Guest opinion by Dr. Tim Ball |
Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis successfully, but inaccurately, present natural events as unnatural. It works, because most don’t know what is natural. They also exploit the public belief that change is gradual over long periods of time. Use of the word “belief” is deliberate, because it represents the philosophical, pseudo-religious basis for western science – Uniformitarianism. It applies both to climate change and extinction of species, creating the false understanding that they are not supposed to happen. If they do then, by default, it is unnatural and due to humans, who they consider unnatural. The 1990 Greenpeace Report on global warming says, CO2 is added to the atmosphere naturally and unnaturally. As Goethe said, “The unnatural – that too is natural.”
Most people are unaware that their view of the world is predetermined by where they were born, raised and educated. They are effectively indoctrinated and that makes it extremely difficult for them to see the world differently. They can’t imagine how anybody can have a different view of the world. As A.N. Whitehead said,
“It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.”
However, the philosophical view must be transitory because the science is never settled. New evidence forces new opinion.
Challenges to Uniformitarianism And Extinction; The Philosophical Debate
At the end of the 18th century, Bernard Kuhn and James Hutton recorded evidence of a recent ice age in the European Alps. Louis Agassiz, observed similar evidence in North America. A paper he gave to an 1837 conference began the overthrow of established geology. Agassiz was derided at the conference and responded by taking delegates out to the mountains and showing them the evidence. Even today, most can’t imagine and therefore accept, that a glacier, larger than the current Antarctic glacier in area, covered over half of North America just 18,000 years ago. After Agassiz, the philosophy of geology and overall western view of the world changed. Neptunism, the belief that the landscape was shaped by the biblical flood, changed to Uniformitarianism, the result of slow processes over long periods.
A debate, including in the climate community, raged in the late 1980s and early 1990s involving the replacement of Uniformitarianism by Chaos Theory and Cyclic Theory. Communist block scientists said climate was the result of the interaction of multiple cycles creating a net climate. The west, particularly the US, was pushing chaos theory. Western media interpreted this as a political divide of the Cold War. It wasn’t. It was an intellectual divide within climate science, that continues today. Stephen Jay Gould introduced another option he called Punctuated Equilibrium. This was Uniformitarianism with periodic interruptions by catastrophic events. There was discussion at the time about equilibrium and whether the global system is a transitory or a non-transitory system. That is, if pushed from equilibrium, would the global system return to it or establish a new equilibrium. This implies there are tipping points.
Gould, in his book, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, surreptitiously implied that Darwin’s claim of evolutionary expansion with ever-increasing speciation, the familiar tree of life (Figure 1), was incorrect. The book argues that this is contradicted by the multitude of creatures found in the Burgess Shales. It suggested there was an “explosion of life”, followed by a gradually reduction of species through extinction, in other words a decreasing speciation.
The Burgess Shales is described as evidence of the “Cambrian Explosion”. It is a remarkable deposit because, almost uniquely, creatures without skeletons were preserved. The fossil record is problematic because, apart from soft-bodied creatures not surviving, it is estimated that a few million in a species is required for one to appear in the fossil record.
Figure 1: Darwin’s “Tree of Life”
Then there is the Coelacanth believed, from the fossil record, to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, yet found alive in 1938. Gould’s implication is that extinction is natural. A large initial number of species is reduced, \over time.
Extinction: The Environmental View
Environmentalism assumes extinction and climate change are unnatural. They claim both are occurring at unnatural rates because of human activities. But to determine the human impact, you must first know the natural condition. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was charged with measuring human causes of climate change, but that is impossible unless you know the natural situation.
We don’t know how many plant or animals species exist. A 2011 estimate says approximately 8.7 million, 6.5 on land and 2.2 in the ocean. The problem is, this is ± 1.3 million. Over the last 10 years over a million new species were discovered and that’s only part of what remains. According to PLoS Biology, a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.” Here is one example. Ironically, it was an expedition to “find out about climate change”. Led by Dr. Chris Bowler it created the headline, “One million New Plankton Species Found.” Leader Dr Bowler said, “It’s the first time that anyone’s done this expedition looking specifically for plankton life, and that’s why we found so many”.
