Countdown to the End of Days: December 21, 2012

The end date of the Mayan calendar has been confirmed as December 21, 2012. Doomers of all stripes have latched onto this date, convinced -- once again -- that the end is near.

Modern humans have lived in the shadow of doom for as long as we have had printing presses. And before that, for as long as we have had scribes to copy religious texts and assorted prophecies. And before that, for as long as we have had a spoken tradition, and the "wisdom" of the village shaman. The tradition of predicted doom goes back as far as language.

But as always, there are skeptics and doubters among us:

Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Consider some of the environmental cataclysms that so many experts promised were inevitable. Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.” Or best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s ["and 1980s" was added in a later edition] the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now … nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Or Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in 1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”

Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic promises. If anything, the rhetoric has ramped up in recent years. Echoing the Mayan calendar folk, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight at the start of 2012, commenting: “The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere.”

...In the 1970s scientists discovered a decline in the concentration of ozone over Antarctica during several springs, and the Armageddon megaphone was dusted off yet again. The blame was pinned on chlorofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators and aerosol cans, reacting with sunlight. The disappearance of frogs and an alleged rise of melanoma in people were both attributed to ozone depletion. So too was a supposed rash of blindness in animals: Al Gore wrote in 1992 about blind salmon and rabbits, while The New York Times reported “an increase in Twilight Zone-type reports of sheep and rabbits with cataracts” in Patagonia. But all these accounts proved incorrect. The frogs were dying of a fungal disease spread by people; the sheep had viral pinkeye; the mortality rate from melanoma actually leveled off during the growth of the ozone hole; and as for the blind salmon and rabbits, they were never heard of again.

There was an international agreement to cease using CFCs by 1996. But the predicted recovery of the ozone layer never happened: The hole stopped growing before the ban took effect, then failed to shrink afterward. The ozone hole still grows every Antarctic spring, to roughly the same extent each year. Nobody quite knows why. Some scientists think it is simply taking longer than expected for the chemicals to disintegrate; a few believe that the cause of the hole was misdiagnosed in the first place. Either way, the ozone hole cannot yet be claimed as a looming catastrophe, let alone one averted by political action.

...“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” said Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970. Sending food to India was a mistake and only postponed the inevitable, William and Paul Paddock wrote in their best seller, Famine—1975!

What actually happened was quite different. The death rate fell. Famine became rarer. The population growth rate was cut in half, thanks chiefly to the fact that as babies stop dying, people stop having so many of them. Over the past 50 years, worldwide food production per capita has risen, even as the global population has doubled. Indeed, so successful have farmers been at increasing production that food prices fell to record lows in the early 2000s and large parts of western Europe and North America have been reclaimed by forest.

...In 1977 President Jimmy Carter went on television and declared: “World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But sometime in the 1980s, it can’t go up anymore. Demand will overtake production.” He was not alone in this view. The end of oil and gas had been predicted repeatedly throughout the 20th century. In 1922 President Warren Harding created the US Coal Commission, which undertook an 11-month survey that warned, “Already the output of [natural] gas has begun to wane. Production of oil cannot long maintain its present rate.” In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a Shell geophysicist, forecast that gas production in the US would peak at about 14 trillion cubic feet per year sometime around 1970.

All these predictions failed to come true. Oil and gas production have continued to rise during the past 50 years. Gas reserves took an enormous leap upward after 2007, as engineers learned how to exploit abundant shale gas. In 2011 the International Energy Agency estimated that global gas resources would last 250 years. Although it seems likely that cheap sources of oil may indeed start to peter out in coming decades, gigantic quantities of shale oil and oil sands will remain available, at least at a price. Once again, obstacles have materialized, but the apocalypse has not. Ever since Thomas Robert Malthus, doomsayers have tended to underestimate the power of innovation. In reality, driven by price increases, people simply developed new technologies, such as the horizontal drilling technique that has helped us extract more oil from shale.

...Over the past half century, none of our threatened eco-pocalypses have played out as predicted. Some came partly true; some were averted by action; some were wholly chimerical. This raises a question that many find discomforting: With a track record like this, why should people accept the cataclysmic claims now being made about climate change? After all, 2012 marks the apocalyptic deadline of not just the Mayans but also a prominent figure in our own time: Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who said in 2007 that “if there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late … This is the defining moment.” _Matt Ridley in Wired

And so it goes, from apocalyptic crisis to apocalyptic crisis. "Defining moments" come and go, according to the pleasure and convenience of one vested interest or another. In the case of climate change, the lure of $trillions of funds to be redistributed via the United Nations' climate and environmental agencies would seem to be ample motivation for the climate grifters to twist and falsify the evidence.

But every prophet of false doom has his price, for which he will be willing to do and say almost anything. Fame, wealth, power -- or simply something to do.

Meanwhile, mind the countdown. You will not want to be caught flatfooted when the world ends on December 21, 2012, at precisely 11:11 PM.

