It makes me a little crazy when I read lines like this one:
In 2002, as I edited a book about global climate change, I concluded we had set events in motion that would cause our own extinction, probably by 2030... Is there any doubt we will try to kill every species on the planet, including our own, by the middle of this century?
Um, yeah, there is plenty of doubt about that drastic consequence, and by making such extreme and idiotic statements, he damages the credibility of those of us who believe that the consequences of CC are dire enough without going to that kind of extreme. Plenty of species will survive in the middle of this century, even, dare I say, the human species. And unless we actually get runaway warming, which I think is unlikely anytime in the foreseeable future given the way the continents are arranged and the fact that human civilization will be so damaged by the late 21st century that fossil fuel emissions will be drastically cut willy nilly, life will continue for a very long time to come, including most likely human life. It won't be a very fun life for humans, there will be a lot fewer of us, but humans are very clever and adaptable, we have a large store of knowledge, much of which will not be lost, some of us will surely continue.
Which isn't to say that there won't be a large extinction event for many currently existing species. But life itself won't disappear, and people should stop saying such things. |
