२७ मे, २०१८

"Most scientists today live in cities and have little direct experience with wild plants and animals, and most biology textbooks now focus more on molecules, cells and internal anatomy..."

"... than on the diversity and habits of species. It has even become fashionable among some educators to belittle the teaching of natural history and scientific facts that can be 'regurgitated' on tests in favor of theoretical concepts. That attitude may work for armchair physics or mathematics, but it isn’t enough for understanding complex organisms and ecosystems in the real world. Computer models and equations are of little use without details from the field to test them against."

That's from a NYT piece by a professor of natural sciences (Curt Stager) who notes a study that "documented a 76 percent decline in the total seasonal biomass of flying insects netted at 63 locations in Germany over the last three decades, asks "Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?," and warns — quoting Edmund O. Wilson, "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

I'm worried about the insects, but I'm also worried about the city-living scientists and their tendency toward "armchair physics," "mathematics," and "[c]omputer models and equations" that fall short in understanding the complexities of the real world. I couldn't help thinking about the climate change computer modeling and the consensus of (city-dwelling?) scientists.

The insects are an ecosystem to be understood and — in a way — the scientists are also an ecosystem to be understood. They thrive in the city, doing math with computers.

२९३ टिप्पण्या:

293 पैकी 1 – 200   नवीन›   नवीनतम»
MikeR म्हणाले...

'documented a 76 percent decline in the total seasonal biomass of flying insects netted at 63 locations in Germany over the last three decades, asks "Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?,"' Uh. Maybe I prefer the scientists with their math and computers, who at least have a shred of common sense.
Three scientists were driving in Scotland. They saw a black sheep on a hillside.
"Oh", said the astronomer. "All the sheep in Scotland are black."
"That's absurd", said the physicist. "There's no evidence for that. Rather, at least one sheep in Scotland is black."
The mathematician retorted, "At least one sheep in Scotland is black on at least one side."

Oso Negro म्हणाले...

They thrive in the city, doing math with computers, living on government grants.

Darrell म्हणाले...

How many insects are there again?
Stop worrying.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

Maybe the bugs are getting smarter and avoiding the nets.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

The disengagement of humans from nature is a much bigger problem than just scientists. It is bad for humans and for nature.

Wince म्हणाले...

"Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?" ...[Meanwhile the scientists] thrive in the city, doing math with computers.

They're even trying to de-bug their computer programs.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

The media has scientists afraid to leave the cities now. They think they'll end up like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

Tommy Duncan म्हणाले...

"Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?"

Pretty sweeping conclusion from limited data in one small region of the world.

Remember the recent "death of the bees" scare? I assure you the bees are back.

I agree that scientists need to get out more. Those of us familiar with fallow fields understand mother nature's ability to reclaim and restore land that humans have abandoned. The claims that earth is on the brink irreversible of ecological disaster are largely bunk.

Tommy Duncan म्हणाले...

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago."

"Rich state of equilibrium"? Sounds like a value statement. Is there no equilibrium now? Is our current equilibrium impoverished? What makes some states of equilibrium better than others?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Tommy Duncan said...
Is there no equilibrium now?


Definitely not. Species are disappearing at an unusually high rate relative to historical norms (excluding other mass extinction events).

Tom म्हणाले...

So, who would you trust more discussing ecology, 100 city dwelling scientists or 100 rural farmers who's livelihoods are on the line?

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Did I read that right? Did an essay in The New York Times actually say that computer models aren't reliable unless they are checked against the real world?

How did that heresy slip by their truth commission?

Michael Fitzgerald म्हणाले...

Edmund Wilson and ARM are both full of environmental fear mongering bullshit.

Rusty म्हणाले...

Blogger Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
"Tommy Duncan said...
Is there no equilibrium now?

Definitely not. Species are disappearing at an unusually high rate relative to historical norms (excluding other mass extinction events)."

I'll take your word for it. Since you are an unimpeachable source.
Most people think that market hunting exterminated the passenger pigeon. While hunting had an effect the species was much more stressed by the wholesale logging of old growth chestnut trees in the south. Their preferred wintering trees. And the wholesale logging of old growth pine and fir trees in the uppeer midwest. Thier preferred nesting trees when hatching their young. Of which they bred two every year. The equalibrium was destoyed by logging, not hunting.
The more interesting fact is the loss of nearly all large negafauna in the new world before Europeans ever got here. The Dire Wolf, the sabre toothed cat and the short faced bear must have relied on thses large animals and must have been so specialized that when the mastidon, horse and giant ground sloth disappeared so did they.

sykes.1 म्हणाले...

People in the humanities always take physics as the most representative science. But it is, in fact, sui generis. It is almost true that all of physics is reducible to a dozen or so equations; all the rest is applications. However, any merely adequate understanding of biology or chemistry or geology requires the memorization of large numbers of facts, which are often only slightly interconnected, at least in any obvious way. That requires a completely different kind of mental discipline than does physics.

campy म्हणाले...

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago."

Just getting rid of the deplorables would be a great first step.

Rusty म्हणाले...

Blogger Michael Fitzgerald said...
That's what fascists do. Next they'll be telling us that the Jews are dangerous and should be gotten rid of.

Rusty म्हणाले...


"Just getting rid of the deplorables would be a great first step."

I ain't leavin'.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Rusty said...
The equalibrium was destoyed by logging, not hunting.


No one is arguing that habitat loss/degradation isn't the main driver of the current mass extinction event.

अनामित म्हणाले...

...a study that "documented a 76 percent decline in the total seasonal biomass of flying insects netted at 63 locations in Germany over the last three decades, asks "Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?..."

Over the years I've noted a severe decline in the abundance and variety of the more charming insects, like butterflies, bees, and spiders. The mosquitos, on the other hand, seem to be increasing in "biomass" and viciousness every year.

I'm all for a very steep decline in mosquito biomass. Sure, it will disrupt the ecosystem, but it will come to a new equilibrium, right? Yes, any new equilibrium could have a "be careful what you wish for" result. But I'm willing to take the risk. Mosquitos are either deadly, or severely reduce the quality of summer life even when they're not spreading horrible diseases. Btw, death to chiggers and ticks, too.

Seriously, though, there are lots of insects out there. How badly would genociding mosquitos, chiggers, and ticks affect, e.g., bird life? I'm willing to make a deal with the birds to help them over the hump on the way to a new ecosystem equilibrium.

Michael Fitzgerald म्हणाले...

By the way, that environmental fear mongering is a Hallmark of prog Democrat party commie rhetoric. That's why it is vitally important for you commoners to stop driving big cars and using air conditioning, while prog celebrities and politicians fly around the world in private jets, own multiple mansions, and travel in SUV motorcades.

Mary Beth म्हणाले...

Maybe some of those flying insects went to Russia.

Mosquito explosion in southwest Russia makes it ‘impossible’ to leave home

Charlie Currie म्हणाले...

Insects, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
I'm all for a very steep decline in mosquito biomass.


A mosquito 'specicide' is now, or now approaching, a real option.

Lot of scientists and victims on board with this.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

There's some species of sub-ant sized black bug that's inhabiting the kitchen. I think they came in in an oat bran box.

You have to add those in as compensation to mans' effect.

They're easily crushed with a touch.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Modern humans are certainly a disruptive species. When the Indians arrived, almost all of the megafauna disappeared from North America. Musk ox and bison, and I guess brown bears remain. But we are just the latest in disruption after disruption.

One day the Earth will be swallowed by the sun, and it will have been written in the book of life that for a billion years, life on earth bounced around an equilibrium like a molecule driven by Brownian motion before the arrival of mankind.

That's not to say that if it's true about the insects, we shouldn't do something, but ultimately, men do just about everything we do collectively to please women, and women hate bugs, so we kill them.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Fire ant specicide, at least outside of its former range, would be nice, they lower biodiversity wherever they go, even killing mammals.

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

I don't know. Fewer insects sounds like a good idea to me.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Computer modeling in lieu of real scientific research has been a disgrace to the profession for several decades now. My husband, a scientist of the 'old school', was properly appalled by it. While data analysis may be useful and certainly expedited by the use of computer programs, the actual data must still be derived from real discovery and experimentation or it is meaningless.

Bay Area Guy म्हणाले...

