Guest essay by Andy May
The late Dr. Michael Crichton was wonderful writer. In 2003 he presented a wonderful essay in San Francisco equating environmentalism to religion. Nobel prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaver makes the same point in a presentation here. In religion man is meant to be saved from the consequences of his sins. In the environmentalist religion the world was a wonderful, beautiful Eden until man and his technology came along. Man has eaten the apple and lost Eden. Now we must give up our “evil” technology and go back to nature, otherwise all is lost.
As Crichton notes:
“There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up … And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly, the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. … The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated…”
Environmentalists are horrible at predictions. We haven’t run out of oil, millions haven’t starved due to overpopulation, half of all species have not gone extinct, temperatures have not risen in over 18 years, total Antarctic ice and sea ice are increasing and on and on. But, it’s a religion, facts don’t matter. The bearded idiot on the street doesn’t put down his “end of the world is near” sign just because we pass the date he predicted we would all die. He just changes the date of destruction and carries on.
As Dr. Crichton explains, DDT is not a carcinogen, it did not cause birds to die and the people who banned it knew these facts. But, they banned it anyway and as a result tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, died. This was because of religion, not science.
The “Church of Global Warming” is probably the worst sect. The world has warmed from 288 Kelvin to 288.8 Kelvin in the last 135 years and not at all since 2002 according to the UAH satellite data. This is insignificant and very normal variability. The world is greener, food crops better and larger than ever, fewer people are hungry or in poverty, life expectancy is longer than ever before, and we have more arable land. There is no evidence that global warming is either man-made or dangerous and there is no evidence that carbon dioxide is either the sole cause of the minor warming we have seen or the dominant cause. We can show it is a greenhouse gas like water vapor, but that is about it.
We must get the religion out of environmentalism. We must get it back on a scientific basis. Too many organizations are simply lying, pure and simple. It started with DDT and has only gotten worse since. Science, especially environmental science, is becoming more and more politicized and this could have disastrous consequences.
Note: this post accidentally went up without Andy May’s byline. He is the author, not me. -Anthony Watts
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The article is a sermon to the converted. From childhood I was taught the sanctity of observable data, the repeatability of experiments and consistency of outcomes. As an adult I learned that computers are high-speed morons. They will produce what they are programed to produce.
I like the majority here share you frustration with the heretics.
For what I think is the origin of the term “true believer”, Eric Hoffer with “The True Believer” 1951. An interesting essay on the religiofication of mass movements, and the similarity of the thought processes of the fanatics of various religious and political stripes. The content of the movements changes, but the syndrome is very similar. James Hansen as Trofim Lysenko, anyone?
It also involves a heavy dose of blaming others and not taking any measure of personal responsibility for direct or indirect mistakes. That fits with the pattern of shifting emphasis, targets, and labels. Recall the famous “who could have known” epilogue from then Rep. Markey or the slip up by Sen. Wirth.
” tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, died.”
Mostly people of color. which is exactly what they wanted. Environmentalism is the last socially acceptable form of racism.
Environmentalism is the last socially acceptable form of racism.
Or Imperialism. Supremacy…etc.
Next up is the light pollution tax followed by the noise pollution tax on lawn mowers. The ongoing formula tactic is a staged process without full disclose of the end objectives to the public victims at large. The Hollywood edgy formula also plays a part as the advance troupe.
I was wondering if NOAA was losing a little of their religion. They recently revised their El Nino numbers to once again show the 2014-2015 was a weak El Nino. They originally called it an El Nino and then when Karl introduced his pause buster changes the El Nino disappeared. Now it is back.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
An essay with this title is written about every 3 months, or so. Yes: environmentalism is like a religion. No it’s not a religion. UK enviros are the most Godless of any political tendency here, so a poll of UK Green Party members showed about 18 months ago. The author of this piece fundamentally misunderstands modern environmentalists. It is not a nature-loving movement. It is a human-hating movement. They are more like hell-fire priests or hair-shirted, self-flagellating monks than ‘nature loving pagans’. Except they want to ‘whip us’ for our ‘sins’, not themselves.
But they want to profit from it while running a sterilization campaign for acceptable thought and voting. This involves manipulation of Boards and Commissions and all related funded positions therein.
The question is not what “they” do, but who “they” are.
Words have meaning. “Environmentalist” means one and only one thing: “a person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment.” One who bangs on about climate change (aka Global Warming) and its political, economic and social implications is not acting as an environmentalist.
Climate change is not about protection of the environment. Climate change is about thought control, protection of the economic status quo and political totalitarianism. Climate change activists are social engineers, not environmentalists.
