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Guy McPherson

American scientist

Guy R. McPherson (born 29 February 1960) is an American scientist, professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He is known for the idea of Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE), a term he coined about the likelihood of human extinction by 2030. He has made a number of predictions: 2007) permanent blackouts in cities starting in 2012 due to peak oil; 2012) "likely" extinction of humanity by 2030 due to climate-change, and mass die-off by 2020 "for those living in the interior of a large continent"; 2018) based on "projections" of climate-change and species loss, "Specifically, I predict that there will be no humans on Earth by 2026".

Dr. McPherson speaking in Tucson, Arizona, 2014

Quotes

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"Prof's prediction - human extinction in 10 years" (28 Nov 2016)

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Simon Waters quotes McPherson in the article
  • Other scientists are specialists. They focus on a narrow topic. They do not consider the entire Earth system in their work...
  • Climate change and its impacts are here. Expect superstorms, extreme heat, high humidity, and increased spread of deadly diseases. Plants and non-human animals will die in ever-larger numbers. Civilisation will fail, leading to greatly exacerbated impacts.
  • I'm a teacher. I relay evidence. I cite science. I'm not relying on a belief system.
  • I've been accused of many things, extremist included. I'm merely connecting a few dots based on the work of other scientists. In a culture characterised by willful ignorance and the inability to think critically, these accusations are to be expected.

C of C 6-24-2029 Earth is in the Midst of Abrupt, Irreversible Climate Change (2023)

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- Dr Guy McPherson. A YouTube Creative Commons Attribution license video from the Tim Bolger channel
  • Accrding the the 6-month ensemble forecast created by the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and ice-free Arctic Ocean will not occur this year. ...[T]his was the same group of professors who incorrectly projected an ice-free Arctic Ocean to occur in 2016, plus or minus 3 years. So they are being very conservative.
 
2023 Forecast Pan-Arctic Sea Ice Extent vs Observed (red)
  • On September 17 of this year we bottom out at... about 4.7 million km2 of ice floating on the Arctic ocean... [T]he forecast has been below the actual data... So this is great news and... I recommend that you track it... because it will give you a good idea [of] when an ice-free Arctic Ocean will occur, and therefore when we are likely to lose habitat for most, if not all species on Earth.
  • Henry Gee is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor at Nature, and he concluded on November 30, 2021 in a paper in Scientific American... in the final line, "If we are going to write about human extinction, we'd better start writing now" and the title... is "Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct." That's very inconvenient!
  • The aerosol masking effect results from industrial activity, as does planetary warming, so this is an interesting Catch-22. Planetary warming results from greenhouse gases that trap heat, So once the radiation gets through the atmosphere it can warm the soil, and the buildings, and thus the urban heat island effect, and the planet in general... [G]reenhouse gases trap that heat so that about 30% of it held in the atmosphere... Without the greenhouse effect we wouldn't have life on earth, but... we are well beyond the point at which we can stop... the negative consequences. [Overhead: Tiny particles known as aerosols reflect incoming sunlight back into space before the radiation can warm the planet.] According to professor James Hansen, which most of us know as being one of the founders of understanding climate change, the aerosols fall out of the atmosphere in about five days.

Quotes about McPherson

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  • In many ways, McPherson is a photo-negative of the self-proclaimed “climate skeptics” who reject the conclusions of climate science. He may be advocating the opposite conclusion, but he argues his case in the same way. The skeptics often quote snippets of science that, on full examination, don’t actually support their claims, and this is McPherson’s modus operandi. The skeptics dismiss science they don’t like by saying that climate researchers lie to keep the grant money coming; McPherson dismisses inconvenient science by claiming that scientists are downplaying risks because they’re too cowardly to speak the truth and flout our corporate overlords. Both malign the IPCC as “political” and therefore not objective. And both will cite nearly any claim that supports their views, regardless of source— putting evidence-free opinions on par with scientific research.
    • Dana Nuccitelli, "There are genuine climate alarmists, but they're not in the same league as deniers" (9 Jul 2018) The Guardian
  • McPherson’s case basically boils down to arguing that feedbacks like large methane releases will soon kick in, causing a rapid spike in global warming that will lead to global extinctions. One of his primary pieces of supporting evidence is that Earth System Sensitivity – which describes how sensitive the climate is to the increased greenhouse effect over millennia – is higher than the shorter-term climate sensitivity.
    • Dana Nuccitelli, "There are genuine climate alarmists, but they're not in the same league as deniers" (9 Jul 2018) The Guardian

See also

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