Some say these are minuscule creatures and therefore the number is not impressive or consequential, however, many large animals are regularly discovered.
• 2005 report, “Scientists have discovered a new monkey species in the mountains of East Africa.”
• 2007 report the headline, “New Animal And Plant Species Found In Vietnam”
• 2010 report said, “30 unknown species found in Ecuador’s highland forests by a team of U.S. and Ecuadorian researchers,”
• 2010 report said, Over 200 New Species Found In Papua New Guinea. The lead scientist said, there are, “large areas of New Guinea that are pretty much unexplored biologically.
• 2012 report “New species of monkey identified in Africa”
It is also estimated that of those claimed extinct, one-third are found later. WUWT recently related the story from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) of how the Royal Society used a false extinction claim, in its zeal to link it to human caused climate change.
One of the major links of numbers and rate of extinction to human caused climate change claims, originate from the work of E.O Wilson, an honorary Board member of the Suzuki Foundation, according to the 2003 Annual Report.
Wilson’s idea of extinction is based on false assumptions and simplistic mathematical estimates.
“A good proxy for the rate of extinction is the rate of growth in energy used by the human population. In other words, extinction rates are increasing in step with the product of population growth times the growth in affluence.”
The trouble is it isn’t happening. Wilson began with a false reconstruction of species extinction linking it to human population as Figure 1 illustrates.
Figure 1: Graph based on Wilson’s mathematical model.
Wilson claims 27,000 species go extinct every year, or 3 per hour. David Suzuki toured Canada visiting schools and presenting this number as real. I challenged him to name even one of them. I also suggested a daily obituary on his web page listing the 72 per day. Not one name was forthcoming.
Wilson came up with these figures by assuming the number of species in one square mile of rainforest and then estimating how much rainforest was lost each year. Incorrectly, he applied this tropical species loss to the entire world and then predicted 22 percent of all species will be extinct by 2022. If you don’t know how many there are, you can’t prove or disprove this claim. Regardless, threat of extinction is a powerful emotional weapon in the environmentalists arsenal.
There are mass extinctions, some apparently random, like the demise of the dinosaurs related to the asteroid event 65 million years ago. This discovery seemed to support Gould’s hypothesis. Others appear more cyclical, such as those associated with polar reversals. Then there are those caused by climate change. The most recent example is the post Pleistocene glaciation extinction. Some blame humans for this extinction. There are two major problems with this claim. First, there were very few people surviving as hunter-gatherers. Second, pressure on wild animal stocks was reduced as humans switched to sedentary agriculture and domestication of animals.
Environmentalists assume that humans are causing extinctions, either directly, by over hunting, indirectly through habitat destruction. They never consider the number of species that benefit from changed habitat, or species created, directly or indirectly, by human actions. They consider those humans create unnatural. Extension of the idea that humans are destroying their habitat raises the fascinating question of whether a species has ever brought about its own extinction. What happens if the Dutch Elm Beetle kills off all the Elm trees?
Facts And Opinions
People’s view of the world is created by the time, culture, and beliefs existing when they were born and educated. To them, it is the real world and the truth, based on the facts they have at the time. The current western view is still Uniformitarianism. Evidence accumulates that this is not the case but people are unaware of the evidence, choose to ignore it, or attack those who entertain its impact on their belief.
I admonished a student for failing to form an opinion in an essay. I didn’t think I had enough evidence, was the reply. I explained, reductio ad absurdum, that if true, nobody should ever have an opinion. What happens is that you form an opinion based on good research and available evidence. However, if further evidence is obtained, you must be prepared to assess its impact on your opinion. This, effectively, describes the unadulterated scientific method. If you simply ignore the evidence, then you are opinionated. Unfortunately, all this is complicated by politics that selects facts to confirm an opinion, the antithesis of science. Sadly, climate change and extinction are now fundamental parts of political agendas. The deceptive political agenda works because western societies are educated to believe that current climate change and extinctions are unnatural.
