It is not often that I turn a comment into a complete post, but this comment from Willis Eschenbach on the Trust and Mistrust article today, merits such a promotion. – Anthony
Which death is more troubling? (images: from NOAA, upper, Wikimedia, lower)
Willis Eschenbach
I am surprised at the visceral nature of the rejection of the term “environmentalist”. I had not realized it had gotten that bad. I don’t think I’d want to be one of those if that’s how people feel.
It also appears that the new preferred term is “conservationist”. But as I said, I don’t make those fine distinctions, so I’m not sure how that differs from the “e-word”.
So let me modify my statement, and say that I am a conservamentalist. I would define that as someone who thinks long and hard about the effect of our actions on the tangled web of life that surrounds us.
I was fishing herring in the Bering Sea one season. I heard on the radio that the annual killing of the Canadian Arctic fur seals had begun, along with the obligatory protests that seem to be required these days.
We’d caught about fifty tonnes of herring that day, killing on the order of a million living beings. I remember thinking how if some creature has big soft baby eyes, it gets lots of sympathy. But if a creature is slimy and has cold fish-eyes, its death doesn’t matter. People hated the seal killers for killing a few dozen creatures, while I killed millions of creatures and was ignored.
If I had to pick one word to describe my position on the ecological webs that surround us, it would be “realist”. Life eats life to live. I am not a man who eats the meat and blames the butcher.
I’ve worked a good deal as a builder. I build with wood. I cut down trees to make room for the building I live in. I grew up in the forest, my step-daddy was a timber feller, the royalty of the logging fraternity. I’ve worked killing trees on an industrial scale.
And I’ll also fight like crazy to see the logging done right. with proper roads and proper setbacks, and proper slope limits, and reforestation. I’ve seen what bad logging practices look like and do.
So for me, a conservamentalist is someone who has thought hard about and balanced the needs for wood and cleared land, balanced those needs with the way that wood is harvested. I grew up in the middle of hundreds of square miles of virgin forest. I have a deep and abiding admiration for that raw wildness. And yet, I cut down trees. I just want to see things done carefully and with forethought, see them done properly with respect for the consequences. I don’t elevate some mythical “Nature” above humans, and I don’t forget nature either.
I was a sport salmon fishing guide a couple years ago, on the Kenai River in Alaska, as I described here. Kenai River king salmon are magnificent beings, fifty pounds or more of powerful, glittering, awe-inspiring fish. When one of my clients caught a salmon, I always thanked the fish in a loud voice for giving up its life for us. Life eats life, beings die so that I can live, and I can’t ignore that. I don’t let it keep me from fishing salmon, but I won’t pretend that I am not killing a splendiferous entity. Some of my clients understood.
Heck, I apologize to trees when I cut them down. Yeah, I know it looks dumb, a grown man talking to trees. But it doesn’t stop me from cutting them down by the scores if need be, I’m a realist. Life eats life. Me, I don’t take killing anything lightly, be it redwood or herring or salmon. Someday, I’ll be chopped down in the same way.
So I’m forming the Conservamentalist Party, our motto will be,“Conservamentalists unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds”.
Now, back to the climate…
davidmhoffer (13:33:47) : Name ONE monopoly. Specify exactly what you mean by “folks” who “own” the fed.
You’re kidding me, right?
Stop changing the subject. Why are you afraid to answer direct questions?
i have not changed the subject and have answered questions. i think we are in such fundamental disagreement about how the world works that we are having difficulty communicating.
In my opinion the rest of the world works just like your “Follow the Money” blogs. you could write one called, “Follow the money: Governments.” And the fact is, whoever owns the FED has a private MONOPOLY on the creation of money. Only worse, our money is DEBT. It is not even real money.
That is not capitalism, and that is not “democratic”. Our money system is in fact a pillar of Communism. Only it is in the unaccountable hands of private interests. And with it, the powers of the state.
