A Matter of Degrees
“Climatic Zones” writes NASA’s James Hansen “have been shifting poleward for the past thirty years ... If this movement continues ... it will become the predominant cause of extinction of species, many already threatened.”
Climatic zones are indeed moving steadily north. But what consequences can be expected from a rate of poleward climate shift that Hansen calls “unprecedented ?” The answer is a matter of degrees.
Hansen seems to take his cue from Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, in which Mark Lynas likens global warming to a descent into Dante’s Inferno.
This Sunday, Lynas’ hellish vision is due to collide with the popular imagination on TV, amplified not by climate models, but the raw semiotic power of computer generated special effects. We will have to see what The National Geographic Channel unleashes, but judging from Lynas’ publicity website, which shows the dome of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral awash in a rising sea, expect something in the middle ground between An Inconvenient Truth, and Planet of the Apes. The National Geographic Website is forthrightly hyperbolic: “The difference between the world we know and something out of a disaster movie is only a matter of degrees.
One extra degree on the Centigrade thermometer says Lynas, will cast America into a first circle where dust devils turn ‘day into night across thousands of miles of former prairie.’ A second degree conjures visions of Spain as a Saharan wasteland, while a third sees Houston’s “business district begin to sway” as super-hurricanes tear Texas apart and the whole Gulf Coast goes under. “None of this is theoretical conjecture...observable physical laws” make each degree an irrevocable step on the road to hell.
In Lynas’ fevered metaphor, two more degrees encompass the 4th and 5th circles of plant and animal extinction, and the Sixth, “global apocalypse and doom.” To arrive at this revelation, Lynas “read over a thousand scientific papers"—so can anyone with a library card, and Google, including Michael Crichton, whose State Of Fear boasts equally long and tendentious footnotes. Don’t fall for either.
Each manifests the deplorable absence of something that is written of as though it were ubiquitous, but is in fact deplorably rare. Politicized science cannot exist unless both sides have some inkling of what it is they are trying to politicize.
The polarization of environmental rhetoric, from apoplectic denial to Apocalyptic environmentalism, demonstrates instead that most American politicians are scientifically clueless. The last few apocalyptic boom-bust cycles based on the misunderstanding of science, from “the energy crisis” to “nuclear winter “ teach that while publishers reward alarmism, disinterested readers of the scientific literature behind these Jeremiads emerge with a heightened sense of humility rather than a flatly polemic view of the world. Climate can’ be understood by leaps of faith from one worst-case scenario to another.
Reading the journals they all invoke, from Science and Nature, to Eos and Geophysical Research Lettes, and the International Panel on Climate Change reports besides, I, too, find a six degree shift in coming centuries plausible. But I part company with Hansen and Lynas’ cohort over a matter of “dimensional analysis.” They are talking temperature, and I mean Latitude. Both are valid metrics for discussing the impact of climate change. It’s 90 degrees from Pole to Equator, and the hottest and coldest places on Earth, Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression and the Antarctic Plateau, are 83 Degrees Celsius apart.
Science may pride itself on the ability to model almost anything in a single dimension, but natural history, like human existence, unfolds in three and evolves over time. Drive south in midwinter and you’ll see what I mean. Geographically, the 48 States span about 20 degrees of latitude. Climatologically, their mean temperature spans about as many degrees C. From North to South. Miami and Minneapolis are 20 degrees and 32 F apart, and on average, it gets two degrees Fahrenheit warmer for each 100 miles you put between yourself and the North Pole. 100 years of unregulated fuel consumption has moved America south about 50 miles. Elevation counts, to the tune of a degree or so per thousand feet, but the present debate centers on whether the next century can shift regional climate by the length of Vermont, or Illinois?
Depart Greenwich Connecticut, on a frosty midwinter morning, and you can see the sun set over unfrozen ground in colonial Williamsburg. Eight hours and a further six degrees south, you can shed your overcoat by Carolina’s still green coast. Each 50 miles South raises this analogy’s ante by a degree or so Fahrenheit, and after 24 hours of driving south at one degree an hour you can relax in a swimming pool as the winter stars rise over Florida.
But what of the long, hot, Southern summer? The polemically engaged tend to make light of one of climate’s ‘observable physical laws.’ The Greenhouse effect reduces cooling at night more than it increases warming by day. To elide the two deliberately goes beyond sharp scientific practice into the realm of semantic aggression, where the Climate Wars are all too commonly fought. It is by no means an equal battle, and Hansen does his own side a disservice by stoking the fires of reductio ad Hitleram by likening coal miners to loaders of Holocaust trains.
