Michael Shermer — pseudoskeptical doorknob

Any alleged skeptic who lumps real concerns about the fear of degree of effect of anthropogenic global warming with Harold Camping's rapture nuttery is clearly no real skeptic, and is beyond Penn and Teller, even.

But, that's what he does!

Let's take a further look at Shermer's secular end of days that, for whatever likely nonskeptical reasons, he lumped with Harold Camping and other Xn millenialists:

There are also secular end of days, from Karl Marx’s end of capitalism and Francis Fukuyama’s end of history, to natural and man-made doomsdays brought about by overpopulation, pollution, nuclear winter, genetically engineered viruses, Y2K, solar flares, rogue planets, black holes, cosmic collisions, polar shifts, super volcanoes, resource depletion, runaway nanotechnology, and most notably, global warming. In his book Our Final Hour, the British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees put our chances of surviving the 21st century at 50 percent. Last year Stephen Hawking famously warned humanity that contact with aliens could result in our enslavement or extinction.

Marx was unscientific, and his followers even more so. Everybody this side of Pyongyang knows that. Beyond that, contra Shermer, Chicago Schoolers, etc., economics (except for behavioral economics) is less scientific than sociology or psychology, even. Fukuyama was making a political statement, and has since backed off it himself. So, just scratch these from being lumped with scientific "apocalypses."

Nuclear winter? Modelers who were worried about that scientifically looked again at their calculations and admitted they'd overstated it.

Pollution? Still a problem. But, less so, with nonlibertarian regulatory schemes in the US and other advanced nations. If Shermer thinks pollution isn't a problem in general, I've got some Beijing air I'll pump into his house.

Overpopulation? If all of the upwardly-estimated 9 billion ppl on planet Earth at 2100 want to live like Shermer likely does, and other "average Americans," it will probably be a big problem in terms of AGW, degree of effects of AGW, resource depletion, etc.

Ditto for resource depletion to hit that one. Shermer apparently hasn't heard of Peak Oil, Peak Copper and more. (Paul Ehrlich just picked the wrong time frame for his bet with Julian Simon on copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten.)

Wikipedia, talking of their bet, notes that Simon declined a more expansive follow-up bet.

Solar flares, rogue planets, black holes, cosmic collisions? Fringe science at best, and it's been known as such all along. More intellectual dishonesty to lump them with legitimate "scientific apocalypses."

Shifting magnetic poles, if that's what Shermer meant? Unknown what damage that might do; that said, the highest alarmists don't seem to have too much evidence.

Nanotechnology? Luddites aside, who knows what might happen as a result of that. Given the rising police state within the United States, maybe we should be alarmed about the possibility of nano-spying. Very alarmed. Ditto for libertarian-beloved big corporations getting ideas in that area.

Hawking on aliens? Well, if they had hostile intent, and the capability for interstellar travel, he's 120 percent right, Shermer. You're a doorknob for mocking a prediction like that.

Surviving the century? While I've not seen anybody besides Rees put odds on it, I have seen other people worry about whether Homo technologus, at least, will survive in current form.

Who knows how close India and Pakistan may be to nuclear war right now, for example?

This all said, Live Science also gives a realistic presentation of scientific apocalypses.

It evenincludes Shermer's pseudoscientific "heaven" - the Singularity!

Speaking of, that's the single biggest reason to not take Shermer seriously on this. As long as he's fellating Ray Kurzweil, we know he's a ....

Crackpot. Not a religious one like Camping, but a crackpot nonetheless.

Michael Shermer ... crackpot, at least at times.