You borrow a dollar at interest which the bank creates out of nothing. Meanwhile, according to the FED itself:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MULT
that dollar you are paying 2 dollars for is actually putting something like .60 into the economy.
Willis – do you think killer whales kill for fun? This clip is pretty grim nature raw in tooth and claw:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004t03t
and I wonder at how little they consumed of the kill. Is it perhaps that is all the easy meat their jaws and teeth can take from this catch or is there some inter species competition going on? I’ve also seen clips of them throwing seals about without eating them – like a domestic cat does with a mouse.
“conservamentalism”
Is Kreskin behind this?
Do not want.
“As a result, animals have evolved to only go out killing when necessary. But that’s not morals. That’s evolution, where the animals who killed for fun died early and died out.”
Clearly not familiar with cats.
That’s enough from me.
I just don’t understand the seal ban thing. People eat sushi but they won’t let others eat baby seal meat?
Baby seal meat is quite tasty. I don’t see a need to eat it every day, but for people who live there, it is a good source of protein for hundreds of years.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of seals, they breed about as fast as kangaroos and rabbits. Australians sell kangaroo meat in their supermarkets, and there’s lots of places where we can get frozen rabbit meat.
@Douglas DC
‘Being part Cherokee/Choctaw, and knowing a bit about the Eastern tribes, in particular, the Eastern Indians like the Cherokee were actually quite settled, lived in houses, farmed, and had a relatively civil life. Surprised the Europeans.’
Did all “Eastern Indians”, not least the Cherokee, live in houses? Did all the europeans get surprised?
The last question would actually be a surprise considering that the europeans encountered far more “civilized” people long before they actually encountered north american eastern indians, and cherokee, at all. Lest we count the supposed vikings the europeans encountered the somewhat rather higher civilizations in central and south america before they went north.
Michael:
“I see a difference between killing a seal for its fur and killing fish so that we can have a supply of healthy food. The seal fur can be easily be substituted with synthetic garments, the fish not so easily.”
I do not really agree. Whilst I do agree with Willis post and sentiments
and the idea of managing and protecting, the fact is, seal fur is warmer than synthetics and the synthetics are largely made from petroleum.
Leather is better than vinyl and real wood better than plastic, or particle board.
This doesn’t stop me from using synthetics, vinyl or plastics of other kinds.
But these products are not always equivalent just because they look so.
slow to follow (16:22:57)
Link doesn’t work, but I would distinguish between “kills for fun or sport” and “plays with food”. In the clips I’ve seen, either the whales ended up eating the seals, or the clip ended with the whales still toying with the seals. Our cat plays with mice, too … but she sure eats them at the end.
peterhodges (16:01:06) :
“You borrow a dollar at interest which the bank creates out of nothing. Meanwhile, according to the FED itself:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MULT
that dollar you are paying 2 dollars for is actually putting something like .60 into the economy.”
I think you missed a BIG point you are confusing money with wealth. What is wealth vs Money?
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam smith defined wealth as “the annual produce of the land and labor”..Wealth creation is combining materials, labor, land, and technology so there is an excess for trade to others, that is “a profit” in excess of the cost of production.
Money: Is Coin, Currency (paper money), and Credit. If the paper money is not backed by gold, silver or other “wealth” it is a fiat currency and only as good as the people’s ignorance of its origin. Federal Reserve notes, and credit is “created” by banks backed by nothing and DOES NOT REPRESENT WEALTH. Fractional Banking allows private banks to lend out ten times the amount of money deposited.
That means when you say “that dollar you are paying 2 dollars for is actually putting something like .60 into the economy.” You actually mean the banks have devalued the currency you saved that represents your labor by injecting more fiat currency into the economy. Now the dollar you saved is only worth 0.63 cents
In other words the bankers stole your wealth (labor) but continually injecting fiat “counterfeit” money into the economy. This is why gas cost quarter a gallon and a coke cost a dime when I was young and now you have to add a zero to get the current price. The hundred dollars a month I put into savings was fifteen percent of my salary It was also the amount I paid for groceries. Now that same hundred dollars is worth ten bucks. Who got the other ninety dollars of the wealth that hundred dollars represented????