The meaning of a words change over time. Prior to 1968 (Before the Club of Rome) they called themselves conservationists. They went to long walks and proposed nature reserves. Back then, I think most people saw them as odd but charming people. Then Club of Rome doctrine decreed economic growth bad per se, and human beings the enemy within. The new environmentalists saw energy as the most important driver of real economic growth. We’ve had a war on energy since resisted by Jill Public’s desire for cheap energy. First targeting nuclear power. In the West, making nuclear power almost impossible to develop in any economic sense. The enviros preferences: anti-energy, anti-GMO, anti- “Big” Agri, pro-organic farming, pro-regulation. Modern environmentalism became a cult of economic inefficiency. The opposite approach to what I’d expect from an old style 1960s conservationist. Inefficiency makes waste and conservationists wish to conserve, not waste. How did these new environmentalists triumph over the old conservationists? The trashing of old style conservationism is so complete that the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) formally opposes nuclear power and supports avian-slicing wind power. Money, money money. Lots of money funding extreme anti-human enviros. The said enviros spent all their time propagandizing, lobbying, engaging in gesture politics for the media, fund-raising, and suing, or threatening to sue. All the while pretending to care about conservation. All that money directed by up to 1300 funds and foundations, mostly in the USA. Several of those funds with asset under management of ~$6bn.
I see no religion. I see a political movement dedicated to anti-humanism in the literal sense. They care about as much for the “environment” as a general during war. It’s the ground they move on, and their battlefield. Their enemy is other people.
I think it is a collective psychosis with a lot of god complex. The same happens in any religion, but not all religious people are psychotic. So it is very similar to religions. I call it the imaginary opening neurosis and the invaded opening psychosis.
Men and women share the same brain, so we can all have an opening that lets some things in and feels invaded by other things. In the case of imaginary openings, it seems that the only real feeling they can have is when they feel invaded. So eventually, all the imaginary openings feel invaded. Anything manly will more likely be invasive. The hockey stick of warming that rises all of a sudden in the recent era seems perfect to invade the collective climatic opening.
If we look at the worst crimes in history. A lot were committed by people who felt invaded in their national opening, spiritual opening, social opening… The Nazi national opening was invaded by Jews a few decades ago, at least this is what Nazis felt. And the Nazis thought that Jews had to die, this a common pattern. In religions, if somebody invades the collective spiritual opening, they either have to die(extremist view) or they won’t have the eternal life(pacifist view). But still the same pattern.
The media do not help. They are a bit like pimps, they can only sell openings that are ready to feel invaded on demand. And when men with invaded openings commit a crime, they often try to turn it in a crime committed by somebody without openings.
These days, it seems that the new religions are of the pseudo-scientific kind governed by people with intellectual openings. Climate and nutrition “science” have a lot of offenders. They often think that if they let the opinions of the best experts in their intellectual opening, they are the ones who will give birth to the next generation of science. These people are probably already in a psychosis. So you can’t just tell them the truth. I don’t know how the Occident will get out of that mess. And it is probably not the first time it happened.
So, good luck with that dickhead vs cunthead election in the US. I just hope that one day, rational thinking will make a comeback.
I don’t blame the environmentalists. They have always been a totalitarian-leaning, “the end justifies whatever means necessary” lot, and mostly following misguided idealism.
I blame the so-called scientists being led down the noble cause corruption path with the carrot of grant$ as they sell their integrity and ethics. Then the real shady ones like Mann, McNutt, Holdren, and Schmidt get their foothold, willing to sell out completely for prestige and $.
I’m exceedingly tired of the “environmentalism is religion” canard. It’s an overgeneralization, it’s divisive, it’s insulting, and most of all it’s an egregious lie.
I am an environmentalist, have been for most of my 67 years. I am not a human hater, I am not a nature worshipper, I am not a racist, I am not a true believer. I am an environmentalist, a person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment.
I am also a scientist. I work with data, evidence, theory and hypotheses. Belief and religion are not a part of my world view.
This constant drum beat of environmentalism as religion periodically drives me away from WUWT. It casts the contents of this blog as ignorant, biased, irrational and unscientific. It makes me question what I read here.
Environmentalism is no more religion than is climate science. Both are based on research, data and the scientific method.
Environmentalism is not restricted to large international organizations that capitalize on lurid headlines to raise funds to support their bloated bureaucracies. Environmentalists are individuals who work to conserve, preserve and restore natural habitat and species from degradation from human growth and exploitation. This is not religion, this is not faith-based, this is clear, cold data based research and activism.
Equating environmentalism with alarmist Global Warming is absurd. The social forces that promote scare-mongering over slight changes in the fiction of global average surface temperature have nothing to do with environmentalism.
I see far more religiosity in the responses to this one post than I do in a month of interaction with fellow environmentalists.
Okay Then:
Explain 350.org and why its resistance to pipelines is scientifically sound.
Explain “The Science Guy” Bill Nye’s absurd proclamations.
Explain “the science is settled” from the US President.
Explain the science deceptions clearly evident in the ClimateGate emails from Phil Jones and his coconspirators.
Explain why large solar PV arrays in areas like New England and Northern Europe can be justified.
