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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged species extinction
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 12
Jun 18th
What’s with Ozymandias?
Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a statue of Ozymandias, more commonly known as Rameses II (possibly the pharaoh referred to in the Book of Exodus). Diodorus reports the inscription on the statue, which he claims was the largest in Egypt, as follows: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” (The statue and its inscription do not survive, and were not seen by Shelley; his inspiration for [the sonnet] “Ozymandias” was verbal rather than visual.) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972 View Shelley’s sonnet here.
This paper is a commentary on the book; Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
The book is Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Island Press, 2014, Washington D.C.
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This entry is an editorial, ‘The New Conservation”
published on-line in the Society for Conservation Biology, 19 September, 2013.
Herein, Soule speaks out in response to a postmodernist approach to conservation. He points out that ninety eight percent of charitable contributions in the US target humans and human issues “that may seem more tangible to the average citizen than Earth’s unravelling ecological fabric.” If the “new Conservationists” can be taken seriously, it appears that humanitarianism should take prominence over Nature and the other-than-human beings that have become before us and to whom we owe our very existence and continuance as a species. Soule speaks of how this new movement seeks to “replace the biodiversity-based model of traditional conservation with campaigns emphasising human economic progress.” Under the new regime, humans will makeover the so-called “failed” efforts of conservation measures and manage the Earth as a garden for human use and welfare. Perhaps Erle Ellis puts it succinctly: “Nature is gone.”
“The manifesto of the new conservation movement is “Conservation in the Anthropocene: Beyond Solitude and Fragility” (Lalasz et al. 2011; see also Kareiva 2012). In the latter document, the authors assert that the mission of conservation ought to be primarily humanitarian, not nature (or biological diversity) protection: “Instead of pursuing the protection of biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake, a new conservation should seek to enhance those natural systems that benefit the widest number of people, especially the poor” (emphasis added). In light of its humanitarian agenda and in conformity with Foreman’s (2012) distinction between environmentalism (a movement that historically aims to improve human well-being, mostly by reducing air and water pollution and ensuring food safety) and conservation, both the terms new and conservation are inappropriate.
Proponents declare that their new conservation will measure its achievement in large part by its relevance to people, including city dwellers. Underlying this radically humanitarian vision is the belief that nature protection for its own sake is a dysfunctional, antihuman anachronism. To emphasize its radical departure from conservation, the characters of older conservation icons, such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Edward Abbey, are defamed as hypocrites and misanthropes and contemporary conservation leaders and writers are ignored entirely (Lalasz et al. 2011).”
“(1) The new conservationists assume biological diversity conservation is out of touch with the economic realities of ordinary people, even though this is manifestly false. Since its inception, the Society for Conservation Biology has included scores of progressive social scientists among its editors and authors (see also letters in BioScience, April 2012, volume 63, number 4: 242–243).
(2) The new conservationists also assert that national parks and protected areas serve only the elite, but a poll conducted by the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association and the National Park Hospitality Association estimates that 95% of voters in America want continued government support for parks (National Parks Conservation Association 2012).
(3) Furthermore, Lalasz et al. (2011) argue that it should be a goal of conservation to spur economic growth in habitat-eradicating sectors, such as forestry, fossil-fuel exploration and extraction, and agriculture.
(4) The key assertion of the new conservation is that affection for nature will grow in step with income growth. The problem is that evidence for this theory is lacking. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction, in part because increasing incomes affect growth in per capita ecological footprint (Soulé 1995; Oates 1999).”
© 2013 Society for Conservation Biology
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12147/full Contains full article
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 11
Jun 15th
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 11
What’s with Ozymandias?
Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a statue of Ozymandias, more commonly known as Rameses II (possibly the pharaoh referred to in the Book of Exodus). Diodorus reports the inscription on the statue, which he claims was the largest in Egypt, as follows: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” (The statue and its inscription do not survive, and were not seen by Shelley; his inspiration for [the sonnet] “Ozymandias” was verbal rather than visual.) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972 View Shelley’s sonnet here.
This paper is a commentary on the book; Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
The book is Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Island Press, 2014, Washington D.C.
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Conservation in No-Man’s-Land
Claudio Campagna and Daniel Guevara provide a well prepared rebuttal of the claims of the HCCs. [Human Centred Conservationists]
Claudio Campagna is a Senior Research Zoologist affiliated with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Daniel Guevara is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
They pose that the “deepest issue – the real crisis – is that we do not have the concepts or language for expressing, or explicitly understanding, the intrinsic value of Nature; nor, therefore, for articulating its violation.”
I fully agree and add that the reason for this is primarily that we do not realise that we are the Earth. We are Nature. We use tools designed to measure “things”, mechanical objects and use the results to pronounce about the hows and whys of a living being. Further, Earth is an immense and intelligent living being. We treat Earth the way we do because we do not love the Earth, our higher self. Unfortunately for Earth, including all life therein, we speak of the planet as “it” and consider “it” as out there.