Why bother with this semantic overkill when the Greens have already recruited the most formidable semiotic strike force on Planet Earth? The American Mining Association is up against The Advertising Council. Its members are paid to recruit focus groups to inform the media strategy and perfect the production values of both sides in the Climate Wars. Yet the miners don’t accuse the tree huggers of wanting to send anybody to a crematorium—or pace Crichton’s opéra bouffe, boil Green PR flacks in cannibal pots.
Big Energy prefers to keep its head down as the winds of semantic aggression erode the face of popular culture. Voters aren’t about to read Dante or the Journal Of Geophysical Research as long as FOX and PBS keep force feeding them enough junk science and apocalyptic rhetoric to turn the stomach of a tyrannosaur.
Like Six Degrees, PBS new season of Green TV is a two dimensional smorgasbord of geophysical disasters. It’s enough to make Darwin weep and the Intelligent Design movement shout Hallelujah— catastrophes of Biblical proportions are the norm, and the geophysical gradualism that stands as Victorian science’s crowning achievement has no place at the table. Green peer group pressure has prevailed over peer-reviewed science just as viciously at the Corporation For Public Broadcasting as faith-based science policy has at the President’s Council On Bioethics.
And with just as good an excuse. What geophysicists term Deep Time is too boring for Prime Time, but End Time rhetoric garners publicity whether used to sell abstinence education or carbon offsets. We are seeing a network bent on getting the nation up to speed on the case for evolution conveniently ignoring the very principles of biogeography that helped Darwin frame it. Darwin walked uphill in the Andes to confirm for his own eyes what Alexander von Humboldt earlier reported—that species shift with falling temperatures.
Darwin’s pathfinder also laid the graphic foundation of climate modeling—he was the first to hand draw the lines of average temperature called isotherms on maps regional and global—today’s climate debate boils down to how fast they can move over time. For throughout geological history, the field has been in motion—the Earth’s eccentric axis shifts the tropics several degrees in a 41,000 year cycle.
If one degree is nature’s answer to Lynas’ question, the flora and fauna of Newark, New Jersey has about a century to adopt to the climate of Newark, Delaware. If the answer is three, make that Newport, Rhode Island, and Newport News, Virginia. The six degree Celsius shift that Lynas and the Special Effects industry favor is beyond the pale of even the IPCC’s lenient taste , but if , Dies Irae ex machina, it were to materialize, like the Statue Of Liberty’s surfing wipeout in The Day After Tomorrow, 22nd century shockumentary producers might be in for a shock themselves. You can’t expect an Oscar for comparing footage of Birmingham, Alabama today with Birmingham, Michigan tomorrow. Alabama’s biotreme already endures summers about as hot as even nature stoked on CO2 will be able to deliver—the sun is not going to get hotter on our account.
To true believers, too much history is a dangerous thing. Few Greens believe in popularizing the history of ecology lest it ignite curiosity and lead to the reframing of environmental debate along lines not of their publicists choosing. It is hard to transform the politics of Pittsburg by threatening parents, not with their children’s extinction, but their having to endure the hellish climate of Philadelphia. Sesame Street is not about to admit that, by the IPCC model’s own reckoning, those two cities are exactly as far apart in temperature today as Pittsburg is from the climate projected for the year 2100—if that. Climatologist Steve Schneider has lately published a sober analysis of why he expects the climate models to deliver in the low end of the range of potential change.
Though they share the same latitude, the two P’s 2.5 degree Fahrenheit difference reminds us that elevation is as important as location. Florida’s oppressive sea-level summers have led, not to a mass extinction of senior citizens, but a second exodus to the high, dry, desert of Arizona. Such observations drive greens wild—animals don’t own second homes. But then again, many cunningly walk uphill and down, as well as north and south- the trees and the rest of the static flora have more to worry about than the bears.
Not that it does them much good when the real world’s foremost cause of mass extinction stalks a delicate biotreme like that of South Africa’s Table Mountain. The demon haunting that wonder of biodiversity is called not ‘global warming’ but suburban sprawl, and in ecological hot spots around Capetown, it has decimated whole phyla. Yet Nature, the plant kingdom included, goes on continuously re-colonizing the world in the aftermath of abrupt interglacial climate change and the ravages of geophysical catastrophe. These are sources of radical change, yet no one damns nature for them—"harm" is evidently a matter of human not natural indifference.