Thanks, Dr. Ball. As always, your articles are thought-provoking.
I think humans are as natural as any other species, we would not be natural had we been imported into this world, not evolved out of it.
We share the same carbon-based nature.
I feel it insulting, frivolous and wrong in eqaul parts to call western scientists “religious”, where every poll ever conducted shows that 99% are not religious; and the only people in the western world who happen to be religious to the degree of insanity happen to sit on the US White House science comittee of all places, and of course the evangelical/conservative pitchfork wielding crowd they serve…
What do you have against pitchforks?
Do you consider socialism/communisism a religion? Your 99.9 percent would be reversed if you did.
In Scotland there are quite a number of insects which are now confined to higher elevations and in some glens in the central and eastern highlands that were likely widespread in UK as the last glacial retreated, but whilst the land bridge to the continent was still intact, and will likely go extinct with a moderate further warming. However I know of none that are endemic, all being much more widespread in Europe both at lower elevations and lower latitudes. These relict populations do not seem to occur so much in the western highlands, even in the extreme north, and it looks like this is due to the mild and wet atlantic winds that take the edge off necessary winter cold. All such influences are much more subtle than we generally suspect.
Do these separated populations tend to develop into subspecies?
Wonderful column, well thought out and beautifully written. Tim Ball is a true scientist — which of course puts him in a precarious position in today’s academia.
biggest problem…..definition of species keeps changing
We are calling too many things a new species…that are not really
[Snip. “beckleybud” sockpuppet. Banned. ~mod.]
The cycle of species formation and species extinction does bear some resemblance to the creation and extinction of enterprises in capitalism. New enterprises spring up when new, disruptive technologies have been invented, which results in large demand and business opportunity. At first, any start-up with a reasonable product will thrive, but in the long term, only the most efficient ones will prevail. Examples are car or computer manufacturers.
In evolution, the most striking example is the ‘Cambrian Explosion’. This was driven by Nature’s invention of nervous systems that produced larger organisms with more complex behaviors. This created novel ecological niches, which only increased in numbers as the ever-growing number of species created novel food chains. In the long term, however, more efficient predators displaced less efficient ones etc.
(Human evolution seems to have been a more recent explosion, followed by extinction, with the caveat that many human strains that are no longer extant may not have been true species but merely races that could have been merged back into the dominant H. sapiens strain, as has been shown for Neanderthals.)
The Cambrian Explosion shows us the sheer pace that evolution is capable of when opportunity permits. It seems that, during most periods, species evolve at a much slower pace, which is likely dictated by slow changes in the nature of their environment and ecological niche. Most of the time, therefore, selection mostly works to preserve the fitness of the well-adapted species, just as in a mature market good management is more important to a company’s survival than leadership in innovation.
Uncoupling ancient climate change from biological evolution cannot be done. Only when Oxygen evolved to sufficient levels from photosynthetic organisms, was a more efficient means of energy production available to complex multicellular organisms.
[Snip. “beckleybud” sockpuppet. Banned. ~mod.]
Thomas Jefferson clearly understood rigorous education leading to critical thought and freedom to think and speak were fundamental to preserving Democracy against the other forms of governance you mention.
Today’s Progressives have a cure for that, its called Common Core.
BTW since hunans are part of the natural world then AGW, if it were true is also natural.
So what’s the problem?
Reductio ad absurdum.
Given enough time, everything becomes extinct. Such is the nature of the eventual decay of the universes. Immortality, for any species, at least in physical form, is therefore impossible….I’m leaving the door open for afterlife…
And likewise, those who subscribe to a Goldilocks world scenario, where porridge should be just the right temperature, all the time, exhibit such a fundamental lack of understanding of Nature as to be be laughable…if they were not so tragically misinformed…
Entropy always wins.
given enough time, our sun balloons into red giant phase and turns this wonderous blue sphere waterworld into a sterile cinder block.
