"Dr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues
report in the journal Current Biology that the snail darter, Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered. Dr. Near contends that
early researchers 'squinted their eyes a bit' when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville. 'I feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the "conservation species concept," where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,' Dr. Near said."
From
"This Tiny Fish’s Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction/Scientists say the snail darter, whose endangered species status delayed the building of a dam in Tennessee in the 1970s, is a genetic match of a different fish" (NYT).
When else have scientists "squinted their eyes a bit" to see a way to achieve a result they desired? When have they not? Who can ever feel secure that we know whether the "snail darter" is something specific or just another stargazer?
পোস্টগুলি
৮৯টি মন্তব্য:
“Trust us”
I'd rather be a stargazer than a snail, yes I would, if I could.
When else? With the whole catastrophic anthropogenic global warming scam. Why? Because they feel guilty for being part of Western civilization, and want to hobble it.
And then they wonder why we no longer respect experts or accept the science. How many people died from COVID because of just this attitude from scientists?
This needs a "What Would We Do Without Experts?" tag.
Magilla neatly sums up all that needs to be said on this subject.
Standard lefty anti-growth playbook. Also consider the "old-growth forest" and spotted owl strategy used to block logging. Also consider how Nixon and Watergate led to 1,000x of the same againstTrump.
https://www.birdful.org/what-happened-in-the-spotted-owl-controversy/
Is a biologist "squinting his eyes a bit" like a Space Shuttle engineer "putting on his 'Manager' hat"?
Well, there's polar bears and lynx. Don't be building no upstream dams from those guys.
Another instance of my pet theory that science has turned into Wikipedia: you can generally trust it on questions which have no political valence, but otherwise you believe it at your own risk.
The increasing corruption and politization of science is a serious matter. It is weakening the United States and leading to unnecessary and counterproductive expenditures by both government and the general population. Manipulated data and bogus studies that assert absurd claims need to be challenged. Thank God for people like Musk who show the way and put their fortunes and their lives on the line to enable such challenges.
It makes me feel uneasy when I hear you questioning science.
Please stop before some innocent creature is harmed.
i guarantee you, nearly EVERY THING you've Ever read about the Tellico Dam is BULL
* the Tellico river is a beautiful, wild river (TRUE, but the Tellico Dam is on the Little Tennessee)
(it DOES back up the MOUTH of the Tellico, but the Wild&Scenic parts are MILES upstream)
* the Tellico Dam doesn't even generate electricity
(because it's on the MOUTH of the Little Tennessee, and ALL the water flows into the Tennessee, where the Ft Loudon dam's hydros make use of the extra water)
* the Little Tennessee was ALSO a wild river (except for the HUGE Fontanna dam IN the Smokie Mt Nat Park)
* the Tellico Dam wouldn't have had Any benefits to justify its cost
(except for the electricity, and the flood control, and MASSIVE increases in property values due to the MASSIVE increases in beach front property
EVERY THING you've heard about the Tellico Dam was a LIE
by the way, the trout fishing is GREAT up ON the Tellico river (miles above the dam)..
I'd highly recommend it
Cherokee National Forest.. Tellico River Area
watch out for bears, though!
"When else have scientists "squinted their eyes a bit" to see a way to achieve a result they desired?"
It never happens. Just ask National Geographic, Scientific American, , or quite a few of the various medical journals. In other words, we can be secure that something is true only when it is always possible to challenge a stated position in good faith, without fear of being censored. The key is to maintain that environment by being ruthless about eliminating bad faith players.
This is a feature, not a bug of the current science regime. This lying and falsifying of the facts started during the cold war in the fifties. The HUAC committee never should have stopped.
Go Snake eyed.
Back in the early days of my career one reference I used was the "Red Book" of threatened and endangered species. There were PAGES of darters of varying differences. Even then it struck me that it was like small Appalachian towns where many inhabitants shared a small, but distinctive, physical trait.
Later I found a LOT of endangered plants were listed because they were almost indistinguishable from another plant but that no studies have been made of which plants were which over the joint habitat. Many thousands were spent to avoid the areas and, when studied we found, "Gee, that endangered plant is every-freakin' where".
It's Progressivism SOP going back to the Wilson Administration and before.
If I squint really hard I can make myself blind to the greening of the planet due to more carbondioxide.