Congressman, Louis T. McFadden does a better job of explaining than I can.
“On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, The Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, UNLAWFUL CONVERSION, AND TREASON.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was thereafter referred to the Judiciary Committee and has
YET TO BE ACTED ON. “ http://hiwaay.net/~becraft/mcfadden.html
K~Bob (16:27:46)
Brush up on your reading skills there, Bob. I clearly said that I was referring to wild animals, and I distinguished them from domestic animals, which I said killed when not necessary, viz.
This was not posted someplace obscure, it was the post immediately before the post you cited. If you are not going to follow the thread before jumping in with incorrect assumptions, I hope that is enough from you.
peterhodges;
And the fact is, whoever owns the FED has a private MONOPOLY on the creation of money>>
Again…. who owns the FED? The FED being a government construct, it is by definition public, not private. So the statement “whoever owns the FED” is meaningless. No one owns it, it is a branch of government. Is it a monopoly? Of course it is, but it is a public monopoly. It would be difficult (impossible?) to manage a country’s currency through more than one institution. You can argue that it is badly managed, but that it is a private monopoly that somehow controls you is a stretch.
peterhodges;
I just reread your post and realised you also said:
“That is not capitalism, and that is not “democratic”. Our money system is in fact a pillar of Communism. Only it is in the unaccountable hands of private interests. And with it, the powers of the state”
C’mon. What “private interests” do you think the money system is in the hands of?
George E. Smith;
Of lions and baboons…
Yes, one my own comments went into exactly that issue with lions! There are lots of examples, with the diversity of the biosphere, one would expect that, would one not? I said as a “general rule” and there are far more species that follow that rule than don’t.
Willis Eschenbach;
On weasels…
If it were a legend, would it not be rural rather than urban? 🙂
If you google “weasel chicken” you will get multiple articles like this one:
“When they are faced with a super-abundance of food, weasels sometimes go on a lustful killing spree. A weasel in a chicken-house, for example, will kill a much larger number of birds than it could ever hope to eat. However, in more natural circumstances, these animals will attempt to cache their excess food”
or this one
“The weasel is prone to violent killing sprees. Weasels are notorious for killing entire coops of chickens”
And having dealt with the aftermath of a weasel (OK OK, a PRESUMED weasel) in a chicken coop, it didn’t seem much like an urban legend to me.
Willis,
Darn it, you write so beautifully. I was transported by your story “Of sharks and Men”. You have a gift. I urge you to add ‘book author’ to your many careers. I’ve enjoyed the thoughts expressed in this thread.
I’ve just come across an article by a scientist named Peter Koeller, titled
“Ecosystem-based psychology, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the data” (Fisheries Research 90 (2008) 1–5) and a passage reminded me of the discussion in this thread. Koeller describes the different reactions of fisheries scientists, including himself, to killing large numbers of fish.
“… one November gale on a mesh selectivity study, as I looked into the glazed, dying eyes of a thousand cod grunting their last, I had the notion that they were trying to tell me something more than how many of them pass through codend meshes of various sizes, specifically, the ultimate reason why fundamental physical particles are organising themselves into ever more complex life forms.
I am keenly aware that the influence of this and similar experiences on my professional attitudes are unique and entirely personal. Someone with different predispositions, given the exact same circumstances, may well have assimilated them differently, with different results for themselves and their influence on the external world. One may have abandoned fisheries science for a religious calling, as one of my colleagues has done. Another may have moved to a field of research or institution where encounters with dead fish and live fishermen were less visceral and disturbing. Still another may have been driven to regard fish as units, much as an accountant sees dollars and a dentist teeth. In my case, I developed an excessive, some might say neurotic, need to remain grounded in reality, which unfortunately was only really ever satisfied at sea. And I worried a lot. During long steams on groundfish surveys, I worried that the amount of fish caught at the last station plus the amount we would catch at the next divided by two, was not as representative of the hundreds of square kilometres we were steaming across as the models assumed. And I doubted the models more than the data.”
