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Follow the Science, Really?
What follows is about an encounter on Facebook, or Meta. I don’t know which for sure, as it happened in the transition so I can’t say where it landed. So far, all my FB icons remain the same, untouched by the mind of Zuckerberg.
I have been reading a couple of books of apostasy, they being Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger, and Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, by Steven E. Koonin. I have been drawn to them in part to test my own skepticism, and to learn why they had jumped ship.
Briefly, both are still convinced that there is indeed climate change characterized by a small increase in global temperature. What they both reject is the proposition that this increase will be catastrophic in the near future and is an existential threat. They differ on possible resolutions of this “crisis”.
Because I have not finished the Koonin book, I will concentrate on Shellenberger as he is most germane to my confrontation. His book is wide-ranging, touching on much of the environmental movement and his participation in it over the last thirty years.
The encounter began when a post1 from SciTech Daily appeared in my FB feed. I do not even recall the specifics of the post, other than to say it had to do with some environmental issue. In passing, the author of the post mentioned the ongoing “sixth extinction” underway. Among the many topics Shellenberger discussed, this extinction event was one of them. I responded per Shellenberger that this had been long ago discredited and left it at that.
Posts like this are widely seen and can draw a lot of comments, so I expected that my comment would be quickly buried. That was not to be. Shortly thereafter, a response came in which the poster stated that I was obviously not up to speed on the subject and should cite my source, insisting that it should be from a peer-reviewed journal. I responded by stating that it was so stated in Michael Shellenberger’s book and suggested that he(?) should do likewise. He responded with a reference to an article in a journal2 from the National Academy of Sciences that makes the case for the sixth extinction. He also dismissed Shellenberger with the observation that Shellenberger is a journalist, not a scientist.
I left the argument at that. Online arguments can be tedious, and I did not want to spend much effort on it. But it did raise a few questions as to how one should consider the paper offered and just who is entitled to comment. After all, if one must be a scientist, then there is no discussion as the pronouncements contained in the article must be treated as dogma and not questioned. Even then, the question as to who is a scientist is undetermined. Does any scientist count? Or is the commentary limited only to those from the specific field. If having “scientist” attached to one’s resume suffices, are political scientists acceptable? Obviously, the argument descends into silliness essentially because there is no rigid definition for “scientist” and the objection to Shellenberger is about what he said and not what he is. Shellenberger could have a Climate Science Ph.D. and the same objections would be raised against his claims.
The essence of Schellenberger’s argument, in this case, is that the rate of extinction claimed in support of the sixth extinction hypothesis is not abnormal, and further, it has been grossly exaggerated based on — you guessed it — a model, not observation. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, some 0.8 percent of the 112, 432 species, plant and animal in their catalog, have gone extinct since the year 1500. This is an annual rate of two per year. This clearly supports the argument against a sixth extinction. Shellenberger went to some length to dissect this issue as part of his general contention that the hysteria/emergency/crisis is largely manufactured.
But what of the paper my protagonist offered in evidence? Consider that the title states that the sixth extinction is underway, and the paper is an examination of the evidence. While it is properly peer-reviewed and referenced to a fare thee well, it is unlikely to offer an evaluation or critique of the merits of the claim. I think Shellenberger would say that it is too narrow in scope and timeframe to make such a broad claim.
Finally, no paper submitted can authoritatively answer the question as to what constitutes a mass extinction. The very idea is not science but is instead science highjacked for political purposes. Science properly considered is a statement of facts. Conclusions may be drawn from said facts, but qualitative conclusions are a statement of opinion and not fact. Thus, one can say that the number of reindeer was X in 1960 and is now some value less than X. One cannot conclude that an extinction is underway, only that the known population of reindeer has decreased during the observed timeframe. Thus, no paper, however rigorous or thoroughly peer-reviewed, can state that an extinction is in progress.
My protagonist made one last attempt, slipping in a reference to a criticism of Shellenberger’s book. The title was, as you might guess, How Shellenberger Got It All Wrong. Whatever errors he may have made, isn’t this how it always ends? No matter the issue, he who deviates from the dogma will be thoroughly flagellated and cast out into the darkness. So it is with Michael Shellenberger. I, for one, think his book is worth your time and his proposition that nuclear power may be the way out of the “climate crisis” one to be reckoned with.