Consensus my rear end. Amazing how one after another institutions show themselves corrupted by leftwing politicians.
Scientists are simply not made of finer clay than the rest of us and should be trusted accordingly.
True story. As soon as you might know, I spent a career and environmental cleanup and compliance. In the late 1980s I worked on a project to expand water storage behind The Prado dam in Southern California for later use and groundwater recharge help increase the water supply. We were required to simulate the extra inundation behind the dam and whether or not it would impact the least bells verio. According to the bug and Bunny guy we were working with, he said that the verio was in danger because it would preferentially raise the eggs of the cowbird which was naturally causing the decline. When I asked him why there was so much concern over this species that was endangered because of natural selection why are they listing it as an endangered species. He told me that the endangered species didn't matter what mattered was the use of any animal in order to restrict property development. Color me not surprised that the snail darter was not actually an endangered species.
I wonder if the NYT deciding to cover this story is an example of them, 'getting with the program' in this new political landscape. 'See? We're reformed ! We often accept challenges to 'trust the science' arguments, they say - 50+ years after the Supreme Court upheld, and the President then granted a dispensation to the dam builders to complete it anyway. Maybe ret-conning is becoming the new gaslighting. It's a better, more accurate word, because it includes 'con'.
Add the Spotted Owl and the Desert Tortoise to this list. These lies have been used to shut down development and land use for over half a century.
Everybody knows they are lying, but they hide behind a cloak of scholarship, scientific presence, and moral superiority, and the communist lap dog media laps it up.
We used DDT to wipe out malaria in the USA. After we did that, "science" decided that DDT was a dangerous pesticide that destroyed bird eggs.
So DDT disappeared. Even though in many places in the world -- like Africa -- malaria is still killing up to a million kids every year.
WHO recommends DDT to control malaria
It's a political fight. And if white liberal scientists were Republicans, they would be called racist for their lack of care about African kids. And DDT would be used in Africa to wipe out malaria. Like we did here! But white liberals own the media, so they rarely hear how racist they are.
Now they tell us?
Now consider the gamesmanship of historical preservation and protection of anthropological materials. The people playing these games are getting rich from selling their putative integrity.
I have a cousin who is a wildlife biologist with a major Federal Agency. He laments the politicalization of the field and of decisions made based on politics, as well as 'studies' accomplished by "windshield biologists" - staff that don't bother to get out of their truck and can observe only what is seen thru the windshield.
DDT became increasingly ineffective as a mosquito control chemical. It's patent for mosquito control ran out in 1966 so there was no longer any vested interest keeping what became a mere commodity chemical alive. One of my environmental projects was to examine DDT use in the areas of Monterey county tributary to the Moss landing harbor. The amount of DDT used by vector control in that area increased tenfold over a 15-year period as resistance increased. They quit using it long before it was banned in 1972 because it wasn't working that well. They next shifted to spraying diesel fuel on surface water
Going strictly on the basis of my aging memory here, but wasn’t there a “discovery” of a living population of a thought to be extinct species of foxes that was based on the evidence of a single hair that was later found to have been stolen from a museum? This was maybe 30 years ago. And of course this was used as a pretense to stop development of something or other. Anyone else remember that?
Here's how Wikipedia, that font of woke wisdom, relates this paradigm case of politically motivated mendacity, "It has been suggested that the snail darter may have been possibly intentionally misidentified as a distinct species in the midst of a campaign against the Tellico Dam."
See? Nobody didn't do 'nuffin.
Similar deliberate lies have been used on the Left Coast to prevent the construction of new reservoirs in California, and to make privately owned stands of "old growth forest" where the spotted owl does not exclusively live or nest economically worthless to the owners, not to mention dooming California to annual spates of deadly and destructive wildfires, all in the name of habitat conservation.
We live in the twilight of reason. Unlike climate change apocalypse, which perpetually awaits us in ten years, we have fewer than ten years to prevent science from devolving into shamanism.
Phone number squinting,
PHONE MAN: All right, miss Benes, all finished. Here's your new number.
ELAINE: Ahem. 646? What is this?
PHONE MAN: That's your new area code.
ELAINE: I thought 646 was just for new numbers.
PHONE MAN: This is a new number.