An Apocalypse of Stupidity: One Possible Future

They will tell you that the world will end by nuclear holocaust, or by climate catastrophe. Or perhaps they'll say the world will choke to death on its own pollution, or starve for lack of enough resources to feed an overpopulated planet.

A Slow Apocalypse of Stupidity: Fourmilab

But more likely to seal the fate of humanity, is the slow and steady loss of human problem-solving ability.

Regional Variations in IQ Test Scores

Over tens of thousands of years, separate human breeding populations evolved to meet divergent challenges in their environments (Kanazawa PDF). Some environments presented greater challenges to be solved, for the sake of survival. The farther from the equator a group migrated, the greater the seasonal challenges of survival. As greater intelligence evolved, humans devised sophisticated societies and technologies to shield them from the environment.

But in the course of becoming more intelligent, they created micro-environments of culture, with differential rates of divergent intellectual revolution.

Rates of Population Growth

Not all populations reproduced at the same rates. More affluent, more intelligent, and better educated women chose to reproduce at lower levels -- or not at all -- compared to women of lower educational attainment (on average). Higher birthrates among less intelligent populations began to affect overall average IQ levels.

And since IQ is strongly correlated with level of economic achievement (Gottfredson PDF), societies with lower average IQ levels tended to be the most impoverished societies.

Imagine a World Without Europe or the Anglosphere

Besides economic achievement, scientific and technological achievement tends to accompany high average IQ. Low IQ nations in the map above tend to be very tiny, unless they are lucky enough to have a high IQ smart fraction.

The higher IQ populations which are responsible for the economic, scientific, and technological accomplishments in the map above, are also the populations which are shrinking in size -- while lower IQ populations are growing.

Finally, crime and corruption tend to correlate with low average IQ levels. So that even low IQ populations lucky enough to have a smart fraction, will be less able to efficiently utilise that lucky bit of human capital. Homicide per 100,000

There is no reason to expect the differential birthrates between the different strata of IQ and education, to change. The global decline in average IQ seen in the graph above, is likely to continue unless something significant happens to change the trend.

Many people are aware of the trend, but no one has a good answer for it. Good people may well think the answer may be found thru better education:

While the smart people know they must fight the tyrannical government or run away to another country, the not so smart grow in numbers. In our current state, we will not be able to hold government accountable and put a stop to the tyranny. We must overcome the stupid somehow. We must find a method to show them the folly of their ways. We must “educate” them on what their responsibilities are in society and we must show them how to exercise those responsibilities properly. _LibertarianViewpoint

But no one really believes that such "education" can be both effective and humane. And since we voluntarily limit ourselves to humane methods, we must admit that we will have to look for other solutions.

Here is an analogy: Realistic energy analysts generally accept that humans should use unconventional oil, gas, and liquids as temporary "bridge" fuels to better forms of power and energy such as advanced nuclear power. In other words, we must make good use of the next few decades to develop long term energy solutions that will last for many thousands of years.

In the same way, realistic students of the human future understand that brighter people must make very good use of the next few decades to develop bridge technologies which will see us past the approaching dysgenic bottleneck.

First, we must take the trouble to understand that the problem is real.

Genetics, Genes, Genomics, and g (Plomin PDF) _via Meng hus blog

g: Highly General and Highly Practical (Gottfredson PDF)

We must understand how differences in average intelligence between population groups influence quality of life issues such as crime, affluence, social trust, levels of corruption, etc. Such an understanding is likely to influence important life choices.

And we must be able to project current trends -- often contradictory trends -- into the near future. Then we must devise ways of best dealing with our conclusions for our own sake, and for the sake of our dependents.

The Ultimate Zombie Apocalypse Escape Vehicle?

The following article is cross-posted from Al Fin Potpourri blog

When the zombie apocalypse hits, you may not have much warning to get out of town. Freeways and surface roads will be jammed to a standstill, and walking out of the city with zombies on the loose could be extremely dangerous. In such an event, you will want a method of urban exfiltration. Helicopters are generally considered the best method of fast evacuation, but a flying car or flying motorcycle ranks high on the list. The Pal-V personal flying road vehicle is an auto-gyro and a three-wheel motorcycle all in one. Here's more:

On the ground this slim, aerodynamic, 3-wheeled vehicle has the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ‘tilting’ system. It can be driven to the nearest airfield and take off just like any other airplane. The single rotor and propeller are unfolded to make the PAL-V ONE ready to fly. When airborne, the PAL-V usually flies below 4,000 feet (1,200 m), the airspace available for uncontrolled Visual Flight Rules (VFR) traffic; so there will be no interference from commercial air traffic. Furthermore, the PAL-V is powered by a very robust, flight certified aircraft engine. It runs on gasoline. It can reach speeds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph) both on land and in the air. The PAL-V ONE has a very short take off and landing capability, making it possible to land practically anywhere. When not using controlled airspace, you can take off without filing a flight plan. Flying a PAL-V is like a standard gyrocopter. It is quieter than helicopters due to the slower rotation of the main rotor. It takes off and lands with low speed, cannot stall, and is very easy to control. The gyroplane technology means that it can be steered and landed safely even if the engine fails, because the rotor keeps auto rotating. _PAL-V

Escaping a Zombie-Infested San Francisco

The PAL-V One can reach speeds up to 112 mph. On the road, the PAL-V One has a range of 750 miles from its gasoline engine and in the air it has a range of up to 315 miles. It runs on gasoline like a conventional car, but there will also be versions that use biodiesel or bio-ethanol. _Inhabitat

In a world of zombies, there are very few second chances. Best to plan ahead.