Greatly prefer engineers over scientists. The latter are often asocial geeks who are stuck in publish or perish mode, and totally dependent on government grants, so they end up being tools for whatever the government wants.

Very little independent thought.

Ambrose म्हणाले...

NYT publishes articles like this one at least once a week so is apoplectic readers can shout "It's mankind's fault! Our wasteful ways! We are all sinners agains Gaia. We need a bigger government with more regulation."

mockturtle म्हणाले...

The disengagement of humans from nature is a much bigger problem than just scientists. It is bad for humans and for nature.

I'm compelled to agree with ARM on this point. My brother, however, argued that it was only humans who were destructive to nature and that it would be better if they disappeared. He did his part, unintentionally, last year.

Etienne म्हणाले...

Nope. I'm still killing the wasps.

I hate those things. Death to wasps that invade my space!

Michael McNeil म्हणाले...

… the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.

Ten thousand years ago was the end of the ice age — which was basically the opposite of any “state of equilibrium.”

Michael McNeil म्हणाले...

The more interesting fact is the loss of nearly all large negafauna in the new world before Europeans ever got here.

Geez. It wasn't before people got there (indeed, it was just after people got there — and not just in the “new world”: see also, New Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, for instance) — and that's what's significant, not whether those people were “Europeans.”

Jaq म्हणाले...

Naomi Oreskes, before she cooked up the 97% of scientists nonsense, and wrote Merchants of Doubt, wrote a paper on numerical modeling of complex natural systems that kicked the legs out from under 'scientists' who run 'experiments' on computer models.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/263/5147/641

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

mockturtle said...
My brother, however, argued that it was only humans who were destructive to nature and that it would be better if they disappeared. He did his part, unintentionally, last year.


Sorry for your loss.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia! Is there any doubt where the puritans would fall in this debate? Cotton Mather would have lived for this shit. Nobody hardly believes in Christianity anymore, but the fall of man from The Garden of Eden is still a central myth.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Thank you, ARM. I lost my mother and my brother last year and miss them both terribly, especially my mother. No one to discuss baseball with now. Or books. Or politics, economics or any number of things my mother and I hashed over through the years.

Birkel म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Birkel म्हणाले...

First it was polar bears. But that was overblown.

Second it was bees. But that was overblown.

Now it is bugs. And this will prove to be overblown.

What will be the next completely wrong worry? WWTMWA?

What would Thomas Malthus worry about?

अनामित म्हणाले...

BCARM: A mosquito 'specicide' is now, or now approaching, a real option.

Lot of scientists and victims on board with this.


Interesting link. I hope these proposals have moved past the "this could theoretically work, maybe somebody will apply for a grant to study it one of these days" stage.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

mockturtle said...
No one to discuss baseball with now. Or books. Or politics, economics or any number of things my mother and I hashed over through the years.


Lucky to have had such a relationship. Most families become atomized over time. I moved around a lot when I was young and largely lost meaningful contact with my immediate family. I paid for this mistake when I got older.

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

What is weird in our two lives is switching back and forth between urban and rural. When we get back to Phoenix, she will continue to throw our uneaten food off the porch, until she notices that it isn't getting eaten. Not like MT, where most plant garbage doesn't survive the night (Except for white bread, which lasts until fall), and I have to take meat scraps further out, so that we don't get black bears on our front porch. She, of course, tries to hand feed the pre-venisons, and is usually successful by late summer. She thinks that I scare them, as I tromp up to the porch. Haven't seen any of their young yet this year, but the geese are starting - the little puffs of feathers don't stand out well against the asphalt, so have only barely missed getting a couple of them, as they head to the river for water. At the Conoco, they are into their second batch of chicks for sale. Two sides of their coop, with each side containing a couple breeds (except when they have ducklings on one side), with names on them that mean nothing to me, but apparently something to the people buying them (there is a poster by the cash register from a feed company showing examples of the common breeds).

She thinks that I am immune to nature. I am not. I just don't see the hundreds, if not thousands, of shades of green that her designer eyes see. There is something deeply comforting about the yearly cycle of nature that city dwelling loses. They have already had the first cutting of hay and alfalfa on the nearby farms, and our yard has followed suit - it went from inches high to better than a foot, in a scant couple weeks, which would be a fire danger later in the year, if not cut, which means that I have to cut it this week when we have a dry day or two. Then maybe once again in late June or early July. By then the baby deer will be well along, and somewhere along the way, young turkeys too. By fall, the deer are a true menace, congregating in town in larger and larger groups, meandering across the highway at their leisure. Which is fine, when the speed limit is 25 in town, but not so good a couple miles down the road when it is 70. Fall means rutting season (which is esp fun with the bighorn sheep 5 miles east), and hunting season, which means working around everyone else sighting in their rifles, at the local shooting range. But before I cut the lawn, she wants me to pick up all the new pine cones. Good luck on that - I use the mower for them too. Got the needles already, except for from the roof. In any case, I tell her that we need to save the pine cones for grandkids to pick up (for money, of course). Except we won't see any of them this summer. Maybe next year. She doesn't want to hear that.

chickelit म्हणाले...

Too many eggheads stoked and ant-stoked by theorems.

Darrell म्हणाले...

At the Conoco, they are into their second batch of chicks for sale.

I disapprove of human trafficking.

robother म्हणाले...

My money's on the insects. Ultimate r strategy species. Plus, they can fly. Only dinosaurs that made it through the last 2 mass extinction events were flying dinosaurs: AKA birds.

Michael K म्हणाले...

That requires a completely different kind of mental discipline than does physics.

It is interesting to me the difference between Engineering, which I began with, and Medicine, which I finished with.

Very difference modes of thinking.

I am more worried about bats than insects. Bats, of course, eat millions of flying insects every night here in Tucson. I watch them as I walk the dog.

The monstrous windmills, built by idiots relying on federal grants and the delusion of global warming due to fossil fuels, are killing hundreds of thousands of bats each year along with a few hundred eagles.

Bats' reproduction is more along the lines of the passenger pigeon.


madAsHell म्हणाले...

Replace the word "scientist" with "journalist", or "talking head".

dreams म्हणाले...

Getting out into the real world can add perspective, something that is really lacking in most liberals.

SteveR म्हणाले...

Small periods of time don’t usually make for good conclusions.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

""Rich state of equilibrium"? Sounds like a value statement. Is there no equilibrium now? Is our current equilibrium impoverished? What makes some states of equilibrium better than others?"

Yes, and what is the meaning of richness and equilibrium if there are no human minds to appreciate these abstractions?

But if the insects go away and everything collapses, human beings will be around to suffer. Many other animals would suffer too. What would they eat? And also the plants would suffer. That's obviously why you get collapse without the insects. So the loss of the insects will matter a lot either because human beings will suffer and intellectually understand and anguish over the collapse and other living things will suffer and have whatever mental experiences are available to them.

chickelit म्हणाले...

“Getting out into the real world can add perspective, something that is really lacking in most liberals.”

As Armchair politicians found out recently, you don’t win important election by amassing vote totals in urban conclaves. You have to venture out into the hinterlands. The same goes for political scientists fixated on polls.

Birkel म्हणाले...

State of Fear by Michael Crichton is available through the Amazon "spying on you" linked by Althouse.

Equilibria are discussed.

Birkel म्हणाले...

chickelit:
Did politicians and pollsters find out?

I do not believe you, with all due respect.

Owen म्हणाले...

Bruce Hayden: thanks for the wonderful description of MT life.

Michael K: I had not known that the windmills were chewing up bats in such numbers. It sounds horrific. Where can I learn more?

As for urban-dwelling scientists playing with glorified spreadsheets and dictating what it all means, meh. Anyone who spends even a few minutes looking at "urban heat islands," the decline over time in qualified weather data sites, and the constant ex post facto and unexplained "adjustments" to the data, will start to wonder why these people are so sure of themselves.

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

Things rarely heard:

"We need more bugs."

"I'm worried that my biomass is shrinking."

chickelit म्हणाले...

“I do not believe you, with all due respect.”


Fine. *Throw lantern on ground of brightly lit forum and leaves.*

Wisco म्हणाले...

