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.
eyesonu says: @ur momisugly June 4, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Slightly OT response, but maybe industry is failing partly because the HR (Human Relations dept) now controls the composition of employees and mgmt. of any particular industry. HR mgrs. are the product of the new academia….
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HR’s sole reason for existence is to keep applicants from seeing managers. HR is a real pain in the rump whether you are a manager or an applicant. HR will screen out the perfect candidate because he is too old, over qualified… anything to REJECT the canadate. HR types have no idea what the job is so will only be looking for a cabinet maker who has used a craftsman 12 oz hammer and therefore rejects a cabinet maker who only uses Estwing hammers.
The other more subtle move is for HR to make the requirements so ridiculous no one in the USA can fit and therefore a CHEAP H1B Visa foreign professional can be “Legally” hired. Just ask anyone now working the computer industry how many foreign professionals they have as workmates.
SocialBlunder says:
June 4, 2012 at 7:56 pm
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.
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People would not be so callous about the subject if rare species were not used as a blunt object to beat us over the head with. Once you realize environmentalism is not about the environment but about some jack ass in DC getting his kicks out of being a petty dictator, you tend toward the philosophy of shoot, shovel and shut-up.
The northern spotted owl for example is one of four spotted owl subspecies. “… also occurs in heavily logged secondary pine-oak forest, warmer and drier conditions and even bare rocky canyons. While some degree of logging may aid foraging, Spotted Owls associate with old trees and old-growth forest for nesting and roosting….” Another words you need logging to increase biodiversity to provide meals for the owls. As long as old growth for nesting is available the owls are AIDED by logging. This did not stop the totalitarians disguised as animal lovers to finally get the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 to rule spotted-owl laws can be applied to private land.
In other words the US government has stomped all over our Constitution using environmentalism as an excuse.
So as far as I am concerned at this point all the endangered species can’t die out fast enough for me. However if you want to wipe the EPA, USDA, FDA, DOE and the rest of the little totalitarians of the face of the earth I will gladly reconsider that position.
The government even tried to forfeit a farmer’s tractor for allegedly running over an endangered rat. For crying out loud!
ferd berple says:
June 4, 2012 at 9:01 pm
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.
I agree totally, what is frightening though wrt smallpox is that I understand that scientists in the USA and Russia have kept frozen samples to prevent extinction. If these samples were ever released into the environment either accidentally, or by deliberate act they would decimate the human population aged under fifty because they were never immunised against it.
If I could wave a magic wand and make an entire species or genus extinct, it would be the mosquito. I hate flies, but they are part of a food chain. Mosquitos contribute nothing, other than their own self-perpetuation. Sentimentality should not be allowed to keep a species/genus alive if it is causing the deaths of 1000’s of people a year.
We cannot control evolution no more than we can control the climate because behavior is more is more complex then the theory of evolution needs it to be,if we can’t know all the consequences of our actions then genes can’t create specific outcomes,all we have is change(evolution).Those who believe in protecting the environment had worthy aims and we accepted them but now they have become too powerful and threaten our well being.
SocialBlunder says:
June 4, 2012 at 7:56 pm
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?
If a species is that narrowly adapted, it’s just as likely that a natural event will push it over the edge. That doesn’t mean “the species deserved to die” — nature is non-judgemental — it just means that when one niche disappears and another one appears, another species will find it and move in to occupy it.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that the narrowly-adapted species population morphed from a larger, more broadly-adapted one.
Steve P says:
June 4, 2012 at 8:20 pm
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?
Naturalists who studied them knew — Passenger Pigeons were nucivouous. A tick was pretty safe, unless it happened to be resting on an acorn.
%$#@ur momisugly! That “nucivouous” should be “nucivorous” — that’s what I get for trying to multitask on only three cups of coffee…
Anthony, I am disappointed and a bit shocked by both the ignorance and tone of many of the comments here. The fact that most of us here are troubled by “climate alarmism” does not mean that its ok if we cause species to go extinct, which we are doing, by means that have nothing to do with climate change. Social Blunder (at 7:56 pm) puts the situation very well, in distinction to many of the other writers. I am wondering why you posted Viv Forbes’ “letter to the Editor” as a top post, instead of just having it as a comment somewhere? Like the rest of us here, she is entitled to sound off, but the letter is essentially that, there is little factual information in it, and she does not address the positions and concerns that those of us concerned with species survival actually embrace. For example, she writes “We cannot now return to a cave-man existence”. Well, I do not know anyone, on any side of discussions about species extinctions, that believes that we can or should return to a cave man existence. Rather the opposite, most professionals concerned with endangered species want to see detailed scientific approaches to the issue, which are dependent on a continued existence of a sophisticated civilization. Many of us are appalled by the way climate alarmists are prepared to ride rough-shod over endangered species regulations in the California Desert for example, by constructing vast solar arrays which are quite unneccesary, using the alarmist hype about CO2 and global warming, which, like you, we believe is at least grossly exaggerated if not outright wrong.