In the end, nature has more to fear from cooling than warming, because while heat causes animals discomfort and plants stress, frost bites and kills. Life on Earth is wet, and when water falls to zero Celsius, its liquid to solid phase transition ruptures cell walls as catastrophically as frozen pipes. The ice caps so many are obsessed with saving are the Earth’s penultimate deserts.
Though unready for prime time, biogeography’s eternal turf fight rolls on, oblivious to environmentalism’s rhetoric of motives as to its metaphysical dreams—in the real world, evolution reflects how populations adapt to environmental stresses over generations.
If the environment is headed for a meltdown, at least we have a map. With temperatures shifting tenths of a degree a decade, and isotherms moving poleward scarcely a mile a year, if the world is on the road to hell it definitely is not in the fast lane.
If Public Television aspires to credibility, it needs to put down its Greenpeace playbook long enough to look out their windows, because if the IPCC’s models are right, and not merely Big Science’s answer to video games, we face an extended version of the biogeographic shift of the last century.
The political question is not how the world will cope with sea levels in the fourth millennium, or when Greenland will turn green, but what an informed electorate will make of the prospective transformation of Ohio into Arkansas or Massachusetts into Maryland. Though mere reality may lack the melodramatic punch of what PBS plans to endlessly loop from now to the election, policy remains too important to be taken on faith, let alone predicated on special effects, or science fiction.
Comments
A sober and sensible piece.
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Natural variations in sea level include a level ~ one hundred meters higher than the present. Are you willing to risk a rise, of even one meter, if the gloom and doomers are correct?
This topic is extremely difficult to sift through because of all the ... misinformation being spewed out by all sides of the debate.
As conservatives is it not wise to err on the side of caution?
There are many ways we can cool this world AND it will create jobs and prosperity. But those making hand over fist with oil at $100 a barrel aren’t exactly the ones who will benefit are they?
I’ve been writing about humanity’s need to avoid overeaching its carrying capacity [at all costs] for almost twenty years and have some brief articles which try to explain the situation to the lay man.
http://eggheadalliance.tripod.com/
Which status quo do we wish to err on? The one where Venice, Holland and Florida are not taken back by the sea and the carbon count drops back below 300 ppm?
Or the one where the energy conglomerates of our world are left as they are to do as they please and any number of possible scenarios could come into play.
If there are refugees in any of these scenarios I suggest we house them in the homes of those who said, “I prefer not to worry about what might happen and assume things will work out just fine.”
One last thing. I despise Al Gore. He is not the answer any more than anyone else running. All of them powerless puppets who do as they’re told.
‘Cept Ron Paul. I actually endorse Ron Paul as the only one who could free markets in hemp, electric vehicles, and other gadgets which could easily help reduce the carbon count.
Which of the status quos do you choose to err on as a supposed conservative? The current sea level or the current energy grids?
http://eggheadalliance.tripod.com/onepresidentpaulplease/
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Global Warming, Inc. gets all the “hype”, but one of the most disastrous elements to the coal mining industry is instead “mountaintop removal”. Sure, I’ve seen some newspaper and television editorials, but NOTHING like Global Warming, Inc. Some weird goings on in the atmosphere just doesn’t compare to the destruction of the Land.
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As China experiences their coldest winter in 100 years. As the snow pack in the western United States is above average. Any climate change is out of our hands. The most powerful force is the sun, which experiences variation in its strength. And why did those Norsemen refer to part of Greenland as Vineland a little over 1,000 years ago? Too much fossil fuel burning back then, during that incredible warming period? Demonic forces are behind all this global warming is mankind’s fault blather. The new religion is born, waiting for its true false prophet, an anti-Christ, to emerge. Al Gore is just a preview, a harbinger.
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Those interested in the ongoing “debate” on purported climate changes are referred to the website “Climate Debate Daily” which is put out by the very people who publish “Arts & Leisure Daily” on the internet. It seems like a valiant attempt to be fair.