Our religious traditions were formed by people utterly devoid of scientific knowledge, steeped in hubris, and dedicated totally toward establishing principles approved by their personal God. Next they set up a hierarchy of special men who were imbued with the authority to speak “for” God. Following was a kicker message devised to frighten the masses into submission by pronouncing that their God would punish them for disobeying the opinions of their God’s spokespersons on Earth. Even into modern times, we have millions who live in fear of damnation and disapproval of their God.
Sadly, when so many people believe that humans are especially fabricated in God’s image and then thrust upon the Earth to, as written in Genesis 1:28 “…Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Actually, the domestication of the Earth underpins the religious foundation of both Christianity and Judaism.
How could we ever expect a population from Christian and Jewish religious Sunday schools to love and cherish the Earth when they have been taught that their God has given the Earth to humans to subdue?
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 10
Jun 13th
What’s with Ozymandias?
Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a statue of Ozymandias, more commonly known as Rameses II (possibly the pharaoh referred to in the Book of Exodus). Diodorus reports the inscription on the statue, which he claims was the largest in Egypt, as follows: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” (The statue and its inscription do not survive, and were not seen by Shelley; his inspiration for [the sonnet] “Ozymandias” was verbal rather than visual.) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972 View Shelley’s sonnet here.
This paper is a commentary on the book; Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
The book is Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Island Press, 2014, Washington D.C.
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What’s So New about the “New Conservation”?
Curt Meine
Curt Meine, Ph.D., is a conservation biologist, historian, and writer.
Let us schedule that Funeral
In this essay Meine begins with a story, somewhat of a parody concerning the new Conservationists. As I’ve posted, I choose to refer to them as Human Centred Conservationists as opposed to the established and sensible effort to protect the biodiversity and integrity of all life on Earth. Life on Earth is NOT all about people. We emerged only yesterday in the chronology of Earth’s development and our frontal lobe growth may at the end of the day cause us to be a failed experiment or failed evolutionary development.
Meine continues on the theme of disagreeing that the “old” conservationists agreed and promoted the idea that wilderness must be “pristine” and excluded humans. There is valid evidence that this is absolutely false. This falseness is exposed here and in several essays to follow. “Old” conservationists did acknowledge the rights of humans to co-exist with other-than-human beings. “Old” conservationists did not blindly adhere to the mythical “balance of a static Nature. “Old” conservationists disagree that modern science has pronounced that the Earth is actually tough and resilient. Looking at Earth as a living being must remind us that humans, for instance, can look resilient yet suffer and sustain life threatening illness. Destroying diversity is dangerous to the maintenance of Earth’s Health. A healthy human population requires a healthy Earth. “Old” conservationists failed according to HCCs. One look at the Wildlands Network: http://www.wildlandsnetwork.org/our-network reflects the unfairness of this statement. Anyway, whatever the limitations to conservationists goal achievement such would not justify giving up the attempt. Children still smoke, but who would use this as an excuse to give up trying to prevent the exploitation of the young by selling them tobacco?
Meine concludes with this quote from Aldo Leopold, the honoured prophet and mentor of the conservation movement:
“I have no illusions about the speed or accuracy with which an ecological conscience can become functional. It has required 19 centuries to define decent man-to-man conduct and the process is only half done; it may take as long to evolve a code of decency for man-to-land conduct.
[Sky: Sorry, but we just don’t have that long to wait. Aldo couldn’t have known this. Who knows what he would have said could he have had access to the climate change scientific evidence we have now?]
In such matters we should not worry too much about anything except the direction in which we travel.
[Sky: We know now that speed is important]
The direction is clear, and the first step is to throw your weight around on matters of right and wrong in land-use. Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits,
[Sky: Avoiding air travel whenever possible falls into this category. It is just not true that “the plane will fly anyway even if you don’t”. Every 50 or so people that quit flying along a particular connection means too many empty seats and the cancellation of that flight. When these individual actions add up to significant drops in passenger miles, new aircraft builds will be cancelled and flight frequencies lowered. The law of supply and demand still rules.]
or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.
[Sky: This is the pragmatist outlook which I despise now and the moment I first read about it in 1958]
That philosophy is dead in human relations, and its funeral in land-relations is overdue.”
[Sky: well, it has been resurrected by the HCCs – Human Centred Conservationists]
Yes, it is long overdue and Conservation Biologists worldwide and lay-people like myself can work tirelessly to schedule that funeral.
Keeping the Wild
Mar 21st
Keeping the Wild
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. The quote below makes a connection that has gone over my head until a few days ago.
