Guy McPherson and Near Term Human Extinction

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(September 29, 2019) Guy McPherson is a controversial guy. Why do I say that? Because he writes things like this.

Homo sapiens, mammals cannot evolve fast enough to escape the current extinction crisis. Humans are vertebrate mammals. To believe that our species can avoid extinction, even as non-human vertebrates and non-human mammals disappear, is classic human hubris wrapped in a warm blanket of myth-based human supremacy. The evidence indicates humans will join the annihilation of “all life on earth,” as reported in the journal literature on 13 November 2018. After all, humans are alive (some more than others). We depend greatly upon invertebrates for our continued existence, yet an “insect apocalypse” is under way, as reported in a review paper in the April 2019 issue of Biological Conservation.

See what I mean? That bit of unvarnished pessimism comes from Extinction Foretold, Extinction Ignored. It’s one of several regularly updated pieces on McPherson’s blog, Nature Bats Last. NBL is also a radio show, a YouTube channel, a Facebook page and more.

As a bit of background, he is a scientist and professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology & evolutionary biology at the The University of Arizona. His published works include more than a dozen books and hundreds of scholarly articles. He is a blogger, cultural critic, and co-host of his own radio show “Nature Bats Last.” Just this month, McPherson received the Jazz for Peace Honorary Ambassador Award. Past recipients include United States Congressional Representative Dennis Kucinich and American historian Howard Zinn.

I’m not going to try to summarize something that McPherson has spent a dozen years writing about on his blog, and even longer studying. I ain’t a scientist. I don’t even play one on the radio. I will suggest, however, that you take a short trip to his website and read a few pieces yourself. I will issue a warning, however. If you follow every link, you will probably never be heard from again.

A couple of places you might start are Climate-Change Summary and Update, which he last updated on August 2, 2016, which he says was probably for the last time. He starts that post by stating,

The Great Dying wiped out at least 90% of the species on Earth due to an abrupt rise in global-average temperature about 252 million years ago. The vast majority of complex life became extinct. Based on information from the most conservative sources available, Earth is headed for a similar or higher global-average temperature in the very near future. The recent and near-future rises in temperature are occurring and will occur at least an order of magnitude faster than the worst of all prior Mass Extinctions. Habitat for human animals is disappearing throughout the world, and abrupt climate change has barely begun. In the near future, habitat for Homo sapiens will be gone. Shortly thereafter, all humans will die.

And have a nice day.

But McPherson’s response might surprise you. At a hearing held by the New York City Council Committee on Environmental Protection in June of this year, he testified that “It’s Time to Pursue Hospice.”

I am often asked for advice about how to live during these tenuous times. In response, I recommend living fully. I recommend living with intention. I recommend living urgently, with death in mind. I recommend the pursuit of excellence. I recommend the pursuit of love. In light of the short time remaining in your life, and my own, I recommend all of the above, louder than before. More fully than you can imagine. To the limits of this restrictive culture, and beyond. Live like you are dying. The day draws near.

As you can imagine, there are people who loudly disagree with him. Several years ago, on a blog called Fractal Planet, Scott Johnson penned piece called, How Guy McPherson gets it wrong. He writes,

And that’s McPherson’s thing— despair. We’re absolutely doomed, he tells us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Everything is lost. He derides any sort of optimism or action as “hopium”. He notes in one recent post that “With an eye to improving my ‘bedside manner’ when I deliver presentations, I’ve recently become a certified grief-recovery counselor.” With such an extraordinary view, you would expect him to make the scientific case for extinction very clearly. But he does not. His argument fundamentally reduces to “positive feedbacks exist, ergo extinction”. That is, he lists examples of positive feedbacks (things that amplify change, like the added sunlight absorption of ocean water that has lost its sea ice cover) for a while, intending to overwhelm you with the number of processes that could add to global warming. And that’s it. There are no numbers explaining how big an effect each could have, no analysis of likely warming impacts, nothing. The fact is that climate scientists know about all these processes. But instead of throwing their hands up and saying “Oh, shit”, they actually do science.

McPherson responded with a piece titled, How Scott Johnson Gets It Wrong. As part of his response, he writes,

Johnson believes the solution to our myriad predicaments can be found in civilization. But each of the predicaments is rooted in civilization. The average reader can detect the insanity, but Johnson cannot. With respect to climate change, Johnson ignores Tim Garrett’s excellent published research indicating civilization is a heat engine. Johnson is working to sustain the omnicide. Due to the absence of global dimming when industrial civilization ceases, turning off civilization causes human extinction even more rapidly than maintaining the heat engine. But don’t expect facts from Mr. Johnson.

As you can see, this is not a mutual admiration society. More recently, Skeptical Science had an article called There are genuine climate alarmists, but they’re not in the same league as deniers. This piece is a little kinder, though the word “alarmist” is one of those words that comes with its own baggage. They write,

[T]here are a few reasonably well-known individuals who could be accurately described as climate alarmists. The most prominent is Guy McPherson, who decided in 2002 that climate change would likely drive humans to extinction by 2030. Sixteen years later, we’re now more than halfway to 2030 and the global human population has grown from 6.3 bn to 7.6 bn. It’s quite safe to say we won’t go extinct in the next few decades.

