Bishop Hill I'm following Paul
Feb 9, 2013 Greens Royal Society Can I just recommend the Twitter feed of Paul Ehrlich to my readers. Try these choice excerpts from the last ten days or so.
#Climate disruption. Remember this when denier morons claim snow proves no warming. Just the opposite. #greed. http://bit.ly/Xiwu7G
#Overpopulation and idiocy -- more on the WSJ's latest moron. Right wing struggling to find even dumber "analysts" http://bit.ly/WxTdva
#Climate disruption. Arizona pol gives more evidence we'll never run out of morons http://bit.ly/XfuVW9
Friends of Fraud -- #Republithugs on the rampage #plutocracy #greed http://nyti.ms/UkMJTb
Tricky Dick pioneering the techniques of todays #Republithug #plutocrats. Richard Nixon's Even-Darker Legacy http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/15846-richard-nixons-even-darker-legacy …
WSJ gibbing idiocy on #population http://on.wsj.com/Ytfg6p no accident. Part of Murdoch empire's attempt to murder our grandkids for profit.
#Population. Julian Simon proved by example long ago the ultimate resource, which will never be exhausted, is morons http://on.wsj.com/VBAmmd
For those who don't use Twitter, there is a thing called Friday follow, where you suggest good people to follow to your own followers. I think everyone on the dissenting side of the debate should be recommending Ehrlich. He's a hoot.
You can see why Paul Nurse and the other big wigs at the Royal Society would want to elect him a fellow. The voice of calm rationalism is just the thing don't you think?
Reader Comments (91)
I've long thought that Rational Optimists vs Malthusian Doomsayers is an unsporting contest.
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He's right: we'll never run out of morons :-)
The "Paul Ehrlich" has another "h", I think.[Thanks, done. BH]
It looks like the RS will get a bad name with another raving left winger on board; more bad publicity for them and good news for the sceptic fraternity.
His constant use of the word "morons" implies that he is a great fan of eugenics.
The pathetic unraveling of what was once considered to be a prescient intellect . . .
I presume the graceless comment about Julian Simon (d.1998) means that the bitterness Ehrlich feels about losing the famous wager hasn't eased with the passing of time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
How hard it must be for Ehrlich to see his life's work of forecasts of doom so brutally ignored by reality.
"When you reach a point where you realize further efforts will be futile, you may as well look after yourself and your friends and enjoy what little time you have left. That point for me is 1972."
Paul Ehrlich, 1970
I think this a spoof account, making fun of the discredit scaremonger who said hundreds of millions would die of starvation in the 1970s.
This guy seems to be so consistently wrong that it seems an excellent argument against CAGW alarmism that he believes in it. That he thinks that anyone who disagrees with him is a moron is pretty amazing, when you consider his track record you would have to be a moron not to disagree with him surely.
Paul Matthews: That thought occurred to me also but I don't think so. If it is a spoof account, it's been running with his picture and under his name for several months. I scrolled back to October. (During the election he referred to Romney as "Mittwit.") He says he was hacked on Jan 5, but other than that, there is no indication it's anybody other than him. I don't think he would have allowed it to run that long if it wasn't him. It's got all the usual suspects tweeting: Mann, Gleick, McKibben, and others.
The thing reads like a parody of itself.
It is not ManBearPig anymore. It is MannGleickCook.
Yes its tempting to think it is a spoof - surely the guy can't be that demented, BUT it looks as though it is genuine.
The man needs help.
He demonstrates why I don't have a Twitter account - I would probably end up in jail.
It is a bit sad. He doesn't have to behave that way.
Even Mann's preferred 'contrarian' disparagement has eminently more class.
It might be good to actually check the reliability of these twitters with one of his cohorts. It seems a bit much.
On the other hand, it could be that he has so little contact with morons he hasn't grokked that they are evenly distributed across all the POVs, his too.
Most people who reach his age would have realized this.
'Degenerate' is, I think, the word that most readily comes to mind when looking at these quotes given that they purport to be from a professor.
I am no longer surprised by such indications of turpitude on the part of leading alarmists.
'Turpitude' - there, that's the next word that readily came to mind.
"#Population. Julian Simon proved by example long ago the ultimate resource, which will never be exhausted, is morons http://on.wsj.com/VBAmmd"
In October 1990, Julian Simon did indeed prove something quite similar to that and made $576.07 in the process. Ehrlich has had his knickers in a twist ever since.
