The only type of virus that could come close to the 90% kill rate, would be one that remain dormant inside every person. Then when every person it can infect, is infected, it would activate using our comuncation system or entanglement. killing everyone in 48 hours, all around the world…

The bubonic plagues that killed so many peolpe in europe crowed citys, from what i have read were probably cases Ergotism. Most of the plauges occured after a massive amount of rain and flooding, which would have infected the grain. I have read an account of people going crazy, in these outbreaks of so called bubonic plagues.

From what I have seen today, is that viruses are using our immune systems and turning it against us, by the looks of it, viruses have change tactics. It really not the hard to fiqure out why.

let say that; if a virus that can kill 90% of everyone on the planet, by boosting the immune system, was to infect the globe then the only people to survive, would if fact already be infected by AIDS or HIV, who would then die them selfs many years after. I would say we would in fact be facing extinction or a reduction of 98%. leaving about 128 million peolpe if we are lucky.

Extinction in a natural fact, it is more probable that man, will become extinct rather than survive to see the human race leave our solar system, for another.

Ha, I like that.
Never mind about the rest of the world, bird flu could affect the USA!!

I know you probably didn’t mean it that way, but when you phrase it as if the worse thing that could possibly happen is if the disease spread to America…

Quite to the contrary, Pianka laments the destruction of our planet, and the consequent destruction of humans. Anyone with an ounce of rationality would understand that from the speech.

Hey, this is Texas. I don’t care how liberal a group of Texans you have, we sing the Star-Spangled Banner and salute the flag, love our country, apple pie, especially Mom, our spouses and the kids, and we don’t urge the death of billions. There were, by Mims’ account, a couple hundred Texans at that meeting. If Pianka got a standing ovation from that many Texans, you can bet your life that he was not advocating anyone’s death.

The slandering and sliming of Dr. Pianka is just the latest episode in the right-wing’s war on science. Shame on them.

However, if you accept the premise that humanity is not currently keeping a sustainable life style due to the sheer number of us around, then you can interpret Pianka as follows:

1. Humanity should survive.
2. Humanity needs an ecosystem that satisfies certain criteria.
3. Overpopulation threatens to push the ecosystem outside this regime.
4. Population reduction is inevitable either via natural causes or via human intervention.
5. Given humanity’s track record, it’ll probably be natural causes.
Let’s just hope that natural causes leave enough humans around to start the whole circus again (this time without monotheism please).

Take whatever position Lubos has articulated, rotate it 180 degrees and you are probably right.

Elliot

also, why was he aplauded by a huge group of people who i am sure most of which where sane. probly not because he advocated the death of billions, but because he is a powerful speaker and an expert in his field.

Eric Pianka is not only a weird and morbid man but also a highly accomplished and cited biologist – an evolution expert and a lizard expert. See

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22eric+pianka%22

Your explanations won’t work. At any rate, it is kind of amusing that with the exception of Wolfgang, everyone else here needs at least 50 hours to understand that Pianka really thinks that the death of 5.8 billion people by Ebola, which should occur soon, will really improve the ecosystem. All those who have no problems with reading and understanding could have learned it within 2 minutes after they started to write my text about it.

I wonder how many more days or years most of you guys need to decide what is the right politically correct answer to the question whether 5.8 billion people should be replaced by 5.9 billion bacteria – the latter are more valuable according to Pianka’s egalitarianism. What I am confident about is that there is a unique answer that all of you will eventually agree upon, even though none of you knows the answer by now.

Good luck
Lubos

This remark I quoted is clearly in the long-term sense, he is suggesting that somehow future trends in human society reduce the number of people by 90% to reduce disease risks and to increase quality of life on a long-term plan basis.

There are things called birth control methods, people they can still have a good quality of life without starting really massive families.

Dr Pianka discussed disease risks and said that the world would be better if rainforests were protected, and he said diseases spread in overcrowded conditions. So he suggests the population should ideally fall to protect the environment, but then someone wanting to spread propaganda ‘misunderstands’ him, saying he is advocating that the desired long-term fall in population be accomplished quickly and deliberately by diseases.

It’s the opposite, he’s saying you need to reduce the population over the long-term to prevent epidemics and the other hazards of overpopulation. If people could limit family sizes, that will decrease the population over the long term.

It is a small step from the above quotation to wondering just who are the excess persons. Perhaps the Chinese, as the most populous nation on Earth? Or Americans, as those who are the greatest consumers? Perhaps some other criterion – Texans? short people? atheists? blondes? [Sorry, I had to inject some humor into a grim topic. I love blondes, really I do.] It must be said that I haven’t seen any post indicating that Dr Pianka is advocating for/against any particular group here; but surely it’s not a great leap to imagine a demented person wishing to act “for the good of the world”. And there is no shortage of those with definite opinions about which groups are worthless. At any rate, a statement that there ought to be fewer of us humans immediately brings forth the question of how to reduce the population. Eugenics beckons. Or perhaps ethnic cleansing.

Dr Pianka may well be correct that Nature will have Her way with us. As Bacon said, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” Dr Pianka again: “If we don’t, nature is going to do it for us in ways of her own choosing. By definition, these ways will not be ours and they won’t be much fun.” What it seems to come down to — if you accept Dr Pianka’s argument of inevitability — is that there will be a population reduction. This can either occur “accidentally” — via a modern plague, say Ebola — or via some planned action.

I’m not convinced of the inevitability. We humans have become rather clever with regard to disease. But even if you accept that, given historical events, planned action scares me far worse than some sort of natural selection event.

70% of people infected in Asia and Europe have died. It mutate and spread from person-to-person if someone infected with ordinary flu gets bird flu, and the viruses combine. In 1918, 50 million died.

One of Dr Pianka’s points is that diseases from animals when humans invade their habitats. Ebola spread from bats and monkeys to humans, for example. Books by Jared Diamond and others Pianka cites explain that there are natural reservoirs of diseases in rainforests. When you move in, the diseases spread out, crossing species. Flu can start with reptiles, spread to birds such as wildfowl in the jungles of Vietnam or wherever, and then be carried across the world when birds migrate. It could spread to the U.S.