North Korea Pursues the "Easy Apocalypse": EMP

The North is believed to be nearing completion of an electromagnetic pulse bomb that, if exploded 25 miles above ground would cause irreversible damage to electrical and electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers, radio and radar, experts say. _abcnews

FuturescienceA specialised EMP nuclear burst high above the atmosphere, could knock out continental-sized power grids. Much of the entire continental US and parts of Canada and Mexico could be temporarily sent to the dark ages with a single EMP-customised nuclear device detonated in orbit.
Given the heavy dependency of modern societies on electric power, it has been estimated that long-term loss of electric power over a wide area could result in loss of up to 90% of pre-event population. Such a high mortality rate could occur due to a combination of long-term basic infrastructure breakdown combined with the inability to bring significant aid into the area from the outside.

Both the US and the USSR conducted experiments to determine the effects of EMP from high altitude nuclear detonations:

A few hours after the sun rose in Kazakhstan on [a] cloudy October morning, the Soviet Union detonated a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead in space at an altitude of 290 kilometers (about 180 miles) over a point just west of the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. The test was generally known only as Test 184 (although some Soviet documents refer to it as K-3). It knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), the capital city of Kazakhstan, to the city of Almaty. Several fires were reported. In the city of Karagandy, the EMP started a fire in the city's electrical power plant, which was connected to the long underground power line.

The EMP also knocked out a major 570 kilometer long overhead telephone line by inducing currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes in the line. (The line was separated into several sub-lines connected by repeater stations.) There were numerous gas-filled overvoltage protectors and fuses along the telephone line. All of the overvoltage protectors fired, and all of the fuses on the line were blown. The EMP damaged radios at 600 kilometers (360 miles) from the test and knocked out a radar 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from the detonation. Some military diesel generators were also damaged. The repeated damage to diesel generators from the E1 component of the pulse after the series high-altitude tests was the most surprising aspect of the damage for the Soviet scientists. _FutureScience

And those effects in Kazakhstan resulted from the detonation of a bomb not particularly efficient at producing EMPs. A custom-designed EMP nuke would have done a far more thorough and devastating job of it.

It is not a question of "if," but of "when" and "where" such an attack will occur. If it occurs over a modern nation which has not prepared for it, the loss of life is likely to be severe. In addition, the target nation would temporarily lose its ability to operate effectively, internationally. The widely dispersed nature of the US military suggests that that country would maintain significant retaliatory capacity, but the civilian infrastructure would require massive immediate aid and a lengthy re-building of destroyed infrastructure. During that time of re-building, it is likely that many millions (or tens of millions) of people would die from a wide range of causes linked ultimately to the attack. If you have not been paying attention, you would be amazed how quickly civilisation can unravel in the absence of a strong order-keeping entity.

Good introductory article on EMP from FutureScience

Wikipedia entry on EMP

Federation of American Scientists article on EMP

EMPact America EMP resource

"One Second After" website for novel based on EMP attack over most of US, and subsequent aftermath

If the damage to the electrical infrastructure from a coordinated EMP attack were widespread enough, restoration of widespread grid power could take years. Over that time period, many large cities would likely revert to barbarism without overwhelming military presence. With hundreds of cities involved, it is unlikely that the US military could preserve order in more than a few.

That is why any hint at development of EMP weapons by North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. must be taken seriously. While it is true that any nation launching an obvious EMP attack against the US would probably be obliterated by retaliation, it is possible to launch a satellite containing an EMP weapon -- but with a different primary use. Such a "sleeper" satellite could orbit for years until it was felt strategically opportune, by its owner, to detonate it. By the time a case could be made against the true culprit, the US (or Europe etc) may no longer be functioning as a viable civilised society.

As you can imagine, preppers and survivalists have taken an interest in the EMP phenomenon, with an emphasis on how to prepare to survive such a widespread disaster. Here is one PDF essay on that topic from Prepper.info

You will need to use your imagination here. What would happen to your neighborhood, community, town, city, etc. if it were to lose power for several months, without significant outside assistance? How long would it take for the stores to run out of food and supplies, or for the fueling stations to run out of fuel? How would you feed yourself and your family, if civil disorder set in -- preventing a cooperative community effort to share resources?

