Applauding Mass Human Extinction

alanw

Sun Apr 02 12:46:12 -0700 2006

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Yes. Yes. To hold in my hand, a capsule that contained such power. To know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes. I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods.

Applauding Mass Human Extinction

pojo

Sun Apr 02 13:00:50 -0700 2006

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Sounds like someone has been reading too much Tom Clancy. This is the plot for Rainbow Six, which uses the Olympics as a staging ground to spread an airborn ebola virus around the world.

In any case, this professor should be kept away from any sort of research involving infectious diseases and any students who might be influenced by his crackpot ideas

I *hope* that this is a leftover prank from April Fools day.

Applauding Mass Human Extinction

bdunbar

Sun Apr 02 13:02:52 -0700 2006

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Okay.  You go first.  We'll be riiiiight behind you.

Umm, yeah... you go first.

Timothy Brownawell

Sun Apr 02 13:55:40 -0700 2006

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Apparently at the speaker's direction, the speech was not video taped by the Academy and so Forrest's may be the only record of what was said.

There were "a few hundred members" present. If this is true, I'd think at least a couple of the other people there would say something.

I was assigned to judge a paper in a grad student competition after the speech. On the way, three professors dismissed Pianka as a crank. While waiting to enter the competition room, a group of a dozen Lamar University students expressed outrage over the Pianka speech.

Ok. I'd expect that at least some of those students would probably say something.

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From http://brenmccnnll.blogspot.com/2006/03/dr.html:

Dr. Pianka's talk at the TAS meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we rapidly proliferate around the globe. While what he had to say is way too vast to remember it all, moreover to relay it here in this blog, the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope, if you can call it that, is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans.

(Some of the comments there are interesting, too: "Anonymous said... Excellent idea. I vote for Pianka and this blogger to be among the first to vacate the planet. Put your money where your mouth is.", follwed by "brenna said... What I wrote is certaintly controversial, but I was not intentionally trying to offend anyone reading this blog. Please do not respond rudely, asking me to commit suicide or using sarcasm to justify your point. Thank you.".)

This is the only other report of this that I found.

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The linked course evaluations (link in article has an extra %20 at the end) do indeed show that he teaches this. The specific one mentioned in the article is

Though I agree that convervation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness. I found Pianka to be knowledgable, but spent too much time focusing on his specific research and personal views.

Looking at the lecture notes link on the webpage for that class, I found http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/PPT/26.Conservation%20Biology.ppt.

In particular, slides 47+ match closely what is described in the article. Slide 47 show the cover of "The Population Bomb", and says

Humans do not appear to have the political ability or the will to decrease the world population, resource use, and habitat destruction.

If we don't, uncontrolled forces (the four horsemen) will do it for us.

If ebola and AIDS kill a large percentage of us it, our impact on the planet would lessen to sustainable levels.

Unless disease unleashes wars, the end result would be a lot better for the Earth and its other inhabitants.

. Slides 48 and 49 are the reindeer population increasing dramatically and then crashing. Slide 50 is the four horsemen. 51 looks like it could be similar to the "rows of skulls" slide described in the article. 52 is pictures of 2 different Ebola viruses, and 53 is the HIV virus.

He also writes similar things in the second half of http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio213/why.html , linked in the article as "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse".

This is also in http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/PPT/Extra%20Goodies/Vanishing.Book.2.ppt .

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/PPT/24.Diversity.Stability.ppt has some cool pictures of "strange attractors". (unrelated, but looks cool)

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He has a textbook, Evolutionary Ecology:

In this textbook, Pianka (University of Texas) examines the effects of human domination of ecosystems, habitat destruction and fragmentation, extinction, and pollution of the atmosphere, water and land.

He has a stub page on Wikipedia, which already links to the article and says that he "sparked controversy" with his talk.

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I haven't found any other mention the the standing ovation.

You can't kill enough of the population to make a difference

lars

Mon Apr 03 02:17:38 -0700 2006

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Humans do not appear to have the political ability or the will to decrease the world population, resource use, and habitat destruction.

Probably everyone agrees on that, regardless of background, education or agenda. The dividing point usually centers on whether we will also destroy our own habitat in the process. It is possible that we can set about changes that will eventually result in homo sapiens sapiens, or its descendents, being able to survive on the planet. It is more likely that we can (or already have) set about changes that will destroy only civilization.

It's not a mater of simple rolling back to an earlier version of civilizatoin: food, water, natural resources, and culture are no longer accessible like they were in the recent past. During the time takes to re-establish a new dynamic equilibrium between the remaining population and the remaining resources, both finite and renewable, many knowledge and skills will be lost.

If we don't, uncontrolled forces (the four horsemen) will do it for us.

If ebola and AIDS kill a large percentage of us it, our impact on the planet would lessen to sustainable levels.