95% of all species that ever existed on this planet are now extinct. We are latecomers on a tired planet. Evolution seems to be running down. As pointed out above, adapt or die. Try telling the children. But they have access to other information they believe is more valid than their parents advice. Ah, well. Evolution in this case may be faster than expected.
Gail Combs says:
June 4, 2012 at 9:01 pm
HR types have no idea what the job is so will only be looking for a cabinet maker who has used a craftsman 12 oz hammer and therefore rejects a cabinet maker who only uses Estwing hammers.
The other more subtle move is for HR to make the requirements so ridiculous no one in the USA can fit and therefore a CHEAP H1B Visa foreign professional can be “Legally” hired.
Most HR-types are clueless about job-requirements. I’ve seen openings for desk jobs written with such stringent physical requirements that only a SEAL could fill them.
Survive.
Reproduce.
The two fundamental biological imperatives hardwired into every living thing.
And survival entails adapting to environmental changes of whatever kind and of whatever origin. Success entails exploiting the environment to ensure your species’ survival regardless of the effect on those others sharing it with you. That is ‘Natures’ way of things and regardless of how we ‘feel’ about it, it is so.
If, through human activity a species dies out, then another will rise to fill that part of the environment left vacant, and who is to say which one is preferable?
Let’s not forget this phenomenal performance by Georg Carlin:
Brgds
TJ
Bill Tuttle says:
June 4, 2012 at 10:58 pm/11:00 pm
Naturalists who studied them knew — Passenger Pigeons were nucivouous. A tick was pretty safe, unless it happened to be resting on an acorn…“nucivorous”
I just wonder what would have happened if the greenies had been around when the Neanderthals et al were extant.
Bill Tuttle says:
June 4, 2012 at 10:58 pm/11:00 pm
But, according to Wiki:
Before men developed an appetite for them, the abundance of these doves means many other predators must have included Passenger Pigeons in their diets. The same is no less true for the Bison, and we know who depended on those big beasts for survival.
Steve P says:
June 5, 2012 at 2:04 am
But, according to Wiki: The mainstays of the passenger pigeon’s diet were beechnuts, acorns, chestnuts, seeds, and berries found in the forests. Worms and insects supplemented the diet in spring and summer.
Many animals — especially birds — classified as seed or fruit eaters merely means that those are their preferred foods, but most are opportunistic predators. I’ve seen hummingbirds eat spiders and goldfinches eat aphids. My neighbor watched a chipmunk eat a nestful of baby starlings and the neighborhood deer regularly chow down on sparrows caught in the netting over his strawberry plants.
DesertYote says:
June 4, 2012 at 5:25 pm
If its a rare species with a highly restricted habitat then it is not very important biological[ly]. If it is not important, then its loss has little if any impact.
Agreed. Who’s life is worse off because the bloody Dodo no longer exists? Or the Tasmanian Tiger? We’re conditioned to say how sad it is – but if we’re honest with ourselves, are we genuinely sad or are we just vocalising the politically correct response? Unless the creature is particularly cute and fluffy then it’s the latter of course. I watched an episode of Nature’s Giants last night. Each episode a team of scientists cuts open a large dead animal (e.g. giraffe, hippo, crocodile) to examine its inner workings – it’s really fascinating, if somewhat gory. But the host always starts by earnestly saying something like “Sadly this majestic animal died of unknown causes. This is not just about studying the animal, but celebrating and paying respect to its life” or other such fluffy BS, thrown in to appease animal rights whackos. This is the mindset I’m talking about.
I believe it is fair to say that the Earth’s environment is changing naturally. CO2, a minor player in climate change, is not exceptional in its presence in the atmosphere at this present time. Other, more intensive, naturally caused, climatic changes to our environment will impact more extensively in the future. Historical records of previous Earth changing events are being ignored at our peril. We should not waste our present abundant, but nevertheless limited, resources. All species, including the human race, will have to adapt or perish in the future.
People keep citing that performance by Carlin. They misunderstand him. He was profoundly misanthropic; he wanted the planet to continue happily on its way sans humans, ASAP. A real jerkwad.
I think you’re missing a few 9s. The actual number is 99.9x%, where x is some positive integer.
Henry Clark says: June 4, 2012 at 3:38 pm
“The widely hyped media figures of millions of species come from counting all sorts of invertebrates, mainly bugs.”