Such weapons may be in orbit overhead, even now, waiting for a designated time to inflict chaos on a targeted continent. What should you do?

Taken from an article at Al Fin, The Next Level

More 7 April 2011: The threat of cyber warfare is much broader, and successful attacks are much more deniable and difficult to prove. Cyber attacks can target power grids -- especially "smart" grids -- and every other piece of critical infrastructure including water systems, phone and other telecom, and much more.

Planning for Apocalypse: Minimum Viable Population

Basic survival planning for natural disasters is very important. But such disasters are relatively short-lived, with normal services being restored within a week or two at the most, typically. An existential risk--or extinction hazard--is different. When making contingency plans for an existential risk situation, it is important to take as many significant complications of large scale human extinction as possible. First, you must assure immediate survival of the extinction event, plentiful long-term food and water for a minimum of months, defense against ongoing human and environmental hazards, safe disposal and recycling of waste, etc. Consider those first-tier contingencies. Among second tier contingencies to be considered in planning, is minimum viable population (MVP).

MVP is the minimum number of healthy surviving individuals that would maximise long term survival of the population without excessive loss of genetic variability through genetic drift--without losing evolutionary potential. The safest estimate of MVP is approximately 10,000 individuals--roughly the number of humans supposed to survive the Toba catastrophe 75,000 years ago.

While no one can know what human genetic potential may have been lost during that existential bottleneck of human evolution, it is important to recognise that any human survivors of an existential hazard must deal with the founder effect.
When you are planning your large-scale survival bunker, your generation ship, your large underwater habitat, your seastead, your orbiting colony, or your moon colony--how many people should you plan to accommodate, to be sure humanity can perpetuate itself?

If all of the Lifeboat Foundation's preventive efforts to ward off existential risk fail, how many people need to make it through? While 10,000 may be enough, what if your project cannot save 10,000? In this simulation, a population of 500 was enough to prevent more than 1% genetic loss over 100 generations. If your project was allied with several other projects dispersed across a large geographical area, the survival of at least one or more groups would be more likely. In that situation, multiple groups of 50 to 100 individuals might be viable in the long term, should at least a few groups survive. Geographic dispersal into small groups should guarantee a greater genetic variety--making the entire set of survivors more genetically viable for a larger number of generations.Ideally, each survival location should contain a nucleus of trained individuals with sufficient knowledge to form a small university. In contrast to most modern universities and secondary schools, the post-survival university would emphasize practical knowledge and skills. Medical, surgical, agricultural, construction, machine fabrication and maintenance skills, air and water purification skills, and skills for defense against animals (including human), microbes, and natural disasters would be paramount. It is clear that in a practical survival situation, 90+ per cent of modern university professors would be worse than useless.

Location of your project should take into account the likely hazards as well as resources remaining in that location, after the extinction risk passes. Is there a natural barrier between your location and the most likely post-existential risk hazards? Will your water supply be clean or polluted by fallout, biohazard, etc? You will have to custom design your recovery supplies and equipment for what you are most likely to face on emergence.

If you are planning a modular project design, perfecting your modules will be a top priority. With such a perfected design, you have a greater ability to expand your project to meet your eventual personnel needs. If you are planning a single large or medium-sized project, you will need to begin immediately to size, and further specify the qualifications of your prospective list of projectees.

Technology for autonomous land vehicles, ships, and planes is developing rapidly. A forward planning apocalyptologist would provide for UAV scouting capability--perhaps using land and aerial UAVs to check if "the coast is clear" before committing to leave the relative safety of the project.

Farther in the future, iff you find yourself in the position of planning a generation ship, you might consider styling it after the O'Neill space colony:

The most common vision for generation ship design is to model it after an O'Neill colony, first proposed by Gerard O'Neill in the 1970s. This is basically a gigantic rotating cylinder or disk with an interstellar propulsion system attached. The cylinder may be from several hundred meters to several hundred kilometers in diameter, and rotated on its long axis to provide artificial gravity along its inner curved surface. The interior is sculpted and pressurized to provide an Earth-like environment, complete with forests, hills, streams, lakes, and so on. The inner environment is usually envisioned as being large enough to generate its own weather, supplemented and/or controlled by the ship's systems. On an orbiting O'Neill colony, light would be provided by gimbaled mirrors and enormous transparent sections of the hull. On an interstellar generation ship, illumination would have to be provided by large strips or nodes of lighting equipment recessed into the inner surface.

An O'Neill style generation ship could ultimately hold from 10,000 to several hundred thousand inhabitants, depending on its exact size and design. Source

With such a ship, you could easily accomodate an MVP. Otherwise, you might want to consider an embryo ship, with a large number (10,000+) of genetically healthy and diverse embryos. An alternative approach, to save resources, is the hibernations ship--where all but a skeleton crew are kept in suspended animation.

The number of issues that must be considered when facing an apocalypse is quite large. Some existential risks are simply not survivable, no matter your resources or planning. We are not concerned about those. We continue to develop our plans for the coming Society for Creative Apocalyptology (SCA), but we will be taking note of important issues in the meantime here at Al Fin.

