Guy McPherson

Guy R. McPherson
McPherson in 2014
Born	(1960-02-29) February 29, 1960 (age 64)
Education	University of Idaho (B.S., 1982) Texas Tech University (M.S., PhD)[1]
Alma mater	University of Idaho
Website	Official 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,^[10] 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.^[11] He has published more than 55 peer-reviewed publications.^[12] 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.^[13]

In November 2015, McPherson was interviewed on National Geographic Explorer with host Bill Nye.^[14] Andrew Revkin in The New York Times said McPherson was an "apocalyptic ecologist ... who has built something of an 'End of Days' following."^[14] 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."^[15] David Wallace-Wells writing in The Uninhabitable Earth (2019) called McPherson a "climate Gnostic" and on the "fringe",^[16] while climate scientist Michael E. Mann said he was a "doomist cult hero".^[17]

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.^[18] 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".^[19] 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. "Academic History - Guy R. McPherson".
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. Guy M. McPherson. "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page". University of Arizona. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
6. Nathan Curry (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. Alastair McIntosh (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. "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page: Academic History". University of Arizona. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
11. Guy M. McPherson. "Guy R. McPherson Faculty Page: Services". University of Arizona. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
12. "Refereed Journal Articles - Guy R. McPherson". cals.arizona.edu.
13. "What I Live For". weeklyhubris.com.
14. Andrew Revkin (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.
15. Michael Tobis (March 13, 2014). "McPherson's Evidence That Doom Doom Doom". Planet3.0. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
16. Roger Pielke (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.
17. Michael E. Mann (July 12, 2017). "Doomsday scenarios are as harmful as climate change denial". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
18. "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.
19. "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

External links

• Official website