Guest sarcastic commentary by David Middleton
I’d like to assume Ross Pomeroy’s title was sarcastic…
Humans Are Worse for Wildlife Than Nuclear Radiation
By Ross Pomeroy – RCP StaffIn the wake of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, at least 164,865 people were evacuated from their homes as far as thirty kilometers away. Most have now returned, but some 40,000 people are still unable to do so, as the government prohibits lodging in areas where the annual radiation dose exceeds 50 millisieverts, roughly equivalent to three full-body CT scans.
But where humans are absent, wildlife has flourished.
University of Georgia wildlife biologist James Beasley and a team of colleagues recently set up 106 cameras in Fukushima’s evacuation zone and captured more than 267,000 images of animals over 120 days. Wild boar, hares, macaques, pheasants, foxes, raccoon dogs, martens, bears, and civets were a few of the many creatures spotted. Beasley and his co-authors found no evidence that radiation exposure had harmed animal populations.
[…]
What Beasley noticed around Fukushima echoes what scientists have already discovered around Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster: where humans are absent, wildlife thrive.
[…]
Real Clear Science
This immediately made me think of a scene in Avengers: Endgame (Spoiler Alert)…
May 7, 2019
The Science Of ‘Avengers: Endgame‘ Proves Thanos Did Nothing WrongJV Chamary, Contributor
Science
I write about science and technologyAt the end of Avengers: Infinity War, the villain Thanos acquired the infinity stones for a gauntlet that let him snap his fingers and turn half the population to dust. In doing so, Thanos believes he’s achieved his goal, a universe free of suffering. His reasoning is simple: on a planet with too many people and limited resources, the survivors have more than they need, solving the world’s problems.
Spoiler Alert! This article contains mild spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.
Is Thanos right about overpopulation?
[…]
The idea that Thanos did nothing wrong has become an internet meme, but the joke does have some truth to it — and Endgame provides the proof.
During a conversation between Captain America and Black Widow early in the movie, five years after the events of Infinity War, Cap mentions crossing the Hudson River in New York and says, “I saw a pod of whales when I was coming over the bridge.” That one line implies a bright side to Thanos’ actions: they were beneficial to the environment.
[…]
Reducing Overpopulation
Thanos believes he’s performing a necessary evil that’s required to achieve a greater good, actions with the side-effect of promoting long-term biodiversity on Earth. Why would the Avengers want to reverse the effect of the snap? (READ: The Confusing Timeline of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Explained)
The Avengers are guilty of putting the grief of survivors above the health of our world. From the planet’s point of view, it’s the superheroes who are the bad guys. Reversing Thanos’ actions is a selfish endeavor that reflects the fact we humans put ourselves at the center of everything, a philosophical viewpoint called ‘anthropocentrism‘. Nonetheless, we can still ask whether a smaller population would reduce suffering in the surviving people.
[…]
Forbes
Technically, Thanos didn’t just wipe out half of all people, he wiped out half of all life in the universe. So, his actions weren’t good for all wildlife… But, these two articles lead me to a few conclusions:
- Wiping out or drastically reducing the human population on Earth, would probably be good for wildlife… Who fracking cares? It would be really bad for people and domesticated animals.
- The planet doesn’t have a “point of view.” Just ask George Carlin.
- The government’s reaction to Fukushima killed more people than Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Ted Kennedy’s driving… combined.
- If not for NIMBY’ism and irrational fears about radiation, most of our electricity would be generated by nuclear power plants… And Earth’s average surface temperature wouldn’t be significantly different than it is.
- Godzilla and all of those classic radiation-mutated movie monster movies were actually just science fiction.
- It’s a crime against humanity that Avengers: Endgame only received one Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. It may not have quite been Return of the King… But Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Silvestri deserved nominations respectively for Best Supporting Actor and and Original Score.
As always they miss the blatant fact that humans are part of nature, not outside it. We are as natural as any other life form. Only by assuming otherwise does their argument make any sense at all.
Yein. There are two distinct differences between humans and most else.
1. We intentionally alter the environment (early fire, and stone tools, up to modern monoculture farming and megacities).
2. We think we are different because we think and can communicate those thoughts.
Neither plants nor other animals have those two capabilities to any significant extent.
So what? We are still part of nature.
You only think that. When I put this question to my cats, they were adamant that cats decided to domesticate humans to their service because it was faster than waiting for evolution to provide them with opposable thumbs.
Yup. My dog apparently thinks the same, especially when she gets into my favorite chair after dinner before I do. Except I disagree, and she gets scooted out.
I toss a pet bed on the floor… For me… 😎
This post got me to quickly research Chernobyl wildlife ‘thriving’ for now 33 years in the radiation exclusion zone. There was a major conference late last year that covered many of these bases, making the research very easy. Birds, fish, amphibians, mammals all thriving despite levels of radiation that even killed nearby coniferous forest—the so called red forest. Not at all what anyone expected.
Several theories have been put forth.
1. A lot of animals have in fact died of radiation induced disease (cancer) , but we don’t ‘see that’ as they get eaten as the overall ecosystem devoid of man thrives back to its ‘natural’ state. Especially early on, when no humans were there to observe wildlife recovery.
2. (Related to 1) Radiation induced accelerated radiation tolerant evolution—birds are displaying a higher tendency to albinism, frogs to darker pigmentation.
3. All the animals in the ecosystem have much shorter lifespans than humans (bison <10 years, horses< 15, foxes <5), and radiation induced disease (other than acute radiation poisoning—which killed the red forest) is probably a cumulative effect so these animals are simply less effected. Fits the human Hiroshima experience.