That's a very naive view. If the plague in Europe in the middle ages is anything to judge by, the population will bounce back within a century to the same levels as before. That is assuming we still have the infrastructure or resources to sustain such a population. Other epidemics, if less than 100% fatal, show similar responses. In other words, you can't kill enough of the population to make a difference.

It's a very difficult situation. Since the stakes are the highest there are, there will most likely be cheating, corruption, and especially nepotism in any artificla system to control the global human population problem.

Kaczynski

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Sun Apr 02 16:34:26 -0700 2006

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While we check the facts on this one, let's remember that the idea is nothing new in environmental circles. If you want to deindustrialize, you can't support the current human population. The Unabomber's ideas about mass murder were not original.

Don't confuse freaks like that with the huge number of sane environmentalists who are trying to keep the world fit to live in, for humans and for others.

Education

bill_mcgonigle

Sun Apr 02 20:16:53 -0700 2006

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This guy's a moron. The population problem is self-correcting if you support education. He needs to go look at the statistics on education levels and reproduction rates and then start helping kids survive malaria so they can grown up and go to school and get an education instead of lobbying for his insane sociopathic theories.

If there's one real challenge the Human Race faces, it's what to do about nutjobs like this in the face of advanced technology. In 1690 he might have been able to kill a few dozen people before he was eliminated. Now a few million isn't so far removed from the realm of possibility.

Sociopathy is apparently resistant to education and deterrance - let's hope we can figure out a way to deal with this that's better than Gattica or the AI's deciding this is our fatal flaw.

Applauding Mass Human Extinction

isdnip

Mon Apr 03 12:12:17 -0700 2006

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Well, it is unbelieveable, especially because the link is to a report on Pianka's speech written by Forrest Mims.  Well, Mims turns out to be one of those Creationist types who hang out with the Discovery Institute.  And fellow Creationist William Debski went and called the Department of Homeland Security to complain about Pianka, as if the ecologist were actually trying to create contagious Ebola viruses, or something, to reduce the population.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/3/11409/90836

Far more likely that Pianka, in his curmudgeonly style, was lecturing about what he thought would probably happen, not what should, but it really offended the creationists.  Funny how only Mims heard something so upsetting.

Applauding Mass Human Extinction

arakis

Mon Apr 03 14:21:55 -0700 2006

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I guess I could give this guy the benefit of the doubt and consider his talk "A Modest Proposal", or some other form of April fools joke.  From some other posts I am seeing that he actually gets up in front of a classroom and does this bit with a straight face.  That doesn't set so well.

Things could be different with much less people, but not any kind of different that sounds even vaugely enticing.  It would seem that we are going to need all these "extra" people if we are to figure something out to stay alive.  Some friends of mine consider planetary expansion as a means to facilitate our unending growth and expansion of rather unsustainable systems.  That idea make me cringe with thoughts of radiation, but it still seems a sight better than this four horseman nonsense.

The part that really gets me is the idea that 400 people applauded this guy and he gets an award.  Didn't realize that quasi-eugenics were so popular down in the Republic of Texas.

Applauding Mass Human Extinction

dmdx86

Mon Apr 03 19:14:06 -0700 2006

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Why is this "unbelievable"? It’s as if people would rather blindly march forward than confront the real issues at hand. This sort of emotional knee-jerk response reeks of Christian fundamentalist views of nature – that humans are the center of the universe and should see everything around us in nature as to be conquered.

We all have been polluted with this garbage in our minds that we need to be obsessed with technology, efficiency, and comfort instead of respecting our environment and using our intelligence to maintain a high quality lifestyle that is in harmony with nature. We are no different than any other living thing on Earth – we compete for limited resources with every other living organism but the only difference is that we can slaughter anything that gets in our way – trees, other animal populations, oceanic life, and the like.

Animal populations live in balance with their environment and the environment forces them to adopt a cohesive tight-knit social structure that works for the benefit of that population by weeding out the weak and promoting the strong within those populations.  What is our vision of progress? Miserable jobs, miserable individualism, and plenty of McDonalds and Burger Kings to feed us. A far cry from even the simple farm life many people lived not too long ago before the demands of a growing money obsessed society took them into the cities to work in the factories.

I find Pianka to sadly be right but hardly anyone is brave enough to confront what we are doing to ourselves because they fear personal destruction and fear nature itself.

I, for one, think there is more to life than what we envision for ourselves. Either we are ruled by nature, or we try to rule nature and create a bland, plastic world of mindless numbers, technologies, and technocracy.

I respect how Native American cultures lived on the Earth before Christianized conquers came. They based their decisions on what was best for their people, not what was best for a single person. Nature was respected and they didn’t trash their environment. Could any of us survive like them? Hell no.

