Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbatt!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Re: Nuclear power: Petr Beckmann
Message-ID: <536@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Jul-86 23:55:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.536
Posted: Mon Jul 21 23:55:55 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jul-86 20:56:11 EDT
References: <457@meccts.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 77
Xref: lsuc net.politics:6916 net.sci:1058
Summary: re Paul Ehrlich

I hope no one took seriously Michael Stein's attack on biologist Paul
Ehrlich, but it should be answered in any case.

>Now the author of this criticism is Paul Ehrlich who Mr. Carnes added
>the title "respected biologist."  Mr. Ehrlich's views are so far
>afield from the mainstream of science that the title "respected
>biologist" should simply be changed to "radical".  This is easy to
>show for yourself.  Simply read some of Mr. Ehrlich's numerous books,
>such as "Ecoscience", "Population Bomb" or "Population, Resources,
>Environment." His lack of understanding seems even more warped by his
>radical ideology.  

Paul Ehrlich is Professor of Biological Sciences and Bing Professor
of Population Studies at Stanford University.  He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.  He is a trustee of the Rocky Mountain Biological
Laboratory, past president of Zero Population Growth, and the
recipient of the Sierra Club's John Muir Award.  His most recent
book, *The Machinery of Nature*, is adorned on its cover with such
review quotes as:

 "The complicated and swiftly moving science of ecology is here
 explained in lucid and entertaining style by one of its foremost
 practitioners.  No one has contributed more broadly than Ehrlich to
 the many basic and applied issues..."  ---Edward O. Wilson
 
 "Paul Ehrlich is both one of the world's great ecologists and men of
 action.  No one else is so uniquely suited to discuss both the
 technical details and the larger implications of the science of
 ecology."  --Stephen Jay Gould
 
 "Only a scientist with the credentials of Ehrlich could have written
 this magnificent book." --Robert Ornstein (Stanford psychologist)

In three passages in *The Cold and the Dark*, the report of the
conference on nuclear winter, Ehrlich is described as "distinguished"
by Lewis Thomas, M.D., Thomas Malone, and Carl Sagan.

I am not sure what else Ehrlich has to do to become a "respected
biologist" -- perhaps being elected president of the National Academy
of Sciences and two or three Nobel Prizes might suffice for Mr.
Stein.  "Far afield from the mainstream of science" !

>With the general lack of interest in his
>doomsday theories, I notice he is now jumping on the nuclear winter
>bandwagon.  

This snide remark epitomizes Stein's comments.  Ehrlich did not "jump
on the nuclear winter bandwagon"; he was invited by the original
group of scientists investigating nuclear winter, presumably because
of his reputation in the scientific community and his writings on the
survival prospects of the human race, to chair the task force of
twenty prominent biologists who investigated the consequences of
nuclear war for the biosphere.

>Ehrlich's writing includes such notable quotes as
>"Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the
>government to control human reproduction.  Some people have the
>viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable
>right.  Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the
>Consitiution mentions a right to reproduce."  Another revealing quote
>is "Several coercive proposals deserve serious consideration, mainly
>because we may ultimately have to resort to them unless current
>trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means."

Sounds like a real Nazi, doesn't he.

>(Admittely later editions of some of his books try to hide the most
>Nazi-like statements.) 

What "Nazi-like statements"?  If you have any serious criticisms of
Ehrlich's views on population, Mr. Stein, by all means let us hear
them, but this sort of cheap innuendo only serves to put you into
discredit.

Richard Carnes