If This Man and His Friends Try to Kill 90% of Earth's Humans, Where Can We Go to Escape Them?

The man pictured above is Eric Pianka, a University of Texas ecologist who suggests repeatedly in public appearances that viruses such as Ebola should be modified so as to be able to kill off 90% of earth's human population. He claims to advocate these extreme measures in an effort to save the planet. Among radical left environmentalists, Professor Pianka is not alone, and may even be considered a hero.

I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

...One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”

Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.

...Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

Source

So where could we go to escape madmen who try to carry through on Pianka's "bold" plan to save the earth? Robert Shapiro of the Lifeboat Foundation advisory committee recommends pursuing a course that leads to human settlements on the moon.

When we face a brand new situation, such probabilities are impossible to calculate. Countermeasures against each individual threat can of course be taken, but we would also be prudent to back up our civilization and our species. We need to place a self-sufficient fragment of society out of harm’s way, which for practical purposes means off the Earth. A buffer of empty space would protect that sanctuary from virtually all of the catastrophes named above.

Physicist Stephen Hawking, and a number of others, have called for humanity to spread out to distant planets of our Solar System. But there is no need to go so far to protect ourselves. After a few decades—centuries at worst—dust and ash will settle, radioactive materials will decay, and viruses will perish. Earth will once again become the best home for humanity in the Solar System. Return would be easiest if a safe sanctuary were nearby. In the more probable instance that only a limited disaster took place, that nearby sanctuary could also play a valuable role in restoring lost data and cultural materials, and coordinating the recovery. And of course, construction of the rescue base will be much easier if it is only days, rather than months or years, away.

We do not have to build the base from scratch, in an environment of emptiness, as we are attempting to do with the space station. A suitable platform has been orbiting our planet ever since its formation. On most clear nights, we need only look up to see it. If I employ the same arithmetic that I use when I insure my home, the cost of the lunar base can easily be justified.

Source

To build a sustainable lunar base, we will need to find water there, and be able to build and extract whatever else we need from lunar materials together with abundant sunlight. We can easily bring the genetic material for the living plants, bacteria, and animals we will need. Eventually, using molecular engineering and nanotechnology, we will be able to design and engineer whatever we need as long as we have water and planetary or asteroidal mass.



Knowing that many members of the radical left support what Pianka is advocating is not reassuring. Particularly when one of the major political parties in the US currently is being strongly influenced by the radical left.

The fever pitch to which anxiety over "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" is being sold to students and members of the public no doubt pushes some people over the brink. The same thing applies to "peak oil" doomsday theories that circulate among many university students and other pseudo-intellectuals. What is essentially an economic problem of managing scarce resources becomes another apocalypse.

This tendency to create doomsdays where no doomsday are justifiable, twists the minds of those who are caught up in the perverse excitement associated with such fictional apocalypses. It is not surprising that many true believers take doomsday theories a step further--to propose bringing about doomsday themselves.

As if they cannot stand the suspense of waiting for doomsday to happen--they simply must concoct it for themselves.

Hat tip Michael Anissimov.

Update 5 Jan 08: Several people in comments and emails have made the claim that Eric Pianka was misquoted by Forrest Mims in Mims' account of the 109th meeting of Texas Academy of Science in Austin. Such a claim is unlikely, given the fact that Mims' written account is the only "transcript" of that particular talk by Pianka. Since all recording devices were required to be turned off for the talk in question, we must depend upon written accounts.

Support for Mims' account can be found here. Apparently others besides Mims' can remember that Pianka referred fondly to the idea of a virulent strain of Ebola (or other microorganism) reducing the population of earth by 90%.

The sad thing is that some of the apologists and deniers for Pianka probably agree with his point of view, but simply do not wish it to become more broadly known. Unfortunately for them, the people who need to know about the Pianka perversion have already been informed.

After Synthetic Biology: Comes the Plague?

Synthetic biologists such as Craig Venter, are optimistic about their future. They believe that once they have mastered the art of forcing nature to do their will, the good life will follow--for everyone.

Synthetic biologists, as they survey all the new genes and control elements whose DNA sequences are now accumulating in data bases, seem to feel extraordinary power is almost within their grasp.

“Biology will never be the same,” Thomas F. Knight of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote recently in describing the new engineering discipline he sees as emerging from it.

....“Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

Most people in synthetic biology are engineers who have invaded genetics. They have brought with them a vocabulary derived from circuit design and software development that they seek to impose on the softer substance of biology. They talk of modules — meaning networks of genes assembled to perform some standard function — and of “booting up” a cell with new DNA-based instructions, much the way someone gets a computer going.

The first practical applications of synthetic biology may not be so far off. “The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research.

Synthetic biologists are well aware that, like any new technology, theirs can be used for good or ill, and they have encouraged open discussion of possible risks at their annual meetings.