Ehrlich is a man who has been demonstrably in error on a multitude of major issues - I can't think of anyone who can touch his record for being so stunningly wrong on so many important topics. Yes, many have erred but few have Ehrlich's astounding breath of scope for screwing up predictions.
Has this hurt his popularity - absolutely not. His apocalyptic siren songs continue to enchant "environmentalists" who just eat up his predictions of doom, the more morose the better!
He was an honorary member on Suzuki's board.
Forgive me, but I must be Neanderthal in my communications because I still cannot understand the arrogance of those who tweet to assumed followers or the presumed sycophants who follow the tweets of the presumed Great.
Call me old fashioned....
"...Richard Nixon's Even-Darker Legacy "
That would be the EPA, which was formed during the Nixon presidency.
Paul "the end is nigh!" -Ehrlich. Serial loser, doomsayer and hero to The Royal Society.
What more could you wish for?
When it comes to identifying morons, Paul Erlich must be eminently qualified by now, after a lifetime of looking in the mirror every morning....
I wouldn't follow Professor Ehrlich even out of curiosity.
Incidentally, the difficulty of telling if these posts are genuine or a spoof looks like an example of Poe's Law. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
I remember the Club of Rome's doomsday forecasts -- a USian turned up on the radio and said 'The US has plans to use all the world's copper. I don't knw what everyone else will do' or words to that effect. I wonder if that was Ehrlich -- it sounds like him.
JF
Done. Twitter can be very entertaining to follow - especially Michael Mann. His ego is probably doing more to warm the planet than anything else!
Doesn't Ehrlich mean Honest in German. Is that appropriate for this man?
Well, this particular moron has at least learnt something today - Poe's law. Thanks, Julian.
I don't have much time for Twitter - the thought that anything worth reading can be contained in 140 characters, the conceit that we might be interested in the thoughts and activities of some noteworthy, etc. But this demonstrates it has its uses: distilling the more sophisticated ramblings of people like Ehrlich down to their nutty essence. You wonder if the Unabomber's rantings would have been any more coherent.
Going by his Twitter feed, the good Dr Ehrlich seems a little out of sorts. Maybe he could benefit by reading a recent book called "Humanity on a Tightrope", which is about "the need to expand our sense of empathy and in-group identification to all of humanity", and was written by Robert E. Ornstein and a certain Paul R. Ehrlich.
TWITter continues to live up to its name.
Just for the record -- has Ehrlich ever been right about anything?
Ehrlich does not go humbly or quietly into disrepute. He is sinking into disrepute while clanging a cheap and tawdry drum. But what else has the hoaxer got besides bitter ad hom and childish name calling? He cannot point out how correct he has been. He cannot show his winnings from his famous bet. Heck, he could not even credit his wife for her major role in "The Population Bomb", his first popular work of failed prophecy.
Paul is just another old bitter man who has acted in a way indistinguishable from a parasitic con-artist, and can only use anger, distraction and bloviation to hide that reality.
What is the point of Twitter? Why does anyone want to be a twittering idiot?
What a wonderful sight! The twitterings of an 80 year old flutterby man, just think how much climate disruption he could create if he was not constrained to 140 wing flaps!
Deranged and desperate.
The alarmists are sounding ever more like a bunch who know in their heart of hearts that their cause is doomed, but haven't the courage to admit it to themselves.
The increasing bluster and braggadocio is really just an attempt to protect their own morale from total collapse.
But still they hope that if they can just carry on long enough 'something will turn up' that will turn the tide.
And they are getting older. The end of their careers is in sight. They've devoted most of their working lives for the cause. Will it all have been in vain? Was it all just a total waste of time? The public admission of 16 years of no overall warming must have been a terrible blow.
So chin up boys! Don't let them see your despair. One last round of denier-bashing. Bigger and better and nastier than ever before...maybe this time it'll work! Maybe there's still a chance we are right. Maybe we'll pull off victory from the jaws of defeat. Maybe Mother Nature will change her habits. Maybe the models will be proved right. Maybe ..maybe...maybe
'Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'
Any genuine scientist should be willing to make serious sacrifices to stay at a distance from Paul Ehrlich and anything that he writes. He has never advanced so much as one hypothesis that has not only been proved false but laughable. I cannot imagine why anyone who was not with him from the beginning would choose to be with him now. Maybe he is esteemed by only those who care about fund raising and getting media time for one's views. I guess that includes Al Gore and Paul Nurse.
