Paul Erichs back...accurate predictions are not exactly his forte. The business of irrational fear mongering goes on unabated.

Environmentalists say Earth undergoing ‘biological annihilation’ — and they say you’re to blame

Justin Haskins  Jul 16, 2017 3:10 pm

According to a study published July 10, 2017, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Earth is now facing a “mass extinction” — and humans are allegedly to blame. (2007 file photo/Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images) 

According to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Earth is now possibly facing a “mass extinction” for only the sixth time in past 500 million years — and humans are allegedly to blame.

The study’s authors examined population trends for 27,600 species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles and found an “extremely high degree of population decay.” This does not necessarily mean these species were found to be at risk of extinction, only that there has been population declines recorded.

“When public mention is made of the extinction crisis, it usually focuses on a few animal species (hundreds out of millions) known to have gone extinct, and projecting many more extinctions in the future,” the authors wrote. “But a glance at our maps presents a much more realistic picture: they suggest that as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of populations.”

The authors wrote “human overpopulation” and “overconsumption, especially by the rich” are the “ultimate drivers” of these problems.

“Much less frequently mentioned are, however, the ultimate drivers of those immediate causes of biotic destruction, namely, human overpopulation and continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich,” the researchers said. “These drivers, all of which trace to the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet, are themselves increasing rapidly. Thus, we emphasize that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short, probably two or three decades at most. … All signs point to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life.”

“We describe this as a ‘biological annihilation’ to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event,” the authors said.

One of the co-authors of the study, Paul Ehrlich, is a noted radical environmentalist who has openly denounced economic growth and cheap energy as dangerous.

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun,” Ehrlich once said.

“We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States,” Ehrlich also said.“Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.”

According to the Population Reference Bureau, human population growth has expanded rapidly over the past 50 years, as advances in technology and medicine have helped more people live longer, healthier lives.

“For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before, and more rapidly than it is projected to grow in the future,” PRB states on its website. “In 1950, the world had 2.5 billion people; and in 2005, the world had 6.5 billion people. By 2050, this number could rise to more than 9 billion.”

See his record here:

Claims: In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. “In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,” and by the 1980s most of the world’s important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million. The problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. (Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. New York, Ballantine Books, 1968.) New Scientist magazine underscored his speech in an editorial titled “In Praise of Prophets.”

Claim: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

Claim: Ehrlich wrote in 1968, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971, if ever.”
Data: Yet in a only few years India was exporting food and significantly changed its food production capacity. Ehrlich must have noted this because in the 1971 version of his book this comment is deleted (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1981, p. 64).

The Limits to Growth (1972) – projected the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and natural gas by 1993. It also stated that the world had only 33-49 years of aluminum resources left, which means we should run out sometime between 2005-2021. (See Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: New American Library, 1972.

Claim: In 1974, the US Geological Survey announced “at 1974 technology and 1974 price” the US had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

Data: The American Gas Association said that gas supplies were sufficient for the next 1,000-2,500 years. (Julian Simon, Population Matters. New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1990): p. 90.