ballpark. Sorry to rant on about this virus.
The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated.
Don’t look now: Big Numbers Coming. Assuming 60% of people catch it before some treatment appears, a death rate of 0.7% – 4% means bad news for some furry number from 100,000 to 600,000 Australians. Double that for the UK. And 1.4m – 8m in the United States. There is a wide range of mortality rates, which may reflect that there are two kinds of mortality rates here — one where people get great ICU care, and one where hospitals are overrun and they don’t.”
I heard Dr. Seigle say this morning that based on South Korea’s experience, where they are doing widespread testing for COVID-19, that the death rate is less than 1 percent. President Trump also cited this number.
Dr. Seigle said he had to correct a reporter who had come on right before him claiming that the virus could live for nine days on surfaces. Dr. Seigle said it was more like a few hours lifetime on surfaces.
“Australians have an inbuilt and natural Bullshit Detector which is active 24.7/.”
Of course, of course. This is probably the reason why they are currently buying so much toilet paper — and other ‘essentials’. (A ‘run’ on toilet paper … there’s a joke there, somewhere.)
A less charitable observer may well form the opinion that Australians were just as prone to panicking as the citizens of any other nation.
Any student of human nature should know that getting people to believe ‘bullshit’ is less about the inherent qualities of a phenomenon than about how it is presented. Very few individuals have the patience or expertise to properly analyse problems as they occur, so most people rely on ‘experts’ whose credibility largely depends on how well they can appeal to (or avoid offending) popular prejudices.
Here’s one for you.
I’ve got diarrhoea, my dad’s got diarrhoea and my granddad’s got diarrhoea.
Runs in the family.
I’m Australian and forced to pay for the ABC through my taxes. I am strongly in favour of the mass extinction of the ABC which treats the Australians who pay for it largely with contempt. They have a Charter which requires them to be unbiased and which they totally ignore.
Me too! Why do our tax dollars go to these Clowns? They define BIAS.
I’m a Brit. If you replace ABC in your posting with BBC, we may be a planet apart but we are on exactly the same page.
Although Aussies laugh at the idea of the UK TV licence , it does give them a way of defunding that monstrosity by making the licence non compulsory. Australia has no such option as its directly funded through tax revenue and no political party has the guts to cut it loose (and really only one would contemplate it , as the ABC is just a mouthpiece for the PC/SJW/Climanista left.
Like the education system creating Climate Jugend and Green Shirts. These people would love it if ‘Deniers’ were obliged to wear a green star .
Would a red pill badge do?
https://delingpoleworld.com/2019/12/10/special-friend-badges/
Any Brits feel free to chime in if I’m wrong, but I believe the UK TV license is no longer “non-compulsory”. That is, it is now a tax and cannot be avoided.
They would like us all to believe that! I’ve not had a TV licence for 15yrs or more.
If you don’t watch (or record) live TV programs, or streamed BBC programs on BBC iPlayer (on any device) you DO NOT need a TV licence.
here’s the skinny: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/tv-licence/
Of course the way they word everything in their advertising, TV adverts, and the multitude of warning letters you get when you cancel it, with goons knocking at your door trying to trick you into confessing (see youtube for TV licence goons) the sheeple continue to buy one.
With netflix and the like, and the popularity of educational anti-BBC youtube channels, the message is slowly spreading.
Yep Mass extinction of progressivism would be very positive.
Global Warminh is harmful.
It affects very strong the brain of certain persons believing to be scientists.
agree I have it on because I hate the drivel n ads elsewhere but the drivel I hear daily does my head in
what little decent programming there is hard pushed by the large amount of crud
the lgbwhatever and the blackarmband recently is waaay over the top
Has the University of Cambridge really sunk this low? Zero critical thought or assessment…AGW/CC extremism is officially a religious cult and Paul Gilding is the latest ‘Reverend Jim Jones’ equivalent…breakout the Kool-aid.
So true.