Unfortunately, he later in the article likens the overfishing crisis to global warming, which he assumes to be real. But he has interesting things to say about how the responses of scientists, including those who advocate marine protected areas, are grounded in fear.
James Sexton said . . .
“Continuing on with another point I’ve made, when animals are considered people too, then people must be considered the same value as animals. I believe I used the word ‘obscene’. History is replete with examples of atrocities committed to mankind because they were regarded as the same value as an animal.”
This isn’t a potential problem except where people place a low value on animals. If I place a very high value on animals, and humans at the same level, then those humans have nothing to fear. Your dread of humans being treated as badly as animals only goes to show how horribly animals are commonly treated. And who in this dispute places such a low value on animals that equating humans to them so disturbs you? Hmmm…
davidmhoffer (19:47:19)
Very good, cracked me up.
This contains far too much emotion for me to consider it as authoritative. “Lustful?”
In any case, a weasel can easily eat half its weight in food every day. So for them to cache excess food makes perfect sense. And in the wild, it would be extremely rare to be able to kill more than they possibly could stow and eat, so they are hardwired to kill whatever they can.
I didn’t mean that weasels killing stacks of chickens was an urban legend. I meant that them killing wantonly or for sport was an urban legend. We got into this because you said:
I agree that weasels can kill a whole bunch of chickens, more than they could eat. I suspect that if the farmer didn’t come back, however, that the weasel (and perhaps his wife and kids) would eat many more of those chickens than we would imagine.
But my point is, this is not wanton killing, this is not “killing for sport” as you say, it is not killing just for the sake of it. Weasels are killing to eat, and they will kill what is there to kill. Under modern farm conditions, they may kill too many chickens to eat, but that does not make their killing wanton. How many times in the wild does a weasel encounter a flock of birds that can’t get away? Their programming has enabled them to survive for millions of years.
You ask the difference between a weasel and a fox. There are two big ones. Weasels (like most very small carnivorous mammals) have a very high metabolism. They must eat a huge amount for their size simply to stay alive. That’s the first difference.
The second difference is that because they need to have food every day, and lots of it for their size, they have evolved to store excess food in their dens. This means that if they can kill more than they can eat right then, it makes perfect sense for them to do so. A fox doesn’t have either the need or the food storing habits to take advantage of multiple kills.
So this is not “abnormal behaviour” that “doesn’t fit with survival instinct” as you say. It is perfectly reasonable behaviour for a tiny mammal predator with a very fast metabolism. And it is behaviour which has allowed them to survive for millions of years.
vigilantfish (20:45:29)
Thank you for your kind words. I’ve considered writing a book, but time, time, time …
This is what I was trying to get at above when I said:
The scientist you quote describes a number of ways that people he knew coped when confronted daily with the reality of death on an industrial scale. I did not take any of the paths that he described. I took a different path, the path of not averting my eyes, while at the same time not regarding fish or animals as “units” in his words. I take full responsibility for their deaths, secure in the knowledge that someday I will die just like the animals. Here’s a story (not mine) that illustrates the issues far better than I could:
I automatically started off, proceeding the way I had done scores of times. Don Juan walked beside me and followed my movements with a scrutinizing look. I was very calm and moved carefully and I had no trouble at all in catching a male rabbit.
“Now kill it,” don Juan said dryly.
I reached into the trap to grab hold of the rabbit. I had it by the ears and was pulling it out when a sudden sensation of terror invaded me. For the first time since don Juan had begun to teach me to hunt it occurred to me that he had never taught me how to kill game. In the scores of times we had roamed in the desert he himself had only killed one rabbit, two quail and one rattlesnake.
I dropped the rabbit and looked at don Juan.