Explain why the US Govt’s social costs of carbon study-analyses ignore CO2 fertilization effects.
Science my butt.
Michael,
You’re lying to the easiest person to fool… yourself.
350.org is not an environmental organization
“The Science Guy” Bill Nye’s is not an environmentalist.
the US President is not an environmentalist
Phil Jones and his coconspirators are not environmentalists
Solar PV arrays in areas like New England and Northern Europe are necessary replacements for finite fossil fuels.
the US Govt’is not an environmental organization.
Michael Lewis, your response sounds familiar. Oh yes, here is the same type response in recent news.
http://santamariatimes.com/news/world/saudi-arabia-s-top-cleric-says-iranians-are-not-muslims/article_94b47b8e-8314-507c-bbf0-d1937c790183.html
Let me try this again for Michael Lewis. Where have I heard your response recently? Oh yes, here it is. http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2016/09/06/ml-saudi-iran/
“Let me try this again for Michael Lewis. Where have I heard your response recently? Oh yes, here it is. http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2016/09/06/ml-saudi-iran/”
This is precisely the kind of irrelevant and meaningless comment that gives WUWT a dodgy reputation.
@Michael A Lewis, who said “Environmentalism is no more religion than is climate science. Both are based on research, data and the scientific method.”:
It’s very difficult to avoid thinking in this way when very smart people (e.g. Randall Munroe) continue to loudly & publicly espouse their belief in “science” and “data” that have long been debunked with actual facts
(e.g. [ http://xkcd.com/1732/ ]), whether Mann, et al. like it or not. Since the data are there for all to see, and since this man cannot possibly be to “dumb” or “stupid” to understand it, the only logical alternatives are that he has ignored facts in the face of belief, or hasn’t bothered to check the facts in favor of a belief.
Either could EASILY be defined as a “religion.”
It is important to use language carefully, and “environmentalism” is a term with a range of meanings. As Theodore Roosevelt noted, and originated the term, there is a “lunatic fringe” that attaches itself to many worthy causes. TR was referring to his own nominal supporters with that term.
In one sense, almost everyone is an “environmentalist”, in the sense of caring about the environment. The lunatic fringe commonly referred to as greens, on the other hand, treat all things done by humans as a bad thing that must be minimised or eliminated. Reducing “pollution” past the point where it has no effect on the environement is an act of worship, not a cost-benefit analysis.
That “lunatic fringe” of 100 years ago are now the mainstream today. Look at the BILLION dollar advocacy industry, where increasingly money is the objective not the solutions.
The Sierra Club,Greenpeace,Earth First and so on who have been caught committing crimes to further their Utopia religion.
Taking in potfulls of money to support an advocacy position is not restricted to Greenpeace, Sierra Club and Earth First! (EF! by the way do not take in potfulls of money. They can barely sustain their own single publication month to month.) The Democrat/Republican Parties are masters at this game.
Once an organization detours down the road of expediency in fund-raising, ideology steps out the window and succumbs to gravity. Money becomes the reason d’etre, and the cause is lost in the spreadsheet. This happens in any organization, large or small, environmental, political of scientific. Money may not be the root of all evil, but it is branch and stem.
As an environmentalist, I am a scientist, an atheist and an anarchist. I don’t do belief, I don’t do coercion and I don’t do politics. I stand up for what I stand on. I resist much, obey little. I am the president of my local chapter of NIMBYs R Us.
Environmentalism doesn’t have to be a form of religion.
Unfortunately almost all of the big name environmentalists do suffer from that delusion.
I’m unaware of these “big-name” environmentalists. There’s a plethora of big names out there, but none of them qualify in my Oxford English Dictionary as an environmentalist!
Michael A. Lewis
September 14, 2016 at 8:45 am
Equating environmentalism with alarmist Global Warming is absurd. The social forces that promote scare-mongering over slight changes in the fiction of global average surface temperature have nothing to do with environmentalism.
Agreed! And I’m an Environmentalist in your sense of the term, too, and have practiced it even in my own lifestyle for at least 40 years. But the problem is that the term “Environmentalism” has now been usurped by a Controllist Propaganda Operation which intentionally changes the practical meaning of the term to its own ends of Control, while trying to pretend and convey that it still means what it used to mean.
It’s an old tactic in general, whereby people also fooled themselves because they did not understand that “words do not carry meaning around on their backs.” Hence a lot of confusing Philosophy about “The Good, Justice, Reality, Knowledge” and so on. Words are, after all, only sounds, appearances, sensations, or anything else used to try to communicate something, eventually probably merging even into art, nonsense, and acts of brute power and violence, depending on what one’s meaning of what a “word” is in practice.
But most currently the confusion has been turned into an intentional tactic for the benefit essentially of the total domination of other people. Charles Krauthammer calls it “Rhetoric over Reality” while I call it “Perception is Reality Delusionalism” to emphasize that it involves the creation of Delusions to which many people are susceptible.
