Letter to the Editor
As the global warming bubble deflates, another scare is being inflated – species extinction. Naturally the professional alarmists present this as a brand new threat, caused by man’s industry.
However, species extinction, like climate change, is the way of the world.
It was not carbon dioxide that entombed millions of mammoths and other animals in mucky ice from Iceland to Alaska. It was not steam engines that wiped out the dinosaurs and 75% of other species who had dominated the Earth for 180 million years. There were no humans to blame for the Great Permian Extinction when over 90% of all life on Earth was destroyed – animals, plants, trees, fish, plankton even algae disappeared suddenly.
Sadly, history shows that it is the destiny of most species to be destroyed by periodic natural calamities or competition from other species. Earth’s history is a moving picture, not a still life. No species has an assured place on Earth. Some species can adapt and survive – those unable to adapt are removed from the gene pool.
Earth’s periodic species extinctions are usually associated with widespread glaciation, volcanism, earth movements and solar disruptions. Most geological eras have closed with such calamitous events. Random and more localised species extinctions are caused by rogue comets. But global warming and abundant carbon dioxide have never featured as causes of mass extinctions.
Because of Earth’s long turbulent history, most species surviving today are not “fragile”. Every one of them, including humans, is descended from a long line of survivors going back to the beginnings of life on Earth.
Man has thrived because of his adaptability, resourcefulness and more recently, his use of science and technology. We cannot now return to a cave-man existence. Without the freedom to explore, develop and utilise our resources, most humans would not survive.
Species extinction events are not new, are not caused by burning carbon fuels, and will probably occur again. We will need all of our freedom, ingenuity and technology to survive.
Let us not hasten our own species extinction by starving ourselves of food and energy with foolish demonization of carbon, the building block of all life forms.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
I am happy for my email address to be published.
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OK. Someone’s got to say it. The Dodo is not extinct. It’s now a politician in Berkley. (or a climate scientist at Penn State, or a …..)
The environment is way too complex and brutal for environmentalists to comprehend. They are thus in a permanent state of confusion and shock. Their recommendations and demands are thus literally insane. Ignore or sequester them.
Survival of the fittest. Isn’t that what it’s all about? If man is making it more difficult for other species then man is pressuring them to adapt. In the long haul that should be good for that species. In fact, it should be good for all kinds of species. It just may not be that good for man.
Gunga Din, please learn how to spell Berkeley.
The difference between conservation and preservation is as long as a piece of string.
Sadly some species are at risk due to ‘anthropogenic global warming’. Not from any change in climate, change in temperature, sea rise, CO2 rise or whatever argument is put forward in any given week. But from watermelons who think they can save a planet that doesn’t need saving and has never needed to be saved in it’s 4.5 billion year history. Policies so backward even Greenpeace think are ridiculous and damaging.
Orangutan numbers in Sumatra have been steadily declining for the past decade as a result of the booming palm oil industry. Which has not only led to palm oil cultivated land accounting for four times the Orangutan’s natural habitat, but hunting is widespread to cut the amount of crop lost as a result of animals scavenging due to their lost habitat.
Another feather in the watermelon’s cap of deniability.
Henry Clark that most vertebrates are not near extinction. In fact, species follow a roughly Pareto distribution, where a few species are numerous and widespread, more are less numrous and less widespread, and most are limited in number and area- by definition they’re near extinction.
During the last ice age, much of the world was a desert. Thanks to the warming world, there has been an increase in the area able to support life, and an increase in species to fill the new habitats- and most of those new species spreading into warmer climates will be on the edge of extinction.
Why all the fuss? Darwin tells us new species are popping up right and left.
John Game says:
June 4, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Gunga Din, please learn how to spell Berkeley.
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If I spent all my time learning how to spell I wouldn’t have any time left to comment here.
I noticed that a lot of people talk about the threat of “invasive species.”
Well that is also something that is often misconstrued. Here is the thing: If a species can not “Adapt” to another animal taking over a niche, they were not worthly to survive. That simple, its cold, its a hard truth, but its also life. Humans might have the ability to “keep the damage down” by hunting invasive species which helps limit the changes the invasive creature has on the local environment, but in the end the environment adapts and something will start preying on the now native species everytime. (or force the invasive species to become limited in some fashion.)
This is how life works, and if you look anywhere that humans adapted species to a new environment, over the course of say 50 years the local environment adapts and something does rise up to put checks and balances into place. That is how “survival of the fittest works.”
Does this seem cold? I hope so, because it really is. Its simply this: A realistic way of looking at life and the environment. That being said, there are ways to ensure the most bio-diversity after an invasive species is introduced. If say rats had been hunted and had their numbers kept down in New Zealand and the animals there had been given a fair chance to adapt, the biodiversity there today might have been better.
But that is what life is about, we learn from our mistakes and strive to do the best we can to make life better. We can not keep smacking ourselves and force our species to bow down to other species, because like it or not we are part of the eco-system as well. Taking us out could cause just as much damage to certain animals (say perhaps the animals and plants we eat…) and is that truly a good thing? Picking winners and losers without regard to the worth of either is a sure emotional way to work yourself up to saying that “viruses that harm mankind should not be driven to extinction.”
IF you want to be emotional to that level, why don’t you talk to people inflicted with certain diseases and ask them how they feel about the disease or virus or whatever it is? Only cold hard science and the truth will allow us to realize that we have a responsibility to ourselves as a species FIRST and then to the environment after we safeguard our own existance.
There there is this comment by George E. Smith, which is rather ironic when you think about it:
But humans risk their very own extinction; simply by being human.