Nearly all astrophysicists work on Earth, without direct contact with other planets or stars or the vacuum of space. So what?

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

" the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago." was in the process of making many species extinct as the climate was making some natural and significant swings.

From another paper: " researchers learned that two events there 9,300 and 11,100 years ago resulted in temperature decreases of 10 and 4 degrees Celsius."

The planet does have a natural equilibrium, but it includes wild swings. I would call that a "rich equilibrium", but I think the author here just means highly populated with plants and animals which is just one swing and not at all an equilibrium within itself. He doesn't sound very scientific, which is fine, and maybe his point.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Owen, here are some places to start:

1. Scientific American.

1. a pdf p[aper.

3. Popular Science.

Just do a search if you want more. "bat and windmill"

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

You know who is really out of touch with their subject matter? Professors of "Women's Studies". Just because you stay deeply immersed in one narrow subspecies does not make you well versed on the whole.

So much innuendo, so little time.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

ARM, while I didn't live near my family we kept in almost daily phone contact. While my brother and I were separated by political and spiritual differences [he wasn't speaking to me at all the last year of his life] our bonds remained close through memories. My sister and I, the only ones left, keep in regular contact by email and phone. Thank heavens my daughters and I are close! Again, not physically, but through daily contact and conversation. Alas, while they are both football fans, neither is interested in baseball. Mom, I miss you!

chickelit म्हणाले...

“Just because you stay deeply immersed in one narrow subspecies does not make you well versed on the whole.”

That maybe some of the best composed innuendo I’ve read here in a while. Bravo!

chickelit म्हणाले...

What is the entomology of the word “bug”?

Anyone?

Stephen A. Meigs म्हणाले...

I don't know why anyone would think that computer models shouldn't be used when trying to determine how much climate change is likely to happen. Just look at how useful computers have been in helping to predict the weather. True, more emphasis should be placed on figuring out how to program the computer model (mainly involving figuring out what formulas should be used in the model) than how to increase computing speed, etc., or than running the program a zillion times under varying conditions, but So what? Sure, climate scientists might for selfish reasons be tempted to justify their importance by overstating the risks of climate change, but my impression is it's more likely that they and others will be selfishly tempted to selfishly justify selfish depredations of the environment by understating the dangers of climate change. People can make more money by encouraging others to not care about the consequences of their pollution. I think that on balance that atmospheric scientists using computer models are more likely to be right in predicting climate change than anyone else.

Even if they are wrong about climate change (and I don't think they are), you've also got ocean acidification to worry about. I actually want a world with coral reefs.

It's really obvious that humans are seriously harming the environment. For instance, the forests of North Carolina are obviously appreciably less beautiful than they were twenty years ago because the hemlocks (really one of the most beautiful forest trees here) are mostly all dead, and because ugly Japanese stilt grass is taking over too many areas. And the new tiger mosquitoes will bite you up. And no, spraying is not the answer, because I can attest that when the neighbors spray for mosquitoes so many bees and butterflies die to the point where I can hardly get a tomato from a tomato plant. And flowers don't look right when there are no bees or butterflies on them. And then you've got the ugly Asian Lady Beetles replacing our lovely native lady bugs; them and the newcomer brown stink bugs love to try to winter indoors with you. And when I was young I remember lovely Monarch butterflies were commonplace. Now I hardly ever see one.

Part of the problem is that people move too much. Lots of families are scared of forests. I don't know, maybe they think that's where the witches and warlocks congregate?!?! Every fifth family will probably cut almost all the trees down if they have any, which means that trees won't tend to last long if families move about every three years. It takes decades or centuries for trees to mature, only minutes for some jerk with a chainsaw to make them vanish for frivolous reasons. Similar things apply to zoning. One politician per century who gets the power to turn parks into logs and you won't have any great trees.

Rusty म्हणाले...


Blogger Michael McNeil said...
"The more interesting fact is the loss of nearly all large negafauna in the new world before Europeans ever got here.

Geez. It wasn't before people got there (indeed, it was just after people got there — and not just in the “new world”: see also, New Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, for instance) — and that's what's significant, not whether those people were “Europeans.”"

The point being that far from being the benevolent stewards of nature our native american brothers and sisters exploited the environment no less rabidly than a dacota coal miner.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Stephen A. Meigs said...
Every fifth family will probably cut almost all the trees down if they have any, which means that trees won't tend to last long if families move about every three years. It takes decades or centuries for trees to mature, only minutes for some jerk with a chainsaw to make them vanish for frivolous reasons. Similar things apply to zoning. One politician per century who gets the power to turn parks into logs and you won't have any great trees.


This is what pisses me off about where I live. When I first moved here it was semi-rural/exurban. Not rural, still a few vestigial farms, but definitely not suburban either. There were trees everywhere and relatively modest sized houses. People just kept cutting down the trees. They kept building McMansions. And, the hurricanes didn't help either. The end result is a noticeably uglier place to live than when I first moved here.

Michael K म्हणाले...

"It's really obvious that humans are seriously harming the environment"

Well, there is one way you could contribute.

Birkel म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Birkel म्हणाले...

Stephen A. Meigs,
Unless computer models can predict what is known to have happened by inputting historical data and showing the model can predict, say, the last 20 years, then the models are worse than useless.

Input all known data up to 1997.
Predict from that data what should happen from 1997 to present.
The predictions must approximate what has happened.

Then - AND ONLY THEN - will the models prove remotely useful.

Francisco D म्हणाले...

"Part of the problem is that people move too much.

I am wondering, if from your perspective, part of the problem is that people exist.

Do they need to be controlled more by those who purport to understand "climate change?"

BTW, Coming from the Midwest, I always used the term "seasons" to refer to climate change. What exactly is it?

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos." (E.O. Wilson)
This statement seems to be wrong on the face of it. Ten thousand years ago nature was not in equilibrium. Insect populations are far hardier than the human population. No one is suggesting that insects are going to vanish. Why should it matter to humans if the world lives or dies after we are gone? Man (according to scientists) is not the center of creation, except when he is, except that the survival of all of the natural world depends on his actions.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

So true. I know a bunch of "greenies" in Massachusetts, and in NC, and they all share the same ignorance of the natural world. It's hilarious to me to listen to them explain how global warming is causing all sorts of catastrophes in Nature, and then taking a walk with them in the woods, or on the sand flats of Cape Cod. Utterly ignorant of even the most basic natural processes, yet insistent that if people don't listen to them, catastrophe is inevitable.

Paco Wové म्हणाले...

"This statement seems to be wrong on the face of it."

Yeah, I would not have expected Wilson to come up with such an obvious boner. Love for his little ants was probably clouding his brain.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

Stephen A. Meigs said...”Every fifth family will probably cut almost all the trees down if they have any, which means that trees won't tend to last long if families move about every three years.”

The house next door to where I grew up had a huge old oak tree in the back yard. Before the neighborhood was built, it had been a corn field and I imagine the farmer had saved that tree for shade and aesthetics. Anyways, at some point the family that had lived there moved away. The new owners cut the tree down. If you didn’t want the tree why would you buy that house? There was absolutely nothing unique about that modest house except that tree. If you don’t want the tree, don’t buy that house!!! That act pissed me off so much I mailed them an article on how trees of different sizes increase house prices. That tree was worth tens of thousands of dollars.

My mom still lives in our old house. Every time I visit her I wince over the missing oak.

Owen म्हणाले...

Michael K: thanks for the links on bat-smashing windmills. The PDF was 2010 and spoke of turbines in the 2 MW range, and a lethality that seems to scale with area swept by blades (as well as siting, cut-in speed, and other factors not yet elucidated). Wikipedia brags of current and future windmills in the 5-10+ MW size with blades hundreds of meters long. I can only imagine the larger effects on wind-fields and the creatures flying through them. We learned the hard way about wingtip vortices from jumbo jets landing and taking off, and wind shear from downbursts. It's a strange fluid we inhabit, and we know far less than we think.

Birkel: good comment on the computer models of climate. Once they can reliably hindcast a 30-year interval, I will start to pay attention. So far, though, it is epic fail; and much special pleading and obfuscation.

Jaq म्हणाले...

't know why anyone would think that computer models shouldn't be used when trying to determine how much climate change is likely to happen. Just look at how useful computers have been in helping to predict the weather."

