Eschatological ecologists

Sullivan links to a scary Drudge article and discusses a new type of apocalyptic aficionado, the ecologist. The link itself is a bit sensationalized and may be a hatchet-job. One rebuttal is written here. For those who don't like links, a scientist (appears to be an evolutionary biologist?) named Pianka gives doomsday speeches predicting the end the world as we know it (wiped out by ebola). He was reffered to the Dept of Homeland Security for investigation of his pro-doomsday rhetoric by a fellow with questionable motivations himself. My thoughts on the matter:

1: Even assuming this Pianka is a horrible person who wishes an epidemic would occur, that doesn't mean he's likely to personally bring it about. Some scientists do have a different perspective on things. I met a paleobotanist (who btw, looked nothing like Laura Dern in Jurassic Park) on a train once. She wasn't at all concerned with ecology. In her view, the earth has been through numerous periods of mass extinction, and it's just one of those things. I don't believe she advocates human extinction, but it's still interesting for somone who makes a living studying plants to not care about the loss of current plant species. Just the same, there's a big difference between not caring and burning down rainforests herself.
2: What separates doomsday epidemiologists from other eschatological types is that the epidemiologists don't believe they will be among the chosen few to be elevated or to survive. They know they run the same risks as everyone else. That makes a big difference. Knowing it's their ass too makes them less likely to try to bring the apocalypse, not more likely. You might even expect them to warn others and try to heighten awareness.

3: A final nit-pick. Pianka claims it will be years before AIDs decimates the human population. The term decimate comes from a practice among Roman soldiers in which one out of ten were killed for cowardly behavior. AIDs already decimates Africa. In some countries over 20% of the population is afflicted with this terminal disease. It's a bad scene.

But in the context of Pianka's talk, decimation is nothing more than a speed bump. A 90% fatality rate, on the other hand, would be if you decimated a population, then decimated what was left, then another decimation, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. If I honestly thought something like that was going to happen in my lifetime, yeah, I'd probably be outspoken about it too.

I don't oppose sending an agent by to inquire what viruses Pianka might stock in his his lab (I don't object to this practice in general), but if they're the garden variety laboratory research viruses, Pianka's been slandered. No one's suggested that the FBI go search the premises of RaptureWatch or specifically prohibited Rapture believers from having nuclear launch codes.