“I can’t kill it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I’ve never done that.”
“But you’ve killed hundreds of birds and other animals.”
“With a gun, not with my bare hands.”
“What difference does it make? This rabbit’s time is up.”
Don Juan’s tone shocked me; it was so authoritative, so knowledgeable, it left no doubts in my mind that he knew that the rabbit’s time was up.
“Kill it!” he commanded with a ferocious look in his eyes.
“I can’t.”
He yelled at me that the rabbit had to die. He said that its roaming in that beautiful desert had come to an end. I had no business stalling, because the power or the spirit that guides rabbits had led that particular one into my trap, right at the edge of the twilight.
A series of confusing thoughts and feelings overtook me, as if the feelings had been out there waiting for me. I felt with agonizing clarity the rabbit’s tragedy, to have fallen into my trap. In a matter of seconds my mind swept across the most crucial moments of my own life, the many times I had been the rabbit myself.
I looked at it, and it looked at me. The rabbit had backed up against the side of the cage; it was almost curled up, very quiet and motionless. We exchanged a somber glance, and that glance, which I fancied to be of silent despair, cemented a complete identification on my part.
“The hell with it,” I said loudly. “I won’t kill anything. That rabbit goes free.”
A profound emotion made me shiver. My arms trembled as I tried to grab the rabbit by the ears; it moved fast and I missed. I again tried and fumbled once more. I became desperate. I had the sensation of nausea and quickly kicked the trap in order to smash it and let the rabbit go free. The cage was unsuspectedly strong and did not break as I thought it would. My despair mounted to an unbearable feeling of anguish. Using all my strength, I stomped on the edge of the cage with my right foot. The sticks cracked loudly. I pulled the rabbit out. I had a moment of relief, which was shattered to bits in the next instant. The rabbit hung limp in my hand. It was dead.
I did not know what to do. I became preoccupied with finding out how it had died. I turned to don Juan. He was staring at me. A feeling of terror sent a chill through my body.
I sat down by some rocks. I had a terrible headache. Don Juan put his hand on my head and whispered in my ear that I had to skin the rabbit and roast it before the twilight was over.
I felt nauseated. He very patiently talked to me as if he were talking to a child. He said that the powers that guided men or animals had led that particular rabbit to me, in the same way they will lead me to my own death. He said the rabbit’s death had been a gift for me in exactly the same way my own death will be a gift for something or someone else.
I was dizzy. The simple events of that day had crushed me. I tried to think that it was only a rabbit; I could not, however, shake off the uncanny identification I had had with it.
Don Juan said that I needed to eat some of its meat, if only a morsel, in order to validate my finding.
“I can’t do that,” I protested meekly.
“We are dregs in the hands of those forces,” he snapped at me. “So stop your self-importance and use this gift properly.”
I picked up the rabbit; it was warm.
Don Juan leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Your trap was his last battle on earth. I told you, he had no more time to roam in this marvelous desert.”
Willis Eschenbach;
on weasels…
OK, I grew up on a farm where certain prejudices against weasels are commonplace due to repeated chicken coop incidents. Having read your explanation, I can see that the killing spree may be a natural behaviour that only gets exhibited when the weasel encounters a dense population that can’t really happen in the wild, it can only happen when humans introduce chicken coops. Got it. (actually figured it out on my own but you had already posted, couldn’t wait just five more minutes?)
Now MY original point was that animals don’t kill for sport, and I cited weasels as the exception that proves the rule. Then I wound up trying to show that they do, even though my base argument was that animals don’t kill for sport. I should’ve just said, yep, you’re right.
davidmhoffer (21:29:38)
Sorry I didn’t wait the five minute, and you are right on all counts. Didn’t mean to rain on your parade, I’m impressed that a) you figured it out yourself, and b) you are willing to discuss it further. Science at its finest.
