Environmentalism’s Bogus Numbers

[PoliticalChic]

1. “… one paper published in the journal Nature in January 2004 that “warned of the loss of thousands of species with a relatively small warming over the next century.” http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29

a. “ E. O. Wilson suggests the problem is particularly bad, indicating that each year 27,000 species are doomed to extinction, which means 74 a day, or 3 every hour. He notes that the normal rate of extinction for species is around one species per million every year, and explains how, as the result of human actions, this rate is now somewhere between 1000 and 10 000 times greater in some areas of the world, such as the rainforests.” About Eco Faith and IDEA





2. Aside from throwing one’s hands up an screeching ‘the sky is falling!,’ what is one to do??? Answer: check the source of the data.
Aynsley Kellow, Professor of Government at the University of Tasmania, did just that, and found that the data was based on a computer model. “Despite this, the predictions made by such models are now contained in scientific papers published in leading journals, which gives the status of science to what is often little more than wishful thinking.,,, Kellow notes that a similar warming over the previous century had not left anything like the trail of species devastation being proposed in the paper, yet this observational data was considered irrelevant compared with the virtual world of the models. However virtuous, virtual science is no substitute for the real thing - Opinion

a. Get the point? The bogus numbers are used because they are threatening to the gullible, to force bad public policy. This is not real science, it is ‘conservation science,’ a very different breed! “We often hear that the predictions accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are based on "the science". It's important to realise that this is often a very different type of science to other sciences, [the real science] that explains why a jumbo jet won't fall out of the sky or why a certain treatment will cure a certain disease.’ Ibid.





3. "The fact is, since the white man arrived in the Americas, there have been no forest bird or mammal extinctions from any cause. "Where are the Corpses? | Reprint

4. The Pacific Research Foundation, a moderate environmental auditor, has used the IUCN Red List, and the Heinz Center’s State of the Nation’s Ecosystems project, that only 2.7 percent of species have gone extinct since the last Ice Age.

a. “"So far, only 1 to 2 percent of all species have gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly,… Barnosky's team chose mammals as a starting point because they are well studied today and are well represented in the fossil record going back some 65 million years. Biologists estimate that within the past 500 years, at least 80 mammal species have gone extinct out of a starting total of 5,570 species (1.43%). The team's estimate for the average extinction rate for mammals is less than two extinctions every million years,…”
Has Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?





5. So, when envirowackos warn of great numbers and deleterious effects, remember that they are speaking not of real danger, but of ‘desktop dangers.’ These are computer models, with input by folks whose goal is to prevent human activity rather than to protect habitat.
“GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) is a concept common to computer science and mathematics: the quality of output is determined by the quality of the input. So, for example, if a mathematical equation is improperly stated, the answer is unlikely to be correct. Similarly, if incorrect data is input to a program, the output is unlikely to be informative.”
What is garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) ? - Definition from WhatIs.com

a. All you have to do is plug the “findings” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the desktop, and, voila, 33 percent of species are definitely about to go extinct! See “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert,” Donna Laframboise, a book that ‘blows the lid off the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’






6. “It seems that we live in a world where environmental policy is based on the following logic: despite the fact that we have no idea how many species there are by at least one order of magnitude, and despite the fact that only 2.7 percent of known species have gone extinct since the last ice age, we nevertheless believe that one-third of the species on the planet are about to go extinct.”
Nickson, “Eco-Fascists,” p. 202-203.

7. “Model builds upon model which builds upon other models, all of which make approximatiosn and assumptions and so on. This is not the kind of work in which to put your beliefs. It it not the kind of work to write treaties or raise taxes. Yet it has become so.”
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29


Conservation science?
Studies show that 91.8 % of all statistics are made up on the spot. True story.

 

[mamooth]

You understand no one actually reads your cherrypick manifestos, right?

 

[PoliticalChic]

You understand no one actually reads your cherrypick manifestos, right?

Well, look who’s back: the human dart board….oops did I say human?


Hope you didn't waste all of your time doing the poll required for your post, Janiss.....

...but seems there are 42 you missed.

 

[Old Rocks]

Dum-de-dum-dum. The flapyapper.

