Via: http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25649/
DECEMBER 29, 2015
An assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst concluded his comparative politics course earlier this month by telling students the planet is dying because of human activity – and there is little hope of reversing course.
“We are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, one that we are responsible for as a species,” Professor Timothy Pachirat told students on the last day of class. “We humans are creating the conditions for our own extinction as a species.” He also suggested that because of global warming, students’ granchildren might only be able to see a coral reef in “history books.” He also said the global consumption of farm animals illustrates in part “that we are living in a period of more suffering than the world has ever known.”
The dire predictions were among a long list of apocalyptic warnings the Yale-educated scholar laid out for his students in a 20-minute tangent that mirrored a TED talk in scope. Audio of the professor’s comments were exclusively obtained by The College Fix.
“Here’s the claim: If we accept my wide definition of comparative politics, okay, as the interdisciplinary study of how power works across time and space, then I want to argue the end of the Anthropocene is the single most important political context for the study of comparative politics today,” Pachirat said. “Yeah, I know what is going on with ISIS and ISIL and all that. I am still making this argument.”
The “Anthropocene” is a term used since its coining by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present time interval, in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities.
“He made a lot of bold claims, further than the vast majority of green movement members have made, on how the Earth is unrecoverable,” the student said, adding that in general the professor did not inject his extreme views into lectures during the fall semester like he did on the final day.
RELATED — Professor: Cripple the economy to save planet from global warming
Pachirat preceded his comments by acknowledging he was only giving his opinion, and that students would not be tested on the information.
“I figure you have been with me all semester, you might as well hear at least one lecture where I out and out tell you what I think – and if that makes you nauseous, you should leave now,” he told students before delving into the basis for his global extinction claims.
He began by noting the human population has “exponentially spiked since the industrial revolution … from 350 million to 1 billion to 2 billion to 4 billion to 8 billion and counting.” He also noted fuel consumption since the Industrial Revolution has spiked, “putting carbon back into the air that has been trapped, sequestered underneath the ground for hundreds of millions of years in the form of carbon and oil.”
“Think about this again in terms of geological time,” he told students. “The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Humans have been around for 200,000 of those 4.6 billion years. The Industrial Revolution, when we humans began excavating and using fossil fuels … that’s only about 200 years old.”
“In geological time the Industrial Revolution represents what percent of the Earth’s history? 0.000004 percent of the Earth’s history,” he continued. “We come back to our UMass example. If UMass is the history of the Earth, and this stage is the period humans have been around, half of the chair you are sitting in is the Industrial Revolution.”
“And yet this Industrial Revolution, this tiny half-chair compared to the enormity of the entire campus, has brought with it widespread and unprecedented extinction of animals and plants, of entire ecosystems and marine systems — caused by human pollution, over harvesting, climate change, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, monoculture farming, nuclear fallout, river diversion and ocean acidification.”
He cited the Fukushima nuclear disaster as one example of what humans “have been doing on a global scale for the last 200 years.” He went on to suggest humans have encroached on every corner of the Earth and “there is nothing truly wild anymore.”
RELATED — Religious studies professor: Ignoring climate change akin to sin
“And at the same time that all this is going on there is a mass extinction of animal species,” Pachirat said. “We are in an era marked by unprecedented intensification of our exploitation over other species of animals that are in no danger of going extinct because we are reproducing them in order to use them.”
“Farm animals are the most illustrated example, with an estimated 50 billion land animals killed each year worldwide after living lives of immense, unprecedented confinement and suffering,” he continued. “If we use a utilitarian calculus based on the capacity to feel pain, it would be possible to say, based on our treatment of farm animals alone, that we are living in a period of more suffering than the world has ever known.”
He went on to say the future is bleak.
“If we continue with our current levels of pollution and carbon emissions, it’s possible that by the year 2050 — just 35 years from now — the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will exceed 500 parts per million, which is twice the level that existed before the Industrial Revolution,” he said. “And the oceans will have become 150 percent more acidic. We are going to see temperature increases of 3 to 7 percent Fahrenheit, and massive die offs of marine ecosystems, including perhaps most critically coral reefs. Have any of you ever seen a coral reef? It’s possible your children’s children will only be able to look at them in history books – they may no longer exist by the time you have grandchildren.”
“Within 100 years we could see a 52 percent extinction rate since the industrial revolution alone,” Pachirat added. “In other words, we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, one that we are responsible for as a species.”
He concluded by saying he hopes students could appreciate his concerns.
“You do not have to be an animal or a plant lover to take this argument seriously,” he said. “You could be the most narcissistic, anthropocentric, selfish jerk on the planet and this issue should still be of interest to you. It’s not inconceivable. Think back again to the Fukushima nuclear power disaster just a few years ago. We humans are creating the conditions for our own extinction as a species.”
The outlook is grim, he added.
“In all honesty I am extremely melancholic about our prospects,” he said of the human race.
In the end, he said that “each of us must justify why we are on this earth, and we too must recognize that we will be judged, we will, by future generations for what we do with our lives in this moment.”