I would tend to argue that humans risk their own extinction by not thinking things through rationally like I said and by being overly emotional (or perhaps being too human perhaps). This is the problem, and perhaps the ironic part of it is that yes, we will risk our own extinction because some of us have more emotions…and yes this will drag us down to a lower level and might lead to our own extinction if we don’t use our brains properly and realize that our survival is more important then any other thing. If humans are too survive, we need to stop the entire process of safe-guarding anything without regard to how it effects the environment…..and especially playing favorites with certain animals , plants and yes especially viruses.
It’s these types of discussions that make me question whether we really understand our origins at the most basic level. Creation and evolution are both beliefs. In my mind it’s so much easier to accept we just do not have a clue. Applying all of our abilities, with very limited sensors, to understand our existence seems so far out of reach to have any certainty whatsoever.
The only certainty is that we will end up the same way as every living thing has in the past. There’s confidence in that……..
I’m just hopefully awaiting the extinction of ‘Climatesaurus Scientificus.’
In another 50,000 years someone/something will find a fossil of a Dodo bird and discuss the atmospheric composition as being thick enough for it to fly. It probably evolved into a penguin due to the ice age of the time that the earth was then coming out of. Will these creatures look like a penguin?
timg56 says [ June 4, 2012 at 4:03 pm ]
I’ve observed a propensity on the part of greens and environmentalists to want to “freeze” what they see as the “natural” environment [ … ]
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I would just be satisfied with freezing those greens’ brains … it wouldn’t take up much space.
species extinction is part of evolution. The cheetah for example performs sex rarely, for 2 days of the year. Lions kill them… They are makiong themselves extinct like Panda bears which are extremely reluctant to have intercourse.
Besides, new species are being evolving and things are being discovered continously. in 2009, nearly 20,000 new species were discoveered, 41 of them mammals
And the summer Olympics are being held where?
If a species is narrowly adapted and man removes that niche, does that mean the species deserved to die (as so many have commented), or that man has ignorantly removed part of the richness of his surroundings? The tone of these comments indicate that many would prefer to be surrounded by tough, resilient species: rats, cockroaches, coyotes, ants and rabbits. That world would be a pale imitation of the world we live in today – it would be like always eating fast food.
re George E Smith’s comment.
Darwin thought that the human race would eventually be doomed because of its lack of domestication. Even the wildest animals are adapted to their environment. ie, domesticated. Humans are dissatisfied and wish to escape, evade, change, and “progress” materially. In other words we are never happy with our environment.
Again, the species that survive are the most adaptable, not the most adapted.
Some Darwin guy wrote a book called “On the Origin of Species”, which was somewhat popular. He pointed out a while ago in it that extinction is the natural process for creating species. Variation causes improved versions of critters, which then tend to replace the older forms because there often is close competition for the same living space and the improved ones (by definition) have an advantage in that competition. There is also competition with other critters, but competition with similar ones is quite a significant pressure within these relatives.
‘Some really serious blow-back against environmentalists here because of the CAGW hoax. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, and remember, we are forced to make rules to keep people from pissing in the water, driving while drunk, and committing other destructive acts, like shooting every last Bison, or Passenger Pigeon. I wonder what ecological niche was vacated when the Passenger Pigeon was exterminated…maybe they ate ticks, who knows?
The Great Auk, the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Parakeet. They are all gone. Can anybody tell us how their loss caused any problems, anywhere.
So many species have come and gone that the error bar for the total number of extinct species is larger than the best estimate for the total number of extant species. leading to that old biologists joke: ‘To a first approximation, all species are extinct.’
I checked the list of species going extinct not long ago, and none were due to global warming/climate change/weirding/what have you. It was all about predation and habitat destruction. And there aren’t many that are threatened by that either.
But for instance in Northern California we have a problem with feral pigs—a hardy species to be sure. They cause expensive damage. They scavenge crops, cause erosion, and are generally great at producing all sorts of expensive damage.
Seems like a good idea to cull them hard, and to benefit from the lovely cutlets they yield.
Andrew says:
June 4, 2012 at 3:37 pm
The struggle for species to survive is the very driver of the process known as evolution. There are many who have a pathological fear of the concept that anything should fail rather than succeed, so we must bail out companies, and in just that manner we must bail out failing species….
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That is one of the worse parts of factory farming and PETA.
For robust farm animals you should not be trying to “save” every last animal with extensive vet care as the bleeding hearts are trying to mandate via “Animal Welfare” laws. Also factory farming leading to a narrow genetic make-up is also a danger.
Do not forget Willis’s post: Where Are The Corpses?
Edward Martin says:
June 4, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Why all the fuss? Darwin tells us new species are popping up right and left.
P Wilson says:
June 4, 2012 at 7:43 pm
in 2009, nearly 20,000 new species were discoveered, 41 of them mammals
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20,000 new species a year. A few go extinct. This does not suggest any shortages on the horizon.
Smallpox, polio, malaria, TB. These are life forms that need to be saved from extinction.
If extinction is bad, then where is the justification to drive some species to extinction and not others? You cannot argue that smallpox eradication, or the eradication of any disease is good, if extinction itself is bad.
Eradication means extinction for the life form involved. Do we have the wisdom to say that smallpox itself is bad? While bad for the individual, perhaps it serves to strengthen the population, preventing human extinction. By eradicating disease, we may be causing our own extinction.
Isn’t this the logical extension of the argument to prevent extinction. We have already seen the success of the EPA ban on DDT to prevent mosquito eradication, allowing malaria to survive and prosper. Time we applied this logic to all pathogens.