Or, the devolution of Guy McPherson

Everything here has been in the back of my mind. Being alerted to the latest productions of Guy and Pauline has led to me deciding to put my doubts out. They are just that – thoughts and reflections. I have no evidence to back up my dark thoughts.

“McPherson is like the pathetic professor in von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel”, sucked up into a vortex of chaos where the rational mind is no longer in the pilot’s seat.”

— From comments

Guy McPherson back in the day with his signature tatty brown jacket that has given way to a new wardrobe.

I have a lot of heavy stuff on my mind but first I want to get something off my chest.

Yesterday, I was sent a video of Guy McPherson’s partner, Pauline Schneider gleefully having her first dose of the Moderna mRNA vaccine in Walmart.

My interest aroused I looked up to see what the man himself was saying about all of this and came across a short video of Guy saying that people (himself excluded, of course!) saying that people are stupid.

I was puzzled as to why he might be saying this until I read this:

“Non-evidentiary comments are unwelcome here, including nonsensical “chemtrails” and other unfounded conspiracies. COVID-19 did not come from a laboratory. Opinions are not evidence.”

Was this a dig at people Guy thinks are insane because of what they think?

You might think, reading this, that I am obsessed by Guy McPherson but that is not the case. The only time he comes into my consciousness is when someone alerts me to something he has said – I do not listen to his selfie videos any more.

I say “selfie” videos because on one of the last civil conversations we had he referred to Paul Beckwith, top of his list of people who have ‘betrayed’ him ( a list that now includes the gentle Peter Wadhams) as making nothing but “selfie videos”.

It takes one to know another!

Go back a few years and Guy McPherson was quite an inspiration to me. He no longer inspires me but I still regard his views as worthy although I don’t automatically jump to the same conclusions which form the basis of everything that has come out of his mouth since. I think that is shown by the fact that I have devoted a whole page to Guy McPherson and what he had to say prior to 2016.

Here is a memory from happier days

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The point is that he had a long running essay which he regularly updated and he wrote voluminously on abrupt climate change. He was also quite the social and political critic, which was something that at the time drew me to him.

All of this came to an abrupt halt in 2016 with his move to Belize and with the scandals that have surrounded him in the Doomer community. He quite literally has not developed his ideas or had anything substantive to say since 2016.

He has moved into irrelevance apart from to a small group of devoted acolytes who hang on his every word.

But it is not that I want to talk about.

The nonsense from yesterday has prompted to get off my chest some deep doubts about Guy and Pauline that I have been harbouring for some time and kept to myself.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF A RELATIONSHIP WITH GUY

I first met Guy in 2012 when I invited him to address a gathering locally. We picked him up from his hotel and he came home. He was miserable with a streaming cold but came out of himself to deliver his lecture. I thought, the poor guy has a cold; however, every time I have met him personally (or via Skype) he has always been miserable. There has always been problems and they have always been about someone else and what they are doing to him.

A memory of his first visit in 2014 (bankrolled by Kevin Hester) sticks in my mind. He lived at the time in the “Mud Hut” in New Mexico so being the outdoors man he presumably was, I invited him out to the farm where we kept our horses. We all gathered around the horses and his wife, Sheila, had a ride. Guy, however, slunk into the background looking as miserable as the worst townie when made to encounter the outdoors.

Strange, I thought, from the great ecologist.

Perhaps he thought it was all beneath his dignity.

I observed that Guy was far from outgoing and usually just moped around looking at whatever gadget was to hand.

Guy doing what he liked doing best when he is not on-stage – mooching around. This is 2014, in the days before he had a cellphone. He generally prefers to mooch around in more celebrious surroundings

 

A BREAKUP

Fast forward to 2018 when he visited (presumably on sufferance) and provoked the final break. He sat in the corner morosely, not 9 feet away from me, with his cellphone constantly engaged with it. Can you imagine being invited into someone’s house and looked after and doing that? I tried unsuccessfully to engage him in conversation by talking about what I was discovering in the Arctic. But the great climate change scientist wasn’t interested. My partner, Pam said to Guy that I had been eagerly looking forward to talking with him. Guy’s response was that he can send me an email with his questions (sic).

He was sitting 9 feet away from me!

Then, having finished texting he got up, without a word and walked out of the room to wait in the car.

And, on top of that, he feigned surprise that I was upset. After all, they had done me such a favour by coming out of their way to visit me on their way back from staying in a luxury resort in the South Island.

As usual, always someone else’s fault.

So, by know you might have an inkling about why I am a little sensitive about Mr. McPherson.

