The ABC breathlessly reports the following:
According to a detailed survey which will be launched later this month, the human race is facing extinction in a matter of decades and will run out of some critical resources in just a few years.
Yep, according to this "Little Green Handbook" (which I'm sure is probably as factual as the Little Red Book), the human race will be extinct by say, 2030 or so.
I call bullshit.
Chicken Littles have been predicting this kind of crap for, well, a matter of decades. One of the advantages of having lived in a house with out-of-date encyclopedia, is that the predictions of the past are there, staring you in the face.
For example, did you know we ran out of mercury in 1997?
You didn't? Why that's what one of these books reported.
Did you also know we hit seven and a half billion people last year? What? We didn't?
Did you know that in 2050 there'll be fifteen billion of us? What's that? There won't be? Population will be maxed out at nine billion?
(Or we'll all be dead, according to the little green book).
DOOMED!!! We're all DOOMED!
(The author, by the way, is a nuclear physicist, who uses one of the lamest appeals to authority to answer how is he qualified to write this doomsday piece of fiction).
Posted by Quentin George at February 9, 2005 04:10 PMWell, it says our inevitable extinction is a matter of decades. 2030 is a bit keen.
Very big call. Best I not invest in any real estate then.
This Polish-born fool, with a Scandinavian name, is off his rocker.
Posted by: Engels at February 9, 2005 09:14 PMI presume that Dr Nielsen will be dead "in a matter of decades"...maybe he just can't imagine how the world will go on without his shining intellect to guide us all. Hence, global extinction of humanity.
Posted by: PW at February 10, 2005 07:16 AM