CBS Lets Humanity-Hating Curmudgeon Paul Ehrlich Spew More Climate Panic Inanity
On the other hand, thanks to the asteroid deflection projects, humanity is poised to save all the species on Earth.
CBS’ 60 Minutes began 2023 by showcasing the opinions of one of the most error-ridden prognosticators ever to hit popular media: Standford Professor Paul Ehrlich.
The news organization’s latest angle to push more climate panic and progressive solutions to a non-existent problem was a focus on biodiversity. That had Ehrlich on to support the notion civilization was about to collapse because mankind was wiping out other species at an accelerated rate.
I recall reading Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb when I was a young and impressionable teenager. The predictions in that book, which included a forecast that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s, have turned out to be completely wrong.
But if you need an “expert” to push your humanity-hating science narrative, Ehrlich is your man.
“Oh, humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from,” he said. “Resources that would be required, the systems that support our lives, which of course are the biodiversity that we’re wiping out. Humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off.”
…Host Scott Pelley mentioned that Ehrlich had been viewed as an alarmist when “Population Bomb” came out.
“I was alarmed. I am still alarmed. All of my colleagues are alarmed,” Ehrlich said. “The rate of extinction is extraordinarily high now and getting higher all the time.”
CBS went on to showcase more doom-casting as “proof,” indicating we were poised to experience the dreaded “Sixth Mass Extinction event.”
We know the rate of extinction is ‘extraordinarily high’ because of a study of the fossil record by biologist Tony Barnosky, Ehrlich’s Stanford colleague.
Tony Barnosky: The data are rock solid. I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that will say we’re not in an extinction crisis.
Barnosky’s research suggests today’s rate of extinction is up to 100 times faster than is typical in the nearly 4 billion year history of life. These peaks represent the few times that life collapsed globally. And the last was the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
Tony Barnosky: There are five times in Earth’s history where we had mass extinctions. And by mass extinctions, I mean at least 75%, three quarters of the known species disappearing from the face of the Earth. Now we’re witnessing what a lot of people are calling the sixth mass extinction where the same thing could happen on our watch.
Social media responded with a long list of realities that ran counter to Ehrlich’s projections.
Ehrlich, 1970: "[E]njoy what little time you have left. That point for me is 1972."
2014: "We will soon be asking: is it perfectly okay to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry?"
2018: "[P]laces like Miami are going bye-bye in the relatively near future."
— Ajit Pai (@AjitPai) January 2, 2023
Many of us are old enough to remember when programs pushed the coming Ice Age, which fueled even more teenage angst for me. There were many references to this failed prediction in response to the 60 Minutes episode.
Leonard Nimoy Warns About The Coming Ice Age pic.twitter.com/taF2QqA5K1
— John Moss (@JohnBertramMoss) December 30, 2022
For a science-based, reality-rich analysis of the episode, I present this thread by Michael Shellenberger:
On CBS "60 Minutes" w/ @ScottPelley last night, @PaulREhrlich claimed a) humans are causing a "sixth mass extinction" & b) that it would require "five Earths" for all humans to enjoy a Western standard of living.
Both claims are totally & utterly false.https://t.co/xXslyyUxQ2
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 2, 2023
As a contrast, let’s see how I am doing with predictions that run counter to the narrative science of the day. I have been on target with covid, so I would like to showcase a piece I wrote in 2020 about how the 6th mass extinction event would occur in four years, according to “experts.”
I mocked it and described actual mass extinction events.
About one year ago, news outlets were reporting that the Earth has entered a sixth mass extinction phase, with animals now dying out at 100 times the normal rate. In my detailed analysis of the other 5 extinction level events, I noted than mankind played absolutely no role.
In fact, the Permian extinction wiped out 95% of all lifeforms. Unless therapsids were driving S.U.V.’s or had air conditioning, it is difficult to condemn fossil fuels as the cause of such a massive loss of species.
Obviously, we have not been sufficiently scared. So, now a new new report has been released asserting that over 60 percent of species will be gone in four short years.
In one year, we will look back and see who was right.
Meanwhile, there’s actual science to counter Ehrlich’s insanity. Humanity is the only species poised to save the planet, thanks to the asteroid redirection systems that were successfully tested last year.
Humanity doesn’t often have the opportunity to conduct real-world tests of how to avert a potential apocalypse, but NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test gave the agency just that chance.
In September, a NASA spacecraft intentionally slammed into an asteroid in a historic test of humanity’s ability to protect Earth from a potentially catastrophic collision with a space rock. The $325 million DART mission was designed to see whether “nudging” an asteroid can alter its trajectory, in a first-of-its-kind test of planetary defense technologies.