Cambridge Univ. seems to be going full moron recently , doing its best to destroy a reputation for academic excellence built up over centuries.
They will never recover that reputation once it’s gone.
After today there will be a mass extinction of Democratic Presidential Candidates
True. It now looks like a two horse race. link
Please don’t call President Trump a horse; the other one maybe…
In this case he’s referring to Bernie and Biden.
Sorry to see Tom Steyer go…
Would have loved for him to burn through a full half billion on his “Doomed from the start” campaign.
Though there is still hope that Bloomberg will burn through a full Billion before his denial of reality catches up with his campaign
Abandon all Hope ye who enter here…
Bloomberg has also dropped from the race
One’s a race horse; the other’s a horse’s arse.
Recently Pelosi called Trump the most dangerous man in the history of this country.
They have been investigating him since before the inauguration. When none of their investigations could find anything, they went ahead and impeached him anyway.
On the other hand, they have been quite consistent about their complaints that Trump is dividing the nation, and that’s why he needs to be replaced by one of them.
“Recently Pelosi called Trump the most dangerous man in the history of this country.”
I think this is the new theme of the Democrats, trying to portray Trump as dangerous. Bernie is saying the very same thing. And the other parrot will chime in.
Trump *is* the most dangerous man in history from the perspective of radical socialists. Trump is about to destroy radical socialism and the radical socialists see that as a disaster. Can’t blame them. But that won’t stop me from cheering Trump on in his quest to take power away from some of the most delusional people in history: The Radical Socialists.
My quick take on the Super Tuesday elections: It appears a lot of Democrats are leery of going down the radical socialist road, and I think Bernie just exaserbated that feeling among them with his promotiong of Fidel Casto and communist Cuba. So the less radical Democrats voted for Biden. Many of the voters said they only made their choice in the last few days and I’ll bet Bernie’s professing his love of communism had a lot to do with those decisions.
So now Biden is in the lead but that shouldn’t make Democrats feel too confident. I’m afraid Joe is going to be making mental gaffs on a daily basis and he won’t have a chance against Trump.
And Joe still has some potential legal problems in his future with regard to Ukraine and the 2016 efforts by the Obama-Biden administration to undermine the U.S. Constitution by trying to fix the 2016 elections in Hillary’s favor. We’ll probably be hearing from Rudy Guiliani on this subject soon.
It’s going to be interesting between now and the November elections.
Bloomberg just pulled out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden.
He will probably give Biden about a billion dollars to spend agaist Trump.
That was probably Bloomberg’s plan the whole time… to dump a lot of money into his campaign and then drop out when he knew he wouldn’t make a mark and leave the loot for the SuperPacs to spend on the nominee. But I don’t think it matters anymore in this particular election. If Trump can continue to connect with the normal every day man and woman on the street in the nation and especially rural America, and not get trapped in any of the hoaxes the Dems try and trip him up on, you can’t beat authenticity with that connection that people genuinely feel. Trump wouldn’t need to spend a plug nickel on himself for re-election, since he creates his own free advertising. Plus the fact that the Dems are flailing about with extreme left wing policies like a drowning drunk and this has a lot of normal folk really scared how fast things could go off the rails with radical socialist policies.
The idiocy of the Australian ABC is openly displayed with this insane article….with a bit of luck the ABC will suffer their first ‘mass extinction’….most thinking people down-under now live an “ABC-free” life…nice way to be…
Well it should be obvious that Climate Policy as being pushed by the UN and other scammers for net-zero emissions by 2050 is a self-fulling prophecy for human pan-genocide. And once that starts, things will spiral quickly out of the globalists’ control if they ever had any.
Just the impact to agricultural production of that zero-emissions policy would starve half the human population in a few years. Of course the Globalists seem to think they will be in half that doesn’t starve. With regional and maybe global wars that kind of disruption would start, no one would be spared.