“From time immemorial, just as today, the underclass and the powerless have been forcibly limited from accessing resources for their own material advantage. It is thus injustice toward the more-than-human world – stripping it into being-for and value-for people (“resources”) that constitutes the foundation of social injustice and inequality.” Eileen Crist in “Keeping the Wild”
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. Is it not rather bizarre and crazy-making that whilst we, as just one species of many, have given ourselves the right to slash and burn, poison and desecrate as we choose whilst energetic and physical essence that we depend on for our very existence has no rights whatsoever?
Skeptical Science: Time is running out on climate denial.
Jan 2nd
“Greg Craven summarized why by examining the extreme possible outcomes in his viral climate ‘decision grid’ video.”
Posted on 30 December 2014 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/time-running-out-on-climate-denial.html
If you can afford to watch a video for 9+ minutes, this is a good investment. And, as I recollect, the US government made the column “A” choice over the possibility of a nuclear attack by Russia in the 50’s. Billions of dollars, maybe all total over a trillion, were spent on the nuclear deterrent, mainly by the Air Force Strategic Air Command keeping bombers in the air heading towards targets 24/7 plus a 24/7 command aircraft in the air plus who knows how many Nike missile sites and hundreds of missiles: not to mention the personnel and support costs. The US government definitely took column “A” and avoided the column “B” true. So the method has been tried and proven effective in that case. I suggest it will work in the case of climate change caused by global warming. The boss may not always be right but is still the boss. Humans may not be causing global warming but the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are still warming. What do you think?
Waiting for Godot?
Nov 3rd
“The overall rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation was thought to have been triggered by the release of CO2 from the deep ocean – especially the Southern Ocean. However, the researchers say that no obvious ocean mechanism is known that would trigger rises of 10-15 ppm over a time span as short as one to two centuries.”
“The oceans are simply not thought to respond that fast,” Brook said.
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-abrupt-pulse-carbon-dioxide-deglaciation.html
I read daily updates on climate change science and suspected results of the certain rapid increase in CO2 and methane levels in both the atmosphere and oceans. In the oceans it increases acidification to the detriment of crustaceans and other hard shelled animals. In addition I read about climate change deniers and detractors; many of which are paid to create cherry picking and inaccuracies that result in doubt in public opinion.
I find constant revisions and updated findings. The uncertainty fuels deniers who demand scientific “proof.”
Science does not and never has supplied “truth.” The primary cause of the subject of uncertainty is a misunderstanding of the nature of Earth. Earth is a living being and not a machine. Earth events are often unpredictable and constantly break the “laws of Nature” that we persist in holding onto. Earth rhythms and cycles never exactly repeat. Variation resides in the very core of what it is to be planet Earth.
Take our medical Doctor visits. We learn to accept the “uncertainty” of our health and our illness treatments. We think nothing of following medical advice. For instance, the exact cause of an illness often cannot be determined accurately. We are sometimes told to take this medicine and come back in awhile to see if it worked. If not then other medicine is prescribed.
Governments and other power structures have habituated the “do nothing until we have absolute proof,” and “not enough data has been collected” excuses. They fiddle while Rome burns. It is time to stop searching for who started the fire and concentrate on putting out the fire.
We don’t need to know the exact extent of anthropogenic causes to become aware that humans, within the present cultural and global economic system, contribute a significant and irrefutable amount of greenhouse gases. These gasses are undeniably present and increasing. Weather in most regions of Earth is becoming more severe,[see: http://mashable.com/2014/11/02/super-typhoon-nuri-strongest-storm-2014/#:eyJzIjoiZiIsImkiOiJfeGhoOTN4dDhsbmZvcmc1ayJ9] sea levels are rising, glaciers and polar icepacks are melting faster than predicted, and oceans are warming while life-forms that make up our food chain are dying. Desertification is increasing whilst global air currents carry little or no moisture from the rainforests to sustain vegetation.
Surely it is obvious to all rational beings that we can wait no longer for certainty, for “scientific proof.”
Save the Cardamom Forest
May 26th
Can A Few Monks Save the Cardamom Forest?
By Luke Duggleby May 16, 2013
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/can-a-few-monks-save-the-cardamom-forest/614/
“Cambodia’s forests were once described by the World Bank as the country’s “most developmentally important resource”, but according to the international group Global Witness, by 2009 these rich forests had been largely degraded by unrestricted logging, the valuable timber sold off by the political elite for quick, private profits.”
Who gave humans who govern countries the right to pillage and destroy precious trees?
