Faid
Posts: 1143
Joined: Mar. 2006
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Hmm. There was something fishy about this from the beginning. Why would some whacko who says we must self-inflict genocide upon ourselves to save the spotted owl or whatever, get a long standing ovation? Did he give his lecture at a University, or at Arkham Asylum?
So I did some search, and first thing I found out is that Pianka is actually a famous and respectable scientist, and also admired by most of his students.
Now, in Davescoteian logic, that would be enough for me to accept any nonsense he might have said, but I searched on nonetheless.
So I read several comments on Pianka's views, and found the class that was the core of his lecture:
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio213/why.html
So... It seems that (surprise suprise) Pianka is not a Eco-Nazi. He believes that the overpopulation of Earth, along with mankinds' abuse of it, has seriously damaged the ecosystem,to the point of total destruction. He thinks that this disastrous course can only be stopped by a drastic decrease of the human population. He thinks that an airborne ebola virus is an extremely likely scenario to cause this.
He does not propose that we deliberately plan this catastrophy, though. He does not say we must carefully devise, plan and execute genocide upon ourselves (he admits, in fact, our unwillingness and inability to control our population by much more, well, conventional means). He says that this disastrous pandemic is an extremely probable event, a result of the same ecologic imbalance our overpopulation has caused.
Granted, he seems to think this imminent destruction is not a bad thing: He views it as the only possible scenario in which both our species and life on Earth will survive. He does not say *we* should do this, however: He says it is going to happen.
And that is controversial, to say the least: An extremely pessimistic and cynical view- but it makes him sound more like Jurassic Park's Ian Malkolm (without the cool black suit), and less like some insane scientist, who plans to "intelligently design" some deadly strain of ebola virus and release it upon the world.
From all that I've read about this guy, I'm not sure I agree with him. I have a feeling he's more an activist than a cynic in reality, and his lectures are designed to deliberately scare people, so that he may more easily point to the problem of overpopulation (he may have a point, too: Sadly, that old Alternative 3 spoof did more to draw the public's attention to global warming than all lectures and research before that time).
But if I learned anything new (well, not new, actually) is how easily creationists resort to distortion of the facts and mudslinging to attack their opponents, even when they don't have to.
They could easily have mocked him for being an extremist, whacko scientist who thinks a global pandemic would be beneficial: But that wasn't good enough for them. Since they are on the side of good and justice by default, their enemies don't just have to be wrong, or even crazy: They must be EVIL.
So, Pianka became Dr. Doom, working on his doomsday machine in his secret underground laboratory with his lizardmen army.
Whatever, guys.
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A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
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