Guy R. McPherson | |
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![]() McPherson in 2014 | |
Born | February 29, 1960 |
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 such as Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE),[6] which predicts human extinction by 2026.[7][8][9]
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]