“As global temperatures rise and this summer’s bushfires devastate the Australian landscape…”
———————————-
Except global temperatures aren’t rising and the bushfires were nothing out of the ordinary for Oz. When you blindly accept the fear mongering as fact, you’ll believe any baseless doomsday prediction.
Humans are probably subject to the law of large numbers in the scheme of things. But even if we lose a billion here and a billion there to some forcing, we will still have the population that we had just 30-40 years ago. It would of course be terrible for all that suffering, but nature is a harsh mistress. And it won’t be this Covid-19 virus. In a few years, this will all be a memory like Sars and Mers were. But there will be much worse black swan events to come out of left field, (no pun intended) and mankind will survive for thousands of years to come.
Isn’t a mass extinction when more than one species goes extinct, rather than a large number of one species?
Yes, that is correct. A mass extinction is when a broad sector of species goes extinct for some significant change in the environment they need for survival. The above authors are just putting together big words that are scarey to advance their own agenda.
It would have been better to say “mass quantities”.
Mass Quantities
The most likely people to go extinct are greens,and it wont be from climate change.
Now that’s a Mass Distinction
Absolute nonsense. The human race is very special indeed. In no way can we be compared to any other animals that ever lived on this green globe. We are now the masters of life on earth – understand what is going on – and can effortlessly influence our own existence and continued survival.
In its 4.5 billion years the Earth has never ever seen anything like the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
We are the ONLY species on the planet that has ever left it and stepped upon another world. And we will do so again within the next decade (with any luck). By 2100 we will be a multi-planet species. If you don’t think that makes us special, then you have your head up your ass so far there’s nothing I can do to help you.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that ordinary people, including some top executives, find it difficult to grasp the essence of AGW. This is exacerbated by the fact that some people build their paid propaganda on this.
The Cambridge link bases itself on “The paper , by the Melbourne-based Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration, is not a scientific study, but an attempt to model future scenarios based on existing research.”
Delving the depths of pessimism here.
Its odd that they would attempt to make the point that the human race is not special. OK, ignoring the religious viewpoints that would place the human race centre-stage, its hard to find any other creature that can send probes to Pluto and beyond the solar system, or analyse and manipulate DNA directly.
I would suggest the evolution of the human race is the most significant event since the development of life on this planet.
Publishing stuff from twonks like this is further evidence (if you needed it) that the ABC is completely un-hinged and running out of control, careering down Hysteria street without brakes. Pretty sure that particular street ends at a cliff. We can only hope…
Biggest straw man ever ?
Firstly one species can have a mass extinction. They need to learn what the scary terms mean before trying to use them.
If they mean immune to the effects of a mass extinction, who suggested we would be immune.
Maybe they are concerned that no takes their alarmist BS seriously any more. That is simply the effect of crying wolf every single day. The effect wares off.
Cretins like this still have not evolved a better strategy than to cry wolf a bit louder every day.
Species generally go extinct because they are unable to adapt to change and/or inhabit a niche environment. Flightless and ground nesting birds have often been unable to cope with the introduction of predators; the Giant Panda is a slow breeder adapted to a very restricted diet. Humans are omnivorous and highly adaptable: breakdown of civilisation or major climate change would undoubtedly cause losses but we did evolve to our present state without civilisation and through varying climates. The losers would be those whose diet is based round the soy latte.
Great response!
Well, strictly speaking, it’s NOT going to be in our lifetimes, is it?
“Aussie Government ABC Predicts Mass Extinction in our Lifetimes”
They’re going to have to stop inviting Paul Ehrlich to go down there and give them doomsday lectures. Old Paul had always had that population thing in his repertoire but now he has added climate to it and cooked up a pretty scary lecture. Here is one of his speeches in Adelaide.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/02/29/prophets-of-doom/
Paul Ehrlich has been getting it wrong for 50 years be he seems to be the only person who doesn’t realise.
“ The human race is not special. So why do we think we’re immune to mass extinction?“. A mass extinction is when many species go extinct, as correctly stated by earlier commenters. So they are saying that many species will go extinct and Homo sapiens may be one of them.
