Near-Term Human Extinction: Guy McPherson (#218)
Award-winning scientist Dr. Guy McPherson has concluded that for human civilization, the end is near. He advises the rate of change of our climate is increasing far more rapidly than we are being told, and this puts us on his endangered species list.
In this 2017 interview, McPherson reveals why the International Panel on Climate Change, and even many individual scientists, understate the problem. He critiques our modern “living arrangement,” and the lies our culture promulgates to avoid admitting, “We are trashing this planet at an astonishing rate of speed.” He also shares his thinking about a “sane” living arrangement. You might be surprised – both at how soon he expects we’ll be extinct, and at his positive advice about how to respond to this crisis.
Dr. Guy McPherson is professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, where he taught and conducted research in natural resources, ecology and evolutionary biology for twenty years. His published works include 14 books and hundreds of scholarly articles. Dr. McPherson blogs and co-hosts his own radio show under the title “Nature Bats Last.”
Recent Books:
Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey
Killing the Natives: Has the American Dream Become a Nightmare?
Extinction Dialogs: How to Live With Death In Mind Co-authored with Carolyn Baker
I have now lived for 83 years and have somehow known ever since I was in my teens that some version of this day was coming. How could anyone who can see and think conclude otherwise? Like many others I believe that our extinction will be a blessing for the planet and all remaining life upon it. The sooner the better.
Unfortunately, the 400,000 tons of nuclear ‘spent fuel’ we leave behind will leave no remaining life on the planet when it burns uncontrollably and the ionizing radiation destroys the ozone layers and the atmosphere is blown away by the solar wind.
I somehow find comfort in McPherson’s dire prediction. Am I alone?
no you are not i also feel the same. humans are the biggest parasites on this fragile planet and will be wiped out
When I first heard Guy McPherson’s conclusions my immediate thought was that he was at the extreme end and the truth was probably somewhere near the middle. Well, so far I have not come across anything that refutes his ideas, and sadly, more and more scientists and evidence support his conclusions. Ted Trainer at the Simplicity Institute lives very simply and comes to very similar conclusions on the impossibility of any form of industrial civilisation being viable. James Hansen’s keynote address on March 8th at Williams on Confronting Climate Change shows that, at best, he too considers our situation dire – partly in what he says but also what he doesn’t say, and what he starts to say and then stops, and the immense hopelessness and sadness in his body language. Guy’s ultimate conclusions on what we should do personally in the current situation, are likely the most useful words you will ever hear.
Here’s some interesting rebuttal of the scientific basis for Guy McPherson’s views: http://hot-topic.co.nz/guy-mcpherson-and-the-end-of-humanity-not/
“the extinction in 10 years scenario is really at the outer edge of speculation about the future.”
And Guy McPherson responded here: http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2016/12/push-back-from-ippc-scientist-james.html
As mentioned in the podcast, Dr. Guy McPherson is a Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, and the world’s leading authority on Abrupt Climate Change leading to Near Term Human Extinction; that is, he is knowledgeable about the habitat necessary for human survival. As the global average temperature rises above a certain point, it’s not that human beings can’t live at higher temperatures, but that the plants that we and other animals depend upon for food cannot adapt fast enough and they die out.
Based on these facts, and the abrupt rise in global average temperatures due to the predicted 50 Gigaton bursts or “burps” of methane in the Arctic Ocean this year or within the next two years, Dr. McPherson has written an article which includes a timeline for virtual Human Extinction within 10-34 months from now:
https://guymcpherson.com/2017/02/faster-than-expected/
Just like all the others in the list of presenters, McPherson has no clue whatsoever! We WILL become extinct and there is absolutely NOTHING we can do about it and it WILL be in a matter of months. Where McPherson et al. walk on an irrelevant tangent is in insisting on their amusing beliefs that climate change, environmental havoc, peak oil, overpopulation, diseases, interbreeding, and other agents/mechanisms have anything to do with extinctions. Humans WILL undoubtedly disappear in a Mass Extinction like the dinos, archosaurs, mammal-likes, amphibians, and others before us. The cause of ALL mass extinctions is always the same. Mother Nature uses a single mechanism to get rid of the remaining species at the end of their cycle… in this case, primarily the ruling mammals.
.
.
mass extinction: the disappearance of a FOOD chain
.
.
The agent is definitely food, but the mechanism is not geologically rapid environmental change caused by extrinsic catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, supernovas, or careless humans. The dinos disappeared when their ECONOMY collapsed!
.
.
Yes! All animals in the wild have an economy. The primary — if only — resource a species manages is food. WHEN the food the species consumes disappears, it dies. It’s just that simple.
.
.
If we were standing at the starting line of the Cambrian, we can in retrospect predict that entire families and orders of interdependent animals WILL disappear WHEN the primary production they depend on finishes its cycle and is muscled aside by a more vibrant invention of Mother Nature. The ferns were displaced as rulers by the conifers which were displaced by the angiosperm. When the flowering plants took over, the dinos disappeared. We have no need of volcanoes or of asteroids to explain mass extinctions. Not a single paleontologist, archeologist, geologist, or other so-called ‘expert’ has ever mentioned that food disappears all by itself and the animals that depend on it disappear with it. Therefore, whether you believe the theory or not, we have a NEW THEORY OF EXTINCTION!
.
.
Now it’s our turn. We are the apex predators, the last of the hominids. WHEN out global economy finally disintegrates. there will be no corporation or individual which will produce food or distribute it to the cities. Money will be no more! Money — which has gone from food itself, to gold, to paper, to electronic 0s and 1s today — disappears overnight and no one produces or distributes food. We die massively of starvation. That’s how humans WILL die and not because we are destroying the environment or crowding out the animals or overpopulating the planet or running out of oil. All we need is a gargantuan stock market crash tomorrow morning and we’re through!
.
.
.
https://www.academia.edu/28866480/We_are_the_last_generation_of_humans_on_Earth_Proc._Int._Oxford_Apocalypse_Conf._Prague_2016_
.
.
.
https://www.academia.edu/29310494/Unsustainability_Proceedings_ICBEC_Hong_Kong_2010_
.
.
.
With each passing day I see more and more that supports Guy’s premise that we are not being told the truth. Here’s a very interesting report on this: https://www.vox.com/2015/5/15/8612113/truth-climate-change?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=72e4034daaee4ef48a51147185e8eec2&uid=3249041587&nid=244+285282312
How will we die if this happens? Will we suffocate… oxygen pushed out by carbon monoxide or methane? If not that, crop failures and lack of food? Will those who have stored up years worth of food and water be the last to die?
Here’s a recent commentary that made me think of Guy’s discussion of living with integrity as civilization collapses: Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-global-warming.html