 

CUTTING TO THE CHASE

Now to some of the other stuff that is on my mind.

Between 2013 and 2018 I was the fiercest defender of Guy McPherson against some of his detractors, much of which, I think, to this day was justified. Some of it, in hindsight wasn’t as I shall make clear.

I was often there on Skype to talk to him when he was miserable and depressed (which seems to be most of the time); I don’t think I have seen Guy laugh (perhaps in derision?). One of the times was when I set up a Skype call and much to my surprise found him sitting in a hut in the tropics – in Belize to be precise.

If I had to put a date on the beginning of Guy McPherson’s unravelling that would be it.

The details are a little hazy but apparently he had to leave the Mud Hut with very little quite suddenly. Apparently, he had had a final break with his wife of many years, Sheila.

What I didn’t know was he was going to down to Belize to join his new woman, Pauline Schneider (“but, I had five hours in the car with the Professor”).

Before too long they were building a whole palatial centre in the tropics and were able to employ staff. Before you could say anything the whole thing turned to custard and Guy was surrounded by a ‘stexting’ scandal where he exchanged lurid texts (including what he wanted to do to her) with a young woman in Australia. This quickly broke the whole Doomer community and in the end there was only a rump of support for Guy, including, at the time, myself because I took Pauline Schneider at her word.

This is one of my few regrets in life because I realised after the disastrous visit to our house in 2018 that she is in fact a liar.

It was this realisation that made me ask whether the stories I had been fed and took for granted could be believed and ask myself if there might be some truth in some of the more extreme allegations that were made about Guy and Pauline and their conduct in Belize.

Next, there were reports (from Pauline herself, of course) that theiR house and been burgled (allegedly by an employee) and the proceeds of Guy’s sale of the Mud Hut (brought about, allegedly, by Sheila’s sudden departure from a remote dwelling she clearly did not want to remain in), all held in cash and kept in a drawer disappeared, stolen. We also got the fuzzy story that Guy and Pauline did not give the police the details of their employee because they did not want her to be tortured.

So, once again Guy was on the move and on another Skype call I found him looking depressed (as usual) in a sparse unit in Westchester County, NY (which just happens to have the reputation as the richest county in the USA). Once more, they were hard done-by and living hand-to- mouth and once more, it was due to the actions of others.

The details are a little hazy but I think that Guy’s visit to New Zealand came around this time which brought about my final disillusion and break with Guy. It was his farewell tour before we all went extinct.

So, subsequently, I had to rely on little details I could pick up from videos when my attention was drawn to them.

What I noticed was that, in addition to the constant touring around the country, what was missing was Guy’s signature tatty brown jacket. Guy, who was supposed to be on the bones of his (and Pauline’s ass) had a complete new wardrobe. He had had a makeover.

Subsequently, on a seperate video I noticed Guy was surrounded by some expensive (but bad-taste) brand-new furniture.

Since then, I have been informed that Guy and Pauline are, once again on the move from their house in Florida (another swanky address) and have moved to Vermont and are staying in rented accomodation while their house sells.

MARK AUSTIN, THE SPY

The question, given all of the above that leaps out is where did the money come from?

Does Guy have a sugar mummy or has the money come from elsewhere?

I am not making any accusations because I don’t really know but simply sharing the doubts that sit in my mind.

At this point, I have to mention something else. At some point, while he was still in New Mexico and doing a radio show with Mike Sliwa (yet another “traitor”) the name of Mark Austin appeared. He was an ex-student of Guy’s, a self-declared nephew of the late Senator John McCain who, it turns out had spied on Guy at University and went on to work for the NSA. He turned up from time-to-time, usually to recall some sensational, but incredible, intelligence.

Guy several times expressed his doubts about Mark Austin but the relationship appeared murky and unclear at best.

At some stage, after Guy and Pauline had moved to Florida Guy announced he had met with Mark Austin and they had been able to work things out and everything was fine between them.

This was around the time that Guy appeared with his new clothes and expensive furniture but without anything substantive to say other than to repeat the mantra “we are all going to die” but without any skerrick of evidence of research to back it up.

Gone too was the social and political criticism that I had associated with Guy.

So too, was the philosophical reflections – the citing of the Greek philosophers and even elements of Buddhism.

Is this just a big coinkydink.

Well, I’m not really a great believer in coinkydinks so the questions remain in my mind.

Where has the Guy McPherson of old gone?

Or perhaps that is a figment of my imagination and he was never there.

Has someone from what the Russians call “the Organs” had a little chat with Guy?

Guy likes to call everyone either a traitor or insane so I will end up by returning the favour:

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make insane.”