- https://scitechdaily.com/uncovering-the-surprising-secrets-behind-earths-first-major-mass-extinction/?fbclid=IwAR3qDSo0j-vnIHEBI7GlwbzXQP2-Rx5-awLoanOW8JixdSpGMYiRR4nf14k
- https://www.pnas.org/content/117/24/13596? fbclid=IwAR0ziq54brgDrHYdii6z2B_u8FGUDxdadD3Uj6D8B1eYyyBA65bj1QTv0kY
Naw, it just depends on which Reply button you click on when you have highlighted some text. The quote will be attributed to the person who wrote the comment you click Reply on, no matter where the highlighted text actually was.
Yes, but even so. Two million years is a long time for the geological record. I’ve always had a hunch that he meteor strike was just too good a tale to pass up, so they make it fit.
If it makes you feel better, the North America extinction I referenced happened in about a week.
You mean the meteor strike off Yucatan 65 million years ago? And scientists have gotten it down to a week? That certainly upends decades of previous geologic (what was then given as) scientific evidence.
We have not had, have not, and will not have the power to tame volcanoes, earthquakes, or the constantly changing climate. We DO have the power, with hardcore use of all our carbon-based economic power, to significantly mitigate harm to humans and parts of our geography essential to sustaining our lives over time. From dikes to earthquake
proofhighly-resistant real infrastructure, we have survived, and can still survive massive natural forces.Great list as a whole, several of which I still need to read.
I did not try to comment on the book as a whole, because it is massive in scope. There is a lot of meat there, and this from someone who has been in the middle of it for decades. There is another source you might take a look at, the Climate Discussion Nexus. A weekly video out of Canada surveys the stories and whoppers on climate, Take a look at https://youtu.be/ykjeo17J4AU for the latest entry.
No, I meant the Ice Age hit, not the last mega extinction. This one took the mastadons, the megafauna, several other large mammals, and it is where the fossil record ends for a North American civilization known as Clovis. Took some of us, too.
It hit the ice cap and the flooding lasted a week. Up to then, the Earth was warming up again and the ice retreating, but the flood of fresh water changed the composition of the oceans, and the currents as well. The water vapor from the strike cooled everything back down.
This is still contentious in the geological community, but is becoming more accepted as evidence mounts. Evidence…the likes of which spans North America to Europe and as far as the Middle East.
The very first mass extinction was probably the “Oxygen Catastrophe” or “Great Oxidation Event” that happened starting about 2.4 billion years ago. This was when photosynthetic bacteria started producing oxygen, which was toxic to most other microbiological organisms at the time. It took 2 billion years for the oxygen produced to saturate the oceans and then the land so that atmospheric oxygen began to rise, and organisms tolerant of oxygen evolved. The resulting changes in the earth’s chemistry and biology were vast and are hard to imagine, but this is what enabled the formation of multicellular organisms and, eventually, human beings.
Today, we have not even started any sort of mass extinction. Most of the claims of extinctions are politically inspired claptrap. It is very difficult to count species and their numbers in the wild, as Bjorn Lomborg shows in his book, “Skeptical Environmentalist”.
Just think of the polar bears. The polar bears are on the way to extinction, right? This is what many environmentalist enthusiasts fervently believe. But it’s not true. Polar bears have been thriving ever since restrictions on hunting them were put in place, so much so that they now threaten arctic communities.
I should add, I think it insane that we stopped building nuclear power plants, opting for inefficient, intermittent, unsightly and deadly-to-wildlife wind farms and solar arrays. Have you seen what the “greenies” have done to the Texas Panhandle/West Texas??? It’s an abomination. I literally had to close my eyes while driving through that apocalyptic scenery. Luckily Mr. C was driving.
And then the Big Freeze hit and the wind turbines couldn’t turn and since the “greenies” (really Reds) had insisted all the pumping stations go electric (rather than running off the natural gas already available), Texas couldn’t keep the lights on.
You gotta hate these self-righteous, anti-science punks. They’re not going to save the planet. They’re going to get us all killed. Truly the Party of Death (see abortion, Waukesha, COVID insanity. . .).
I wouldn’t know even what to google to look this up. Do you have a name for this extinction, or a link. Thanks.
Chris is referring to what is known as the Younger Dryas impact. There’s evidence for it, though it remains unconfirmed. In particular, I don’t think there’s much evidence that the current interglacial (the Holocene warm interval in the current Pleistocene ice age) was strongly influenced by it. We remain in an ice age, in one of the 40+ relatively brief warm intervals.
Thanks.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/677046
Thanks.
Sorry, the uchicago link requires subscription. Here is a link to a pdf of the article. https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/kinzie.pdf
No, I googled it and got the whole study. Thanks, again.
https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/Nanodiamond-Rich-Layer-across-Three-Continents-Consistent-with-Major-Cosmic-Impact-at-12800-Cal-BP.pdf