I'm pretty sure it is the real Paul Erhlich, as he has the odd tweet with M Mann, etc
I have been following him for a while, and he has been following me, and we have had the odd twitter chat.
He must be quite old now, and his politics pretty set in the ways, and american politics are very acrimonous.
he has been civil to me, I explained I was a lukewarmer, (ie lower end of IPCC projections) and he agreed that I was not a denier.. before you judge Paul, be aware that there are very many 'anti-science', creationist types in the USA, otherwise we would not be compared to them!
Polly Toynbee of the Guardian is a walking example of Poe's Law. Or maybe she is a Chomsky-bot - a computer program that randomises leftist tosh and writes grammatically correct bit meaningless pieces.
Read her latest bizarre outburst where she blames the evil toreees for the mid-staffs NHS atrocities and ends with a weird appeal to Danny Boyle.
Toynbee rambling here
Jon Jermey-
"Just for the record -- has Ehrlich ever been right about anything?"
Well, he absolutely nailed this prediction-
“We have been warned by our more cautious colleagues that those who discuss threats of sociological and ecological disaster run the risk of being ‘discredited’ if those threats fail to materialize on schedule.”
John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology (1971), p. 6.
I have my own evolving definition of Ehrlich:
Ehrlich (ar'likh)
-n. A spectacularly wrong prediction. (e.g. The tabloid's year end psychic predictions all turned out to be Ehrlichs.)
-v. 1. To not pan out. (e.g. The ponzi scheme started out fine, but then it Ehrliched.)
2. To not admit a mistake. (e.g. The drunk who caused the five car pileup Ehrliched.)
-adj. Wrong, incorrect. (e.g. The Mayan Calendar end of the world prediction turned out to be Ehrlich.)
It has to be a parody, probably someone like Delingpole having a laugh :)
The latest comedy tweet proves it:
In 2007 the sun cycle changed and we started to get more cooler air....therefore more cold fronts to meet up with warm fronts means more storms.
The claim about warmer seas off NE America causing the current blizzards is pathetc and wrong as historical records going back to 1854 show no change. Temps same as 159 years ago.
Dammit. I so used to love this truism, but since Twitter got popular, Brevity is no longer the soul of wit.
It's a small consolation that I've got a new pejoritive to add to my collection.
"Real" Climate Scientologists
"Real" Climate Scientits
"Real" Climate Scientwits
You know who you are...
If a warmer climate causes more storms due to more evaporation then we should have been getting more bad storms in the late 90's....logic.
Parody or not ... Slightly o/t but speaking of the self-appointed elite of the doom and gloom alarmosphere ...
Tom Fuller "welcomes" Peter Gleick to the blogosphere. Evidently the National Geographic's so-called "Science Blogs™", home of the inimitable Greg Laden (amongst others), have added Gleick to their stable of illustrious commentators.
Apparently Gleick got himself a new, improved "mirror" - in order to facilitate his "reinvention" of himself (as I have noted in a comment on Fuller's post)
Barry, it is not like that at all. Your right-wing fear is irrational and has little basis in reality. If you become acquainted with creationists on Twitter, for example, you might find they are not like the stereotype that you think they are, driving you in the process into the arms of Paul Ehrlich.
How is believing in God OK, while believing He is the Creator of everything, not OK?
If a warmer climate causes more storms due to more evaporation then we should have been getting more bad storms in the late 90's....logic.
Feb 9, 2013 at 11:15 PM | holbrook
Like this one?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/satellite/satelliteseye/hurricanes/andrew92/andrew.html
The claim about warmer seas off NE America causing the current blizzards is pathetc and wrong as historical records going back to 1854 show no change. Temps same as 159 years ago.
Feb 9, 2013 at 11:05 PM | james griffin
Is this argument by assertion or can you link me to the data?
If a warmer climate causes more storms due to more evaporation then we should have been getting more bad storms in the late 90's....logic.
Feb 9, 2013 at 11:15 PM | holbrook
Like this one?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/satellite/satelliteseye/hurricanes/andrew92/andrew.html