45 years later, global alarmist still alarming

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If you've been following this blog for a while, you know there is a special place in our heart for one Paul Ehrlich (pictured). Ehrlich has been making fantastically wrong predictions regarding what will befall the human race since his book The Population Bomb arrived on the scene back in the late 60s.

Seriously, what other emotions but warmth and affection can you have towards someone who was freaking you out as a 2nd-grader reading his predictions of Book of Revelations-sized calamities in our Weekly Reader.

Well, neither time nor a crappy track record has dissuaded Ehrlich from his thinly-disguised call for population reduction and wealth redistribution. Wait, what? Did we say thinly-veiled? There's nothing veiled about his calls for population reduction and wealth distribution.

From The Guardian:

Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges

Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless population shrinks and natural resources are reassigned to poor, says Prof Paul Ehrlich .

The world's most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.

"The question is: can you go over the top without a disaster, like a worldwide plague or a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? If we go on at the pace we are there's going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people getting more and more hungry, or catastrophic disasters because the more people you have the greater the chance of some weird virus transferring from animal to human populations, there could be a vast die-off."

"Most of the predictions [in Population Bomb] have proved correct. At that time I wrote about climate change. We did not know then if it was warming or cooling. We thought it was going to be a problem for the end of this century. Now we know it's warming and a problem for the beginning of the century; we didn't know about the loss of biodiversity. Things have been coming up worse than was predicted. We have the threats now of vast epidemics".

(italics, ours)

What Ehrlich predicted is that we would all pretty much be dead by now.



The warmists' world is in shambles. In the midst of discredting themselves through burying data and outright misleading the public on the issue, the climate change conference at Copenhagen back in 2010 was an epic failure to where now no one pays any effective attention to these global climate conferences.

What this has resulted in, fortunately, is for the warmists to speak freely and admit that needed change for the planet's citizens really isn't about global climate change but power... power over the productive societies of this planet.

Rather than wealth redistribution or population reduction (the actual mechanics of which, Ehrlich never gets into), the planet and specifically the "huddled masses" of this planet would be better served were they not enslaved by the various forms of corrupt and amoral governance be they autocracies, warlord-ships, dictatorships or kleptocracies.

Wealth redistribution will merely consolidate more power into the hands of those already in power in the aforementioned governing styles and unless pro-free market, constitutional forms of government are embraced where the rule of law rather than the rule of power is embraced, Ehrlich's predictions may very well be self-fulfilling prophecies.

Sustainability is not about wealth redistribution rather rule of law, freedom of speech and property rights. Any other approach is doomed to failure.

College football Saturday open thread

Some very nice match ups today:



#1 Alabama at #10 Arkansas

#12 South Carolina at #17 Auburn

#5 Oregon at Arizon State

#16 Stanford at Notre Dame

And in the primetime, #24 Oregon St. travels to the Smurf turf of #3 Boise St.

Take the 17-1/2 points that the Beavers are getting. OSU recruits athletes, particularly from the L.A. area that were overlooked by USC and UCLA - they have a chip on their shoulder and as evidenced by what they have done to USC in recent years, they would love nothing more than to come into Boise and deflower America's undefeated little darlings. And all we're asking is that they not lose by more than 17. Lock it up.

We so won't jinx this by mentioning it.

That Coca-Cola commercial that shows video footage of a diminutive yet lightning quick UCLA point guard hitting a right-handed runner high off the glass over the outstretched arm of a much taller defender wasn’t hi-lite footage from last night’s UCLA game it was merely the last time UCLA was a #1 seed and sleep-walked through a 2nd round game against a #8 seed from the Big 12 only to have their point guard bail them out in the last second(s). Tyus Edney… meet Darren Collison.

UCLA’s effort nearly made us look prescient. One’s got to think that the lack of offensive consistency and habit of mounting furious come-backs seemingly every week is eventually going to bite them in the arse…. no such, thus far as the Bruins snatched victory from defeat against Texas A&M last night 53-49.

Previously, we had lamented the lack of a go-to perimeter guy for the Bruins, a job that was to be Josh Shipp’s but one which Shipp has politely declined as he is in the midst of a season-long shooting slump. Our fears may be unfounded, though, as Collison seems of late to be quite capable of providing this perimeter scoring and tending to his primary play-making responsibilities.
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Maybe its because of the amount of basketball we’ve watched these past four days, but aside from the upsets and the high drama of many of the games, particularly last night (the Stanford-Marquette game is an instant classic), the thing that stands out most to us is the terrible officiating. And not at just one site or with a handful of crews…. evidence this weekend on T.V. has demonstrated that this is a nationwide epidemic.

We didn’t see this coming: We liked Washington St. against Notre Dame but we didn’t expect WAZU to hold the Domers to nearly half their scoring average and only 13 field goals (24.5% for the game) in a 61-41 victory. Ouch.

All the Pac-10 haters can go back to shoveling their driveway, scraping their windshield or whatever it is people east of Yuma do on a daily basis. After a disappointing 3-3 first round showing, the Pac-10 will have 3 teams in the Sweet 16 as opposed to possibly just 1 for the hallowed ACC (as of this post Miami is down 8 to Texas with a minute left and North Carolina plays later this afternoon).

oh, btw... UCLA won the national championship back in '95 when Edney hit that runner against Missouri. doh!

P.S. Texas just beat Miami. Its now up to North Caroling to salvage ACC pride against Arkansas.