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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Robbie says:
June 5, 2012 at 3:49 pm
You’ve already acknowledged yourself that:
However, that doesn’t stop you from making a flight of logic that takes us from a poorly understood, cataclysmic but natural event in the remote past, to mankind’s addition of a tiny amount of CO2 to the atmosphere today, along the way dragging in a whole bunch of other stuff, some of it mutually contradictory, and most of it supported only by arm waving.
All the direct, empirical evidence argues that elevated C02 is beneficial for plants, despite what the alarmists like yourself would have us believe. On Earth, there is no record of elevated levels of CO2 being the cause of any extinction, or otherwise cataclysmic event.
In fact, the empirical evidence argues that levels of CO2 lag temperature, rising CO2 is an effect not cause of a warming Earth. First it gets warmer, then atmospheric CO2 begins to rise. The oceans warm much more slowly than your favorite carbonated beverage, but both outgas CO2 as they do, resulting in a flat beverage for drinkers, and disturbing correlations for alarmists.
~
Of course water is required in the Imperial Valley so agriculture is possible, and that requirement is the same every place on Earth where anything grows. You’ve just dodged the points that warmer agricultural regions tend to be more productive than cooler ones, and warmth, by itself, is not inherently bad.
They could move into the shade, or take a dip. Animals have various strategies for dealing with the heat, but as long as they have water, most will be fine.
We could even build air-conditioned enclosures for delicate creatures like the Polar Bear. In truth, most creatures alive today are highly adaptable, and many living on Earth today already experience daily temperature swings greater than that 6°C claimed in your foremost authority’s model. In these parts, 15°C or more is not uncommon. Over the course of my life, I’ve experienced a temperature range of about 75°C, from -30°C to 45°C. When it was thirty below, I had a brush with the reaper, but when it was well over 40, I went for a bike ride and got a slurpy.
Finally, let me emphasize that I think we need some regulations to manage wildlife, and be good stewards of the land, but we can’t afford to bring our civilization to a standstill in the process. We can and do find a balance. Much work remains to be done, and I encourage you to continue your education to clear up the areas where you’ve been misled.
I think your heart is in the right place, but I’m not so sure about your head.
Robbie says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:02 am
Owen in Ga says: June 5, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Beavers don’t live in Africa, Oceania, South America, Antarctica, most of Asia. Humans do.
Termites are almost found everywhere on Earth, but you forgot to mention that there are 2750 species of them and they all live differently. How many species of humans are there? Is it natural that one species lives all over the globe? Humans invaded every piece of land you could possibly think of.
Please name another species which has done the same naturally without the help of humans. Just name one?
You see what we have done is not natural.
If it wasn’t in our nature to do it, we wouldn’t have done it, bur since we did it, it is in our nature to have done it — ergo, it is natural.
Either the infected body dies or the virus/bacteria-population is destroyed by the immune system of that body.
For humans on Earth it will be exactly the same. That’s natural.
You’ll have to go easy on Robbie, Owen — he’s a Malthusian, and because the human race hasn’t offed itself in remorse for being human, he’s feeling a bit peckish…
Robbie says:
Yes it’s true: In the past it was natural catastrophy that killed life on Earth, but today it is man doing the job very quickly and thoroughly too. Either by overhunting, habitat destruction and in the future by changing the climate.
You cannot provide one bit of evidence showing that humans are changing the planet’s climate, because there is no such evidence. Therefore, your comment is merely fact-free speculation. Making policy decisions based on “what if” conjectures is a fool’s errand.
Anything can be ‘justified’ by preceding it with: “What if…”. When you can provide hard evidence that human activity is changing the planet’s climate, you will probably be on TIME magazine’s cover, and in line for a Nobel peace prize. But until you can provide solid evidence that humans are changing the global climate, you are just bloviating. We need verifiable facts, not dreamy conjectures.
Smokey says: June 6, 2012 at 11:55 am
“You cannot provide one bit of evidence showing that humans are changing the planet’s climate, because there is no such evidence.”
Can you provide one bit of evidence showing that humans are NOT changing the planet’s climate, because there is such evidence?
Can you also provide one bit of evidence showing a respected climate scientist (Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, etc etc.) categorically saying that increase in CO2 won’t cause climate change especially warming?
If you can do that I will happily look into it and see if your evidence is correct.
So, Robbie, please share some of that evidence.
Robbie,
You apparently have zero understanding of the Scientific Method: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on those putting forth their CO2=CAGW conjecture, to provide testable, empirical evidence showing that human activity – specifically, human CO2 emissions – are changing the climate. They have utterly failed to provide any such evidence.
There is no evidence whatever showing that “carbon” has any effect on the planet’s temperature or climate. Scientific skeptics have repeatedly asked the alarmist crowd to provide evidence showing that X amount of CO2 causes Y amount to temperature rise. But there is no such evidence.