In order for there to be a mass extinction, many squillions of individual animals have to die or stop breeding, and for that to happen something will have to physically cause it. An asteroid could do it, an amazing (and extraordinarily unlikely) number of simultaneous volcanic eruptions could do it. Seas rising 300mm in a century could not possibly do it, and nor could average temperatures creeping up at even 2 or 3 degrees C in a century, and anyway we don’t have enough fossil fuels to achieve that. CO2 is proven to be very beneficial for plants at concentrations many multiples of today’s levels, and the warmer and wetter world predicted by the scientists would obviously be good for plants too – longer growing seasons, better growth, etc. The increased food production capability of just Russia and Canada would dwarf any problems occurring anywhere else.
Any statement that man-made global warming could cause a mass extinction, let alone extinction of humans, is fundamentally absurd.
CO2 levels could become a problem if they fall to levels below the pre-industrial level. Global temperature could become a problem if it fell to Little-Ice-Age level. There would undoubtedly be a mass extinction if CO2 levels fell below 200ppm or if global temperature fell significantly below pre-Holocene levels (or possibly just to that level).
Warmer is better, beyond anything that fossil fuels could possibly achieve. Colder is worse. Period.
Homo sapiens are still around of course busy looking for things to fear but homo erectus and homo habilis are extinct and so are the neanderthals of course except that they left their genes in a certain group of homo sapiens that have outperformed the other homo sapiens in technological and economic advancement.
CFCs greenhouse effect will save us…….
Another case of [mysanthropic] wishful thinking…
Newsweek proclaims: FOSSIL CORALS SUGGEST A MASS EXTINCTION
Just like 65 million years ago…
The corals are transitioning toward these disaster traits,” said Gruber, who is a National Geographic Explorer
Transitioning – how very right-on.
Transgender corals ! When will we finally realise we must ACT NOW? 😉
Solution: Get the corals to self identify as a coral that can withstand higher temps.
… said Gruber
Funny coincidence: grubering means lying
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/grubering
Climate change is what it is…
Covid -19 another animal
There are staff of hospitals who could not return from China and who returned through other countries. Have been through 14 day quarantine and still affected!
There’s more to this. Incubation is greater than 14 days!
Well all be rooned said Hanrahan.. A poem by John O’Brien https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R96gN2mZ7ZI
From the article Read more
The articles citation is more than enough to realise the propagated BS
Geoff Dawson, just another ABC humanity hating misanthrope, if these people hate who they are so much why don’t they just end it for themselves, then we can get on with our excellent lives that human ingenuity has provided us.
Humans are very special, we are the only species that lives on every continent, we can live on the sea, under the sea, in the air, in space and even on other worlds. We are the most extraordinary species that has ever existed on this planet and possibly in the galaxy.
“The reason people are not taking climate change seriously is” because the ideas expressed are cr*p and maybe only good enough for a B-movie, or children’s science fiction.
Convinced of your own personal suffering and extirpation; all blamed upon the extremely nebulous “climate change”?
Odd, that species are species because they’ve adapted to and thrive because of “climate change”.
That mankind has lived and thrived during the past several million years in climates ranging from pure hot and/or humid tropical to tens of thousands years of a glaciated world.
Yet, Paul Gilding and Geoff Dawson prefer to take the view that “climate change” dooms mankind.
Frankly, if you feel so doomed Paul and Geoff, why wait?
Personally, when discussing “future” events, treating cries of alarm as “vague threat somewhere out there in the distant future” is by far the most rational approach.
So, bugger off Paul and Geoff. Your shrieks of doom indicate your own inner depression preferences, not any real threats to the world.
ABC might be right if they limit their prediction to Australia and the folks there don’t wake up!!
They are watching too many Hollywood movies.
Perhaps the reference is to the asteroid Apophis.
