Monday, April 03, 2006

Crackpot Scientists



Crackpot Scientist Eric Pianka with Lizard

It’s getting to be embarrassing to admit being a scientist. As one trained as a scientist who taught physics and worked as an engineer, I am amazed at the scary idiocy being spouted by academic scientists today.

In 1969 Stanford ecologist Paul Erlich wrote The Population Bomb, a pseudo-scientific account of population growth following the 18th century Malthusian theory. Erlich’s distinctly pessimistic view held that it was physically impossible for agricultural output to keep up with the growth of population. He predicted global famine and mass starvation, claiming it to be a fantasy that India would ever feed itself. (Over the next two decades India increased its wheat harvest by six times becoming self-sufficient in the mid 1990s.)

Erlich even predicted famine in parts of America. He was embraced by politicians like Jimmy Carter who’s 1980 presidential report Global 2000 predicted mass starvation and the destruction of entire ecosystems.

Erlich, Carter, Gore and many fervent environmentalists share a malevolent, man-hating philosophy. In Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, Paul Taylor wrote: "The ending of the human epoch on Earth would most likely be greeted with a hearty Good riddance!" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber wrote: "Human happiness is not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."

Lest you think these crackpot scientific freakos are extinct, look who was recently honored by the Texas Academy of Science as its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. University of Texas professor Eric Pianka says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead. “Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine,” Pianka cautioned students and guests at the awards ceremony. In his estimation 6.5 billion humans is too many: “We’ve grown fat, apathetic and miserable,” while destroying the planet.

Professor Pianka’s solution: an epidemic. “Disease will control the scourge of humanity,” Pianka said. “We’re looking forward to a huge collapse.” It’s the Ebola virus he deems most capable of wide scale decimation. “Humans are so dense (in population) that they constitute a perfect substrate for an epidemic,” he says.

A syllabus for one of his courses reads: “Although [Ebola Zaire] kills 9 out of 10 people, outbreaks have so far been unable to become epidemics because they are currently spread only by direct physical contact with infected blood. However, a closely-related virus that kills monkeys, Ebola Reston, is airborne, and it is only a matter of time until Ebola Zaire evolves the capacity to be airborne.”

So here is a publicly funded University scientist and professor who hopes for the mutation of a deadly strain of the Ebola virus to make it even more deadly. He also has advice for the terrorists: “Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people” Pianka said.

This guy is clearly deranged, but he is also dangerous. To Pianka, a human life, contributing to that “fat, human biomass,” is no more valuable than any other — a lizard, a rhino, a bacteria. And impressionable students listen and are converted.

Brenna McConnell, a biology senior, said she and others in the audience “had not thought seriously about overpopulation issues and a feasible solution prior to the meeting.” But McConnell left the talk with a whole new outlook. “I mean, he’s basically advocating for the death for all but 10 percent of the current population. And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he’s right.”

Heaven help us!

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think these wackos should give it a head-start and jump off a bridge. I know, I know, even if all the wacko scientists killed themselves it wouldn’t make a dent in the population, but maybe they’d be followed by other wackos (hopefully liberals would be right behind them).

Dave

7:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post!!! thanx . Hope you’re recovering as I am also doing slowly with P/Therapy 2x a week.

Glad you’re still writing!! ~ I do this left-handed!!

Marie

7:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post? We need to get more scientists who will really examine creationsist theories. I think we've all had a enough of these "global warming" neo darwinist buffoons!

9:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Straw man again! Are you really doing to start disregarding science because of one kook?

8:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All scientists think like this kook...it's obvious. The huge sham that is "global warming", neo-darwinism, all these things point to scientists who don't understand that God is in control, and it is he who sets the tone. We need to get back on track, and follow the Bible. Science is nice, but only insofar as it conforms to the Bible. End of story.

12:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry Jesus Freaks!



The New Testament story describes Jesus walking on water in the Sea of Galilee but according to a study led by Florida State University Professor of Oceanography Doron Nof, it's more likely that he walked on an isolated patch of floating ice.

The study points to a rare combination of optimal water and atmospheric conditions for development of a unique, localized freezing phenomenon that Nof and his co-authors call "springs ice."

In what is now northern Israel, such ice could have formed on the cold freshwater surface of the Sea of Galilee -- known as Lake Kinneret by modern-day Israelis -- when already chilly temperatures briefly plummeted during one of the two protracted cold periods between 2,500 and 1,500 years ago.

A frozen patch floating on the surface of the small lake would have been difficult to distinguish from the unfrozen water surrounding it. The unfrozen water was comprised of the plumes resulting from salty springs situated along the lake's western shore in Tabgha -- an area where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been documented.

"As natural scientists, we simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years," Nof said. "We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."

It isn't the first time the FSU researcher has offered scientific explanations of watery miracles. As a recognized expert in the field of oceanography and limnology -- the study of freshwater, saline and brackish environments -- Nof made waves worldwide in 1992 with his oceanographic perspective on the parting of the Red Sea.

His latest research appears in the April 2006 Journal of Paleolimnology, a scientific publication that addresses the reconstruction of lake history.

Using paleoceanographic records of the Mediterranean Sea's surface temperatures along with analytical ice and statistical models, Nof and his colleagues focused on the dynamics of a small section of Lake Kinneret comprising about 10,000 square feet near the salty springs that empty into it. Their analysis supports the likelihood that a brief blast of frigid air descended over the lake and dropped to 25 F (-4 C) for at least two days, coinciding with the chill that had already settled in for a century or more and quite possibly encompassed the decades in which Jesus lived.

9:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love the moonbats on this board! Jesus walked on water, not ice! It's in the Bible, go look for yourself. And I just don't care about this silly fish. God created the earth in 7 days 5000 years ago. If you can't accept that, then you will surely perish in the flames of hell. Bill, why do you let these liberal buffoons post here?

1:25 PM  

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