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"He isn't worth second guessing - see his own website."

Well he certainly sounds like he likes lizards better than people but I know physicists who like equations better than people....

He said "One such drug. Exendin-4, derived from Gila monster venom is currently being evaluated for treatment of type II diabetes" - Oddly enough the doctor I saw on Friday told me I might be a candidate for this and to talk to my endocrinologist about it.

>>Any day now, some enterprising genetic engineer will transplant elephant growth genes into cattle to make bigger and better cows! You want a bigger chicken?: I'll transplant some ostrich genes into chickens! We are audaciously bypassing natural selection and creating whatever phenotypes we think best. <<

Elephant and pig DNA just won't splice - Southpark ping

>>If humans do not control their own population (and we seem unwilling and unable to do so), then other forces will certainly act to control our population. The four horseman of the apocalypse (conquest, war, famine, and death) are all candidates. Most likely, lethal virulent microbes like HIV and Ebola zaire will set limits on the growth of human populations.<<

This sounds like what I thought he might have actually said at the conference - its a common position in the scientific community.

>>People everywhere today stand ready to rape and pillage their wildernesses ("wastelands") for whatever they can be forced to yield.<<

He's a liberal

>>"The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all.<<

But at least he is not a communist.

>>Earth's atmosphere is unusual in that it has a relatively high oxygen content (about 21 per cent).<<

Like many narrow minded scientists he sounds foolish when he goes outside his field - we have no idea what "most planets" are like.

>>Until recently these two opposing phenomena more or less balanced one another, but now the balance has clearly shifted and the "greenhouse effect" is leading to rapid global warming.<<

See above comment about scientists outside their field.

>>But, there can be no quick "technological fix" for earth's much maligned atmosphere<<

Actually we physicist know there is a fix, we just don't like to talk about it.

>>Unlimited cheap clean energy, such as that so ardently hoped for in the concept of cold fusion, would actually be one of the worst things that could possibly befall humans. Such energy would enable well-meaning but uninformed massive energy consumption and habitat destruction<<

And he is a "glass is half empty kind of guy - but we already knew that.

So all in all he sounds like a typical liberal lizard studier -not very hopeful but not standing out harmful or particularly noteworthy.