Slash and burn
May 14th
The Great Space Myth
John Naish
Resurgence & Ecologist September/October 2012 Issue 274
Comments on this article made by Sky McCain
While looking through this issue, the following highlight caught my eye and interest. “We must learn to nurture the only place that we are ever likely to inhabit”
John Naish, a prolific writer that has written largely on health issues presents a well-researched and clearly presented case for why we can’t even dream of visiting even other nearby solar systems let alone roam the galaxy unless we do the preposterous: [my take on the situation] Take Earth’s global magnetic field along with us. I’ve checked out the four or five reasons John cites for why we won’t be doing space travel anytime soon – maybe never. They are valid and most well researched
.
The major point in the article that attracted me was the obvious. Why continue the slash and burn as if we could just hitch the buggy up to Ol’ Nell and find another lovely place to ruin. Sorry, but this is it. John mentions the “Kleenix Model of Colonialism” which appears to have been coined by the late writer, Audre Lorde. It must surely mean the absurdly unequal trade situation where the conquerors remove the precious resources and leave the vanquished with Coca Cola and bandaids. I’m not sure how that applies to Homo Sapiens Sapiens and the idea that we don’t have to take care of the planet because we can just get Scotty to beam us up and find another one to ravish.
Stephen Hawking enters left stage toward the end of act 3 having set his brilliance on how to save us all from wearing our soiled jeans. In a recent article in CNET News, Hawking repeats his suggestion that we only have around 1,000 years of plunder time left to us so we had better find another planet ASAP. No mention of alternatives. No looking at options such as a reduction in world population or axing world trade etc. No, just a pronouncement. If I was to write a paper as part of a graduate school curriculum turned in with no supporting arguments, I’d find myself looking for a job waiting tables in the Union Building just before withdrawing from the course. The article states: “In 2011, he said, ‘Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.’”
Although I respect Dr. Hawking’s brilliant career achievements in science, can it really be our “only chance”? Seldom in science do you find such certainty. Obviously this certainty isn’t the result of experiment and hypothesis – the scientific method.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57579003-76/stephen-hawking-predicts-end-of-earth-scenario/
Further evidence:
Rover radiation data poses manned Mars mission dilemma
30 May 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22718672
Jonathan Amos
“For most of its 253-day, 560-million-km journey in 2011/2012, the robot had its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument switched on inside the cruise vessel, which gave a degree of protection.
RAD counts the numbers of energetic particles – mostly protons – hitting its sensors.
The particles of concern fall into two categories – those that are accelerated away from our dynamic Sun; and those that arrive at high velocity from outside of the Solar System.
This latter category originates from exploded stars and the environs of black holes.
These galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) impart a lot of energy when they strike the human body and will damage DNA in cells. They are also the most difficult to shield against.
Earth’s thick atmosphere, its magnetic field and its huge rock bulk provide protection to people living on its surface, but for astronauts in deep space even an aluminium hull 30cm thick is not going to change their exposure to GCRs very much.
The RAD data revealed an average GCR dose equivalent rate of 1.84 milliSieverts (mSv) per day during the rover’s cruise to Mars. (The Sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation.) This dose rate is about the same as having a full-body CT scan in a hospital every five days or so.”
Forget about colonisation, love and protect what we have.
The Escalator
May 14th
“One of the most common misunderstandings amongst climate change “skeptics” is the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal. This animation shows how the same temperature data (green) that is used to determine the long-term global surface air warming trend of 0.16°C per decade (red) can be used inappropriately to “cherrypick” short time periods that show a cooling trend simply because the endpoints are carefully chosen and the trend is dominated by short-term noise in the data (blue steps). Isn’t it strange how five periods of cooling can add up to a clear warming trend over the last 4 decades? Several factors can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the 11-year solar cycle. These short-term cycles don’t have long-term effects on the Earth’s temperature, unlike the continuing upward trend caused by global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions.
The data (green) are the average of the NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4 monthly global surface temperature anomaly datasets from January 1970 through November 2012, with linear trends for the short time periods Jan 1970 to Oct 1977, Apr 1977 to Dec 1986, Sep 1987 to Nov 1996, Jun 1997 to Dec 2002, and Nov 2002 to Nov 2012 (blue), and also showing the far more reliable linear trend for the full time period (red)”
Another climate change warning, written in the shells of crabs
Apr 14th
Another climate change warning, written in the shells of crabs
Posted by Stephen Stromberg on April 8, 2013 at 1:22 pm
“Some claim that the effects of carbon emissions might be good for the United States — longer growing seasons? — or that humans can simply adapt to higher temperatures and more acidic seas. Certainly, we’ll adapt better than those oysters will. But when I hear these arguments, I wonder whether those who make them have really thought about the oysters, the pine beetles, the dry docks and all other other ways, big and small, in which their ecology is changing. Combine those with all of the unpredictability that comes with messing with complex natural systems on such a large scale. Taking these considerations together, the argument for complacency looks very weak, and the case for spending some money now to hedge against the possibility of many negative results later looks really good.”