(See, I knew this would end up making a good LR series!)
This week, Matt Lauer hosts “Countdown to Doomsday” and interviews, among others, Paul “The Population Prediction Bomb” Ehrlich. Some excerpts:
Lauer: “While these scenarios seem dire, they actually pale in comparison with the threat of super volcanoes…
Ehrlich: “Humanity is assaulting earth’s life support system, what scientists sometimes call ecosystems, at a level that is absolutely unprecedented.”
Lauer: “We’re living on the edge of a mass extinction.”
Dr. Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden: “We worry about the extinction of those organisms, but it’s widely appreciated that there’s one of them which if it disappeared tomorrow would leave the other 9,999,000 cheering wildly – that would be us.”
Lauer: “Us [sic]homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid.”
Lauer: “Massive tornados in Los Angeles are just some of the ways that global warming wreaks death and destruction around the world in the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’ The movie’s nightmarish scenario is not as far fetched as it may seem.
Lauer: “If the ocean gets warm enough, the methane will defrost and rise from the ocean into the atmosphere. Global warming will suddenly get a steroid injection. If that happens, we will be past the tipping point. Colossal hurricanes would hammer the globe. The oceans would become too hot to support much life. Droughts, forest fires, and famine would rage across the continents. Florida would be gone, completely swallowed by the rising ocean, as well as hundreds of cities all around the world.“
And it just keeps going on like that!
