'Humans will go extinct soon because of global warming'

An American climate scientist says humans will go extinct soon because of global warming and there is no way the global community can turn this around.

Dr. Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of natural resources - ecology - and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Friday.

Nearly 200 countries are attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opened on November 30 in France and was scheduled to conclude on December 11.

But international negotiators in Paris missed their self-imposed Friday deadline to reach a comprehensive agreement to counter the threat of global warming before it dooms the planet.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday advanced nations must make tough decisions in order to reach a global climate deal.

“It is inconceivable to me that the negotiators would reach an agreement that will prevent completely destroying the planet,” Professor McPherson said.

“I mean we’ve known for a long time based on work published in refereed journals that civilization itself is a heat engine, that if we maintain civilization in any form, whether it is through solar panels, wind turbines or wave powers or fossil fuels, it produces the same effect: the civilization itself is a heat engine,” he stated.

“And I don’t see any negotiators promoting the idea of terminating civilization,” he added.

“We also know now based on abundance of research recently – within last five years or so – on global dimming that if we do suddenly terminate civilization, it will cause such an abrupt heating of the planet as a result of loss global dimming that it will certainly doom humans to extinction,” the scientist said.

“So either we keep the heat engine going and doom our own species and many others or we turn off the heat engine and we deliver our own species and many others to extinction. So it seem that we’re in one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don't’ situation,” he pointed out.

“I just don’t see negotiators doing anything that is even moving in the right direction, much last taking a truly radical approach that might harvest carbon from the atmosphere, for example, and reduce emissions along the way. I don’t see that happening,” he observed.

Climate change greater threat than terrorism

“If I were a conspiracy theorist I might be inclined to believe that the focus on terrorism was by design to specifically move attention away from dealing with important issues such as abrupt climate change,” Professor McPherson said.

“It is pretty clear that we are in the midst of abrupt climate change. It is the greatest existentialist threat ever to face our species, and instead the media and the governments have us focusing on the ‘terrorism threat’ that has killed very very very few people in the entire history of the invented war on terror,” he said.

“So I think as a society, as a culture we are just pursuing the wrong priorities, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” the American climate change expert said.

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