Climate change is very real. For example, the average climate of the northern hemisphere is so cold as to cause the ground to be buried under a thousand feet of ice. The cycle of glacier on/glacier off takes place every several hundred thousand years and can be clearly seen in many ways. Even as the science is settled that glaciation has taken place, the causes are still undergoing vigorous debate.
With respect to the idea that humans are causing harmful changes to the climate at this very moment, I am waiting for some peer-reviewed papers that propose what the optimum climate is for our biosphere. The first question that would naturally flow would be where is our current climate and trend in relation to this finding.
Strangely, nobody seems interested in this vital comparison. Not so strangely, the solutions that are frequently demanded in the most urgent voice, all converge on a socialist worldview: statism, bigger government, higher taxes, less personal liberty. That bigger picture tells me all that I need to know about “climate science”.
It has always been about Socialism; NWO; Agenda 21 or whatever…
Some of the quotes of Maurice Strong that set up the UN IPCC:…
.
-It was never about the “environment”, it was and always has been about imposing global wealth redistribution and collapsing western industrial society.
“Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions.”
-”Facing Down Armageddon: Environment at a Crossroads,” essay by Maurice Strong in World Policy Journal, Summer, 2009
“If we don’t change, our species will not survive… Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
– Maurice Strong, September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine
“Population must be stabilized, and rapidly. ”
“Environment must be integrated into every aspect of our economic policy and decision-making as well as the culture and value systems which motivate economic behaviour.”
“We must act on the precautionary principle guided by the best evidence available.”
-Maurice Strong ,opening statement to: the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 June 1992
Summary: Back in the beginning a few little molecules stood hand in hand. Now the chemistry of life is more complex. All is natural.
I used to think that fire and tool making set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. I was 10 years old.
Now, half a century later, I think that what really sets us apart is this capacity to store information outside of our genes. We have broken free of evolution by force of will power. But our natural origin as carbon-based beings remains despite our new silicon brains.
Thanks in part to Carl Sagan and others that evolve scientific thought.
we are never more than 1 generation away fro returning to our hunter-gatherer caveman roots.
what makes you think homo sapien has stopped evolving? as we remake our environment to remove selection pressures (adversity), we alter the fitness landscape allowing genetic combinations to propagate that otherwise may have been selected against in a more brutish time.
And they vote.
George Carlin hit a home run on this topic stating: “Over 90%, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They’re extinct…..WE didn’t kill them all…”
[Snip. Banned. (beckleybud sockpuppet) ~mod.]
So this is what passes for credible opinion on this blog. New heights of stupidity being scaled here.
Just saying “No it isn’t” is not a counter-argument.
It’s a Monty Python sketch.
So you know: The K-P (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary is now believed to be 66 Mya.
They say they are an endangered species, but I think that there are just too many penguins:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/45173438?source=wapi&referrer=kh.google.com
(and not enough port-a-potties)
Sarc?
Elsewhere Gould demostrated that the flaw in uniformitarianism as proposed by Lyell concerned rate. Constancy of process is fine but constancy of rate is not. And that is where too many climate scientists come unstuck today.
Claims regarding species extinction numbers have routinely been wildly inflated beyond actual observations, whether we are talking about CAGW alarmism or ideas about our evolutionary past. Such claims are typically based on models and assumptions that fit the theory, rather than on actual observations. Could the models be true in some cases? Sure. But we should allow the actual observations to inform our assessment of how much stock to put into such models, not the other way around.
As I’ve said before, the flaw in Wilson’s model is that just because you find a new species in every X hectares doesn’t mean the species can or does only exist in that particular plot.
Suppose that every time you go to a new Irish pub you run across an average of two new family surnames that you’ve never met before (a McMeetin and an O’Really), Under Wilson’s model, every time a pub burns down, two entire Irish family names go extinct. That this logical absurdity went unquestioned for so long is truly troubling, as it implies that the fear-mongering, apocalyptic world view has short-circuited rational thought in an entire field of science.