The current Propaganda Op operates such that: Means=Ends=Thought Control=Totalitarianism.
So when people try to tell me that I’m not an Environmentalist if I don’t believe/in or do x, I try to show them that they are wrong or not really Environmentalists, or say, “I don’t want to be your kind of “Environmentalist” then try to explain why and why I’ve done more to do what they say they want to do than they have. – In the past I’ve also been a member of several well known but no longer Environmental Organizations.
These people usually don’t get it, but at least it shuts them up for a while. I got one guy, up front and personal, to almost break into tears as he turned-tail and exited my Cabin while trying to protest in support of his own “Environmental Record”. He didn’t learn anything except maybe to stop trying to mess with me. I mostly shut up another person up close and personal – it at least drove her to finally claim that CO2-Climate Science “doesn’t make any Predictions” – but she might be capable of learning something about it now that she’s retired from the US Forest Service. Hope springs eternal.
But making their use of “Environmentalism” analogous to the practice of a Religion can help to perhaps inform other people listening. As a simple example, if we are D’niers, aren’t they Believers according to their own usage? And hasn’t The Pope even incorporated *CO2*-“Climate Change” into his own Religion?
But, “It’s never over.” – George Shultz on Politics in Washington, DC.
The pollution nonsense began in the early 80’s. Back then I had a environmental bureaucrat tell me than the pollution levels were over the limit from the non-contact cooling water being discharged. The source was the city drinking water and was identical (and over the limits) when testing. I applied for an abatement and was told I probably would not succeed. During the in shop inspection I included in the paperwork a single sheet with a single test more than 100 times the pollution level being disputed. When questioned I said “Oh, that should not be in there, I was just curious, that is the test on the coffee we are both drinking”.
I got the abatement but when the CEO (an old WWII fighter pilot) got wind of what I had done and viewed the single test results, he blew a gasket. “How dare that kid to test my GD coffee!!! I laid low for a while.
Once the Progressive Left killed off God as a means of social control, they had to fill the void of Catholic guilt with something.
So they took Genesis, painted it day-glo green, and changed God to Gaea. Then they sent the leeches out to collect and trade on the new ‘sin’.
Enter the modern ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ of C02 extortionists.
Randall Munroe is a roboticist and cartoonist, not an environmentalist.
@Michael A. Lewis: Does it take an environmentalist to “truly understand” the science of climate change, then? This is the whole point of the article (and many of the others you claim force you away from this site periodically): those who CLAIM the title “environmentalist” have in fact hijacked it in the name of their “religion,” just as the National Socialists hijacked a perfectly benign symbol of benevolence & good fortune — which had been used as such for thousands of years — & in the span of barely two decades, turned it into the single most hated symbol on the planet.
“True” environmentalists such as yourself will have a hard time trying to win the title back by ignoring this basic fact: when someone says “environmentalist,” it invariably implies a belief in CAGW.
It doesn’t take a scientist to understand the facts don’t agree with them. It doesn’t take a linguist to understand the the term is being misused in the name of beliefs &/or politics. It also doesn’t take a genius to see that just because you’re one of the few “good” or “true” or “real environmentalists,” the word has been co-opted in a way you’re going to have to learn to deal with.
If the word “environmentalists” is co-opted and used to bash those who are not environmentalists, then it’s happening here on WUWT. I find that unfortunate and antithetical to the spirit of this site.
I don’t have to deal with it. I resist the bastardization of language every bit as much as I resits destruction of the natural world.
‘If the word “environmentalists” is co-opted and used to bash those who are not environmentalists, then it’s happening here on WUWT.’
Well, not quite. It’s reflected on this site, but the justification for the characterization occurred in the mainstream community of environmentalists as they became C02 crusaders.
I live in eco-central Northwest, and I find very few naturalists/environmentalists (whose number I once counted myself among), who haven’t simply adapted C02-phobia as their primary doctrine. So the word hasn’t been bastardized, the community it applies to has been corrupted. If you happen to be intellectually and philosophically separate from that community, then more power to you, but it’s your former fellows that have stigmatized the association.
Hell, I barely hear Greenpeace even bringing up whales anymore.
Michael,
That’s a fair point. The word “environmentalist” has lost its true meaning. Most people are environmentalists in the original meaning of the word. Everyone wants clean air, clean water and to live in a healthy environment.
The religion analogy only truly applies to the zealous environmental political activists … I like to call them “Enviromarxists” because they use environmentalism as the rationale for government control of the economy. These people seek to totally eliminate pollution irrespective of the cost, because they think the supply of other people’s money (OPM) is unlimited.
Dave, thank you for your analysis and data. My colleagues at work were environmentalists and I dealt with environmental special interest groups on a daily basis. I had nothing but the utmost respect for their dedication and their mission. My only problem was the unwillingness to reevaluate from time to time, within a global perspective, the marginal costs of their goals against the marginal benefits. Spending X% of GDP with infinitesimal benefits makes little sense given all other public needs.