One possible danger is bioterrorism.

Source

Bioterrorism. For western scientists looking for all the good things in life for themselves and others, bioterrorism is not first on their minds. Yet for hundreds of millions of religious fanatics and apocalyptics, the possibility of ending man's reign on earth offered by a perverted synthetic biology must be too strong to resist.

Most of us simply do not want to think about it. Why not simply dwell on all the good things biotech, nanotech, advanced computing, robotics, and molecular fabs will bring to our living rooms and workshops? Why think about a potential hell when we could be thinking about a potential utopia?

Because we like to think about the apocalypse. There is no apocalypse like a "plague apocalypse." Remember 12 Monkeys, or 28 Days Later? How about the classics Earth Abides, No Blade of Grass, or Andromeda Strain?

In a plague apocalypse, the victims can die as long and as painfully as the author desires. Victims can even pass into a zombie state to prey on survivors and the uninfected. Or instead of humans dying from plague, they can die from starvation when diseases attack food crops--destroying the entire food chain from the bottom up.

The White Plague is a revenge tale, about a scientist who loses his wife to terror and embarks on a far more lethal campaign of terror himself. Why not? Scientists are as human as anyone else. Anyone who has not witnessed the passion of a scientist probably just doesn't know any scientists very well.

The point is, synthetic biology makes synthetic plagues--aimed at people or plants--possible. And given the rampant religious apocalyptic fanaticism that possesses the young burgeoning populations of certain countries, it is likely that many of these fanatics will take up biological science as a profession. In other words, it will happen if we let it.

What will our world be like if we get sloppy, and allow the secrets of synthetic plague to slip into the hands of fanatic apocalyptics? To visualize that, you must use your imagination. Reading some of these books might help. Or you may want to read some of these. After all, apocalypses share many consequences among them.

Facing these possibilities is what organisations such as the Lifeboat Foundation and the Society for Creative Apocalyptology are all about.

It is not inconceivable that the future will belong to the city-state, rather than to the nation-state. A city-state can trade with other city-states and with the surrounding countryside, but is more defensible than the nation-state--having shorter borders.

The US-Mexican border will not keep out a deadly plague. Neither will the long border of the Mediterranean Sea between much of the third world and Europe. Chinese military officials have threatened to devastate the US west coast with nuclear weapons, but why bother when a simple microbe will do even more damage?

Round the world cruises and air travel are custom made for spreading deadly plagues. It is quite possible that we will look back on these days as a time of extraordinary freedom to travel and experience the world. In the future, many unknown perils wait.

This is not a time for academic lobotomies or psychological neotenates. It is a time for teaching children basic skills of living and survival, as a matter of course. Think of life in an orbiting colony or on a moonbase. Think of how children would have to be raised in order to deal with the deadly hazards existing right outside the door.

Then start thinking realistically about what life on Earth could easily be like in a decade or two. And stop wasting generations of human life by dooming them to incompetent neoteny and frivolous helplessness.

Society for Creative Apocalyptology--Apply Here to Register Your Chapter

The editorial board here at Al Fin has come to a momentous decision: we have decided to organise the founding of the worldwide Society for Creative Apocalytpology (SCA). It will be modeled after another SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism.

While the Society for Creative Anachronism is organised for recreation and historical re-enactment, the Society for Creative Apocalyptology will be organised for recreation and education. Education with the aim of creating a core of competence within each participating community--competence for meeting the various challenges of the apocalypse.

Apocalyptology is the study of the end of the world, better known as doomsday or the apocalypse. Many people are amateur apocalyptologists without being aware of it. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction happens to be very popular with the reading and movie-going public. It is a short step from watching The Matrix, Aeon Flux, Jericho, or Terminator, and actually taking a serious interest in developing useful skills that could save your life, or the lives of your loved ones.

The Society for Creative Apocalyptology would not be your typical "community organising" political scam. Besides being fun and entertaining education, the SCA might actually save the lives of large numbers of people living in communities lucky enough to possess an active chapter.

We are currently in the process of collecting ideas for how the SCA will be structured. Soon, we will announce the launching of a new web headquarters of the SCA where future plans will be announced. Stay tuned.


It is the intention of the SCA to remain nonpolitical and nonreligious. By focusing upon the core competencies and skills needed by communities who lose their lifelines to the larger economic and emergency systems of their regions and nations, the SCA attempts to assure that a kernel of competency will exist within all participating communities. In a true major disaster that severs the ties of a community from its regional and national lifelines, several problems have to be addressed simultaneously.

It was clear from observing New Orleans and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that the local city and state governments were caught completely unprepared. If not for the US military assets who responded almost immediately, the people of New Orleans and southern Louisiana would have suffered far worse than they did.

There are many conceivable disasters and catastrophes that would not allow free-loading and corrupt local governments to abdicate their responsibilities in that way, without suffering far worse penalties than the government crooks of Louisiana suffered.