About the only things that would result in a mass extinction that included mankind would be a large impact event or the Sun going nova. Nothing else comes close, even plagues and super volcano eruptions, both of which mankind has already survived multiple times . Anyone who thinks that the insignificant climate effect from CO2 emissions can cause a mass extinction that includes mankind is in dire need of some remedial education in both science and history. Mankind has already survived the substantial climate change arising from the ebb and flow of ice ages as naturally modulated by Earth’s orbit and axis variability, moreover; no possible amount of atmospheric CO2 will prevent ice ages from occurring and they will, again and again.
The climate changers and sundry weather worriers played the bushfires and poor fauna card for all it was worth but it was always going to be yesterdays news by winter and some decent falls of rain have come early anyway.
However with Covid19 and the pandemic word being bandied about they’re suffering an acute case of media deprivation syndrome and can’t get a look in so they’re at a total loss. Perhaps they’ll resort to the old Gaia’s wrath and Sodom and Gomorrah routine they’re that barking mad crying wolf with their perpetual dooming.
So our species isn’t special….I guess they fail to realize that it is homo sapiens alone that is fast developing the ability to defend this planet from rogue asteroids. Yes, asteroids – those things from outer space that can actually cause a mass extinction of the vast majority of the planet’s plants and animals.
So if any of these hardcore green fantasies ever came true of all humans (but no other living things) being wiped off the face of the earth, the future would indeed be very grim should a big space rock come calling. All that would happen then would be like when the dinosaurs were alive – animals would simply look up at the sky helplessly and watch the incoming fireball that would destroy most of their kind.
There are a lot of things special about humans like the opposing thumb and women having breasts even when not pregnant.
One thing not special about humans are humans will not go extinct by, as the article states, a 1 or 2 degree rise in temperature and certainly not for a claim that has no evidence for support. Like we could worry ourselves to death.
Extinction is more likely from a 70 mile wide rock hitting the earth at a speed faster than a speeding locomotive. Much faster.
It is institutionalized stupidity.
Those writing the articles, are good little soldiers for the Cult.
They are clueless about industrial production, power grids, implications of super high power costs, balance of trade, GDP, and so on.
They are not lying, they are just clueless, angry children, as to what zero carbon dioxide emission would mean.
Their ‘plan’ is dead on arrival.
Zero CO2 emission means:
No air travel
No mining
No ships
No hydrocarbon industry
No manufacturing
Mass unemployment/currency collapse/rioting in the streets
Ignoring the fact that all of the IPCC ‘science’ is incorrect….
… The Cult’s solution to global warming is to spend a gazillion dollars on sun and wind gathering.
The intermittent power solutions all fail at the point when power storage is required. It does not matter how much money is spent.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-renewable-energy-fantasy-1436104555
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
Billions of people dying is not a mass extinction.
That is what is known as culling the herd, especially if it is a bunch of frail people in ill-health.
Even every human on the planet dying is not a mass extinction.
That would just be a run-of-the-mill extinction.
Mass extinction refers to something specific…a large number of species going extinct in a short period of time, basically simultaneously.
And according to these same morons, the one chance for the planet is we all go away.
As usual, they cannot keep their story straight.
Do they want less people or not?
If so, then they should welcome terrible pandemics.
Do they want the Earth to return to the way it was before people?
Then they should do nothing about this pandemic, or any other.
In fact, the want to scream about anything worrisome, and talk out of both sides of their mouths.
If they get their way with deindustrialization, we will not need any diseases to see billions die.
If we stop burning fossil fuels with no replacement source for all that energy, they best learn to stop worrying about large numbers of people dying.
I am Australian, our national broadcaster is autonomous and should not be described as belonging to the Australian government it does not. The journalists of the ABC are either green or of the left hence this nonsense that they pedal. They have 20% of the audience which is in decline but nevertheless they have become a huge problem and are out of control. There was a time when they were objective and produced content which was in the general interest of the Australian populous. Not anymore. Personally I have stopped watching them because of their bias and irrational actions. The current Australian government was opposed by the ABC in the last election and currently our government is trying to reduce funding. There are many including myself who wish to have our ABC sold. I think the ABC is a treasonous anti-competitive organisation populated by ideologues.