He added that he didn’t have all the answers to the big questions, but he hoped he provoked students to seek them out on their own and impact the world in positive ways.
Click here to hear the professor’s message in its entirety.
RELATED: Prominent professor’s decades of research concludes global warming will not destroy Earth
47 Responses
‘We are going to see temperature increases of 3 to 7 percent Fahrenheit, ‘
That’s novel. What is it in real money ?
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It’s 1.8 times more than 3 to 7 percent Celsius.
Pro Tip: if you are going to get paid, demand to be paid in Fahrenheit. You are way better off.
Depressing how many reality deniers think this graph is “unfair” because it puts temperatures in Kelvin : http://cosy.com/Science/CO2vTkelvin.jpg so you can talk about percents .
Still waiting for you to explain how “gravity” explains the Earth’s outgoing EM spectrum. I don’t think you can do it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da44f12a47b976c480d655d79a0672a36e50a27c57b9c59c0080a39ad0a2303c.gif
Did you just claim GRAVITY doesn’t effect the TEMPERATURE of the PLANET?
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLoooooooLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Your replies are getting increasingly vapid.
You’re not worth any more of my time. Good bye.
Did anyone ever tell you there is a law for the atmosphere and that it’s named the Ideal Gas Law and it is PV =nRT?
LoL LoL LoL Why did you think mankind ADOPTED that LAW??
Nothing about AGW violates the ideal gas law.
And, BTW, that ideal gas law is just a simplified model, and it does not always hold.
The Ideal Gas Law is WRITTEN to DESCRIBE ATMOSPHERIC PROCESS.
It describes MARS, it describes VENUS, it describes EARTH,
and you’re running around claiming ”magical gais made the sky a heater.”
MANY PEOPLE have done these calculations they’re fairly SIMPLE.
Lubos Motil, Steve Goddard – there’s some Jr College teacher named Harry Dale Huffman, there are a LOT of people who’ve done it and PUBLISHED it.
And there’s nothing about magica gais made a heater in the real law of thermodynamics written specifically FOR the atmosphere you’re claiming is magic.
Then WHY AREN’T YOU DISCUSSING your CHURCH’S MAGIC HEATER in the FACE of CLASSICAL THERMODYNAMICS?
Why are you so knee-knocked you won’t even mention the process you CLAIM they convinced you, is as REAL as the fact POT’S like HEROIN?
The greenhouse effect isn’t a “magic heater.” It satisfies conservation of energy, as all physical processes must.
And yet for WEEKS we’ve watched you CRAWFISH EVERY TIME YOU’RE CHALLENGED to DESCRIBE it in STEP by ENERGY CONSERVING, THERMODYNAMICALLY CORRECT STEP.
And you still aren’t man enough to explain it. Which means you’re not man enough to understand it. The faith is there but the intellectual capability is lacking.
Now it’s crawfish? What do crawfish have to do with any of this?
You are ranting so bad you can’t even construct a proper English sentence.
Actually YOU’RE unable to construct a proper English sentence.
One doesn’t rant BAD most properly in English one rants POORLY.
AT the VERY LEAST one rants BADLY not ”bad”.
YOU’RE the crawfish. You’re a COWARD or you’d STAY and DEFEND your BELIEFS. You don’t believe the planet to be warmed by the atmosphere or
YOU’D DESCRIBE HOW.
Instead you run like what you are: a FAKE believer in a FAKE religion about FAKE physics.
Good riddance Gas-Billy, if you want to talk about your church sometime, BRING that discussion to ME.
Because I say you’re a fake and you can’t analyze a thermometer without BEING WRONG.
TOLD the ANSWERS
AHEAD of time.
Your correspondence and style of writing is to weird to continue this — I literally can’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Okay here’s a more SIMPLE way of putting it:
YOU SHOW THIS GROUP of PEOPLE READING my WORDS a SINGLE INSTANCE in HISTORY
ONE
of a CIVILIZATION – A.N.Y.W.H.E.R.E. mr low information Bigfoot/Area 51 reader
WARMING SUN-HEATED ROCKS by IMMERSING them in SUN BLOCKING REFRIGERANTS
that are COLDER than the SUN WARMED ROCK but make the SUN WARMED ROCK, grow
HOTTER than BEFORE it was PLACED in the TURBULENT, FRIGID, REFRIGERATED BATH.
Any time, cheer leader. Get those big letters and pom-poms out and SHOW us
you understand how a rock gets heated in a heater.
More nonsense written like a chipmunk.
You can’t even construct a rational sentence. Be gone.
Actually YOU’RE the one who can’t construct – even ONE in DEFENSE of YOUR CHURCH’S TEACHING,
about there being a FRIGID REFRIGERATED BATH that made a VACUUM HEATED ROCK HOTTER
by BEING in the FRIGID REFRIGERATED GAS BATH than when it was heated with MORE sunlight
and when it WASN’T IN the FRIGID REFRIGERATED BATH.
You’re a thermodynamic failure. FIRST rate FAILURE. You can’t mention even ONE? Not ONE?
ONE instance of a civilization HEATING light heated ROCKS by IMMERSION in FRIGID LIGHT BLOCKING,
REFRIGERATED BATHS?