A final note to Michael A. Lewis, who said: “I don’t have to deal with it. I resist the bastardization of language every bit as much as I resits destruction of the natural world.”
My friend, you don’t get to decide what the rest of the world thinks of the label with which you paint yourself, nor can your resistance against the “bastardization” of language hope to be successful in the face of everyone else (allegedly) speaking your native tongue.
As Exhibit B, I present the words “forte,” and “forte,” both perfectly good words found in English language dictionaries everywhere, each pronounced differently & each with its proper respective use:
-> forte Old English, n. |FORT|, a strong place or point; “Swimming is fun, but triathlons really aren’t my f.”
-> forte Italian, adj. (adv. -ly) |FOR – tay|, loud, strong, forceful; “The music swelled from soft and lyrical to the rousing f. of a stirring march.”
(For those who didn’t know, go look it up: “Surprise!” & “You’re Welcome!”)
Despite this, nearly everyone I’ve ever met says things like “Well, pronouncing strange words I don’t use very often isn’t really my FOR-TAY,” and trust me when I say that “irony” is the last word in their respective brains when they say it.
In other words, please do cling to your idealized definition of “environmentalist” all you like, if that helps you feel better than everyone else. The word has a common, colloquial meaning these days which is very different from your own personal use, & no matter how “wrong” they may be in so doing, the general public will persist in re-defining language over time to fit their own use, but please don’t let that stop you from being smug & self-righteous while ignoring the obvious discussion at hand in favor of semantic gymnastics.
…..a good post and all replies worth to read…..thanks.
I have for a long time been thinking along these lines. I’d like to share my thoughts. I have written them up but..
I go a step further thinking environmentalism is an evolutionary convergence of religion, a repeating fractal like pattern, just like winged flight or tall woody stemmed plants (trees) are repeated. I reason: where the cause of trees (repeated in most plant types at one time or other) is reaching for the sunlight; the cause for religion (and the like) is the life force survival – an equally universal, fundamental life force share by all living things (and maybe even, it could be argued, some non-living where computer robots will someday maybe able to think, given a similar memory/brain power, about their own survival). We didn’t alway have religion, there was a time we would have walked past the dead; not now, now everything has a ‘right’ to life.
I justify environmentalism is religion on commonalities. Religion and environmentalism have in common concern for the future, and importantly survival in the future, this is a fundamental instinct, a ‘force of nature’. For religion (all religions) it is survival in the after-life, and for environmentalists survival of the future generations and the ecosystem; both of which are impossible, ‘we’ are in a constant flux of change, sustainability is a mantra. Where regular religions are obsessed with death and the afterlife, environmentalists are obsessed with extinction; again, both are natural. Both narratives are similar in that they make it sound like we are not welcome here, that we came from somewhere else, as if we are introduced – intruders. To hold their line, they are giving up what enlightenment has achieved over the last 4- 500 years and is slowly putting us (not Earth) humans – at the centre.
Michael Crichton wrote: “On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals.” Science backing this is easily found.
But here’s how British Columbia’s elementary school science text book “BC Science 7” by McGraw-Hill Ryerson serves up their politically correct version. In a science class.
“Aboriginal peoples can be considered British Columbia’s first ecologists.”
“In Aboriginal teachings, an ecosystem is a whole, rather than a collection of separate parts. All parts of the environment biotic and abiotic are alive, related, and sacred. Origin stories tell of living beings transformed into rock formations and mountains, of animals transformed into people, and of the first people emerging from the ocean. For Aboriginal peoples, all plants, animals, water bodies, land forms, and natural forces such as weather are interconnected and should be respected. Their understanding of ecosystems guides Aboriginal peoples today when they consider how their actions may affect ecosystems.”
As a father with a zoology degree, I was hoping to help my daughter with her science home work when I was dumbfounded to read the above in her school science text book of all places.
I can’t help but wonder how folks would react if other groups such as the “Scientific Creationists” were able to also include their beliefs into a public school science text. Something equally benign like, “Biblical origin stories tell of…”
Or maybe: “BC’s Shintoists are also ecologists. Their “spirits”, “essences” or “deities”, are associated with many understood formats; in some cases being human-like, in others being animalistic and others being associated with more abstract “natural” forces in the world (mountains, rivers, lightning, wind, waves, trees, rocks). These spirits and people are not separate; they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity.” That definition essentially is from Wikipedia and it reads very close to the Aboriginal statement.
Such is “science.”
The Paleoindians killed off the Pleistocene megafauna. Their Archaic descendants drove bison herds over cliffs. In historical times, Plains Indians preying on bison with the European-introduced combination of horse and firearm were in the process of wiping them out when White hunters beat them to it. Columbia River tribe members today throw away any salmon they can’t sell.
As an archaeologist, this is something I know about in detail.