I support Mike O’Ceirin’s remarks about the ABC which is certainly not a mouth piece for the Australian Government notwithstanding it funds the ABC by about $1bn AUD a year
The Government appoints the Board which however has shown itself incapable of reining in the staff or getting some political balance in both presenters and comments
A survey revealed that the ABC staff identified 70% as Green -Left whereas the Greens in Australia poll between 10 to 12 % of the national vote
The ABC was quick to blame the recent bush fires on climate change and has never once mentioned the the positive Indian Ocean Dipole as the principal cause of the drying drought which enabled the fires
The ABC’s TV program the Drum has announced that it will not permit discussion on climate change that does not accept the Orthodoxy of CAGW -yet another example of ABC green left bias
Somebody let the Aussies know there are some real existential threats in the air and space near you.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mile-wide-asteroid-fly-earth-233535903.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy/coronavirus-death-toll-jumps-to-107-in-italy-all-schools-shut-idUSKBN20R23R
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-iran-rouhani/coronavirus-has-spread-to-nearly-all-iran-provinces-president-idUSKBN20R1ES
Whilst the corona virus is a useful comparator for global warming alarmists to push for urgent action on global warming I think that mass extinction by asteroid collision is more appropriate. Whilst no one has died from global warming the virus is here and now and requires urgent action. If one looks at the historic rate of global warming ( man induced) it’s difficult to use that info to predict a mass and near term extinction. In fact if the conclusion that the dinosaurs indeed became extinct due to an asteroid collision at least there is some historical context to assume some concern. The other similarity with global warming and asteroid collision is that no matter how many resources are applied can you do something about it. With corona virus it’s clear applying resources immediately does have an impact, but with asteroid collision and global warming it’s very uncertain that no amount of resources being spent will actually make a difference. In the corona virus case the cost benefit is clear and quantifiable. With asteroid collision and global warming the cost is clear ( or understated) but the benefit is problematic.
If the mass extinction occurs “within our lifetime”, it probably ought to be at the very end of our lifetime. Just sayin’.
Phew! For a while there I thought it might be 32% increased risk and thanks to the beeb for helping quantify that for the doomed-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/climate-change-boosted-australia-fire-risk-by-30percent/ar-BB10Ln0K
what makes you think a 2 degree rise in temperatures will be the end of life on earth?? You’ll notice our recent temp is listed as being in the ‘Icehouse’. Then they take a scientific ‘stab in the dark’ for the future.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/149157242@N05/49545333311/in/dateposted/
I have philosophised with a close friend for some years now that the human species needed a wake-up call and that this needed to be natural disaster. Our developed societies have become besotted with trivialities. This comes in many forms: climate phobia, draconian environmental and safety regulation, slaves of the smartphone and those that control them.
I foresee that within the next 6 months the pandemic’s social impact is going to be most severe in the Southern Hemisphere. You in the Nth are nearing the end of your cold/flu season. Ours will arrive in about 2 months. We are supposed to self-isolate and make a judgment on when to seek help. We cannot visit an A&E. Help must be sourced through a hotline. Once flu and colds kick in it sure will be hot. I predict that numbers of people will die in their own homes.
Research of past virus pandemics indicates that several involved 2- 3 waves spanning 2- 3 years. In theory the situation should improve in the Nth as summer kicks in but may well worsen 6 months later.
We are already witnessing that the reaction to the outbreak is doing more harm than the event itself. I feel qualified to make such a sweeping statement being of the right age, gender and health status to bite the dust. We are the only group left that can be targeted and criticised under woke law (given colour).
Is he woke too? 🙂 – Oops I forgot that he must be a gender-neutral : “it”