Guy McPherson

Guy R. McPherson
McPherson in 2014
Born (1960-02-29) February 29, 1960 (age 64)
EducationUniversity of Idaho (B.S., 1982)
Texas Tech University (M.S., PhD)[1]
Alma materUniversity of Idaho
WebsiteOfficial website

Guy R. McPherson (February 29, 1960[2][3]) is an American scientist, professor emeritus[4] of natural resources and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.[5][6] He is known for inventing and promoting fringe theories (roughly synonymous with the term pseudo-scholarship) such as Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE),[6] which predicts human extinction by 2026.[7][8][9]

Biography

McPherson's career as a professor began at Texas A&M University, where he taught for one academic year. He taught for twenty years at the University of Arizona,[1] and also taught at the University of California-Berkeley[citation needed], Southern Utah University, and Grinnell College. McPherson has served as an expert witness for legal cases involving land management and wildfires.[10] He has published more than 55 peer-reviewed publications.[11] In May 2009, McPherson began living on an off-grid homestead in southern New Mexico. He then moved to Belize in July 2016. He moved to Westchester County, New York in October 2018.[12]

In November 2015, McPherson was interviewed on National Geographic Explorer with host Bill Nye.[13] Andrew Revkin in The New York Times said McPherson was an "apocalyptic ecologist ... who has built something of an 'End of Days' following."[13] Michael Tobis, a climate scientist from the University of Wisconsin, said McPherson "is not the opposite of a denialist. He is a denialist, albeit of a different stripe."[14] David Wallace-Wells writing in The Uninhabitable Earth (2019) called McPherson a "climate Gnostic" and on the "fringe",[15] while climate scientist Michael E. Mann said he was a "doomist cult hero".[16]

He has made a number of future predictions. In 2007, he predicted that due to peak oil there would be permanent blackouts in cities starting in 2012.[17] In 2012, he predicted the "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".[18] In 2018, he was quoted as saying "Specifically, I predict that there will be no humans on Earth by 2026", which he based on "projections" of climate-change and species loss.[9]

Publications

  • McPherson, G.R., D.D. Wade, and C.B. Phillips (compilers). 1990. Glossary of Fire Management Terms Used in the United States. Society of American Foresters, Bethesda, Maryland.
  • McPherson, G.R. 1997. Ecology and Management of North American Savannas. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
  • McPherson, G.R. and S. DeStefano. 2003. Applied Ecology and Natural Resource Management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
  • Weltzin, J.F. and G.R. McPherson (editors). 2003. Changing Precipitation Regimes and Terrestrial Ecosystems. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2004. Killing the Natives: Has the American Dream Become a Nightmare? Whitmore Publishing Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2006. Letters to a Young Academic: Seeking Teachable Moments. Rowman & Littlefield Education, Lanham, Maryland.
  • Brothers, Mac. 2006. Academic Pursuits. PublishAmerica, Baltimore, Maryland.
  • Jensen, S.E. and G.R. McPherson. 2008. Living with Fire: Fire Ecology and Policy for the Twenty-first Century. University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • Esparza, A.X. and G.R. McPherson (editors). 2009. The Planner's Guide to Natural Resource Conservation: The Science of Land Development Beyond the Metropolitan Fringe. Springer, New York.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2011. Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey. PublishAmerica, Baltimore, Maryland.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2013. Going Dark. PublishAmerica, Baltimore, Maryland.
  • Baker, C. and G.R. McPherson. 2014. Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind. Tayen Lane Publishing.
  • Schneider, P. and G.R. McPherson. 2015. Ms. Ladybug and Mr. Honeybee: A Love Story at the End of Time. America Star Books, Baltimore, Maryland.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2019. Only Love Remains: Dancing at the Edge of Extinction. Woodthrush Productions, Pleasantville, New York.
  • McPherson, G.R. 2019. "Becoming Hope-Free: Parallels Between Death of Individuals and Extinction of Homo sapiens" Clinical Psychology Forum, No 317, May 2019.

References

  1. ^ a b "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page: Academic History". University of Arizona. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
  2. ^ McPherson, Guy (January 8, 2024). Is There a Secret Cabal Running the Show? A Discussion with Psychologist Peter Miller. Nature Bats Last (Video Podcast). 33:05 minutes in. Retrieved January 20, 2024 – via YouTube. [my] birthday on February 29th of this year
  3. ^ McPherson, Guy (14 October 2019). "The Fire Next Time – Hubris". weeklyhubris.com. Retrieved 20 January 2024. My path was further cleared by my birth in 1960
  4. ^ "Chances high for another dry winter in Monterey County". The Salinas Californian. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  5. ^ McPherson, Guy M. "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page". University of Arizona. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  6. ^ a b Curry, Nathan (August 21, 2013). "Humanity Is Getting Verrrrrrry Close to Extinction". Vice.com. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  7. ^ Jamail, Dahr. "Mass Extinction: It's the End of the World as We Know It". Truthout. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  8. ^ Richardson, John H. "When the End of Human Civilization is your Day Job". Esquire. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  9. ^ a b McIntosh, Alastair (2020). Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being. Berlinin. ISBN 9781780276397. The professor crisply reiterated and summed up his position in an interview given in 2018: 'Specifically, I predict that there will be no humans on Earth by 2026, based on projections of near-term planetary temperature rise and the demise of myriad species that support our own existence.'
  10. ^ McPherson, Guy M. "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page: Services". University of Arizona. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  11. ^ "Refereed Journal Articles - Guy R. McPherson". cals.arizona.edu.
  12. ^ "What I Live For". weeklyhubris.com.
  13. ^ a b Revkin, Andrew (October 31, 2015). "National Geographic Explores Bill Nye's Climate Change Denial – and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Analysis". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  14. ^ Tobis, Michael (March 13, 2014). "McPherson's Evidence That Doom Doom Doom". Planet3.0. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  15. ^ Pielke, Roger (March 8, 2019). "The Uninhabitable Earth — future imperfect". Financial Times. Retrieved May 14, 2019. We are introduced to Guy McPherson and Paul Kingsnorth, called "climate Gnostics" by Wallace-Wells, both of whom have dropped out of society to await the climate rapture. It seems that Wallace-Wells introduces these "fringe" characters to normalise his own apocalyptic vision, as if to say: You think I'm out there? Look at these guys.
  16. ^ Mann, Michael E. (July 12, 2017). "Doomsday scenarios are as harmful as climate change denial". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
  17. ^ "The end of civilization and the extinction of humanity". 28 August 2007. One by one, starting in 2012, the world's cities will experience permanent blackouts; and once we enter the Dark Age, the Stone Age won't be too far behind.
  18. ^ "We're Done by Guy McPherson". I concluded .. we had set into motion climate-change processes likely to cause our own extinction by 2030.. For those of us living in the interior of a large continent.. I'd give us until 2020 at the latest
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