You are operating under the delusion that CO2 has any quantifiable effect. If it does, show your evidence. And by ‘evidence’ I mean testable, empirical evidence per the scientific method. Computer models are not evidence. Peer reviewed papers are not evidence. Evidence is testable, verifiable data.
Where is your evidence?
Robbie, every single organism on this planet is an “invasive species”. At some time it did not exist, then it did. Then, following programmed biological imperatives it set about populating the local environment, and then, if possible, the greater environment. It succeeded or failed. That is life.
Man is the most adaptable animal on the face of the earth (because he can control and use his local environment to a much greater extent than any other animal) and it therefore follows from a biological perspective that he will ‘invade’ as much of the planet as his control of the environment allows him to . Perfectly natural behaviour.
BTW, should we abandon space exploration on the basis that we are ‘invading’ another portion of our environment?
Smokey says: June 6, 2012 at 8:52 pm
“You are operating under the delusion that CO2 has any quantifiable effect. If it does, show your evidence. And by ‘evidence’ I mean testable, empirical evidence per the scientific method.”
Weren’t you the person who claimed (in an earlier discussion with Robbie, me myself and I) that the current rise in CO2 is caused by the MWP without giving one single source or “shred of evidence” for it? And I mean testable, empirical evidence per the scientific method. Please!
Here: Smokey says: May 11, 2012 at 2:31 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/08/letter-to-the-editor-a-wish-for-dr-michael-mann-to-clear-some-things-up-from-an-errant-psu-grad/
I had to believe your particular story that you wrote there, because that one was better than what has been published in the peer-reviewed literature so far.
And now you are demanding evidence from me that CO2 doesn’t cause warming while I gave you several quotes and sources in that thread that you were wrong about that. I am not going through that discussion again here. Sorry.
Robbie,
You are still avoiding the fact that scientific skeptics have nothing to prove. You are impotently trying to corner me into abandoning scientific skepticism, by demanding that I must provide evidence to, in effect, prove a negative.
That is not how the scientific method works: Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit. – “The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof.”
As to the belief that C02 produced by human activity is causing “unprecedented” global warming: the onus lies on those who say so. As to the proposition that there has been an alarming late 20th century spike in global temperatures: the onus lies on those who say so.
The onus is on you to provide direct, verifiable evidence showing that a rise in anthropogenic CO2 causes a quantifiable rise in global temperature. But you cannot provide any such evidence, because none exists. Thus, your belief in the evils of “carbon” ends at the conjecture stage. Your belief system is not a testable hypothesis, and it is certainly not a theory.
It is the climate alarmist crowd that claims the rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2 will lead to runaway global warming and climate disruption. But you are incapable of providing any real world evidence, per the scientific method, to support your conjecture. And the ultimate Authority — planet earth itself — is falsifying your CO2=CAGW belief system. I prefer to listen to what the planet is telling us, rather than listen to climate alarmist nonsense.
And you still need to get up to speed on the scientific method.
Smokey says:
June 7, 2012 at 11:38 am
Robbie,
You are still avoiding the fact that scientific skeptics have nothing to prove. You are impotently trying to corner me into abandoning scientific skepticism, by demanding that I must provide evidence to, in effect, prove a negative.
In Robbie’s World, asking him for proof of his hypothesis requires him to demand proof of the null.
Robbie, in the most basic terms, here’s the deal:
The Null (natural variation) is true until you prove it isn’t.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Good article, and good comments below it. For me, it is wise for us humans to remember our place. We also must remember that time and space are too big for us to condense into images that fit nicely in our daily lives. We cannot assume. We must keep in mind that life is fragile, but tenacious. We humans must not let our ego fool us into believing that we are important in the life of species, to the course of this planet, to energy balances that involve orders of magnitude more energy and more factors than we can ever hope to influence. We must keep ourselves humble, do what makes sense, not what seems grandiose and magnanimous. Grandiose and magnanimous typically lead to more harm than good. It is very important to keep in mind that, given only the natural order, all species are doomed. Of every 1,000 species that have ever existed on this planet, only one survives. Can it be considered a tragedy to lose one more? And (as pointed out in comments), let us never quite asking, “Where are the corpses?” as Mr. Eschenbach has pointed out.
The corpses, at least in the case of birds and mammals, are dead skins in museums – Dodo, Great Auk, Passenger Pigeons, a whole string of hawaiian Honey Creepers etc. Then for plants they are pressed specimens in herbaria, eg the Philip Island Glory Pea. We are losing species at a much higher rate, through habitat destruction, human-caused spread of invasives and diseases, and hunting (eg for rhino horn) than was the case before humans came to dominate the planet. It isn’t clear that huge numbers of species are at risk from climate change, but Yes, it is sad that species are going extinct on our watch (which they are continuing to do): for one thing, our children will not be able to enjoy them. This does not mean that climate change is the cause of current extinctions – that’s one possible factor, but in my view exaggerated. But there are substantial and undenible threats from human activity, to island floras and fauna especially, and we are losing distinctive creatures every year.