What is unreal to me is how people sit here with zero perspective on the past and think that somehow our way of life is in any way maintainable and can grow infinitely.

well, right off the bat you are wrong

zogger

Mon Apr 03 21:29:41 -0700 2006

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I spent half a decade living like "them" the 'earlier americans", totally feral. Well, call it 99%. As in out in the woods, hunter/gatherer/small scale primitive agronomy. I did own a few simple steel tools, ax, bowsaw, shovel, etc, but that's it, and my clothing was primarily from "the store", but outside of that, pretty primitive. I would go months and not see another hoo-mann, primitive enough?  Sort of a fun-hard and sometimes rather dangerous, but fun-experiment I did in my 20s. It's quite possible. I did it, so right off the bat you have an incorrect ass-umption about "Could any of us survive like them? Hell no.".... Hell, yes some of us could, and I douibt I am the only one here who could do it. I mean, part of geekdom is the ability to figure stuff out, and being really hungry or really cold is a GREAT inducement to figuring out what to do about it! I also have written and taught and consulted on various aspects of survivalism, both primitive and modern day. They are my leet skills. I don't write code (I should learn one day...), I don't play stupid video games(those are..notnecessary and ratherjevenile, IMO). I don't "go the movies", watch only news and weather on the TV, and only view the occassional VCR tape, as in maybe 2-3 a year with my GF and the vast majority of them are gotten used. All our furnture except for a few hand made pieces-used, or "recycled" a lot of my clothing, ditto, vehicles, I have never gotten a new one, onjly ever gotten used. And so on. Low impact as possible. I go outside and "do stuff' in nature for work, relaxation, hobby, and fun. Using the net is really my biggest delve into modern tech useage in any sort of extensive way, and even there I stay several generations behind and milk hell out of my components, I don't trash and burn, I *use* them up until it gets ludicrous or they totally break. My last machine that finally fried last year was a PP200 with a 3.6 gig HDD. That's milking it for a geek. I'd still be on it if it hadn't fried due to some serious rogue spike or something that nailed it right through a surge box. so I went ahead and got a real cheap cpu/mobo/ram and throw some old used components at it, that's my "new" machine now. wow wee, bumped up to a 6 gigger HDD I pulled out of a junker that was trashed. Still using an old monitor I got for $7 used years ago.

And your digs against christianity I will challenge as well, one of the tenets in the bible is to be a good steward of the land. For good or bad, basic biology made us the smartest, so of course we will have the most impact, we *do more stuff* than the other animals. We have to, we would go nuts just grazing around. Our brains are too big and too complex. We got thumbs, we are gonna use 'em, it's that simple.

  There are millions of "fundamentalist christians" who take that "be a good steward" to heart-even if you don't know any in your circle of friends and subscribe to some other common-meme assumption that they are all the same. I guess you'll have to take my word on it, but it's true. some of the more extrme nutjobs get all the press, but they aren't even close to a majority. That's more or less one of the political urban legends that's been talked up so much it has become "data", especially in web bulletin boards. They don't seek to conquer the planet, merely live here efficiently and peacefully, about the same as anyone else.

We are allowed space, we are allowed to live.

Yes, there will be an impact, so the best we can do is try and figure out how to minimize it, how to adjust our societal expectations, how to use technology and nature in harmony, how to be a good "Technocrat", the whole point of this website actually, how to use what we have or what is possible for the bettterment of ourselves and our surroundings.. But we can't all just one second completely stop what we are doing and radically change, that just will not work, and it's not going to happen so it is a waste of time and electrons to even muse on it much. .


I am a conservationist-life long, and active worker, and also a proponent of sustainable agriculture, alternative greener energy, etc. You must have noticed this by now with my postings.

I also don't believe it's a cool idea to wipe out 7/8ths of the human species. I think only nut job demonic whacko *cultists* think that is a good idea or look forward to it so there's more bunny rabbits and mosquites.

We fought a big war to stop the nutjob eugenicists,and we have a national shame with our own misguided eugenics movement. I actually have met some of the victims from that, it actually extended into the 70s in some places, people in institutions who got "experimented" on, treated as sub humans.  Demons did that stuff as far as I am concerned, people posing as "scientists" and "concerned government workers" who "knew better".

If we don't want a future of McJobs and McWaste, then you have to do something *personal* about it, personal besides complaining.

  We grow a huge chunk of our own food here, on site. That's doing something about it, not just complaining our signing a petition or something. We produce some of our electricity with solar. That's doing something about it and not whining to the government or waiting for bigelectrico to do something..We primarily use sustainable wood for heat, carbon *neutral*.  I don't commute to work, I live were I work,so we burn very little gas that isn't necessary and we are always seeking better ways to use what we have.