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I see one reader comments that :
“Demonic forces are behind all this global warming is mankind’s fault blather. The new religion is born, waiting for its true false prophet, an anti-Christ, to emerge. Al Gore is just a preview”
While my classmate Al is always open to write -in nominations, I doubt he will volunteer in this case, as the Anti-Christ is in some legal opinion a foreign prince or potentate, and becoming one might raise Constitutional questions as to his remaining qualified for the only executive office to which he may still aspire.
I have dealt with this contingency elsewhere:
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/05/after_the_falwe.html
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Global warming ehtusiasts use the evidence that fits their argument, and ignore the rest. Most importantly, they base their record of past global temperatures on ice cores and tree rings, but they ignore the evidence provided by changes in arctic tree-line, even though that record has been well-established and provides arguably more accurate data on northern hemisphere temperatures than either tree-rings of ice cores.
The reason for silencing the tree-line record is obvious: it shows large changes in the recent past, when there was no change in carbon dioxide. Tree lines were significantly north of today during the medieval warm period (about 800-1100 AD), which cannot be explained by fluctuations in carbon dioxide. More impressive yet is the hypsithermal, i.e., the warmest period after the last ice age. The tree-line was over 200 miles north of its current position. This lasted about a thousand years, yet the glaciers did not melt and the sea did not rise. Of course, beginning to discuss this fact would bring about an absolutely catastrophic diaster of a different kind: a drastic reduction in the greenhouse lobby’s funding and political influence.
Keep watching the “Green Alps” data currently coming out in Germany. This started from the discovery that many alpine glaciers are bringing down old, frozen tree-trunks, i.e., trees must have grown in areas currently covered by glaciers. Last I checked, carbon dating of the trunks suggested that about half of the time since the last ice age tree-line in the Alps has been higher than today.
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Talking about evidence the greenhouse people try to ignore: January’s ice data just came out, and Antarctic currently has by a good margin the largest ice extent for that month since accurate measurements started in the late 70s.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Note that, while the area of ice in the Arctic has been declining, the area of ice in Antarctic has been slowly growing—this applies to all months. Somehow “global” warming seems to be limited to northern hemisphere.
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Kari
“The reason for silencing the tree-line record is obvious: it shows large changes in the recent past, when there was no change in carbon dioxide.”
There is no conspiracy of silence. Scientists are well aware that there have been dramatic changes in climate in the past. The point that you don’t appear to understand is that the current changes are unprecedented in the RAPIDITY with which they are taking place.
“Somehow “global” warming seems to be limited to northern hemisphere.”
Not true. We have seen dramatic changes in various climate indicators, associated with global warming, in southern Australia over the past 30 years. For example, inflows to Perth dams over the past 30 years have been approximately half historical levels, and over the last few years inflows are about a third of previous levels.
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Yes, Ian, there have been dramatic changes in climatic indicators over tha last ten years—and over the ten years before that and the ten years before that and so on, as far back as there have been any climatic indicators to look at. Sometimes the changes have been towards greater warmth and sometimes away from it. Many of them don’t consistently relate to any particular warming or cooling trend. What the global warming bandwagon has done, however, is to collect all the recent evidenc of warming and conveniently neglect all the evidence of cooling. See Climate Debate Daily for a balanced look at ALL the evidence, not just that which suits the warming case.
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As an opinion:
What does the data in the “marginal areas” show, such as, say the United State of Missouri (considering it is neither “Yankee” nor “Southern”, according to most common definitions)?
Is Missouri, as an example, chosen out of thin air, with no real science behind it, getting hotter or colder or no real change?
I suspect that Australia, the Arctic, and the Antarctica would be entirely too “outlying” for any real statistics to be evaluated. It would be like evaluating ankle injuries among extremely tall people by studying players in the National Basketball Association.
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Mr Capp—concerned with the rising sea flooding cities—might do well to acquaint himself with geological principles such as isostasy.
Which see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isostasy
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Russell: You wrote that Al Gore was your classmate. I presume you mean classmate at Harvard College. Gore was Class of 1969, but I couldn’t find any Seitz in that class. Are you sure you have the right class? Or have you changed your name?
“While my classmate Al is always open to write -in nominations
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Mr. Lebeau:
Al Gore ‘69 and I were contemporaries at Harvard College. I’m listed in the alumni directory as ‘J.R.M. Seitz ; College ‘72’ my transfer from MIT having extended my undergraduate years.