The Crichton quote is inaccurate. There were not “hundreds of species of large animals” waiting around to be wiped out by encroaching humans. Furthermore, Pleistocene megafauna we’re already under stress from the changing climate that allowed humans to show up in the first place. It’s not climate or humans, it was climate and humans.
Arbeegee, please note the paragraph starts with “In Aboriginal teachings,” making this a lesson in anthropology, not zoology. Nor does it bear any relationship to Creationism and religion.
The claim that Plains Indian tribes were in the process of wiping out bison is not supported in evidence.
I prefer to stick to reality, evidence and data rather than wild-eyed speculation.
Dr. Crichton is right about this. The only thing that differentiated the end-Pleistocene deglaciation from the previous dozen or so Pleistocene deglaciations was rapid advance of large numbers of skilled human hunters and their hunting dogs into Northern Europe and the America’s. While previous deglaciations were, no doubt, stressful and the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles of glacial stadials and interstadials was probably even more stressful, the megafauna did A-Ok before they had to deal with climate change, humans and dogs.
It drives me crazy when people babble about mammoths being flash-frozen with food in their mouths. Most, if not all, well-preserved mammoths were killed by flash floods related to the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
Lyuba is the first and only mammoth carcass to have “well preserved” internal organs. The fact that “airways and digestive system were clogged with” silt is a pretty clear indication that she drowned in a flash flood, sank in a bog or was killed by a mudslide. Parts of mammoths, including a few nearly intact mummified carcasses, with some well-preserved soft tissue and fur, have been found frozen in permafrost (not in ice). These carcasses have been found primarily deposits of silt & mud. All of the other mammoth carcasses show some signs of slow decay with poor preservation of internal organs. Even the previously best-preserved specimen (baby “Dima”) showed some signs of decay. Carcasses buried in mud in near-freezing conditions tend to be preserved fairly well.
Most animals die with food in their digestive systems and many die with food in their mouths. Most of the mammoths were found in the sort of alluvial deposits associated with flash floods, mudslides and bogs. Now, flash floods are catastrophic – But they are localized phenomena. They happen all the time. Animals don’t often finnish chewing their food, much less digesting it, before being entombed in mud downstream.
Animals tend to congregate near sources of water – Like rivers & streams. During the Pleistocene glacial stages, Siberia and much of the non-glaciated northern latitudes had an arid, steppe/savannah climate. Roughly every 1500 years, the climate would warm significantly (glacial interstadials, Dansgaard-Oeschger Events) and there was extensive melting of the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. This led to lots of flash floods. Occasionally, massive lakes formed (Missoula, Agassiz, etc.). These lakes were impounded by giant dams of rock, sediment and ice. When these dams failed, floods of biblical proportion occurred; creating landforms like the Channeled Scablands. But these events occurred episodically on a regional scale, not synchronously on a global scale.
Baby Lyuba probably died toward the end of the the 38.5-36 KYA interstadial…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Lyuba.png
While mammoths and other megafauna survived the Dansgaard-Oeschger events of prior glacial stages, they couldn’t deal with the rapid intrusion of humans and our hunting dogs.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/ElephantEvolution.png
As I understand it, the large mammals of North America were on the decline when man first arrived 12,000 or more years ago. But, evidence of man slaughtering large mammals has been found and they did play a role in their eventual extinction. The buffalo herds were deliberately exterminated by the US military as a way of defeating the native americans, especially the Comanche. The Comanche were especially brutal to their victims, they always killed the baby’s. They tortured, mutilated and killed all of the men and the elderly. They horribly mistreated their women captives (see Empire of the Summer Moon). The white men decided that they had to be stopped for these crimes and yet they could never seem to do it. Thus the buffalo slaughter. I don’t think we can pass judgement on either side of the debate, it was a different world then.
The Comanche basically made North Texas uninhabitble by anyone other than Comanche until the formation of the Texas Rangers… http://www.texasranger.org/history/RangersRepublic.htm
Michael A. Lewis, we seem to be in agreement that humans wiped out some number of large animals to extinction, providing falsehood to aboriginals as ecologists, my first point.
Buffalo jumps. While the activity did not likely lead to the extinction of the buffalo, it wasted a lot of life in order to get meat. I don’t believe that every piece of the buffalo was used after hundreds went over the cliff. And the nomadic hunt was anything but nurturing.
When the goal is to enlighten students about what is real and what is not real about their world, where do you think those students above now stand?
There are many different ways to interpret nature …. art, narratives, religions, science, mathematics, etc. Each approach is legitimate when placed in its proper sphere, but the forced blending of spheres for political purposes is an abuse of the educational system. This approach legitimizes the aboriginal “super-ecologist” myth, but segregates the idea from the science sphere.
So my second point that in a SCIENCE book, it should be clear that there is no room for the promotion of Aboriginal teachings, Creationist teachings, Shintoist teachings, Satanic teachings or any other form of sly superstition related to the Earth. Especially when the offerings are scientifically incorrect and placed purely to appease the politically correct.