Did you read my link to Naomi Oreskes?

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

A neighborhood or subdivision without mature trees is a sad place. I recall as a child in the very early 60’s when the city of Milwaukee cut down the huge old elms due to being infected with Dutch elm disease, that created a green canopy over the neighborhoods we played in. After the trees where down the neighborhood lost its magic. At the lake we have two beautiful huge birch trees that we’ve had to inoculate twice against the birch borer which looks almost identical to th emerald ash borer, or so we’re told.

Remembering the elms.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

What bothers me about the Wilson quote, in the context of the article, is that it reverses what is obviously true: that nature was in a state of chaos before man began to shape it. 10,000 years ago was about the time man began to domesticate animals. The existence of civilized man bringing chaos to the ordered world of nature is entirely wrong, something like saying chemotherapy destroys the naturally ordered growth of tumors.
Now that I've gotten through the paywall & read all of the article, I see that it is an opinion piece with a familiar theme -- "the bit of nature I study is the most important thing in the world." When scientists study nature there is a tendency for them to mark off their area of interest as their property and see other men as trespassers. Or maybe it's just the scientists who do this that are invited to submit opinion pieces to the New York Times.

Anne in Rockwall, TX म्हणाले...

I just got back from a short fly-fishing trip in the Rockies. On the drive there and back, I got to admire the way the land in both the Texas panhandle and Colorado mountains sprang back after massive fires last year.

Nature is a wild and wondrous thing. More powerful than we can even imagine.

Volcanoes may destroy a neighborhood, or create a new island.

We are not nearly as significant as we fool ourselves into believing.

Anne in Rockwall, TX म्हणाले...

Oh, and I landed my very first cutthroat!

Achilles म्हणाले...

After science became Federally funded it just became a propaganda arm of the government.

Global Warming is the obvious example. Governments tend to use religion more than science to control the populace.

That is why the Warmists act like inquisitors seeking heretics more than they act like scientists.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

Wind turbines take energy out of the climate, convert it into electrical energy, and send it someplace else where most of it turns into heat. What could go wrong ?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

The proof in the pudding is how little attention colony collapse disorder gets. If the bees go so do most farm yields. I'm sure the capitalist anti-Malthusians have a rationalization for that, though.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Definitely not. Species are disappearing at an unusually high rate relative to historical norms (excluding other mass extinction events).

An unusually ignorant statement from a usually ignorant individual. Large fauna disappeared from Australia shortly after the arrival of humans, and the same appears to have happened in North America. Many species went extinct in both North and South America when the two continents merged.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

"Most scientists today live in cities and have little direct experience with wild plants and animals,"

Most scientists don't work with wild plants and animals.

The actual # of entomologists is a closely held secret, but there are
19,400 Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists (BLS) and
23,200 Microbiologists, so even most biologists don't work with wild plants and animals.

"Entomology is not a physically demanding career. But entomologists do spend time working out in the field. You should be prepared to do some lifting."

100 to 1000 bugs weigh about the same as 2 grams of cocaine, so they'd be pretty easy to lift.

"documented a 76 percent decline"

So people have been counting bugs for 30 years. I wonder how many people were methodically counting insects or something similar, 100+ years ago? Maybe two?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

More people accepted evolution 100 years ago than they do now because their proximity to farm life and farmland made it harder intellectually to delude themselves into denying that traits are selected for over time and can change a breed.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

I suppose the opposite of a "capitalist anti-malthusian" would be a "communist pro-malthusian." Maybe that's why the commies are always killing off their people and introducing anti-growth policies? To the pro-malthusian, politics may not be able to produce more food, but it can certainly reduce the number of mouths that need feeding.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

"Definitely not. Species are disappearing at an unusually high rate relative to historical norms (excluding other mass extinction events)."

An unusually ignorant statement from a usually ignorant individual. Large fauna disappeared from Australia shortly after the arrival of humans, and the same appears to have happened in North America. Many species went extinct in both North and South America when the two continents merged.


WTF are you talking about? Biologists have ways of quantifying extinction events and if you're so innumerate that you can confuse the loss of 70+% to 90% of species with the loss of a few species of megafauna simply because the kid in you finds them visually interesting then you are the ultimate poster child for the typical right winger who needs illustrations and pictures and coloring books to understand what most of us can figure out with words.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

I suppose...

Lewis Wetzel supposes a lot. It's a necessary alternative to someone who finds thinking as hard as he does.

Whoever said anyone had to be a communist to accept that Malthus might have just been off by a few hundred years rather than completely wrong must have either been a moron or feeding a lie to Wetzel or one of his fellow morons.

If you confuse controlling means of production with understanding the consequence of resource depletion or the long-term consequences of short-term profit motive as a society's sole consideration then you're simply the type of person who could be just as easily brainwashed by the authorities in China or Russia as you could by The Heritage Foundation in America.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

Ritmo believes that to stop an insect extinction event, we need a human extinction event. And by God, he's just the man who can make that happen. Ritmo! Now more than ever!
If nature is the Leftist God, Ritmo is a church lady.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe म्हणाले...

If scientists got away from computer models and studied the natural world we'd know a lot more. Why did it take amateurs to notice this?

chickelit म्हणाले...

“The proof in the pudding is how little attention colony collapse disorder gets. If the bees go so do most farm yields. I'm sure the capitalist anti-Malthusians have a rationalization for that, though.”

Another example is Huanglongbing (also known as citrus greening or HLB for short), citrus canker, citrus black spot and sweet orange scab. This pest is a serious threat to the commercial citrus crops in the US. The disease was imported by no borders, Bezos-loving fascists.

chickelit म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
chickelit म्हणाले...

“Theory guides, experiment decides” ~ I.M. Kolthoff

That maxim used to describe chemistry and other physical sciences.

etbass म्हणाले...

Had an nice pleasant and informative thread going. Then along comes.....

Anne in Rockwall, TX म्हणाले...

Look up Lazarus Taxon. Species that were thought to be extinct.

There are cycles in the fossil record just like there are cycles between forests, fire, meadows and forests again.

We are not that significant.

Stephen A. Meigs म्हणाले...

You are wrong, Big Mike. And you don't have to be a naturalist for it to be obvious. I'm no naturalist, but nine-spotted lady beetles, monarch butterflies, and stands of old hemlock trees all used to be common and something I would appreciate when young. They're probably all among the two hundred or so native species that I knew and liked the most as a child. There was nothing obscure about them. These species presumably evolved tens of thousands if not millions of years ago. Now they are hard to find (especially the ladybug, which is almost extinct on the east coast) and would be in a good way to go extinct if everyone was as oblivious and dishonest as you are. Lots of dishonesty is not just outright fabrication of data, but speaking with an air of authority like you know something for sure when you don't. Like the people who thought it was crazy to think the (formerly very common) passenger pigeon could possibly go extinct.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Birkel: good comment on the computer models of climate. Once they can reliably hindcast a 30-year interval,

Unfortunately, that proves nothing either, unless they are one hundred percent based on measured inputs and proven laws of physics, which they aren't. They are tuned. They deny it, which is one of the things that erode their credibility, but they need to deny it to keep the low info types, low critical thinking, math deficient, believing that the models are something they are not so that they can strut around and ignorantly demand that the rest of us tremble before the scientific edifice that are climate models.

There is a thing called "back test overfitting" which is the big problem with models. This is what killed the hockey stick. As soon as you took more recent measurements of tree rings, outside the period in which he developed it, Mann's hokey stuck fell apart. It is known in the literature as the "divergence problem."

More recent studies seem to be closing in on the idea that it's not going to be as bad as we thought. Compared to a new ice age, which would be disastrous for humanity, it seems like a best case scenario.

Etienne म्हणाले...

chickelit said...What is the entomology of the word “bug”?

A device designed and used by the FBI to spy on all segments of society, especially the President and the Archbishops.

Etienne म्हणाले...

Bug - First attested in this form around 1620 (referring to a bedbug), from earlier bugge (“beetle”)

à la Wiktionary

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

The ladybug is almost extinct on the East Coast? I saw a ton of them today while cutting through my neighbor's soybean field. As for the bees, it's a bumper year for them here, as well as for ticks and tree frogs.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Asserting that Anti-Malthusian is an insult seems right for Ritmo.