ELAINE: No, no, no, no. It's not a new number. It's--it's--it's just a changed number. See? It's not different. It's the same, just...changed.
PHONE MAN: Look, I work for the phone company. I've had a lot of experience with semantics, so don't try to lure me into some maze of circular logic.
They squinted pretty hard in the Tuskegee Experiments. Hey scientists ... thanks for creating the Unabomber.
Scientists are amoral. They are monsters. Every last one of them. And don't you ever forget it. They're not squinting. They're closing eyes. YOURS. And sewing them shut.
They'll look you right in the face and tell you that face masks prevent the spread of COVID19, and at the same time, they're busy in the Chinese labs creating COVID20 and releasing it deliberately to keep the world population under control, or Trump out of office.
Trust a scientist at your literal peril.
Same folks who brought us #BelieveAllWomen
"When else have scientists "squinted their eyes a bit" to see a way to achieve a result they desired?"
As Althouse suspects- "All the fucking time."
Meaning "as far as you can throw them."
What? "Scientist" lie? Who knew!! Need to call Bill Nye, that 'science guy' Biden gave the Freedom Medal to.. and and... Al Gore!
Look we all know 'Climate Change' is a scam. It gets colder, hotter, drier, wetter, etc... at varying degrees all over the planet for thousands of years. You can pick and chose what represents what.
As they say, there are liars damn liars and statisticians... and add 'scientist'.
Think of all the grants and academic careers that Global Warming theory has supported over the last 50 years. Squinting hard for big bucks.
In retrospect, a lot of pro bono public interest work doesn't look like it really was in the public's interest or did us any good. Ralph Nader looks more like a politician and less like a crusader.
The insight of the 1970s was that Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government were all on the same side, so we needed crusading activists and lawyers to act in the public interest. What we're realizing now is that Big Activists, Big NGOs and Big Law Firms aren't as idealistic as people back then assumed they would be.
The Florida panther has entered the chat....
The NY Times headline calls it a case of "mistaken identity." It was all just an innocent "mistake." Whoopsie! The NYT doesn't even have the intellectual honesty to suggest it was all a ruse in service of an environmentalist agenda. Sheesh!
Now do the same species in CA's Sacramento River's delta. Million's of gallons of water flushed to the sea rather than being available for people and agriculture!
i thought those were extinct.. oh wait!
the TVA's fundamental flaw was naming their enhancement to their Ft Loudon dam, the Tellico dam instead of the Little Tennessee dam (or, better yet, calling it the Ft Loudon dam enhancement).
By naming it the Tellico dam, people "naturally" assumed that it would be damming the Tellico river gorge; which OUTRAGED people. Of course, it was about a HUNDRED Miles from the gorge, and wasn't EVEN ON the Tellico River.
If they'd named it the Little Tennessee project, outside people would have thought that it was a little project, and wouldn't have even cared.
If they'd named it the Ft Loudon dam enhancement, outsiders wouldn't even have ever noticed
Yep. Look up the delta smelt to see how much damage has been done to California in the name on "endangered" species. It is ridiculous.
Old Al say
When "Experts say"
Go the other way
And really , who cares if a subspecies becomes extinct? I certainly don’t.
"The Florida panther has entered the chat...."
It galls me to know "exotic animal hobbyists" -- you know the type, tattoos everywhere, piercings everywhere -- are beavering away at the destruction of America's wildlife and getting away with it. (It used to be confined to South Florida, but invasive reptiles are rapidly colonizing the southeastern coast, from Brownsville to Charleston.) Importing and releasing anacondas and reticulated pythons wasn't enough. Now it's Nile monitors on the loose. What next? Komodo dragons in Corpus Christi?
Keep in mind that the very notion of "species" is a human construct - - that's not to say that the darter doesn't have very different genetics from a paramecium or a gorilla, but rather that the dividing line between two similar organisms is very much an arbitrary human decision.
It's the age old conflict between 'splitters' and 'joiners';
You ask one virologist, and their answer is that Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever are two different viruses, though closely related; ask another and they are just variance of the same virus.
There is no way that Science™ can tell us precisely where that dividing line can be placed; it's arbitrary human decisions all the way down.
Lazarus, with all due respect, some of us never fell for that scam in the first place. Ralph Nader was always a scammer, a grifter, and unsafe at any place in the public discussion.
