Let me separate this into two points. One is the issue of the veracity of Forrest Mimms’ report of what Pianka said at the meeting. I too would prefer to read the transcript of the speech before commenting.

However, it actually shocks me that the vast majority of readers commenting on these threads find it so easy to believe that the `vast majority’ of Texan scientists were vigorously applauding a call to mass murder. For me, such a claim is extremely unlikely, and casts a huge element of doubt on Mimms report. Obviously, others here find it very easy to believe that this is the kind of thing that scientists support.

The second issue is about Pianka’s views in general. In the blogosphere, the main evidence for this seems to be similar to yours—the student evaluation reports. However, again I would doubt that the `majority’ of his students agree with wiping out 90% of the population, which to me casts some doubt on the single student’s report you have quoted.

What strikes me is that Pianka seems to make comments which are easy to quote out of context. Maybe he is advocating mass murder, I don’t know—but for the above reasons I’ll reserve judgement. Again, I’m shocked that more people here are so quick to believe the worst! Not only of Pianka but of scientists in general.

Am I the only person here who wonders if his remarks were taken out of context?

It’s difficult to tell without seeing the speech, but perhaps Pianka was making some completely different point, and not seriously suggesting killing people?

I agree completely and that’s why I’d like to see an unedited transcript of his speech. But as I stated in another thread the problem is that students are coming out of his classes with comments like this:

In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and found verification of my interpretation of his remarks on his own web site. In a student evaluation of a 2004 course he taught, one of Professor Pianka’s students wrote, “Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.” (Go here and scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation section near the end.)

Yet the majority of his student reviews were favorable, with one even saying, “ I worship Dr. Pianka.”

So obviously I’m a bit skeptical of Pianka’s backpedalling and the claim that he’s just being misunderstood.

I don’t know anything about Pianka, and perhaps others here know his work and previous comments. But it seems highly unlikely that the vast majority of members of the Texas academy of science advocate killing 90% of people with Ebola. Really, really unlikely.

It’s difficult to tell without seeing the speech, but perhaps Pianka was making some completely different point, and not seriously suggesting killing people? Just a thought.

I am so shocked, I don’t find the right words.  I’d like to hope it’s a hoax… one scientist can go mad, but the entire Texas Academy of Science giving a standing ovation to this nutcase would-be mass murderer?    WTF?Dr. Eri…

You are on to something very important here. You say:

“Pianka obviously wants to employ a moral argument, but he has no basis upon which to ground the morality to which he appeals.”

According to the Census Bureau’s population clock, the world’s population today is 6,507,315,652. Pianka advocates killing 90% of those people or 5,856,584,087.

The only conceivable reason Pianka would advocate killing over 5.8 billion people is because he thinks it is a “good” thing. But he does not mean “good” in the normal sense of comporting to a transcendent moral standard. He means “good” in the Nietzschean sense of the “over” or “upper” man (ubermensch). But over 60 years ago G.K. Chesterton explained how Nietzsche’s idea rapidly collapses in on itself. In “Orthodoxy” he wrote:

“Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, ‘beyond good and evil,’ because he had not the courage to say, ‘more good than good and evil,’ or, ‘more evil than good and evil.’ Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, ‘the purer man,’ or ‘the happier man,’ or ‘the sadder man,’ for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says ‘the upper man,’ or ‘over man,’ a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker.”

So you are right. We cannot escape moral categories by trying to bury them in metaphor. The existence of these categories is a stubborn fact, and in the final analysis it comes down to this: Pianka is saying it would be good to do something that is evil, or, more simply still, he is saying “good = not good.” Yes, that’s right. His statement violates the law of noncontradiction.

For example, Pianka could become a Christian and help evangelize the remainder of the world. According to several N.T. scriptures, at the moment the gospel reaches the last set of ears at the ends of the earth, the rapture will occur which instantaneously will remove millions, if not billions, of (mostly rightwinger) people from the earth. He doesn’t have to STAY a Christian if he doesn’t want once it becomes clear the event is near.

Maybe this is a thought he hasn’t considered. Maybe if he knew about this prophesy, he might think Christianity is not so bad after all.

Just a thought.

Good point. If global warming is such a big problem and popping off thousands of nukes will cause a nuclear winter, shouldn’t popping off a few hundred nukes just serve to arrest global warming in its tracks? We shouldn’t even have to do it all at once. We could do like 50 per year and measure the effect each year. The Gobi would be the perfect place. Nothing lives there so it won’t make much difference if a few billion tons of Gobi sand is turned into stratospheric dust.

Why hasn’t anyone suggested this before?

Say, this is off topic but did you know you can rearrange the letters in “Darwinists” to spell “Rats, ID wins”. Spooky.

I don’t think your nuclear cooling plan would be such a good idea. What about fallout? Like your discovery, BTW! –Crandaddy