In education circles these days, there is a huge political push to “indigenize” the curriculum to show some form of support for aboriginal populations. Problem is, most politicians and educators don’t know how to “indigenize” the curriculum, so inappropriate connections are made between subjects that should not be connected. Including statements that “indigenize” the science curriculum (which should be free of political and ethnic biases) and which just serves to confuse students and misrepresent the scientific perspective.
The aboriginal myths and current speculations about their connection with nature have no place in a science curriculum. In Anthropology, Theology, Social Studies, sure … but not in Science.
***
“Among the main causes hypothesized by paleontologists are natural climate change and overkill by humans…”
Koch, Paul L. Barnosky, Anthony (2006)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415
“During the last 60,000 years, including the end of the last glacial period, approximately 51 genera of large mammals have become extinct in North America. Of these, many genera extinctions can be reliably attributed to a brief interval of 11,500 to 10,000 radiocarbon years before present, shortly following the arrival of the Clovis people in North America.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event#North_America_and_the_Caribbean
“A global pattern of human arrival to such landmasses, followed by faunal collapse and other ecological changes, appears without known exception… New observations emerging from refined dating techniques, paleoecology and modeling suggest that the megafaunal collapses of the Americas and Australia, as well as most prehistoric island biotic losses, trace to a variety of human impacts…”
http://tinyurl.com/htggbsm
Some two decades ago James Burnham (historian) wrote a book entitled “How Superstition Won and Science Lost”. His thesis examined mainly the return to superstitious beliefs in health sciences and information through advertising, but it applies to practically any area of technology combined with public information and entertainment. Superstition returns again and again in new forms despite concerted and sustained efforts to banish it. The reason for this is that superstition serves purposes useful to human psychology and emotion. It’s a great book.
MIchael Crichton also had a pretty good quote from his (rather tepid) sequel to ‘Jurassic Park’ – the ‘Lost World’ – which was mostly a retread of the previous novel, couched around an essay on extinction – a number of years before ‘State of Fear’. I think this encapsulates the phenomena surrounding AGW as well as anything:
This was the Ian Malcom character responding to a student in a lecture:
“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”
That about cover it?
Good question. Start from here and work backwards, since it’s already at the saturation point.
Science is a religion, when done properly, it seems to me. Many don’t seem to grasp that it’s all about faith, even as they morn their loss of faith in what it now produces. They seem to think if they use the word ‘confidence’ instead of ‘faith’, that changes everything . . like magic.
To the scientifically illiterate, science is a religion. This is why the Warmunists babble about a 97% consensus and the position statements of scientific societies as if these were related to science. When, in fact, they aren’t even remotely related to science. These appeals to authority and consensus are akin to saying something is factual because “it’s in the Bible.”
When done properly, faith plays no part in science. Trust that previous work was done honestly and competently is an essential part of science; however this isn’t faith.
“Trust that previous work was done honestly and competently is an essential part of science; however this isn’t faith.”
Bullshit, sir, that’s exactly what it is.
It’s not faith because the work can actually be checked for honesty and competence. And outside of he envrionmental religionism and climatism, it is routinely checked.
True religion cannot be verified. There is no way to check the work. It has to be taken on faith.
Scientific theories have to have a null hypothesis. Trenberth says that AGW is exempt from a null hypothesis… QED.
David, if you check it, that is not trusting “that previous work was done honestly and competently”, is it?
What percentage of all the things you believe about reality based on that trusting stuff, have you personally checked? A tiny fraction of a percent I’d guess . . And why do you assume/believe that even if some previous work was done honestly and competently, it will check out now? Faith in things like “natural laws” and the universality of them, right? You can’t actually know they are universal by any conceivable tests, right? That’s to say you have faith that they are, isn’t it?
I don’t have to personally check everything. I just have to know that it can, and has been checked, and that the previous work provides some predictive value. This isn’t faith.
I don’t accept the theory of plate tectonics based on faith any more than I accept the existence of Romania based on faith. I do accept my views of God religion based on faith, because there is no scientific way to test the existence of the former or validity of the latter.
PS~
“True religion cannot be verified. There is no way to check the work.”
That is an assumption, and is not true, if God exists. If HE does exist, He can obviously verify that He does, any time He wishes to. You can assume He hasn’t done so, but cannot possibly know He hasn’t . . it’s atheism that cannot possibly be verified, even if true.
We have been indoctrinated to think of verification as a “consensus” affair, but as you’ve inferred, it’s really a personal thing (for now, anyway ; )
“I don’t have to personally check everything. I just have to know that it can, and has been checked, and that the previous work provides some predictive value. This isn’t faith.”
Yes it is . . no matter how much you want it not to to be. The problem you’re having has to do with a false belief, I say, about faith meaning belief without good evidence . . which is just something made up by strident atheists as far as I can tell. There’s nothing in the book about it meaning without evidence . . just without direct observation. No different than when you or I believe in subatomic particles which we cannot directly observe . .