You’re as outclassed by the SIMPLE CHALLENGE to PRESENT EVIDENCE as you are to know how to ANALYZE a THERMOMETER in front of us all CORRECTLY so we can make sure you’re not as – yep
stupid as we all figured you are.
Go polish that magic gais story some more and get back with me when you either grow a pair and want to explain it or find a man WITH a pair who’ll do it FOR you. Because you’re nothing but
FAIL,
fail,
FAIL.
Simple: it’s because your graph is wrong.
See, for example, “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature,” Lacis et al, Science (15 October 2010) Vol. 330 no. 6002 pp. 356-359
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/la09300d.html
Anyone can publish a study, the same kind of studies proliforated from the government about marijuana being like heroin for forty years.
The fact you BELIEVE it is the part that makes the NON public schoolers laugh at how much you got ripped off for 12 or 13 years.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6048870ded2d0a642876d3fda537b89d317f4903fa7eb444037b8090a503852e.jpg
Not as big of a “control knob” as was thought by some …
Water vapor isn’t a control knob, Einstein — see the Clausius-Claperyon equation (if you can understand it, which I doubt.)
See what I mean . Appell cites some paper to argue against the simplest possible 8th grade level graph of universally accepted numbers , 0 based so one can speak of ratios : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Ratio_scale .
He just can’t stand the incontestable fact that
dT%dCO2is at most 0.01 , that is , a 0.3% change in our temperature associated with greater than 30% change in CO2 .I want to know how you take a specrum-squared and equate it to a temperature times a spectrum.
You know what I meant. More stalling on your part. Always stalling.
“He just can’t stand the incontestable fact that dT%dCO2 is at most 0.01 , that is , a 0.3% change in our temperature associated with greater than 30% change in CO2.”
Actually the increase in CO2 from the pre-industrial era is now 44%. Try to get the basic facts straight.
And an increase of 1 K compared to 288 K is very significant, with no other know cause but atmospheric CO2.
Ratios reveal very little about climate change, given that the temperature range for life is so small.
“He just can’t stand the incontestable fact that dT%dCO2 is at most 0.01”
A typical beginners mistake — assuming a relationship is linear, with absolutely no evidence of it being so.
The Question Bob Armstrong Won’t Answer: explaining how gravity accounts for this fact:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f93c940e9f2343330b3d1ba5d95d008fdb475fcdbd7983c5d764d9b0e70f3e0f.gif
Actually dT/dCO2 is known from observations: 1.5 C of surface warming per trillions tons of carbon emitted, +/- 1/3rd (95% CL).
See Matthews. H. D.. Gillett, N., Stott, P. and Zickfeld, K. (2009) The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions. Nature, 459, 829-832.
As usual, you provide no units (or wrong units) on your calculation.
Armstrong fails again.
dT/d(CO2) is a nonlinear function of CO2. Here’s what Armstrong is TRYING to say — but, as usual, bumbling it terribly:
dT = lamba*dF
where F is the radiative forcing of CO2 and lamba = climate sensitivity of CO2 ~ 0.8 K/(W/m2).
dF = alpha*ln(C/C0), where alpha = 5.35 W/m2 and C0 is the baseline level of atmospheric CO2, 280 ppmv.
So, in fact, dT/dC is not a simple constant — it varies logarithmically with CO2 emissions.
Claiming it’s “0.01” is nonsense, no matter what units you use. (Armstrong has a long history of being confused about units.)
Percentages reveal almost nothing about the impacts of climate change.
The last glacial period, 25,000 yrs ago, was only 2.8% cooler than our pre-industrial baseline.
Sounds very small, doesn’t it. Yet it saw 2 miles of ice over Chicago.
What baloney. Everyone — EVERYONE — knows that energy is proportional to absolute temperature.
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When this fails to occur, where do we send the cards and letters? He just wants to be liked and maybe a grant or two.
It brings meaning to the phrase “mad professor”
Can the good professor tell me where to mail his double edged razor blade so he can start healing the planet with the man in the mirror.
Jimmy Carter: The World Will Run Out of Oil in 2011
Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years.
Never believe a liberal prediction. If Man causes Global warming why was it warmer during the middle ages than now? Why hasn’t it warmed in 18 years (Search the “great pause”). Why did Venus and Mars get warmer and cooler with Earth? Do they have SUV’s or man made activity? Why did global warming experts conspire to hide data and results (wiiki leaks). Why hasn’t any predictions come true? Don’t let liberals play with Science.
Well, professor. Sit back and grab a beer. Don’t worry about this stuff. If nothing can change, nothing can change. Buy a boat and tie it to your deck, just in case. Another example of an academic chicken little.
You know, I’m reading through these comments and people are really into this stuff. Here’s a clue: Nobody in this room cares what you write! You aren’t going to change anyone’s mind. You are just “venting” and we know it. We are all just wasting time on the computer. It is 6:02 pm right now and I’ve been farting around writing comments for the last 15 minutes waiting for my wife to cook dinner. Go to go. I’ll waste time with everyone tomorrow.