The Leftist Collectivists who are pro-Malthusian are consistently wrong, of course.

Right for Ritmo = not even close enough for government work

#mailingitin #itequalsshit

Jaq म्हणाले...

Stephan Meigs, did you have a look at the link from Merchant of Doubt author Naomi Oreskes? It has a lot of cites, BTW. Let me excerpt it for you.

Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always nonunique. Models can be confirmed by the demonstration of agreement between observation and prediction, but confirmation is inherently partial. Complete confirmation is logically precluded by the fallacy of affirming the consequent and by incomplete access to natural phenomena. Models can only be evaluated in relative terms, and their predictive value is always open to question. The primary value of models is heuristic.

Here, if that is too many for you, let me excerpt from her conclusion:

Finally, we must admit that a model may support incorrect intuitions and may confirm our biases. Therefore models are most useful when used to challenge existing formulations, rather then validate or verify them. Any scientist who is asked to use a model to validate a predetermined result should be suspicious. . - Naomi Oreskes . (BTW, the Author of the 97% consensus paper when later she stopped being a scientist and became an advocate)

http://www.likbez.com/AV/CS/Pre01-oreskes.pdf

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

The orange lady beetle or Asian beetle is not the same as the lady bug we all grew up with. The orange Asian beetle actually bites.

chickelit म्हणाले...

The Pharma industry used to encourage their employees to gather soil samples from far away places. This was done under the guise of vacations to exotic locales. Soil bacteria engage in endless chemical warfare with each other and are forever inventing new antibiotics. The soil samples would be analyzed and cultured back in the lab and assayed for anti-biotic potential. Then, around the late ‘80’s and especially the ‘90’s, came the the so-called “combinatorial chemistry” revolution wherein robots were empowered to invent new anti-biotics by accident. Old school chemists were “retired” and the industry prepared to reap the benefits of serendipity. It didn’t pan out as expected.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

chickelit said...What is the entomology of the word “bug”?

So you think etymology is funny, chickelit? I can't imagine what sort of mind thinks like that. Sad.

Birkel म्हणाले...

tim in vermont,
If they could achieve my test (a 20 year hindcast) I think they would necessarily have had to drop the adjustments from their theories. The adjustments are garbage (GIGO) and cannot survive scrutiny.

My next request would be for reproduceable experiments or calculations.

I am a stickler that way.

Jaq म्हणाले...

I recommend Oreskes' paper to anybody who is interested in the issues surrounding the use of models in science. It's very good. It's accessible, and you will know more after you read it than before, which is not true of many papers coming from climate activists.

wholelottasplainin म्हणाले...

Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...

"Seriously, though, there are lots of insects out there. How badly would genociding mosquitos, chiggers, and ticks affect, e.g., bird life? I'm willing to make a deal with the birds to help them over the hump on the way to a new ecosystem equilibrium."

********************************************

Back in the 1950's Mao ordered the Chinese to aggressively kill every fly they came across, in order to reduce their impact as disease carriers.

It worked---except when the local birds started falling from the sky from starvation.

Oddly, no spokesman for the birds came forward to cut a deal.

********************

Stephen A. Meigs said...

"Even if they are wrong about climate change (and I don't think they are), you've also got ocean acidification to worry about. I actually want a world with coral reefs."

Corals have been on this earth for hundreds of millions of years, after teetering at the brink of extinction at least three times due to entirely natural processes, and when CO2 concentrations/ocean temps were both much higher and much lower than today. They are very hardy critters. See this:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/04/coral-reefs-temperature-and-ocean-ph/

Ocean pH values vary a great deal, even during a single day, without harming plant or animal life. Marine animals incorporate and thus sequester carbonates in their skeletons, while plankton use CO2 as food. IOW the entire CO2 content in the oceans is a heavily buffered system, so persistent net pH changes are very tiny. There's no danger of oceans actually becoming acidic.

In any case it's just really bad physics not to recognize that the heat-carrying capacity of the ocean is about 1400 times that of the atmosphere. A 1-degree increase in atmospheric temps does NOT yield a 1-degree temp increase in the oceans, not even close.

Ocean temps vary seasonally by a lot more than 1 degree, not to mention the changes effected by El Nino/La Nina and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and other phenomena, which humans have nothing to do with.

It's interesting that researchers who debunk such claims wind up being attacked and driven from their fields. Recent cases in point include the woman who proved that polar bears were thriving, and the Aussie scientist fired from his university for criticizing (and providing evidence for hiss opinion) that the Great Barrier Reef is NOT being destroyed by CO2 changes or so-called "acidification".

Their work wasn't challenged "on the merits", only for being heretical to Church of Warmistas dogma.



LincolnTf म्हणाले...

I know what a ladybug is, and there are plenty of them. I'd say 2 to 4 per plant, on average. Last year more like 1 or 2. And the tree-frogs are up at least 50% from last May. Bees are more plentiful than they were in all but 2 or 3 years in the 10 that I've lived in the Piedmont.

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

Lost ladybug project.

“Across North America ladybug species composition is changing. Over the past twenty years native ladybugs that were once very common have become extremely rare. During this same time ladybugs from other parts of the world have greatly increased both their numbers and range. This is happening very quickly and we don’t know how, or why, or what impact it will have on ladybug diversity or the role that ladybugs play in keeping plant-feeding insect populations low.”

Birkel म्हणाले...

There are loads of ladybugs.
Anybody saying otherwise is just plain wrong.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

Tim in Vermont said . . .
"More recent studies seem to be closing in on the idea that it's not going to be as bad as we thought. Compared to a new ice age, which would be disastrous for humanity, it seems like a best case scenario."
I can't take the catastrophic warming alarmists seriously because a far bigger threat is a solar flare like the Carrington Event of 1859. If we had one today, millions or tens of millions people would die and our tech level would be set back by a half century. The fact that the Carrington Event occurred about a hundred and sixty years ago tells that they they probably occur every few hundred years. Isotope studies of polar ice cores suggest that they occur every five hundred years or so.
The worst effects of a large solar flare could be mitigated. We know how to do it. Harden power grids & isolate them. Harden critical electronics the way harden the electronics of spacecraft. It wouldn't be cheap -- except when you compare it to the costs of mitigating global warming. Then it is a downright bargain.
But protecting our technological civilization from a large solar flair isn't sexy. It doesn't give you the power to control the lives of others the way that fighting global warming allows you to do. Controlling the economy and human behavior would be a small part of protection from a large solar flair. Controlling the economy and human behavior is essential to protect us from global warming, or so the alarmists believe.

Jaq म्हणाले...

f they could achieve my test (a 20 year hindcast) I think they would necessarily have had to drop the adjustments from their theories.

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." - John Von Neuman (Super Genius) [OK, I added the last bit on account of it is true. Here is an explanation of why your test won't work.

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/

Stock Portfolio Design and Backtest Overfitting

Birkel म्हणाले...

LincolnTf,
In which Piedmont, if that is not too personal a question.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

The "lost ladybug project" needs to head to NC and do a survey, I'll point them in the right direction. Of course, the multitudes of lady bugs they'd find would moot their existence, so it won't happen.

Jaq म्हणाले...

The fact that the Carrington Event occurred about a hundred and sixty years ago tells that they they probably occur every few hundred years.

You would think so if you only read Instapundit on the subject, but events like that leave a mark that can be detected retrospectively, and they appear to be pretty rare. Not that it couldn't happen tomorrow, but it's thousands of years between them, IIRC.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Central North Carolina. I do my thrice-weekly hikes primarily in Forsyth, Yadkin and Guilford Counties.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

”For instance, the forests of North Carolina are obviously appreciably less beautiful than they were twenty years ago because the hemlocks (really one of the most beautiful forest trees here) are mostly all dead...”

Boy, I sure hope the infestation doesn’t make its way to the upper midwest. Old, large hemlocks are a signature species in northern Wisconsin, etc.

Birkel म्हणाले...

tim in vermont,
Then the test would fail in short order. Exposure to facts is a nasty business.

The experiment would not end at the hindcast. The theory would have to continue to fit the future too.

On odd Tuesdays I do math for a living. Just because I don't type everything I know doesn't make what I do type wrong.