Mr.Konkola:
As you remark: “Somehow “global” warming seems to be limited to northern hemisphere.”, you may find this review of the evidence to the contrary edifying: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/antarctic-cooling-global-warming/langswitch_lang/wp#more-18
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Ian,
Actually, the greenhouse people ignore the treeline evidence and try to argue the medieval warming out of existence. I have not seen them discuss (for example) Bryson’s work on the treeline, and you might want to look at what Mann says about medieval warming.
As to the current warming being exceptionally fast, the problem here is that the speed and magnitude of historical changes is difficult to gauge accurately—i.e., we still do not know how warm the medieval warm period actually was. However, the current warming began in the middle of the 19th century, which means it has now lasted about 150 years. This may not be anything exceptional. The start of the late medieval cooling can arguably be dated to the massive, weather-caused harvest failures of 1315-1322. If we accept that the “little ice age” was fully developed by mid 16th century, then the cooling happened in somewhat over 200 years. (I emphasize the uncertaintly of the dates about the beginning and magnitude of the change. There is, for example, a record from England from 1257 complaining that the winter was so cold that all fig trees died!)
As to the Antarctic evidence, the question here is, how much weight do you give to the satellite data, which now goes back 30 years? I agree there is contradictory data, and to me the satellite evidence looks like the most reliable there is. Thirty years of expanding ice are very diffifult to explain away, though we should not underestimate people’s capabilities at sophistry. (Warming enthusiasts eagerly embrace the satellite obsevations from northern hemisphere.)
An interesting detail: a recent hypothesis connects the warming to fluctuations in El Nino - La Nina, arguing that the latest increase in temperature is due to the prevalence of warm El Nino conditions since the mid 1970s. This year’s large expansion in Antarctic ice agrees with this hypothesis, because we now have a cold La Nina in the Pacific. This is an intriguing possible connection, particularly since to my knowledge there is currently no explanation of what causes the El Nino - La Nina fluctuations.
An English summary of the Green Alps evidence can be found at:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,357366,00.html
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The one observation I have about the global warming worriers, is that they are always concentrating on the negative aspects of such a change. And fear about the future opens always the door for hucksters to sell snake oil remedies. This is not different from those that use the fear of Islamofascism to sell their otherwise useless goods to a gullible public.
Global warming on the scale predicted by the green movement would make Siberia into a paradise and world breadbasket, the northern land mass of Canada would be inhabitable and offer plenty of room for refugees from New York and Washington DC. One would think that the scientists and political activists predicting the coming disaster have invested their personal fortunes in real estate in those areas. If they did not, it would be a pretty good indicator that they are not that convinced of their own doomsday theories.
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This is pseudoscience and worse.
A few words of common sense: Today, Man has the ability to destroy (at the very least) all HUMAN life on earth, or at least any Human life worth living, in a matter of around one hour.
Just one hour, just a few pushes of buttons can turn this Earth into a planet in which, even if some life might continue (and even that’s doubtful), very little if any Human life could continue, or would have any reason to want to.
Mr Seitz, what you have written here is one of the LEAST conservative essays I have ever seen.
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Mr. Ball gives me too much credit, and not enough to his own efforts to immanentize the eschaton.
I am obliged to him for so concisely illustrating the phenomenon to which paragraph 5 refers.
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Professor Sietz:
I enjoy your well written commentary and your rather biting letters that you occasionally send to The American Spectator. I pretty much agree with your comments presented here but I feel it is necessary to call out your gratuitous swipe at Intelligent Design Theory. Proponents of the theory like molecular biologist Michael Behe and mathematician William Dembski are hardly bible thumping yahoos. They have a particular point of view and use science and mathematics to argue their positions. They are no different the proponents of String Theory which, as Lee Smollin points out, propose a theory that cannot be proven by normal empirical scientific methods. Just because the biblical literalists have latched on to Behe and Dembski ideas doesn’t validate your summary dismissal of their arguments. I don’t hold a particular brief for Intelligent Design Theory but I do acknowledge that their theory raises some interesting questions that are beyond the ability of science to fully address at least at this time. It is true that ID or String Theory are not science as we have know it in the past but both seek to explain things that may be beyond our ability to understand. Your unwillingness to take ID as seriously as I assume you take String Theory is a product of the same mindset that you condemn here.
Awaiting your biting reply.