4. No ‘radiation induced’ ‘abnormal’ animals could just mean those are get aborted or stillborn, something researchers are not there enough to observe adequately (also related to 1 and 2).
It’s probably all of those plus (5) Natural selection .. survival of the fittest genes adapted to resist radiation damage.
There is a long latency between ionizing irradiation and full carcinogenesis. In humans ~25 years for solid cancers. Most animals just dont live long enough. Except rats / mice which lack some of the DNA damage response mechanisms that humans and other mammals have. A high% of rodents die of cancer naturally, without any irradiation.
Low levels of radiation may be beneficial which may be why wildlife is thriving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
David,
I enjoyed the post, and agreed with most of your points except,
“If not for NIMBY’ism and irrational fears about radiation, most of our electricity would be generated by nuclear power plants… And Earth’s average surface temperature wouldn’t be significantly different than it is.”
Uh, prove it!
I’m all for nuclear energy, but there is ZERO proof that the mean temperature of the earth’s atmosphere would be “significantly different” if nuclear plants had been generating the energy that has been, instead, supplied by coal and natural gas.
You may have misread the sentence…
“And Earth’s average surface temperature wouldn’t be significantly different than it is.”
Yes it wasusread – battered skeptic syndrome.
As is my wont, my takeaway from the quoted article had nothing to do with the main point: it was the reference to “raccoon dogs” inhabiting the surrounds of Fukushima. I had never heard of such a creature…but I have seen one!
Some months ago, I happened to glance out one of our sunroom windows, and saw something I first thought was a fox. We have lots of them in our neighborhood, and this creature was the equivalent of a good-size fox. But when it paused, and looked directly at me through the window, it had the facial structure and markings of a raccoon! We have LOTS of those in our neighborhood (one of which almost killed me via rabies infection). The rest of its body markings, especially the bushy ringed tail, were raccoon-like.
I did a little research after reading this post, and sure enough the pictures I found were of a creature exactly like the one I saw. But there are supposed to be only a handful of them in America, and all of those in Atlanta (we live in Manassas, Virginia). Now I have something exciting to report to the Virginia animal control people! Thanks, Mr. Middleton!
Yes, raccoons are overpopulated, nasty & disease ridden. I trap ’em regularly — won’t say what I do w/’em…..
Here are the built on percentages of land surface in several countries:
USA 1.63%
UK 5.89%
Germany 7.62%
Italy 5.48%
Hong Kong 14.89%
Russia 0.15%
Poland 2.68%
France 4.25%
Netherlands 16.96
Belgium 15.37%
Finland 0.27%
Peru 0.18%
Pakistan 0.5%
South Africa 1.29%
Australia 0.15%
Singapore 50.51%
Saudi Arabia 0.15%
Morocco 0.67%
Malaysia 1.7%
Libya 0.08%
Kenya 0.1%
Indonesia 1.14%
Brazil 0.25%
Korea 3.58%
Japan 7.36%
Ireland 1.62%
Greece 1.76%
Hungary 3.63%
Iceland 0.04%
Israel 5.49%
(From:
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=BUILT_UP
)
Anyone interested in the intersection/interaction between wildlife and humans might want to read Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba
Highly recommended.
It we are overpopulated at 20 billion, then we are in great shape. If we are overpopulated at 1 billion we are in bad shape.
Who gets to decide whether I live or die? I know it won’t be us.
From my research, the exclusion level at Fukishima of 50 mSv per annum is around optimal for human health and well being. The dose is around 20x average background and might alarm some folks, however there are millions of people worldwide who are naturally exposed to this dose and higher without adverse population wide effects. You might be surprised that for mice, experiments in the 1950’s gave the optimum dose for life expectancy and growth rate at ~1000x background. For those interested in this research I refer you to Ed Hiserodt’s excellent book, “Underexposed”, which reviews the earlier work of Don Luckey et al.
The presence of lots of wildlife near Fukushima MAY demonstrate that the human evacuation from there was not necessary, although most of the animal species mentioned have much shorter life expectancies than humans. An animal with a normal life expectancy of 5 to 10 years would receive far less radiation living there than a person who evacuated at 30 or 40 years old, who may be expected to live another 40 or more years, unless the person gets cancer due to the radiation.
The Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents have been exploited by the media to demonstrate that nuclear power plants are too dangerous to be built, as if a meltdown would result in as much destruction as a nuclear bomb (which is not true). Yet nuclear power plants, if properly designed, can be safer than coal-fired or natural-gas fired power plants.
Both the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents were due to poor design. The Chernobyl plant did not have adequate containment, and the Soviet-style design did not conform to requirements for safe design in effect in Western nations at the time it was built.
The Fukushima plant itself was well-designed, but it was located on a low beach between two coastal hills, which channeled the water from the tsunami straight over the nuclear power plant. It was well known that that area was earthquake-prone, but no provisions were made that could enable the pumps to be started remotely (from the top of the hills) if the nuclear plant was flooded. This was the same mistake that led to the massive flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina–once the levees were breached, there was no way to start the pumps remotely from a non-flooded area.
Nuclear power plants are able to provide tremendous amounts of energy, with little or no pollutant emissions, safely if they are properly designed. There is no reason to fear nuclear energy, but nuclear plants have to be designed to withstand upsets, and have systems in place to enable operators to respond to adverse conditions and shut them down safely when necessary.
same goes for the coral at Bikini Atoll, where man does not go. It is in pristine condition and growing like a forest .
Next stop Chernobyl.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNSxg7azKmZpvaq9xKGfVCTdVxnRrw:1580730177048&q=Chernobyl+International+tourism&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiR5cDlprXnAhUSmIsKHYqsB0UQ7xYoAHoECAsQAg&biw=360&bih=518