Jaq म्हणाले...

speaking with an air of authority like you know something for sure when you don't.

Yes, only the priest may speak with an air of authority! That's why they get to wear funny hats!

Original Mike म्हणाले...

I’ve got 6 hemlocks in my backyard I’d hate to lose, too.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Ritmo believes that to stop an insect extinction event, we need a human extinction event.

This is the lie you have to tell yourself in order to believe the bigger lie - that things we rely on could either never go extinct or that we can kill them off.

That you're an idiot is obvious. The question is, who is it that's profiting off of and selling your idiocy?

Birkel म्हणाले...

LincolnTf,
That is good country.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

I can't take the catastrophic warming alarmists seriously..

Translation: "I can't take the facts seriously."

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

The forests of North Carolina are being strangled by kudzu, which of course was introduced by the Federal government in the 1930's to control erosion, and at least up until the 50s, the Feds were encouraging farmers to plant it. Absolute ecological disaster, deliberately brought on by central planning.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

The ladybug is almost extinct on the East Coast? I saw a ton of them today while cutting through my neighbor's soybean field.

One person, one field = Reality everywhere.

Right-wing magical thinking at "work," everybody.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Computer models =/= facts

Rookie mistake.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

No, PPPT, it's called direct observation. Scientists used to do that.

Jaq म्हणाले...

he forests of North Carolina are being strangled by kudzu, which of course was introduced by the Federal government in the 1930's to control erosion, a

I think in a couple of hundred years, these patches of bamboo you see here and there will come to dominate.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Another example is Huanglongbing (also known as citrus greening or HLB for short), citrus canker, citrus black spot and sweet orange scab. This pest is a serious threat to the commercial citrus crops in the US. The disease was imported by no borders, Bezos-loving fascists.

Why do you keep injecting your political mental illness du jour into reality? Trade, tourism, migration and species/disease spread have happened since the technology for those things to occur was invented and will continue to happen no matter what President Beta Carotene has to say about it.

And again, Bezos? Jesus. Trump's angry with him for buying The WaPo, over which he exerts no editorial control. So what's your beef? With people buying newspapers? With allowing editorial freedom? Or with Trump not having sufficient psychological control to either be held accountable or allow free speech? What other Trump tantrums are you going to take up the banner of? His hair loss? Blame testosterone! Let's get it! Trump's constipated? Chickie will then take up a personal crusade against low fiber diets! They must be banished! Your toadyism is very dismaying.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Right-wing magical thinking at "work," everybody

This from the guy who thinks you can bring in millions of low-skilled workers and the law of supply and demand doesn't mean that low skilled workers already here will have their wages or any other kinds of bargaining power impacted. That's why I don't bother reading his comments anymore 90% of the time.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

No, PPPT, it's called direct observation. Scientists used to do that.

Never by selectively only citing one piece of data and neglecting all the rest, as you just did.

Liar.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

I see a bunch of bamboo on my hikes, it's really strange to be walking among dogwoods, wild cherries, oak, maple, etc. and then stumble into a patch that looks like the set of Gilligan's Island. At least when the bamboo dies it decomposes quickly, the kudzu just heaps up onto itself year after year.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Birkel, yes it really is nice.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

This from the guy who thinks you can bring in millions of low-skilled workers and the law of supply and demand doesn't mean that low skilled workers already here will have their wages or any other kinds of bargaining power impacted.

More magical thinking at work. The toady who wrote this can't find a single place he can quote of me saying this anywhere.

That's why I don't bother reading his comments anymore 90% of the time.

I don't expect a toady like you to read anything that is not genuflecting of your Sky Daddy Trump, or even from someone who's not genuflecting of your Sky Daddy.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

I'm not making any blanket declarations based on my observations. But I will make this blanket declaration, everyone who fell for even one minute of Al Gore's pathetic little film strip, Earth in the Balance, should forever be forbidden from engaging in discussions of the natural world. Let me guess, you gave it 5 stars?

Char Char Binks, Esq. म्हणाले...

I knew nothing good would come from city scientists and their fancy molecules and cells and facts and shit like that!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

I'm not making any blanket declarations based on my observations. But I will make this blanket declaration, everyone who fell for even one minute of Al Gore's pathetic little film strip, Earth in the Balance, should forever be forbidden from engaging in discussions of the natural world. Let me guess, you gave it 5 stars?

I didn't see it.

But the fact that you, again, cite that film as the single data upon which one should base everything that is known or that they should know about atmosphere and climate reveals you all over again to be a "single data point" kind of a guy. IOW, a scientific illiterate.

How many planets or moons are you aware of that can have let alone regulate a climate without an atmosphere, Mr. Magical Thinker? Talk about throwing out all the data...

Jaq म्हणाले...

The toady who wrote this can't find a single place he can quote of me saying this anywhere.

I am sure if anybody googles "sophisticated understanding" and "supply and demand" and whatever handle you were using at the time... But whatever. I am glad to see you have abandoned that position.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Now you're just babbling. But in the spirit of earthling fellowship, I will offer you the opportunity to join me on a hike, where I will quiz you about your surroundings, and then educate you.

Birkel म्हणाले...

19 years without warming and the last two years saw a 0.6 Celcius drop in global temperature.

I blame glowball warmening.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Now you're just babbling. But in the spirit of earthling fellowship, I will offer you the opportunity to join me on a hike, where I will quiz you about your surroundings, and then educate you.

About how a single field is the entire planet (or the entirety of a species' habitat) in and of itself? No thanks. But glad you can enjoy the nature we have allowed to continue while it lasts. It's a fun and important activity.

Howard म्हणाले...

You people are hilarious. Does ignorance warm your heart? Every stinking facet of science and engineering is a model. All data collected are based on models. Temperature, pressure, elevation, concentration, viscosity, acceleration, velocity, chemical reactions, chemical structures, charge, pH, conductivity, vorticity, dispersion, diffusion: Models models models models, etc, etc, ad infinity. Because otherwise the universe is too complicated to finger out.

The anti-field bias in natural sciences is due to females entering these subjects. Field-centric study is considered an old-boys network, another appendage of the patriarchy that needs be amputated. This was aided by the girly men of academia who consider field work and data collection to be non-professional technician-level, IOW, beneath contempt.

That's OK. Because pussification, there are many disruptive opportunities available for smart kids who get their hands dirty.

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

“About how a single field is the entire planet (or the entirety of a species' habitat) in and of itself? No thanks. But glad you can enjoy the nature we have allowed to continue while it lasts. It's a fun and important activity.”

He claims to know the difference between the ladybug and the Asain beetle and expects everyone to believe him that he’s seen fields of them, while actual sightings of the ladybug are rare, even among the experts.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Howard,
Those fields you list have models that fit the facts GOING FORWARD.

When climate models get there, please let everybody know.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

He claims to know the difference between the ladybug and the Asain beetle and expects everyone to believe him that he’s seen fields of them, while actual sightings of the ladybug are rare, even among the experts.

They can't be. I saw one a few weeks ago, and my eyes are like really special scientific observation devices that magnify and amplify personal anecdote into all data everywhere forever.

If the right-wing model for data/evidence collection were normative then bigfoot and UFOs would be part of accepted mainstream science.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Right-wing "science" = "Joe Schmoe in Podunk said he saw some shit."

Jaq म्हणाले...

Because otherwise the universe is too complicated to finger out.

Yes, and simplifying assumptions used to make problems tractable and comprehensible to us human beings introduce biases and, as the sainted climate activist heroine and once scientist Naomi Oreskes says the the paper I linked above, the one with over 3,000 cites, BTW, "may support incorrect intuitions."

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Oh for crying out loud, you think I don't know my bugs? I know them, lady, believe me. How many summers did I work at the Ecotarium, doing guided walks of MA fields and marshes? Hmmm, let's see, I guess it was just 3 summers, but I remember everything. And the summer at Wood's Hole was another very educational job. Not to mention a lifetime of reading and researching natural history. I suggest Steven Jay Gould and David Quammmen (despite his Leftwing mania) to give you a foundation in how the natural world works.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Why are you guys afraid to read a paper by the lady who "documented" the 97% of climate scientists are stark raving alarmists paper? Afraid the paper will give you kooties?