And so on. It's a compromise between totally feral and outright energy hog who-gives-a-crap exploitation, which given the curent state of affairs seems a reasonable enough situation. It's my compromise anyway, seems to be working. I challenge anyone who wants to "do something" about the planet and the environment to stop flying in airplanes to "ecology OMG summits", and use teleconferencing instead, grow their own organic food,so it doesn't have to be shipped any further than the garden to the kitchen, produce their own power on their own property using any of the numerous alternatives out there, to not buy ridiculous energy hog gadgets, especially for "entertainments", to minimise water useage and be cognizant of waste water and reuse it intelligently, and etc, etc, etc.

It's amazing how many WANT a better planet, yet actually don't DO much about it, always waiting for government or 'big business" to..I dumnno, do it for them?

I'd rather make my own decisions, sorta gotten old getting ordered around, I don't like it either from governments, big businesses, nor someone I never met who claims to be a "stakeholder" of something that is mine. Let them go hold their own stakes, thankew.

  We are all individuals who make up a huge planet, by each individuals own actions a better world can be built. Waiting for the other guy to do it is silly.

Hey, did you miss that article I put up back a spell, about the analysis of "dumps",etc and what "native americans" did to their environment? Interesting read They trashed stuff out same as europeans or anyone else, they just hadn't developed much in the way of more modern tools.In short, a lot of this jazz they promote now is a *myth*, it's "politically correct" revisionist history. As their numbers got larger, their environment suffered, to the point that THEY exterminated quite a few species, even just using primitive tools. As they got introduced to more tools, more damage, they adopted them as fast as they could. And there's an interesting twist that goes along with this current article, the environment improved AFTER they got wiped out a lot by european introduced diseases.

The real bottom line is-humans will have an impact. We have to expect that, it is unavoidable. Now it is time to go forward, and learn from history. Not everything in the past was "all good".

So is that what we really want, either extreme? Let wars, plagues and whatnot reduce populations because somehow that will magically make the planet better. Really, like I said, I have travelled in environmental and conservation circles, I am TOTALLY aware of some of the more eXtreme "Gaia" nutjobs out there. Had MANY conversations with them. Some seriously insane people in some of those crowds, IMO, completely as batsquat insane as the mass exploiters.

 I reject both extremes.  Myself, I vote for the middle way, just keep on plugging away at it and try to do better, starting with *self* and local environment, and to "lead by example". I honestly haven't been able to come up with anything better. We don't need to rape the planet, but we certainly are going to *use* the planet, and the only way to make it better is by mass personal choice and sticking to your convictions. All the little tiny decisions add up to the big ones.

well, right off the bat you are wrong

isdnip

Tue Apr 04 11:11:41 -0700 2006

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Zogger, problem is that you posted the original story without checking it out.  So now everybody's arguing about the silly misquote that Mims made and Drudge and other wingnut bloggers propagated without checking the facts first.

Pianka is concerned about the environment, and how humanity has messed it up, to its own detriment.  He is not asking for a plague, wanting a plague, or trying to breed super-germs the way Dembski imagined (and reported him to DHS).  He was making a warning.  Pianka expressed concern about his grandchildren's future.  He didn't want then dead.

well, right off the bat you are wrong

zogger

Tue Apr 04 21:41:00 -0700 2006

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I haven't seen a transcript yet, nor any of the video with the missing sections. That part is suspicious to me. If the tape exists, let them release it, that would clear things up immediately. if there's a "missing" gap in the tape, that will also tend to "clear" things up, you don't erase (or fail to record) innocent normal stuff, would you? Just a ho hum normal conference, they are taping it, what's the big beef then, let's see it. Let's see how this plays out.

 Here is *exactly* what I wrote, I will bold my defense on this subject, indicating I was merely repeating a claim, linking to a story and posting a summary near as I could, same as always, not making the claims myself.:

"This is.....unbelievable. It was just uploaded on Drudge, take it for what it is worth. It is a *serious* allegation.  A well respected scientist, speaking at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Science, seemed to indicate he would be in favor of something like an airborne ebola virus exterminating most of the humans on earth. To make it even more unreal, he was later given an award and got a standing ovation during the meeting. According to the reporter, the meeting was being videotaped, except for the segment with the mass extermination part.

Let's see how this goes, what develops from that. The guy claims he was quoted out of context, yet others say he said there is a "scourge of humanity".  Not "to" he allegedly used the word "of", which is a HUGE difference. That is equating humanity itself as a disease, a plague, a pestilenece. There's no way to misinterpret that or take it out of context. But we need a verifiable transcript and the video of the conference. It is in their court now, they can release it or not, if they don't, that will fuel the rumors on the internets.

The story won't go away I bet, we'll see how it goes. I'll do an update, whichever way it's played out, as soon as I see a good one with some more verifiable data. I am *very* suspicious of the claims of the shutting off of the video camera  during his delivery. If that is the case, well.....that means there's a hidden agenda there. pretty obvious, too.

The guy who is making the claims is also going way out on a limb himself, his name is attached to what he is saying, so if there's a counter rebuttal or libel lawsuit or whatever, that will make it to the news as well.