I think we’re going to have a large species explosion, not a collapse, for the simple reason that all our cities are becoming isolated habitats that can serve as “island” refuge for a bewildering array of species transported from around the globe, both intentionally and accidentally. We’re also constantly introducing species into alien environments, so non-indigenous plants and animals are ending up everywhere. Since these are effectively isolated from significant interbreeding with their relations on other continents, they will eventually speciate.
“it is estimated that a few million in a species is required for one to appear in the fossil record.”
How could they even come up with such an estimate? Have there been any empirical studies don on the conditions needed for fossilization? Empirical studies of how long the process takes? Without this information it’s just a SWAG (stupid wild assed guess) not an estimate.
It’s estimated from character, distribution, preservation, and discovery/recovery. An estimate of an estimate of an estimate of an estimate. I prefer to distinguish between science and other philosophies. That is to acknowledge what is known, unknown, and imperceptible. Preferably where science has a utilitarian emphasis. Unfortunately, I am in the minority. The pattern matchers control the mainstream. Concepts such as chaos and risk management are not well received by the general public and are therefore unprofitable or less profitable.
1:10^6 was simply pulled out the air. There is no way to validate that number.
“It’s estimated from character, distribution, preservation, and discovery/recovery.”
In order to estimate the “a few million in a species is required for one to appear in the fossil record” from those factors, you would need empirical evidence as to how the factors you mention affect fossil creation rates. Otherwise you just pulled a number out of your posterior sphincter.
Joel O’Bryan, MattS:
I have not suggested a number. Only a conceptual hypothesis, which is suitable for philosophical, not scientific, debate. Well, also for risk management purposes, if only by necessity of reasonable adaptation.
It has been my observation that people will readily conflate science and philosophy when it suits their purpose. I have no intention to corrupt scientific inquiry by shifting it to a universal domain in time and space, and subordinating deductive to inductive reasoning. My interests in science is utilitarian, which is distinguished from other philosophies principally by the former’s constrained frame of reference. The scientific method of observation and reproduction approaches a limit of an unambiguous interpretation. Otherwise, it is not scientific, but philosophic, which may one day change classifications. For example, the theoretical a-tom, which was later cited as the atom, which was later reduced to smaller particles yet.
Incidentally, I think the scientific method, specifically the constrained frame of reference, is not a coincidental development, but is a direct result of the limitations imposed by a semi-stable chaotic system. The only question is what is a suitable frame in time and space which will yield accurate outcomes. The accuracy of forecasting a chaotic process is proportional to its characterization and modeling, which necessarily limits human beings inside the system, with a finite perspective, to an increasingly limited frame. Everything else is theoretical or philosophical.
Anyway, no number, but rather a conceptual construct.
Current issue of Smithsonian magazine has an idiotic article about wild Pacific salmon, repeating the “dozens of species go extinct every day” nonsense.
Thanks to Dr. Ball for providing material for an informed rebuttal – though they won’t print it. Perhaps they will become more discriminating in their propaganda, though. This article was written by a “poet and science essayist.” Ugh!
The system is chaotic by virtue that it is incompletely characterized and unwieldy. The significance of this is that semi-stable processes can accurately be estimated over indefinite intervals or frames (i.e. time and space). The feature of science which distinguishes it from other philosophies, including its predecessor “philosophy of nature”, is not a procedural advantage per se, but that the scientific method enforces a constraint in time and space (i.e. frame). Unfortunately, the uniformitarian principle, as well as consensus (i.e. social) science, and a related principle “faith”, shift the frame to a universal scope, with inductive reasoning and circumstantial evidence to support its conclusions, thereby conflating philosophy and science, and notably corrupting the latter. This has happened for three reasons: wealth, control, and fear. The same reasons it occurred with traditional faiths. Traditional faiths introduced a philosophy of morality established in a universal frame and later an extra-universal frame. Modern faiths produced a similar effect through statistics or models, and de-emphasis of natural variability as well as stability.
Interesting and another example of how messed up the scientific system is.