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!