A minor note. “The exception proves the rule” is widely misunderstood. The word “prove” is used here in the sense of a “proving ground”, meaning a testing ground. Therefore, the meaning of the phrase is “the exception tests the rule” … which makes a lot more sense. If the rule is that 2 + 2 = 4, finding an exception where 2 + 2 = 5 wouldn’t prove that the rule is true, it would test whether the rule is true …
@ur momisugly Anton (21:00:07) : “This isn’t a potential problem except where people place a low value on animals. If I place a very high value on animals, and humans at the same level, then those humans have nothing to fear. Your dread of humans being treated as badly as animals only goes to show how horribly animals are commonly treated. And who in this dispute places such a low value on animals that equating humans to them so disturbs you? Hmmm…”
Yeh, right, I eat steak from time to time. I don’t and won’t apologize to Gaia for it. I eat frog legs from time to time. If need be, and I wouldn’t wish this on any one, I’ll eat darn near anything necessary to keep me alive. Except human. (I’ve been hungry once.) Then, tell me you’d wish something different on your loved ones. Then tell me how animals would make a distinction when they’re hungry. Heck, I’ve seen mammals and avian kill their own even when they weren’t hungry. Get back to me and let me know how and why we shouldn’t distinguish the difference between man and animal. And again, if you can’t see where there is a precedence to your same thought, there is no hope for you nor the people you try to teach. They will be as wretched as you.
Willis Eschenbach;
Therefore, the meaning of the phrase is “the exception tests the rule” >>
I shall adopt your phrasing provided you adopt “rural legend” or “rural myth” in appropriate cases such as this one. I will be attempting to dispell this particular myth at the family dinner tomorrow night. This is at some risk to myself as various uncles may be offended that I am challenging their belief system and they tend to express their point of view with a cuff upside the head. I am steadfast however in my resolve to speak the truth, and I promise not to weasel out of it.
@ur momisugly Anton (21:00:07) : Sorry, I took the wrong approach earlier. I’ll try it this way. If indeed. you “place a very high value on animals, and humans at the same level” then surely, you’re outraged at the slaughter of every meat food source that mankind eats. If you do indeed believe we are wantonly and needlessly slaughtering the equivalent of people, where is your outrage? Where is your indignation at all who participate? Why aren’t you more visceral than the anti-abortionist? Could it be that you’ve lowered the value of human life instead of raising the value of an animal? But then, you make no distinction. The Africans today, the Natives in the U.S., the Jews in Germany and Russia, the Kurds in Turkey……..all the same as a slaughterhouse in Emporia, KS and people here don’t see why I think that’s obscene?
Willis Eschenbach (21:29:32) :
…
Don Juan said that I needed to eat some of its meat, if only a morsel, in order to validate my finding.
“I can’t do that,” I protested meekly.
“We are dregs in the hands of those forces,” he snapped at me. “So stop your self-importance and use this gift properly.”
Sounds like something from Castaneda. I wish some of our greenie politicians could understand this.
If civilisation collapsed, I would tip you to survive longer than a post-normal philosopher.
James Sexton;
If you do indeed believe we are wantonly and needlessly slaughtering the equivalent of people, where is your outrage?>>
I do not recall anyone arguing that animals are the equivelant of people. Some animals have some capacity for thinking and reason, this does not mean on the same scale as humans and it does not make them equivelant to humans. Some animals walk on two legs. This no more makes monkeys equivelent to humans than does the fact that they use very primitive tools.
You still haven’t answered my direct question. Who are the “private interests” that you claim control the Fed?
James Sexton;
My apologies last post. Coffee hasn’t kicked in all the way yet. The question about private interests and the fed was for peterhodges. Global Warming has caused a decline in caffeine concentration, as a consequence of which it takes two cups of coffee to bring me to complete waking status. Having had only three, you can see the problem. Global Warming also affects math skills, though I have seen no direct evidence of that. It has however, caused considerable aging. 25 years ago I was a lot younger than I am now, and today I am twice as old as I was then which is proof of global warming.