The cosmic smash-up was carried out on a small and harmless space rock known as Dimorphos, which is about 6.8 million miles from Earth. Weeks later, the agency confirmed that the DART probe did successfully change the asteroid’s orbit, shortening Dimorphos’ orbit by 32 minutes.
Professor Jacobson asked me to predict when the world would end, and I will do so now in the form of a tweet which was my response to some climate panic gibberish.
The climate has changed substantially throughout geologic history. I'll start worrying when a large asteroid is on a trajectory to impact us, or if a super-volcano begins to erupt. I refuse to participate in #ClimatePanic
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) December 23, 2022
Thanks to DART’s success, we may only have to worry about the supervolcanoes. News reports focused on those destructive behemoths at least have some legitimacy.
The entire climate panic episode is below:
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Comments
Wow, he’s still alive?! And still has people who take him seriously?!
No, actually he died in 1974, just as he predicted.
So did Biden, from the looks of things.
My reaction as well.
If you are trying to convince people that we are in the early innings of a mass extinction why would you ever drag out this ancient, failed prognosticator?
He looks so outstandingly classic in a toga and sandwich board.
Of course, he does. He’s got a whole new crop of suckers to listen to his bovinations. They weren’t born when he was raving about worldwide starvation and cannibalism.
He’s a poster child for University Tenure.
This detritus started in the 1820s. In all that time show me once when the Chicken Littles have been right. The free or burn swings like a pendulum with these jokers.
They told me if I voted for Trump in 2020, I would lose all my wealth and my freedoms.
I did, and I am.
You could have made a lot of money over the years listening to Ehrlich and then betting against everything he predicted.
If you had been listening to Erlich AND Krugman, you could have owned New Zealand by now.
He’s kinda like lying hacks Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman, isn’t he?
Julian Simon made $1000 by doing exactly that!
The problem is that just two countries have 40 percent of the world’s population while having only 20 percent of the world’s arable land. Their solution is to send as many of their people to America as fast as they can. But they are not coming here nearly as fast as the migrants who are crossing our southern border.
LOL, wasn’t AOC available?
These clowns with their ‘predictive models’ are a joke.
‘Predictive Model’ is another name for ‘Educated Guess.’
When they run around spouting their theories with certainty, as if their models ‘prove’ their theory, they should be punched in the throat and told to STFU.
The idea that we can look at a 4 billion year ‘fossil record’ and make factual statements about such predictions as these is farcical. Do ya’ think your ‘fossil record’ might have a few holes in it, genius?
“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
I predict Paul Ehrlich will pass on and we won’t have him to kick around any more
Ha, so now he’s falling back on the old trick of making “predictions” that are guaranteed to come true if you spin them right.
I mean, if you had told me 30 years ago about stuff like “transgenderism”, sending kids to “drag queen story hour”, etc. I would have said you were nuts. It sure ain’t the world I grew up in.
“A great empire will be destroyed.” Three drachmas, please; enjoy our gift shop on your way out.
planned parenthood, planned parent/hood, planned person/hood, political congruence, dysfunctional relationships, Green [New] Deals… the Pro-Choice ethical religion in liberal doses.
For humanity’s sake, keep Paul Ehrlich away from the Infinity Stones.
Really? Then explain why the feral hog population in the US is exploding.
https://nypost.com/2020/09/20/feral-swine-bomb-causing-us-wild-hog-populations-to-explode/
Those are pork. Hams on the hoof. Bacon au natural. And in a few months my family’s farms are going to sound like Khe San as we kill them to keep them off of our crops.
It’s a new harvest. Unfortunately we can’t sell the hundreds of pounds of meat, or even donate it as food, because the law says so.
Another reason is that we’re building new homes in their habitats, pushing them into adjoining older neighborhoods… and then the county/HOA rules say you can’t shoot them in a residential area, meaning they get to plow up your lawn for grubs like meat-based John Deeres on a mission from God, and there isn’t a single thing you can do about it legally. I tried interesting my frustrated brother (in Tampa) in archery for its low noise value, but at 85 he’s not learning new tricks.
Weird. No season for feral hogs in Bama. Landowners are allowed to take or destroy them all year b/c they are so destructive and prolific breeders.
In our case, these are cheek by jowl suburban houses and McMansions. But a pretty good stretch of swamp as a backstop, still…
How high powered of an air rifle do they make these days? Wouldn’t be my first choice for hogs but if the local Karen will get up your backside over gunfire then maybe do some research and see if it would work?
South Alabama is where most of my relatives’ farms are. No problems with killing the hogs, just hugely wasteful as our freezers are only so big and we can’t sell or donate the meat.
Maybe you could barter the meat or even a couple days shooting hogs to someone for something you want? Got to be folks who would want the meat and the sport.
Grind it up for chicken feed?
“a couple days shooting hogs to someone for something you want? Got to be folks who would want the meat and the sport.”