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But look at the viral marketing campaign NatGeo has put together for Six Degrees Could Change The World: http://youtube.com/user/CNCNewsTV
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Mr Goldblatt:
I take your word that “molecular biologist Michael Behe and mathematician William Dembski are” hardly bible thumping yahoos.” But that does not make their work interesting
You write of “Things that may be beyond our ability to understand.” What you mean we?
The more demanding parts of mathematical biology and information theory seem thus far to have eluded them . What the Discovery Institute finds impressive, others find naive, and indeed tendentious , an intellectual shortfall, that explains why so little of their work ends up in peer reviewed journals even as their public polemics seem to electively ignore everything from quantum computation and combinatorics to synthetic biology.
The bottom line is that ID movement is just not playing with a full deck. It is easier to imagine Smollin and Smullin Sokaling the Discovery Institute than Behe and Dembski batting out a paper advancing ‘brane theory.
Dyson of course could still do both.
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If the flagellum of a bacteria is too complex to have just happened, how likely is a designer of flagellums just happening?
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Will Binder just did the overly simplified (thus falsified) Pascal’s Wager against this well written article.
If Will really believes this then can I make up any doom and gloom idea then he will have to capitulate because he is not willing to take the risk?
Well Will, the whole world will explode in 24 hours if you don’t give me $20. Now Will, are you willing to risk planetary destruction by not sending me money?
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Pascal’s Wager Redux
Why is Pascal’s Wager only allowed to justify Green actions - the “Even if we’re wrong, better to have spent it and made sure” argument - and not allowed for economists?
Let’s use the standard 4x4 grid:
Global Warming is true/false, and we’ll assume that climactic zones rise by the probably 3 degrees of latitude.
Remedying it will force the West to gut their economies, true/false.
If we spend our resources on raising the standard of living for all people on the earth (which will, due to better farming methods, reduce infant mortality, allow more people to live at above subsistence levels, and the general panacea that modernization and indoor plumbing brings) and global warming is false, fewer people die.
If we do nothing, and global warming is true, climactic zones shift up by 3 degrees over the next three centuries. Some adjustments will have to be made...but we still provide the benefits of modernization to billions of human beings.
If we shut down Western civilization and global warming is false, we shift the isotherms three degrees south. Crops fail, and we condemn billions of human beings to the abject poverty of the muscle-power economy for no benefit. The West undertakes a slight reduction in Standard of Living, and the glaciers advance.
If we shut down Western civilization and global warming is a three degree shift in isotherms towards the poles, which, by expiation of our carboniferous sins we have prevented, we condemn billions of people to the status quo, which doesn’t sound so ba d if you’re a Westerner, but is horrifying conditions if you live in Ethiopia.
All this merely demonstrates that Pascal’s Wager is not a sufficient justification for running off willy nilly on policy changes.
For the record, I want efforts like Skyonics Skymines to continue for carbon sequestration. Whether I believe CO2 is driving global warming or not, performing uncontrolled gas mix experiments on the only habitable biosphere we’ve got seems to be...unwise.
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The question asked most often by people who are lying is,
“Why would I lie?”
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. Suppose all the white liberals got up one morning and said, “Hmm. Not much coal and oil left. We should start making political changes that will prevent all those brown people in Third World countries from bettering their lives through industrialization, so all the remaining coal and oil will be saved for us here in Europe and North America.” In this hypothetical situation, can anybody think of anything these people should do that the Global Warming “activists” aren’t already doing?
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Though Ken Burnside elects to “assume that climactic zones rise by the probably 3 degrees of latitude.” That’s not my assumption here- all climate models can do is range bounds of greater or lesser probability on futures arising from greater or lesser inputs of gases that cause radiative forcing- the IPCC gives no one figure, just a baseline range of 1.5 to 4.5 C of warming by 2100.
The Bayesian uncertainty in the latitude shift analogy is just as great.
Pascal did not have to figure the uncertain ravages of inflation into his wager. At the high end, the prospective ecological wear and tear has sober souls like E.O. Wilson of ‘Biophilia’ fame worried about the Stewardship Thing, but defending the scientific center against hype on the left and cries of hoax on the right is in my view an exercise in conservation as well.
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An excellent article with one complaint. I disapprove of any deference to peer reviewed articles. Peer review is a fraud by which individuals are forced to submit to thought control by agreeing to certain norms and rules when making an argument. Individuals should not be forced to think alike to have their arguments considered.
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