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

The question is, who is it that's profiting off of and selling your idiocy?
Lol, if you could figure out a way of profiting from idocy, you would retire a very wealthy man, Ritmo. The problem is that people tend to be idiots with other people's money and not their own.
You need to rely on government regs & subsidies to make Elon Musk level money.

Michael K म्हणाले...

the last two years saw a 0.6 Celcius drop in global temperature.

I blame glowball warmening.


No, Trump was elected.

Can't you recall the oceans receding when that other guy, with the nice pants crease, was elected ?

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Tim in Vermont, it's a variation of the Union mantra..."Don't kill the job". The Left found that scientific ignorance among the masses was a profit-center, and Global Warming was their sales-pitch.

wholelottasplainin म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

Only politicians and ideologues talk in certain terms about the future climate. The IPCC speaks in terms of "confidence" probabilities. The IPCC puts its docs online, anyone can read them.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Howard said...
Every stinking facet of science and engineering is a model


It is true that no science is more model dependent than physics, the experimental arm of which has become an appendage, in many fields, to the theoretical arm. But, there are models and there are models. Most physical models are relatively simple deterministic affairs (not all, but most classical ones) whatever the difficulty of the underlying math. The models at issue are a complex hybrid of computational, deterministic and guess work. Their complexity and lack of transparency, even to the people who wrote them, puts them in a very different class than the models of classic physics.

This being said, the paper Tim linked to is somewhat out of date. There are lots of phenomena that are too big and complex to ever be adequately described in the highly determined way that much of physics does, or at least used to do. Computational biology and computational neuroscience are viewed as legitimate fields of enquiry where the biological complexity is too great to ever grasp intuitively. The models organize what is known, highlight what isn't known and give people tools to think about these problems. The climate models are no different, they are just tied up in a lot of politics.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Global warming can't be real because the greenhouse effect isn't real. Everyone knows that we need no atmospheric medium through which the sun's rays can travel to warm the planet. It's all volcanoes and shit. We could remove the atmosphere tomorrow and the earth would like totally be just as warm on average - as the moon. Which is really hot on average. Some guy who didn't like what David Brooks admired about one president's trousers as opposed to sloppy Beta Carotene's extra long ties and dumpy fitting suits told me so.

Howard म्हणाले...

Lewis Wetzel: Lol, if you could figure out a way of profiting from idocy, you would retire a very wealthy man, Ritmo. The problem is that people tend to be idiots with other people's money and not their own.
You need to rely on government regs & subsidies to make Elon Musk level money.


Spoken like a jealous loser. If what you say is true, the USA would be as fucked up as North Korea. Real men investing hard money know that you will drill a bunch of dusters for every gusher. Best you stay in your safe space.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

The IPCC puts its docs online, anyone can read them.

Even you crazy fuckers? I thought you were the geniuses telling everyone that the IPCC was a cabal owned by George Soros to convince everyone of the communist falsehood about how keeping the planet warm requires an atmosphere.

How hot is it out in space? Shit, how hot is it at 30,000 feet up?

What is it about your right-wing politics that keeps you from using your brain?

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Why are you guys afraid to read a paper by the lady who "documented" the 97% of climate scientists are stark raving alarmists paper? Afraid the paper will give you kooties?

Tim, I remember when, probably ten years ago, NPR had a thirteen year-old-girl on the program discussing her clear evidence that climate change is not the result of human activity. But she probably didn't live in California.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Wait, so how does 19 years of cooling fit in the models you Leftist Collectivists love so well?

Did any of the models predict a 0.6 Celsius drop in global temperatures these last two years?

Facts are sticky things.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

What is the ideal mean temperature for life on Earth? And how did you determine that ideal temperature? And how have humans contributed to a deviation from that ideal temperature? Which existed when?

Jaq म्हणाले...

Even you crazy fuckers? I thought you were the geniuses telling everyone that the IPCC was a cabal owned by George Soros

Actually, as time has gone by, the IPCC has become more moderate in their claims and are more often cited by skeptical people and more often attacked from the left. If you really want to become skeptical of the media narrative on global warming, the IPPC report is a good place to start.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

"You need to rely on government regs & subsidies to make Elon Musk level money."

Spoken like a jealous loser.


Yeah, no shit. The guy talks so much nonsense that I skipped past this one. Musk made his first hundred millions with PayPal, which had nothing to do with the government. But magical thinkers like Wetzel can't be bothered with figuring out anything - let alone major bits of U.S. economic history over the last 20 years. He's still doing his online shopping with a telephone.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

What is the ideal mean temperature for life on Earth? And how did you determine that ideal temperature?

I keep hearing this right-wing "talking point question" thrown around as if it's really hard to figure out the importance of the last 10,000 years of agricultural history that's kept these billions of Homo sapiens fed and their coastal cities (which are only growing) from being submerged.

Well, for a right-winger that might be a really difficult concept to grasp, anyway.

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

Lincoln, if you’ve truly seen fields of them, take some pics of a few and send them in to these researchers.

“Researchers with ARS, Cornell University at Ithaca, N.Y., and South Dakota State University (SDSU) in Brookings want people to photograph every ladybug possible, and to send the photos to Cornell so researchers can inventory the insects. In particular, the scientists are looking for rare species, such as the nine-spotted, two-spotted and transverse lady beetles.

These beetles were common 20 years ago, but have become harder to find in the past few decades. There are more than 400 ladybug species native to North America, but some have become extremely rare, displaced perhaps by development, pesticides, non-native species and other factors.

Entomologist Louis Hesler at the ARS North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Brookings is particularly interested in the nine-spotted, two-spotted and transverse ladybugs because the farm community in South Dakota where he works has depended on these predatory beetles for years to eat insect pests that eat farm crops.

In a survey this past summer, Hesler and colleague Mike Catangui, an entomologist at SDSU in Brookings, found 1,000 ladybugs,but only about 10 each of the three rare species. Hesler and Catangui are co-principal investigators in the SDSU part of the "Lost Ladybug Project."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081013201003.htm

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Actually, as time has gone by, the IPCC has become more moderate in their claims and are more often cited by skeptical people and more often attacked from the left.

So it became more politically correct and approved by the same right wing that can't figure out how to keep a planet warm without an atmosphere, you say. Glad to know.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

So, you have no idea what the temp "should" be, but are convinced that it's too warm? The Left is having collective hot-flashes, I guess.

Howard म्हणाले...

ARM: that's right, biology is much more complex than physics, therefore, the models are much more cartoonish by comparison. I'll give the deniers one point, the warmunistas have exaggerated the efficacy of GCMs and promoted too much funding of studies via politics that claim outrageous consequences. This has damaged the social trust in science as can be seen here on this blog when Dunning-Krueger effects make the ignorant believe that the hole basket of fruit is rotten. This reaction by Trump-believers is the result of another loser over-reach by liberals.

Jaq म्हणाले...

How hot is it out in space? Shit, how hot is it at 30,000 feet up?

My personal marker, I set a couple decades ago, as to whether the enhanced greenhouse effect was as bad as claimed was stratospheric cooling. The claim is, and it makes perfect sense, that the amount of heat coming from the sun is stable, so if the troposphere (where we live) is trapping heat, the stratosphere must cool. Because if the whole atmosphere is becoming warmer, then there is something else at play aside from the greenhouse effect, which only redistributes heat downward towards us, it can't create it. The stratosphere is so sparse that once an IR photon reaches it, it is as good as in space.

Well, the stratosphere isn't cooling. It hasn't in a couple of decades. The only way that have recently found to cook up some cooling up there was to "re analyze" pre-satellite era weather balloon data. Balloons that had primitive altimeters and no GPS, BTW.

But to maintain good faith, I will check the literature again, as I have periodically, to see if there has been any actual stratospheric cooling.

The real problem skeptics have is not with climate scientists, it's with the "media' <<- that which places itself between the reader and the events they are reporting on. I don't trust the media, that's why I read the papers directly.

Jaq म्हणाले...

So it became more politically correct and approved by the same right wing that can't figure out how to keep a planet warm without an atmosphere, you say. Glad to know.