Please allow me to “nit” pick. “Bugs” are more precisely know as hemiptera, (half-wing insects), of which there are only 10’s of thousands of species. The entire group of insects consists of millions of species.
John Game says:
June 4, 2012 at 11:11 pm
Anthony, I am disappointed and a bit shocked by both the ignorance and tone of many of the comments here….
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Then you do not understand. It is not “ignorance” but knowledge of the ultimate goal that causes the “tone”
“The urge to save humanity (species) is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” ~ H.L. Mencken
That goal of the UN’s IPCC, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN’s Agenda 21 are all the same. It is to put humans into “preservations” (Company Towns) and forbid them any freedom except to work for one of the large multinational. A return to feudalism.
George Bernard Shaw was cofounder of the Fabian Society with the Webbs who also founded the London School of Economics. A school educating top political and corporate leaders such as John F Kennedy, George Soros & David Rockefeller. Speakers at LSE include Pascal Lamy (WTO director) Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Ben Bernanke, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, and Lord Stern. Anthony Giddens, former director came up with the “Third Way”
Ole George stated the actual goal.
There will be no owning a home or small business. Unless of course you are George Soros (Wyoming) Maurice Strong (Colorado) tr the Bush family (Texas) yeah BUSH too.
This is a map of the goal: MAP (Humans get to live in the little green dots, as I said “Company Towns” )
The Kalmath Bucket Brigade has a listing of all the bills/laws concerning this coup of the USA: http://www.klamathbucketbrigade.org/YNTKwildlandsproject_table.htm
If you do not like conservatives a liberal activist also has information DEMOCRATS AGAINST U. N. AGENDA 21
We came very close to this a decade and a half ago. Stopping the treaty ratification does not mean anything more than slowing the global totalitarians down.
The plan is already going ahead. In California people are being driven from their homes using building code violations and are forced to pay for demolishing the houses. SEE: L.A. County’s Private Property War
Updated in 2012: In RED, are the areas off limits to human use, they already have significantly reduced public access and no management or resource harvesting through: Wilderness, Critical Habitat and Roadless Areas. YELLOW Areas are areas of Highly regulated Use where hiking may be allowed, but no homes. Only GREEN areas will allow housing. See: http://stewardsofthesequoia.org/Wildlands_Project.html
Close-up Map of the far west: Corridor Map
Bill Tuttle says:
June 5, 2012 at 2:51 am
So the classification as fruit-eater or whatever is really an over-simplification in some cases. ‘ Gotta watch out for those; they’re everywhere!
Anna’s Hummingbird is a year-round resident in California. In winter, when nectar is not widely available, they eat insects, and even when nectar is available, they continue to eat insects occasionally, a behavior I’ve witnessed many times. This past winter, Yellow-rumped Warblers and Anna’s Hummingbirds were gleaning insects from Eucalyptus trees right outside my 2nd floor window, where I had an excellent view of the proceedings.
As Yogi Berra put it:
Some folks complain about the callousness of the responses. Get a life. If the environmentalists actually used something approaching a scientific argument instead of always argument to emotion, then most of us would not have such a visceral reaction to yet another attempt to move us all into the great socialist utopia, concepts of freedom be [self-snipped]. The part that gets me personally is the idea that these useless city-dwelling busy-bodies think they are better stewards of the land then the person that lives on it daily and has watched its seasons for decades. Then there are the nimrods that think we have to put out every fire in the western US, so that now when we do get a fire, there is so much fuel that it is impossible to prevent it from over-running populated areas and people get killed trying to stop it. It is so overgrown now that disease is running rampant in the trees and every lightning strike is a cause for concern. If environmentalists knew half as much about the actual environment as the do about implementing socialist dystopias, I might give them the time of day.
But the bigger point is that a when a species is destroyed, a thread is ripped from the fabric of life, whose colors, textures, and weave we are still trying to understand. It won’t hurt much if we rip a few parts out here and there. Heck no.
It doesn’t seem like much changes when the Dodo is gone, or the Peregrine Falcon no longer flies. If the last few hundred Elephant Seals had been clubbed to death, that would just mean more room for us at the beach – right? – especially valuable now that some of us are starting to approach that size.
‘Same way with the Bison. Who needed them? ‘Could have wiped them out too, if only we’d tried just a littler harder.
Is this Survival of the Fittest, or do human actions resemble those of the House Sparrow?
Passer domesticus is a non-native bird that was imported by humans. Actually a Weaver Finch, both males and females will sneak into the nest of beautiful E. Bluebirds in N. America, and blind or kill the nestlings, a fate that could befall an adult Bluebird as well, if one is unlucky enough to get caught in its nestbox when a House Sparrow enters.
The House Sparrow tries to kill off competitors seen as being in the way. Not so unlike certain bipeds, eh?