Islamofascists to the right, Liberals to the Left and now we are stuck in the middle with a Texas Professor that wants to the end 90% of the human species. Here I am stuck in the Middle again.
If you are a Christian you have to recognize the signs that the end is near. There is violence, death and indifference everywhere. It is almost surreally unbelievable.
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Meeting Doctor Doom
Forrest M. Mims III
Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.
There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts [ PDF ], Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.
One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Saving the Earth with Ebola Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.
“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population.
How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears on his web site.
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.
Questions for Dr. Doom
Then came the question and answer session, in which Professor Pianka stated that other diseases are also efficient killers.
The audience laughed when he said, “You know, the bird flu's good, too.” They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, “We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.”
After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, "What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?"
Pianka replied, "I speak to the converted!"
Pianka responded to more questions by condemning politicians in general and Al Gore by name, because they do not address the population problem and "...because they deceive the public in every way they can to stay in power."
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." He said those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It was necessary to wait a while before I could get close enough to take some photographs (Fig. 1).
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.
Yet five hours later, the distinguished leaders of the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. When the banquet hall filled with more than 400 people responded with enthusiastic applause, I walked out in protest.
Corresponding with Dr. Doom
Recently I exchanged a number of e-mails with Pianka. I pointed out to him that one might infer his death wish was really aimed at Africans, for Ebola is found only in Central Africa. He replied that Ebola does not discriminate, kills everyone and could spread to Europe and the the Americas by a single infected airplane passenger.
In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and found verification of my interpretation of his remarks on his own web site. In a student evaluation of a 2004 course he taught, one of Professor Pianka's students wrote, "Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness." (Go here and scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation section near the end.)
Yet the majority of his student reviews were favorable, with one even saying, “ I worship Dr. Pianka.”
The 45-minute lecture before the Texas Academy of Science converted a university biology senior into a Pianka disciple, who then published a blog that seriously supports Pianka's mass death wish.
Dangerous Times
Let me now remove my reporter's hat for a moment and tell you what I think. We live in dangerous times. The national security of many countries is at risk. Science has become tainted by highly publicized cases of misconduct and fraud.
Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria? I believe that airborne Ebola is unlikely to threaten the world outside of Central Africa. But scientists have regenerated the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people. There is concern that small pox might someday return. And what other terrible plagues are waiting out there in the natural world to cross the species barrier and to which scientists will one day have access?
Meanwhile, I still can't get out of my mind the pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred scientists of the Texas Academy of Science gave a standing ovation for a speaker who they heard advocate for the slow and torturous death of over five billion human beings.
Forrest M. Mims III is Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, and the editor of The Citizen Scientist. He and his science are featured online at www.forrestmims.org and www.sunandsky.org. The views expressed herein are his own and do not represent the official views of the Texas Academy of Science or the Society for Amateur Scientists.
Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.
Monday, April 10, 2006
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Here is a good update about Dr. Doom. Apparently Dr. Pianka (real name) has publicly denied he wants to to exterminate 90% of mankind. There are even bloggers apologizing for the insinuation. Nonetheless The Y Files Blog has found the Google Cache proof of Dr. Pianka's yearning to exterminate mankind:
Y Files Blog: Cathy Young.
Speaking of fanatics...
As a number of people including yours truly have noted before, radical environmentalism is a secular religion, complete with its own zealots -- and not all of them live in cabins in the woods. Some teach at universities.
Yes, I'm talking about Eric Pianka, University of Texas ecologist and Texas Distinguished Scientist of 2006, whose speech at the meeting of the Texas Academy of Science last month is making waves in the blogosphere. According to a report in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, Pinka spoke enthusiastically of the (alleged) prospect of 90% of humanity being wiped out by a global epidemic, most probably of a mutated Ebola virus:
"Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk" - a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.
Though his statements are admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he embraces.
Indeed, his words deal, very literally, on a life-and-death scale, yet he smiles and jokes candidly throughout the lecture. Disseminating a message many would call morbid, Pianka's warnings are centered upon awareness rather than fear.
"This is really an exciting time," he said Friday amid warnings of apocalypse, destruction and disease. Only minutes earlier he declared, "Death. This is what awaits us all. Death." Reflecting on the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times," he wore, surprisingly, a smile.
So what's at the heart of Pianka's claim?
6.5 billion humans is too many.
In his estimation, "We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable," all the while leaving the planet parched.
The solution?
A 90 percent reduction.