And that’s the civilized stuff. There have been some ugly accusations against McPherson, which has led him to be careful about his Facebook group called, not-so-surprisingly, Nature Bats Last. In the introduction to the group, you will find this statement, among others:

Please do not add people who have slandered, libeled or defamed Guy or anyone else for that matter.

And then there is a list of names of people whose statements are banned from the site. Hey, it’s a private group. They can do whatever they like. I’m just saying that being the guy who is predicting the imminent end of the world has some serious downsides.

In just the past eight months or so, we were told that there was an “insect apocalypse” coming, and that was followed by news that our bird population was crashing. Then, scientists and journalists began to look at the data and the reporting, and they began backing off of the original hyperbole concerning both insects and birds.

All I’m saying is that good science is difficult. It takes time. Is Guy McPherson right? I don’t know. Do we have that time? Probably not. Should we stop our dithering and address climate change? Of course we should. Will that happen? Probably not. We’re likely to continue to dither, especially if we keep voting for idiots to run our country. If that’s the case, then it’s very likely that McPherson will be proven correct on a lot of things.

You don’t need to believe everything or anything he says. But it doesn’t hurt to listen. And to keep an open mind. That’s the hard part.

 

Fighting for smart urban agriculture

It was a crazy week in Washington, D.C., but it was matched by what was happening in urban agriculture circles in Chicago. Here’s my own timeline. On August 20, Block Club Chicago ran a story about how certain farm animals were being found in the City. In the story,15th Ward Alderman Raymond A. Lopez expressed his concern and noted that he was thinking about introducing an ordinance to “tightly regulate or outright ban certain animals in the city.”

Exactly a month later, on September 20, Lopez announced that he and Alderman Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward) had introduced an ordinance in City Council that would regulate livestock in the City of Chicago. At that point, figurative alarms went off in the urban agriculture community. Within days, WTTW’s Chicago Tonight program featured a segment with Alderman Lopez and Laura Calvert, Executive Director of Chicago’s Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA).

By the end of the week, AUA and another half dozen organizations had crafted a response to the alderman’s proposal. In full disclosure, The Mike Nowak Show was part of the behind-the-scenes conversations about how to respond to the proposed ordinance, though you won’t see our name on the list of signees. This is part of the statement.

Current regulations protect Chicagoans’ right to raise backyard livestock and practice urban farming that is humane to animals and respectful of neighbors. Existing City of Chicago ordinances already address the potential public health, nuisance, and animal welfare concerns related to raising small farmed animals. The ordinance will create unnecessary regulation by banning roosters, capping the total number of fowl at six and other livestock at two, only allowing single-family or two-flat residences to keep livestock, and levying fines up to $500 per day for permit violations – all without consideration for lot size.

What was frustrating to urban agriculture folks in Chicago about the new proposal was that they have long worked with the City of Chicago to enact reasonable urban agriculture laws. For one, Alderman Lopez didn’t seem to understand that there were already stakeholders who had spend years crafting those laws. A number of those groups had tried to approach Lopez but were met with silence.

The new law seems headed in the wrong direction for a number of reasons. It would

• Require those possessing fowl or livestock to obtain a “livestock permit” from the Commissioner of Health for $25 per animal, which must be renewed annually.
• Applies only to single-family home or two-flats. All other residential properties would be BANNED from obtaining a permit.
• Cap the total number of fowl at 6 and other livestock at 2, regardless of the size of the livestock and of the property where they would reside.
• Require anyone applying for a permit to contact all residents within 500 feet of their property line to inform them of the proposed keeping of fowl or livestock. If 51% or more of those contacted object, the City must not issue the permit,regardless of reason for objections.
• Levy fines of up to $500 for each animal every day until the animals were removed. This would apply to anyone in violation of this ordinance, even those operating within the law before its adoption.
• Ban roosters within the city, even though existing nuisance ordinances are more than adequate in addressing any sound or nuisance complaint a rooster may cause.
• Require those selling any products from livestock or fowl (i.e. eggs, milk, butter,etc.) to obtain an “Urban Farm” business license. Currently, no clear urban farm business license exists within the City of Chicago. Require the Commissioner of Health to immediately notify the appropriate alderman when an urban farm license is requested in his or her ward.

Meanwhile, on September 25, the Cook County Board’s Zoning and Building Committee decided NOT to ban roosters. The measure also doesn’t limit the number of fowl residents can have on their property, though it does limit the number of horses.

“We revised it to take away the restriction on roosters,” said Commissioner Peter Silvestri, R-Elmwood Park, who is the chair of the zoning committee. “There were only three complaints [about roosters] last year … Why regulate something that’s not a problem?”

If you live in Chicago and you agree that the proposed City ordinance would set urban agriculture back, you can write to your alderman by clicking onto this link, courtesy of The Illinois Environmental Council

Laura Calvert of AUA and Martha Boyd from Chicagoland Chicken Enthusiasts and Angelic Organics Learning Center join us this morning to talk about where we go from here.