Yeah, kind of amazing that people think the distinctions between these fish are significant but the same folks will also tell you both Chihuahuas and Great Pyrenees are in the same species.
If Charles Darwin's little game of "One of these things is not like another" didn't allow all the right people to point and laugh at those silly Christers, he'd have become a has been as soon as Watson and Crick had figured out the double helix.
"Would I lie to you just to get into your pants?" - Frank Zappa.
They are now killing barred owls to "save" spotted owls.
And you strongly and passionately kept voting these very folks back into power year after year.
This was during the Reagan Bush era, you twit.
]Environmentalists, um, Leftists will lie about everything and anything to get their way. They have always been about power to themselves. Environmentalism is a means to an end. The poor are a means to an end. Everything is a means to the end of them having power.
The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacuo hatred—against the exploiters.
The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell.
As long as the Galactic Federation continues to recognize mosquitoes as an endangered species, we're good.
What's so amazing/That keeps us stargazing?
Check out the budget for the Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"The 2025 President’s Budget for the Service totals $4.0 billion, $213.9 million above the 2024 Continuing Resolution (CR), including current appropriations of $2.0 billion, and $2.0 billion available under permanent appropriations, most of which is provided directly to States for fish and wildlife restoration and conservation. In total, the Service estimates the budget request will support 9,183 full-time equivalents (FTEs). The budget for the principal Service operating account, Resource Management, is $1.7 billion, an increase of $150.9 million."
https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-03/fy2025-508-fws-greenbook_revised-pex-4.pdf
My favorite Darter is the San Marcos fountain darter which is currently quarantined because of a largemouth bass virus (LMBV) ravaging the population.
I think that you may have cause and effect reversed. The “science”, more often than not, is to justify what the government wants to do, or not do. Or, in this case, pressure the government not to do something.
Compulsive trailblazing.
When else have scientists "squinted their eyes a bit"...
I dunno, but a safe bet is the grant seekers will jerk us off until we need glasses.
Of course, they weren’t altruistic.
As for NGOs, the leftist ones are responsible for much of the election fraud we see in this country, as well as getting the illegal aliens to and across the border, and safely hidden in the rest of the country. And, of course, Biden, one of their biggest founders, was just awarded the Presidential Freedom Medal, along with Crooked Hillary and Bill Nye, the Science Guy (who doesn’t really have a science degree - it’s in engineering).
My brother was big in the Tellico Dam/Snail Darter protest. He's passed on so good he doesn't see this. It did set the history major turned carpenter on his path of running a nature center then a land conservation organization.
End result was not a lot of industrial development above the dam and it wasn't built to hold hydro-electric generators. But it was the last stretch of natural river and they did flood historic sitesl of the Cherokee Nation
The former Chota and Tanasi sites are listed together on the National Register of Historic Places; Tanasi also has an archaeological site designation (40MR62) assigned in 1972. Since 1979, both sites have been mostly submerged by the Tellico Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River. Archeological excavations were conducted before the dam was completed.
Ann Althouse said...
"What's so amazing/That keeps us stargazing?"
Another brilliant Paul Williams lyric!
That always bothered me. I was taught that that the line was the ability to fertilely interbreed. So, how can wolves be endangered, because the routinely interbreed with dogs, which we probably have millions of in this country? But if you are a splitter, the wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone (and we are now seeing in W MT, N ID and W WA), are a Canadian variant that is larger, and run in bigger packs, than the indigenous subspecies we used to have in the US. That means that they take larger prey (such as elk), and have negatively affected the ecological balance in the region. It was so successful, that they have now (not re) introduced them into CO. Ranchers, of course, hate them, because they prey on cattle, and, apparently, esp sheep. I expect CO to fare worse, because the quantity of natural prey, in relation to ranched prey, is lower. Funny thing though is that the species apparently hit the hardest, from the Yellowstone (not re) introduction were coyotes, which no one misses.
We still have to stop Trump's border wall to protect the jackalope though, right?
Bruce,
"I was taught that that the line was the ability to fertilely interbreed"
Me too, but that's a purely arbitrary human thing to - - " 'Species' Is the term *we* we use to describe living things that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring." There's nothing about science or even Science™ that forces this, it's purely a human linguistic and categorization thing.