Do not completely trust your governments at any level, with the safety and well-being of yourself and your loved ones in a disaster, catastrophe, or worse. Be prepared.

Al Gore, and the Dancing Gigolos of the Apocalypse

It used to be that the apocalypse was only popular with evangelical Christians. But for the last few decades, environmentalists have become the foremost apocalyptics in the modern west. CAGW--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming--is custom made for the earnest modern apocalyptic true believer. And there is no better promoter of CAGW than Al Gore, seminary drop-out and political has-been.

Like the Book of Revelation, Gore's vision is an apocalyptic one. Scenes of smoggy skylines, gridlocked traffic and smokestacks are interspersed with crashing glaciers, storm-ravaged cities and Third World refugees fleeing on foot. Computer models predict the submerging of continents and the deaths of millions. Every problem on the planet, including overpopulation, war and infectious diseases, is attributed to global warming. If ever there were a vision of the End Times, this would be it. But instead of God's wrath raining down on the planet, it's human beings that are doing the damage. One might call it apocalyptic environmentalism.

Faith-Based Science?

At the heart of this new religion is planet Earth, photographs of which Gore holds up as if they were objects of worship. In fact, audiences are told in the trailer that they "owe it to the planet to see this movie," which is certainly a novel marketing approach. Then to add just a twist of relationship psychobabble, the question is raised, "Did the planet betray us or did we betray the planet?" Gore provides the answer later, stating matter-of-factly that "our civilization is destroying the planet." So why not just kill ourselves off now and get it over with?

Source

But Al Gore is not the only dancing gigolo of the apocalypse. He is joined by Islamists of both Sunni and Shia sects.

The study of Muslim apocalyptic is absolutely essential to the understanding of modern Islam. Anyone who wishes to understand the huge influence which these groups have on the direction of Muslims will not be able to ignore them. Although the groups are frequently anonymous and unknown until they burst onto the world stage with some action, they cannot be accused of being secretive about their motives orbeliefs. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books are available at every bookstand, and are frequently handed out in mosques. Much research remains to be done to ascertain what is the exact connection between the literature and the action, especially suicide attacks which require a strong ideological imperative.

Source

Both Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clearly qualify as apocalyptics on a very similar scale as Al Gore.

All else being equal, not many people would prefer to destroy the world. Even faceless corporations, meddling governments, reckless scientists, and other agents of doom, require a world in which to achieve their goals of profit, order, tenure, or other villainies. If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.

Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Singularity Institute.

And Yudkowsky is probably right about most apocalyptics--although probably not the Islamist dancing gigolos. As for Al Gore and his CAGW crusade, one can only observe the apparent excitement displayed at every hurricane or other "sign and portent" of the coming apocalypse, to understand that these people are truly getting into the spirit of their end-of-the-world act.

Modern narcissistic and psychologically neotenous youth in the US are custom made for apocalyptic crusades. Having been left with limited knowledge, skills, and competence by a governmental educational system in decay, they are searching for a meaning and purpose where they can utilise their limited skill set. Political activism is one such purpose, and apocalyptic activism is particularly attractive.

The same type of lack of preparation for the real world is prevalent among the young and burgeoning populations of most muslim countries. Combining a huge surplus of incompetent but passionate youth, with an apocalyptic vision that involves destroying the great enemy of Allah and imperialistic oppressor of Islam, gives many of these youth a purpose that they cannot resist.

Complicating this circus of dancing apocalyptic gigolos, is the very real set of existential risks of the modern world. And see here for a more thorough treatment.

While Al Gore burns large quantities of jet fuel traveling the globe with his apocalyptic message--for fun, profit, and general adoration--bin Laden and Ahmadinejad are in the dancing apocalyptic gigolo routine until the bitter end. Both men actually believe in what they are fomenting, and see the apocalypse as being for the better good of Allah's children.

Science fiction books, films, and television, have long used the apocalyptic theme as a source of ideas. Many of my favourite books and films utilise this very theme. There is no question of whether the apocalypse works. It works very well to grab the attention and stimulate the emotions. But humans do not function well when kept hyper-stimulated continuously.

That is what Karen Hurley tried to get across to fellow environmentalists, with little success. That is what Bjorn Lomborg tried to get across to others who were concerned with the many environmental problems of the world. For that he was soundly demonised by those less competent.

Many muslims have tried to get their fellow religionists to chill out a bit. For their attempt at moderating the mouth-frothing masses, they have been rewarded with death threats, stonings, beheadings, and other signs of typical gratitude that a true believer displays, when he is told to think more broadly.

A true apocalypse is unlikely, except perhaps by collision of the Earth with a large asteroid or comet. But limited nuclear war becomes more likely with each passing day that the current regime in Iran remains in power. A large scale pandemic with mortality approaching 50% could sweep through many of the overcrowded cities of the third world. It is not impossible that the US, Russia, China, and the muslim world could become involved in protracted warfare, resulting in a massive economic collapse and the deaths of hundreds of millions.