Seriously, that’s already a profitable business in Texas.
From helicopters, no less.
300 blackout, just sayin.
How can Ehrlich be so demonstratably wrong on nearly every prediction and still have network news people seeking your opinion? Is this a great country, or what?
Brandon is proof that even if you were wrong in every single thing you ever did in public life, you could even grow up to be president.
Because the “Science!’ worshippers don’t really care about science, but narrative that supports their worldview.
“How can Ehrlich be so demonstratably wrong on nearly every prediction and still have network news people seeking your opinion?”
Case in point: gun reporting.
Every single time there is talk about any gun restriction getting loosened, newsrooms across the country provide free mega-inches to all the new ravings of professional hoplophobes, who boil out of the woodwork predicting Dodge City, Blood In The Streets, and Death Over Fender Benders. These clowns have a 100% record of being 100% wrong. They were wrong about the liberalization of concealed carry, wrong about the expiration of the so-called “assault weapons ban,” wrong about permitting self-defense arms in National Parks, wrong about Constitutional Carry, and wrong about pretty much everything else you can name.
But the minute it looks like there’s a chance of citizens getting another little bit of their rights back, the media will go back, Jack, to these same old failed clowns, and do it again.
“Tony Barnosky: The data are rock solid. I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that will say we’re not in an extinction crisis.”
I’m a scientist. We’re not in an extinction crisis.
Ehrlich has been wrong on every issue and the epitome of junk science since the late 1960s
One way that I mess with the climate people is to mention that the illegal immigrants consume about 1X units of natural resources in their country, but when they cross the border iilegally they start to accomodate the American standard of living which mens that they are now consuming 5X the natural resources than they were previously. That is one of many reasons why CA has no power and rents are so high, because illegal immigration has led to an accelerated depletion of resources. As predicted, they counter, well Americans, who lets say consume 20X units of natural resources, need to consume less. I then counter with good, YOU first, and good luck honestly selling that to anyone with a brain.
Yes, we do lose more species now, simply because there are more species. It is like cancer. We are seeing more people die these days from cancer, because we can accurately diagnose it, so that literally no one ever dies from natural causes, which used to be the “go to” cause of death, before being replaced with the WuFlu. The most disingenuous scientists are those who switch between percentages and natural numbers when it suits their arguments.
“ 1971: “I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.””
Well formerly Great Britain certainly doesn’t.
Great Britain is an island. How can it not exist? And parts of it are so high that even if the oceans were to rise like in Algore’s fantasy movie they’d still be above water.
Great Britain, like Antifa, is an idea. It’s gone.
No, it is not an idea, any more than Manhattan is, or Maui. It’s a piece of geography, nothing more and nothing less. The only way it can cease to exist would be if it were completely and permanently covered by the ocean. Which won’t happen under any foreseeable scenario.
Leslie: Let’s tread gently here
Curmidgeons could sue for defamation and did nothing to deserve to be associated with this particlular Bolshevik
As a well-seasoned curmudeon, I felt it necessary to set the record staright… (Now get off my lawn!!! 🙂 )
If it’s so serious he should take himself off the earth. Won’t be missed. The only good that came out of his early books was my stockpiling .22 bullets.
This guy should be Chairperson of one of Biden’s climate-change councils. C’mon … this guy needs to be on the front page every day!
But instead of stealing your luggage, he’s steal your roughage.
“‘60 Minutes’ Exhumes Enviro Cult Leader For A New Round Of Scaremongering” – This was David Harsanyi’s headline for this, LOL!!
Oh, and your photo of Ehrlich is way out of date. That photo was taken way, way back before he died and was mummified, a process that hasn’t seem to preserve him very well.
Paul R. Ehrlich is alive. He may be demented at age 90, but that’s not much different than he was at 36…
Poor old Chicken Little has been dragged from the henhouse to reprise her previous performance. Leave her alone, she’s old and needs her rest.
Malthusians: Have they ever gotten anything right?
David Harsanyi’s recent essay at the Federalist criticizing Ehrlich’s “60 Minutes” appearance wittily and accurately refers to this wizened crackpot as having been “exhumed” by that show’s hosts. And, Ehrlich has fairly earned the moniker of “crackpot.” That CBS would grant publicity and deference to someone whose nonsensical and histrionic doomsday predictions have been proven wrong, repeatedly, is disgraceful, but, it shows that the show is entirely driven by fealty to the Dumb-o-crats’ “green” zealotry, fear-mongering and fanaticism.
If this guy really believed his own BS he and his like thinking colleagues would have departed this earth years ago. At least we could say they did their part.
That loon is still around?! I thought the acid rain would have dissolved him by now, or maybe that second ice age would have frozen him solid. Whoops….more bullshi,,.er, of his “predictions” wrong. The dude has the batting average of a dead wombat.