Vireo.
I searched before posting this myself...
thanks >> strange that current stories don't connect the dots and help rescue Californians from Californicators
DDT was banned worldwide in areas where no such resistance has been noticeable and could have been cheap and effective
"All taxonomy is political."
So the US scientific community has been lying to us “strictly for our own good” for at least the last half century. Good to know.
The Center for Biological Diversity wrote a report opposing a housing development near me. They cited dangers to the fairy shrimp. The fairy shrimp need standing water, and the proposed development is on a couple of small hills where there is no standing water. I don't think they even bothered to see through a windshield. More likely they now just look at Google Maps.
it didn't NEED hydro electric generators..
NO water goes over (or through) the Telico Dam. ALL the water of the Little Tennessee (which comes down from the Fontana dam) goes Through the canal they dug, and into Ft Loudon lake. The Telico river IS a natural river.. about a HUNDRED miles upstream of the dams.
For someone that claims to be related to the people that slowed this project;
you SURE DON'T know much about it; do you? I'm guessing your brother didn't know much about it EITHER
And why do you think coyotes are a menace all over the U.S.? A good explanation is the predators that eat them (e.g. wolves) has allowed them to spread, even into NYC.
so ALL the water from the Little Tennessee river produces electricity AT the Ft Loudon dam.
The Whole point of the project was to take the little Tenn (which normally entered the Tennessee JUST BELOW Ft Loudon) and make it enter AT Ft Loudon, thus making the power produced there MUCH larger.
It also created SEVERAL resort areas (such as Telico Villiage) that are Now worth BILLIONS (and were COMPLETELY disregarded by the courts cost/benfit analysis because they didn't exist BEFORE).
If you want a wild and scenic river, with lots of waterfalls and rapids and trouts and beauty.. Try the Telico river, about A HUNDRED MILE upstream from Ft Loudon (where it ALWAYS WAS)
wait until you find out about fluoridation!
Also, the Biden regime's Surgeon General is telling us that drinking alcohol may cause cancer. Am I going to believe him? Nope. If a Biden regime apparatchik told me that the sun rose in the east this morning, I'd still look out my window to verify the fact.
"Add the Spotted Owl and the Desert Tortoise to this list. These lies have been used to shut down development and land use for over half a century."
Just the "bad" land use. California recently began construction of a solar farm (good land use) which requires the removal of thousands of Joshua trees and will impact desert tortoise habitat. Both the trees and the tortoises are threatened/protected species.
In California, the water provided to the ultraproductive farms of the Central Valley is largely determined by regulations enforcing biological opinions relating to the Delta Smelt. The Delta Smelt is, by most biological accounts, just a local subspecies of smelt, which is common throughout other parts of the U.S. and Canada. Somehow, the environmental lobby convinced courts that they should be treated as a separate species from other smelt, and thus their habitat in the Sacramento River delta protected from irrigation pumping (but no untreated wastewater discharges, also for no apparent reason).
Oil on water was what was used when the US built the Panama Canal.
IIRC.
Ever heard of the elderberry beetle.?The last thing any California developer wants to see on his land is an elderberry bush. Once it’s spotted all work stops. There have been many unfortunate fires on land that’s planned for development. Many elderberry bushes have been unfortunately consumed.
The establishment/permanent lefty deep staters, democraticals, like you, were already well entrenched in the pre-Chevron ruling world even then you idiot.
Now tell us again the fantastical story of how no one at Althouse blog had ever heard of Joe Rofan before you mentioned him! Maybe you'll get a cookie and a pat on the head!
Yeah, Howard. The EPA do that a lot. My BIL who is a real civil engineer has spent his career on sewer and water projects. The EPA pays for studies and just discards the ones that don't meet their pre concieved notions. When the town south of us built a new water treatment and filtration plant they experiences unexpectededly low levels of ecoli and other contaminents. Well below the recomended minimum. They were proud of what they acomplished. The EPA wrote them and told them to cut those numbers in half. No studies. Totaly arbitrary.
One step further dumbass. They have spread(coyotes) because their food source has spread. Deer and domestic animals. Wolves competed with coyotes but weren't their preferred food source. Large ungulates were. Which have been largely exterminated. Replaced by deer. There are more deer today than in pre European times. Hence more coyotes.
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