Nice straw many you built there. Have fun with it.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

I will take and send them the pics, Inga. I have a steady correspondence with DNR folks in both NC and MA and routinely report fish, bird and rare plant sightings (nailed a cluster of four Jack-in-the-Pulpit this Spring, but never found the wild Ramp I was looking for). I do it out of habit and to help counter the hysteria from the "everything is going extinct!" fanatics. In fact, if you yourself go look, wherever you live, you might be able to contribute to the knowledge base as well. But that requires knowing what you're seeing, and getting bug-bitten and muddy. Somehow I doubt you're up for that.

Jim at म्हणाले...

I’ve got 6 hemlocks in my backyard I’d hate to lose, too.

Watch out for those. Western Hemlocks notoriously rot in the center before giving any outward signs.

I've got six. Used to have eight. At least 150 years old.
Two of the were too close to the house and had to come down.

Six-inch diameter rot in the center in both.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

So, you have no idea what the temp "should" be, but are convinced that it's too warm?

Only if you can't calculate the last 10,000 years of historical temp. data during which agriculture and civilization developed, Mr. Doesn't Know Which Beetle He Thinks is Repopulating North America From His Friend's Field.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan म्हणाले...

Howard said...
This has damaged the social trust in science as can be seen here on this blog when Dunning-Krueger effects make the ignorant believe that the hole basket of fruit is rotten. This reaction by Trump-believers is the result of another loser over-reach by liberals.


While I might not have framed things quite like this, it is hard to argue with the basic sentiment.

This being said, the link between cancer and smoking also had to survive irrational skepticism from those who had something to lose. I don't think the liberals can fairly be blamed for that one.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Jaq म्हणाले...

keep hearing this right-wing "talking point question" thrown around as if it's really hard to figure out the importance of the last 10,000 years of agricultural history that's kept these billions of Homo sapiens fed and their coastal cities (which are only growing) from being submerged.

Billions of years of climate history, 4 million years of glaciation with periodic interglacials that last about 10 to 15 thousand years, before falling back into glaciation, and this ten thousand years is so special that absent mankind, Earth will keep this temp forever?

Talk about "magical thinking!" Better some warming than to fall back into another ice age. This interglacial is getting a little long in the tooth, and nobody really understands how they come and go, because the factors are never the same. The moon is retreating from the earth, tilt, orbital factors, such as distance from the sun for the north and the south during summer and winter, etc, never repeat exactly. Continents are drifting. So better we get warmer than find Toronto under a mile of ice again.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Wait, so how does 19 years of cooling fit...

I have a feeling I know which Senatorial Information Minister you got this lie from.

When are you guys going to get a Centralized Ministry of Propaganda? Isn't it getting hard to keep all the conflicting lies straight?

I guess when you're as informationally disrupted and disordered as the right wing then you don't even have to keep the lies straight. You just assume that people have as much trouble thinking and remembering as you do.

Birkel म्हणाले...

No, Howard. We don't disbelieve science. We decidedly DO disagree with 'science' that consistently produces the answer "give Leftist Collectivists power".

BAMN toward power is not better when disguised as science.

Howard म्हणाले...

The IPCC and the underlying mainstream climate science has not become more moderate, it always has been boring and non-committal due to uncertainty. The updating of the climate sensitivity estimate has come down a couple clicks, but for the most part, the exaggeration promoters have not reduced their chicken-little mantra which is in part responsible for the Trump counter-balance.

The real damage from the warmunists is the de-emphasis of real toxic, infectious and mutagenic pollution which is the culprit in insect species loss, air pollution mortality, 50% of global warming, 75% of glacial/ice melting and 100% of water-bourne illness.

Jaq म्हणाले...

hen Dunning-Krueger effects make the ignorant believe that the hole basket of fruit is rotten.

Oh D/K is at play here, I just don't think that you know which side you are on.

Howard म्हणाले...

Who is this "We" you represent, Birkel?

Inga...Allie Oop म्हणाले...

“But that requires knowing what you're seeing, and getting bug-bitten and muddy. Somehow I doubt you're up for that.”

Really? Why? I’ve had a garden for years, live on property during the summer that is on a lake and butts up to a marshland in the back of the property. Over the years I’ve collected all manner of bugs and critters with my children and now grandchildren, when they’re visiting. Do you think liberals don’t like outdoor activities? Lol.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Science is not a belief system, it's a method of investigation. Which is why the Left perpetually declares that the "Science is Settled!". They know that any real investigation will reveal their craven fraud.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...


Inga wrote (quoted from someplace, I suppose). . . " . . . but some have become extremely rare, displaced perhaps by development, pesticides, non-native species and other factors."
Once again note the tendency to put man at the center of nature. "Development, pesticides, and non-native species" are due to human activity. Note the lack of supporting evidence given for the statement. When environmentalists see a change in nature that they disapprove of, they reach into their psyches and blame man. There is no real world evidence referenced to state the conclusion.

Jaq म्हणाले...

This has damaged the social trust in science as can be seen

The Hockey Stick nuked "trust in science," and since when has science been about trust? It's about evidence and logic, not funny hats and sacred robes.

Howard म्हणाले...

ARM: This being said, the link between cancer and smoking also had to survive irrational skepticism from those who had something to lose. I don't think the liberals can fairly be blamed for that one.

Linking AGW to Smoking-Lung Cancer was one of the biggest errors of the left's Chicken Little program to promote the crap-can theories of Al Gore and his enablers in the press.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Billions of years of climate history, 4 million years of glaciation with periodic interglacials that last about 10 to 15 thousand years, before falling back into glaciation, and this ten thousand years is so special that absent mankind, Earth will keep this temp forever?

It's obviously special to mankind because without it there wouldn't have been any mankind. Why do you pretend to be more concerned about whatever lifeforms that Pruitt the Creationist running the Environmental Pollution Agency doesn't mind killing off, either? If you don't care about humans being able to inhabit the earth then you could start with yourself. For the rest of us who believe in human ability to work with/around nature - (given our 10,000 year history of doing it) - we'd prefer to keep riding this current temp period out before figuring out the technology in a few thousand years that will allow civilization to cope with any natural changes back that could actually threaten civilization and the planetary life that came with it.

LincolnTf म्हणाले...

Have you sent in any pics, Inga? Done any surveys of insects? Bird censuses? Fish-tag programs? Tending petunias is nice, but it ain't science.

Birkel म्हणाले...

YouTube?
No, the raw satellite data is available.
Stay poorly informed and ask for more power over my life?
Hard pass.

Howard म्हणाले...

tim: The trust in science comes when you build a dangerous machine and stand by when you fire it up the first time. Trust in science is when you run like hell when the gauges twist up the wrong numbers.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

We don't disbelieve science. We decidedly DO disagree with 'science' that consistently produces the answer "give Leftist Collectivists power".

LOL!

So IOW, if the scientific finding has an impact politically, THEN you disbelieve it.

Hahaha. First figure out the politics, then determine how acceptable the science is (to your politics).

I think we have our answer on who's screwing up the science.

Like I said, AGW denial is right-wing political correctness. A scientific stance based on a political result.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Well played, Howard. Your deflection really the us.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Stay poorly informed and ask for more power over my life?

You don't have a life. No one wants "more power" over it.

The video is a clip of a senate hearing where Ted Cruz gets his ass handed to him on how he misinterpreted (probably intentionally) the same data that Clavin Birkel misinterprets.

Howard म्हणाले...

Satellite data = 100% complex numerical model... but conservative Dunning_Krueger is satisfied by these modeled temperature cartoons published by christian right-wing scientists from Dixie.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together म्हणाले...

Clavin Birkel at 2:24 PM tried to write a sentence but it didn't come out too well.

Better luck being intelligible next time, Mr. More Power Over His Life.

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

ARM: This being said, the link between cancer and smoking also had to survive irrational skepticism from those who had something to lose. I don't think the liberals can fairly be blamed for that one.
I hear this this story a lot from people who like to compare skepticism about the link between lung cancer & smoking to skepticism about global warming.
The link between smoking and lung cancer was proven by empirical data. They experimented with animals (cows, I believe), and found that animals exposed to tobacco smoke got cancer while animals not exposed to tobacco smoke did not get cancer. The experiment was repeatable and subject to criticism, unlike "climate science."

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