tags: streaming video, Bill Maher, Earth Day, politics
Bill Maher quotes Albert Einstein as saying that humans and other animals have only four years left if all the bees died. Did Einstein really say that?
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Apparently not, though if that quote can be attributed to someone, it sounds more like E.O. Wilson.
No!
No Einstein did not say this. And I'm so disappointed in Bill Maher. He's usually pretty decent on science.
I don't buy this bees crap. There is no good science on this. It's based on bad, bad studies, and is just environmental hysteria. Further, bees are not the only pollinators of important crops, and there is no correlation between GM crops, cell phones, what have you and this die off.
New rule: From now on, Earth Day really must be a year-round thing. Right on. I was afraid he was going to scoff, as the great Carlin often does.
The following discussion thread on Snopes came up empty handed on finding the Einstein reference:
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=127316
Similarly, Mark Turner, on his blog, passes on Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson's doubt:
http://www.markturner.net/?q=node/2195
Fantastic message, but he's just so damn smug!
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp
Status: undetermined
Always good to do the research.
I don't know if Einstein actually said it, but the conclusion is probably unassailable, and I suspect his contemporary, Alfred North Whitehead, would have agreed. Thanks for sharing Maher's comments; they are well worth circulating. I've referenced your post on my blog at
http://creativeadvance.blogspot.com/
Yesterday I counted 5 dead honeybees on the walkway in front of the Ralphs Supermarket on Huntington Drive in South Pasadena, California. That's got to be statistically anomalous. I'd never seen a dead bee anywhere until a few years ago. Now I'm seeing them everywhere.
Actually animals that feed on cereals/grass would not be immediately affected since grasses, corn, etc. are wind-pollinated. So are some trees; e.g., there would be no shortage of acorns. Ultimately, however, food-web relationships would be disrupted until a new balance was achieved. You could still get a Big Mac.
There are plenty of other pollinators. However, farmers tend to rely on honey bees because not only are they good pollinators and produce honey, but we have experience keeping them. (Because, of course, people in the past wanted in honey.)