“I don’t accept the theory of plate tectonics based on faith . . ”
Bullshit, you have no choice in the matter.
I actually do have a choice. I accept the theory because it works better than its predecessor: Geosynclinal formation of orogenies. However, the older theory still retains value. This is why I have this book in my office:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353168/20160915_072419_zpsnfeersvb.jpg
Plate tectonics explains all of the observations better than the geosynclinal theory. Theories are systematic explanations of observations. The strength of a scientific theory is its ability to “predict” future observations. When subsequent observations contradict theories, the science requires that the theories be modified. In the case of recent environmental science, AGW in particular, contradictory observations are ignored or modified to fit the theory. Religion tends to operate in the same manner.
Regarding trust vs faith:
I trust that Snell’s Law, the Dix and Zoeppritz equations and the thousands of other theorems, laws and equations required to generate a 3d seismic survey are valid. I trust that the people who shot and processed the seismic survey were competent. I trust that the guy across the hall correctly loaded the data. And I even trust that our IT department can keep my workstation operating with reasonable efficiency. I don’t have to derive all of the equations, theorems and laws for myself… Although I could, if I had an extra century of spare time. I don’t have to have been on the survey vessel to trust that the data were shot in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t have to look over the data processors’ shoulders to make sure they are doing their jobs properly. I trust that all of these things were correct, because, if they weren’t, it would be obvious the moment I started to interpret the 3d survey. This is not faith. This is trust.
I believe in God and the other aspects of Christianity totally through faith. There is no way on Earth that I can scientifically test for God… Although, my understanding of geology, geophysics and math reinforces my faith in God… And I am pretty well convinced that dogs are proof of God… But I am a dog person.
“I actually do have a choice.”
Not the choice to observe it directly, right? I’m suggesting the Biblical term merely implies belief by any means other than direct observation . . and that means such as you imply with regard to your confidence in the continental drift idea would easily qualify. And, that this is why science as we know it was born through just such means employed by Christian intellectuals . . (often funded by the Churches by the way)
“There is no way on Earth that I can scientifically test for God…
You can in the same sense you “tested” the continental drift theory, I contend. And I find it very difficult to believe you didn’t “test” it in that sense, many times, which to my mind you actually attest to when you write; “Although, my understanding of geology, geophysics and math reinforces my faith in God”.
The idea that faith cannot involve logic, evidence, questioning, testing and so on, is just made up by people who want us to appear gullible/foolish, I am convinced.
“I believe in God and the other aspects of Christianity totally through faith.”
Same here, but I don’t understand your (apparently) different meaning of the term “faith” there . . What do you mean by that usage?
Environmental based religions, at least in the current age, seem to be a very corrupt and poor substitute for spiritual based religions
When I was kid there was a lot of talk about Jesus returning. I think it was the six day war and events around Israel that set off the hysteria. The global warming preachers sound the same to me now as the last days preachers did then. They both say the big event is just around the corner and they both rely on ‘signs’ that sound really good if you don’t know any history.
+10 You remind me of a popular book from the mid 70’s, Late Great Planet Earth. It was basically Apocalyptic pornography. Nearly exactly like much climate crisis writing.
An alternative to trying to say that environmentalism is a religion is to admit that science is full of delusions about objectivity, correctness, and certainty, and that men love their paradigms and theories so dearly, that they will not admit when they are getting bad results.
And banning the use of chemicals, electricity and em waves in our daily lives is indeed a bad result. Miseducating young people into thinking that the environment does not have a dark and deadly side, which was mastered by applying chemicals, is also a bad result.
Yep. This is why most geologists are taught to practise Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses rather than following ruling paradigms.
Geologists do bicker. But only about which hypothesis should be used to support the ruling paradigm.
We constantly bicker… But most of us adhere to Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses because Earth Science is plagued (or blessed) with an abundance of non-uniqueness.
Well that certainly is binning your data into a different category, where it won’t affect your conclusions.
Here is a similar example of re-catagorization:
In Peter Hitchens’ book he shared a statement his brother made about Stalinn. Christopher Hitchens claimed that St-lin had killed so many people because he was practicing “a religion,” not communism.
What is that called when people who hold theories do not admit the failure of their theories?
“What is that called when people who hold theories do not admit the failure of their theories?”
CAGW
If one takes the nature of religion as claiming the absolute necessity of there being somewhere one or more omnipotent omnipresent supernatural beings that are observed only by believers, then radical environmentalism isn’t the aforementioned kind of religion.
I think radical environmentalism shares almost all the modes of irrational mental processes always found in the aforementioned religious nature, but it isn’t religion per se.
John
“the world was a wonderful, beautiful Eden until man and his technology came along. Man has eaten the apple and lost Eden. Now we must give up our “evil” technology and go back to nature, otherwise all is lost.”