Edge of Extinction: To Err is Human

AVID Audio Course Description (Conservation Biology)

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.

Draft script:

The coordinated defamation campaign marches on. More than five years after the campaign peaked, thus destroying my public life, I’m charged by trolls of making an error with respect to timing. Timing of what? Human extinction, of course. Extinction by 2020, as I recently saw on social media posted by AI. AI, of course, must mean anonymous idiot. As with all my work, my prediction was based on peer-reviewed evidence. In this case, it was rooted in a projection in the 2012 issue of the stunningly scientifically conservative Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences of no ice on the Arctic Ocean in 2016 +/- 3 years.

Fortunately, we have not yet experienced an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Based on a 14 February 2020 paper in Science, we now know that such an event will cause the equivalent of a trillion tons of atmospheric CO2. As an informed ecologist, I have known for many years an ice-free Arctic Ocean would cause our extinction due to the stunningly rapid rate of environmental change in the wake of this phenomenon. An ice-free Arctic Ocean is predicted to occur this September by professors James Anderson at Harvard and Jennifer MacKinnon at the University of California (San Diego) and also the Scripps Institution, part of the Scripps Institute. If this happens, full effects will manifest next year and will lead to loss of habitat and therefore our extinction shortly thereafter. Will it happen by 2026, as I have recently predicted? Sadly, I suspect it will. Even though I try to avoid the word hope, I certainly hope it will not happen this year.

The consequence that disturbs me is not about me—it’s never been about me—it’s the confusion to be experienced by more than 8 billion people as loss of habitat leads to our extinction in the near term.

No water coming through the taps. No food at the grocery stores. Stratospheric ozone stripped away within days of nuclear facilities imploding and super-heating of the planet to occur soon after.

If you think your leaders care about you and will do something about it just notice how they spend your tax dollars trying to destabilize the world, rather than help people live with decency and dignity. This is a sure sign they have zero plans to help anyone as the Arctic ice disappears.

At the edge of extinction, only love remains … for some of us.