Many things can go wrong in a world that is both massively interdependent and marbled with apocalyptic hatred and fear at the same time.

True believers in conspiratorial apocalyptic visions are very dangerous. Yet they become more common as society fails to provide its younger generations with competence and purpose. We can only bypass the incompetence of society for a limited number, if the dancing apocalyptic gigolos finally succeed in creating the disruption and destruction that they appear to be aiming for.

If you depend upon the news media to understand the world, you will probably arrive late and unprepared for the catastrophes that do, in fact, come to pass. Try to be more alert, would you?

Panic, Damn You!

Reason magazine has an interesting feature titled "Peak Oil Panic." A lot of persons who are locked into the worst prognostications of peak oil, global warming, etc. etc. appear fixed in a single mode: panic.

The good news is that the peak oil doomsters are probably wrong that world oil production is about to decline forever. Most analysts believe that world petroleum supplies will meet projected demand at reasonable prices for at least another generation. The bad news is that much of the world’s oil reserves are in the custody of unstable and sometimes hostile regimes. But the oil producing nations would be the ultimate losers if they provoked an “oil crisis,” since that would spur industrialized countries to cut back on imports and develop alternative energy technologies.

Apocalypse Yesterday

Predictions of imminent catastrophic depletion are almost as old as the oil industry. An 1855 advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil, a patent medicine whose key ingredient was petroleum bubbling up from salt wells near Pittsburgh, urged customers to buy soon before “this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.” The ad appeared four years before Pennsylvania’s first oil well was drilled. In 1919 David White of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) predicted that world oil production would peak in nine years. And in 1943 the Standard Oil geologist Wallace Pratt calculated that the world would ultimately produce 600 billion barrels of oil. (In fact, more than 1 trillion barrels of oil had been pumped by 2006.)

During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth projected that, assuming consumption remained flat, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years. With exponential growth in consumption, it added, all the known oil reserves would be consumed in 20 years. These dour predictions gained credibility when the Arab oil crisis of 1973 quadrupled prices from $3 to $12 per barrel (from $16 to $48 in 2006 dollars) and when the Iranian oil crisis more than doubled oil prices from $14 per barrel in 1978 to $35 per barrel by 1981 (from $45 to $98 in 2006 dollars).

In response, the federal government imposed price controls on oil and gas in the 1970s and established fuel economy standards to encourage the sale of more efficient automobiles. The sense of doom did not dissolve. In 1979 Energy Secretary Schlesinger proclaimed, “The energy future is bleak and is likely to grow bleaker in the decade ahead.” The Global 2000 Report to President Carter, issued in 1980, predicted that the price of oil would rise by 50 percent, reaching $100 per barrel by 2000.

Most of today’s petro-doomsters base their forecasts on the work of the geologist M. King Hubbert, who correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. domestic oil production in the lower 48 states would peak around 1970 and begin to decline. In 1969 Hubbert predicted that world oil production would peak around 2000.

Hubbert argued that oil production grows until half the recoverable resources in a field have been extracted, after which production falls off at the same rate at which it expanded. This theory suggests a bell-shaped curve rising from first discovery to peak and descending to depletion. Hubbert calculated that peak oil production follows peak oil discovery with a time lag. Globally, discoveries of new oil fields peaked in 1962. The time lag between peak global discoveries and peak production was estimated to be around 32 years, but peak oilers claim that the two oil crises of the 1970s reduced consumption and thereby delayed the peak until now. Hubbert’s modern disciples argue that humanity has now used up half of the world’s ultimately recoverable reserves of oil, which means we are at or over the peak.

The prophets of oily doom are opposed by preachers of energy abundance. Chief among the latter is the energy economist Michael Lynch, president of the Massachusetts-based Global Petroleum Service consultancy. “Colin Campbell has the worst forecasting record on oil supply,” says Lynch, “and that’s saying a lot.” He points out that in a 1989 article for the journal Noroil, Campbell claimed the peak of world oil production had already passed and incorrectly predicted that oil would soon cost $30 to $50 a barrel. As for Matthew Simmons, Lynch dismisses him with a sneer: “Petroleum engineers know a lot more about petroleum engineering than a Harvard MBA.”

One petroleum engineer— Michael Economides of the University of Houston—calls peak oil predictions “the figments of the imaginations of born-again pessimist geologists.” Like Lynch, Economides, who worked in Russia to boost that country’s oil production in the last decade, rejects Simmons’ analysis. Saudi Arabia, which currently produces about 10 million barrels of oil a day, “is underproducing every one of their wells,” he claims. “I can produce 20 million barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia.”
Much more at the source.

A lot of people just need a catastrophe--any catastrophe--to make their lives feel worthwhile. If the catastrophe fits their political proclivities and prejudices, so much the better.

Most people are tired of this dependence on fossil fuels, and want society to move to renewables as soon as economically and technologically possible. The world will not end during this transition, much to the disappointment of the doomseekers.