Stephen Hawking Talks About Stuff He Knows Nothing About
Stephen Hawking is often seen as the ultimate, geeky genius scientist.
And I'm sure he's great at theoretical physics and cosmology. But when he ventures outside he sometimes says some awful stuff.
He recently claimed that because of global warming, we could see 250°C temperature increases. This is not just a tiny bit inaccurate. It is an amazingly 50 times higher than the highest predictions from the UN climate panel.
"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid."
Now, he is at it again, claiming that humanity will self-destruct because our population growth rate is an "alarming rate": "I believe we have reached the point of no return. Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing."
Of course, this is simply historically ignorant. The human population growth rate is at a 65-year *low*, and it is set to go lower each and every year for the rest of this century. See: https://bit.ly/1VObTIa
Please, Stephen, stick to cosmology and make us all smarter.
President and CTO at Psychotechnology LLC
6 年Bjorn Lomborg is one of my favorite researchers. I don't agree with everything he posits, but he always makes me think harder about big issues.
Regional Sales Support Team at Master Flo Valve Inc.
6 年Well you have to admit, Hawking has become somewhat pedantic in his dotage. I hope he doesn't have a big front yard or hell irritate the neighbours.
SHE Manager, Dawsongroup Temperature Control Solutions Ltd
6 年Lomborg you are a bigger idiot than Trump!
Principal at Ipgnosis LLC
6 年For a start, there is a BIG difference between growth RATE and GROWTH: Professor Hawking (and the rest of us) learned that in Middle School. When you start with a big number like 7.6 Bn and grow that at 1% the population hits 10Bn by 2050 (i.e. ~40% growth from 2017). Additionally, a person born today is likely to live 50-90+ years, so even negative growth starting today could take 4 generations to affect the size of the total population. Furthermore, the 'world population problem' isn't uniform across all countries. Developing countries have a much higher birth rate than the developed countries, yet have the lowest ability to support that growth; resulting in 'economic migration' issues. I think that both you and Professor Hawking have demonstrated who knows something worthwhile about this topic. I can only hope that your request in the last sentence starts to work for you, in particular.
Specializing in Infinite Solutions for Courier, Delivery, Freight, Logistics, and Warehouse Services at Pronto | 40 Years of Excellence
7 年What is your highly slanted agenda here?