That's 5.8 billion lives - lives he says are turning the planet into "fat, human biomass." He points to an 85 percent swell in the population during the last 25 years and insists civilization is on the brink of its downfall - likely at the hand of widespread disease.
Pianka is now under fire from Forrest M. Mims III, Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, who claims that Pianka used the Texas Academy meeting as a forum to advocate the painful death of over 5 billion people.
Pharyngula, the noted science blog, responds by shooting the messenger, pointing out that Mims is a well-known advocate of intelligent design and a disgruntled critic of the science establishment ever since Scientific American refused to hire him as its "Amateur Scientist" columnist because of his pro-ID views. Pointing to another account of the meeting and the speech, by Texas Lutheran University senior and biology major Brenna McConnell, Pharyngula's PZ Myers says:
It mentions nothing of a plan to intentionally infect people with airborne ebola and kill a majority of the people on Earth.
But I don't think Mims claims that Pianka advocated such a plan, either. He did express concern that "a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria." Well, when you think of the Unabomber, maybe the idea of an enviro-zealot turned bioterrorist isn't all that farfetched.
In fact, McConnell's account broadly confirms Mims', and also shows what kind of mindset his ideas generate:
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. He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right.
Humans are far too populous. We've used up our resources, and we're destroying the Earth at an accelerated pace. The more technology we create, the more damage we're capable of doing. ... It's the harsh reality that many people alive right now should be dead. And even harsher to think that the world would be better off with them dead too. My grandparents, who I love dearly and am so incredibly thankful to know, are honestly being kept alive only through the technology that we have created via medicine. The same goes for the millions of other old folk alive and kicking and will continue to do so for another 5-10 years, using up more resources. Or think of all the babies being born every hour with abnormalities that 50 years ago would have kept them from living. ...
Dr. Pianka made a very profound comment during his presentation; he said that China has the right idea by limiting reproduction at 1. We're past the point of replacement reproduction as a species. We're too many for the number we're at now! We need to decline in population. A virus is probably the fairest method of extermination (though still not completely fair, I admit) because it's nondiscriminatory as to whom it targets. Rich, poor, black, white, brown, nice, mean, religious, agnostic - we'd all be targeted equally. The only difference is who can afford medicine and even then, if it's a mutated virus that strikes fast, humans would have only the tiniest of a chance to find a cure in time so money wouldn't matter.
Of course, in reality, a virus would be quite discriminatory: Ebola is an African virus. In a correspondence with Mims, Pianka has apparently asserted that it could migrate to Europe or the Americas by means of a single infected airplane passenger. (Methinks he's seen the movie Outbreak a few too many times -- rooting for the virus, no doubt.) But it's virtually certain that quarantines and other preventive measures would be quickly imposed, and the damage in the West might well be contained while Africa turned into a mass grave. Furthermore, do Pianka and his followers really think the chances of infection and survival in an epidemic would have nothing to do with levels of sanitation, medical care, and other things related to wealth? (By the way, Pianka overstates the mortality rates from the virus -- according to Emergency Medicine, fatality rates in Ebola epidemics have ranged from 53% to 88% -- and does not seem to know that the infection rate for most airborne diseases is far below 100%.)
Pharyngula suggests that because Pianka received enthusiastic applause at the TAS meeting, his comments couldn't have been as vile as Mims and other critics suggests. But the fact is that anti-humanism has long enjoyed a disturbing level of acceptance in the environmental church, including acceptance from scientists. In an article in the Los Angeles Times Book Review on October 22, 1989, reviewing Bill McKibben's book, The End of Nature, David Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service, wrote:
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line -- at about a billion years ago, maybe half that -- we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.
It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
(Note that Graber's idea of rejoining nature entails going to a 500 million years BCE level of human culture. Charming.)
For other pearls of such wisdom, see this page.
This is evil stuff, and not very different from "classic" religious fanaticism in its hatred of human freedom and achievement, and its demand for absolute human submission to a greater power.
Pharyngula reports that the Texas Academy of Sciences has been receiving "death threats" over the Pianka speech, though the only email PZ Myers cites is a heated but non-violent condemnation which says (rightly) that the Academy is "diminished" by its association with Pianka's views. Of course death threats, or threats of any kind, are wrong. But I think that environmentalists, and scientists, need to recognize that they are diminished and compromised by doomsaying and misanthropy.
Mistrust of "godless" science is already all too common in American society. People like Pianka and Graber only give further ammunition to the enemies of science.
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