 

[Old Rocks]

Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions

Abstract

Unqualified, the statement that &#8776;1.3% of the &#8776;10,000 presently known bird species have become extinct since A.D. 1500 yields an estimate of &#8776;26 extinctions per million species per year (or 26 E/MSY). This is higher than the benchmark rate of &#8776;1 E/MSY before human impacts, but is a serious underestimate. First, Polynesian expansion across the Pacific also exterminated many species well before European explorations. Second, three factors increase the rate: (i) The number of known extinctions before 1800 is increasing as taxonomists describe new species from skeletal remains. (ii) One should calculate extinction rates over the years since taxonomists described the species. Most bird species were described only after 1850. (iii) Some species are probably extinct; there is reluctance to declare them so prematurely. Thus corrected, recent extinction rates are &#8776;100 E/MSY. In the last decades, the rate is <50 E/MSY, but would be 150 E/MSY were it not for conservation efforts. Increasing numbers of extinctions are on continents, whereas previously most were on islands. We predict a 21st century rate of &#8776;1,000 E/MSY. Extinction threatens 12% of bird species; another 12% have small geographical ranges and live where human actions rapidly destroy their habitats. If present forest losses continue, extinction rates will reach 1,500 E/MSY by the century&#8217;s end. Invasive species, expanding human technologies, and global change will harm additional species. Birds are poor models for predicting extinction rates for other taxa. Human actions threaten higher fractions of other well known taxa than they do birds. Moreover, people take special efforts to protect birds.

 

[Toronado3800]

1. “… one paper published in the journal Nature in January 2004 that “warned of the loss of thousands of species with a relatively small warming over the next century.” http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29

a. “ E. O. Wilson suggests the problem is particularly bad, indicating that each year 27,000 species are doomed to extinction, which means 74 a day, or 3 every hour. He notes that the normal rate of extinction for species is around one species per million every year, and explains how, as the result of human actions, this rate is now somewhere between 1000 and 10 000 times greater in some areas of the world, such as the rainforests.” About Eco Faith and IDEA





2. Aside from throwing one’s hands up an screeching ‘the sky is falling!,’ what is one to do??? Answer: check the source of the data.
Aynsley Kellow, Professor of Government at the University of Tasmania, did just that, and found that the data was based on a computer model. “Despite this, the predictions made by such models are now contained in scientific papers published in leading journals, which gives the status of science to what is often little more than wishful thinking.,,, Kellow notes that a similar warming over the previous century had not left anything like the trail of species devastation being proposed in the paper, yet this observational data was considered irrelevant compared with the virtual world of the models. However virtuous, virtual science is no substitute for the real thing - Opinion

a. Get the point? The bogus numbers are used because they are threatening to the gullible, to force bad public policy. This is not real science, it is ‘conservation science,’ a very different breed! “We often hear that the predictions accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are based on "the science". It's important to realise that this is often a very different type of science to other sciences, [the real science] that explains why a jumbo jet won't fall out of the sky or why a certain treatment will cure a certain disease.’ Ibid.





3. "The fact is, since the white man arrived in the Americas, there have been no forest bird or mammal extinctions from any cause. "Where are the Corpses? | Reprint

4. The Pacific Research Foundation, a moderate environmental auditor, has used the IUCN Red List, and the Heinz Center’s State of the Nation’s Ecosystems project, that only 2.7 percent of species have gone extinct since the last Ice Age.

a. “"So far, only 1 to 2 percent of all species have gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly,… Barnosky's team chose mammals as a starting point because they are well studied today and are well represented in the fossil record going back some 65 million years. Biologists estimate that within the past 500 years, at least 80 mammal species have gone extinct out of a starting total of 5,570 species (1.43%). The team's estimate for the average extinction rate for mammals is less than two extinctions every million years,…”
Has Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?





5. So, when envirowackos warn of great numbers and deleterious effects, remember that they are speaking not of real danger, but of ‘desktop dangers.’ These are computer models, with input by folks whose goal is to prevent human activity rather than to protect habitat.
“GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) is a concept common to computer science and mathematics: the quality of output is determined by the quality of the input. So, for example, if a mathematical equation is improperly stated, the answer is unlikely to be correct. Similarly, if incorrect data is input to a program, the output is unlikely to be informative.”
What is garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) ? - Definition from WhatIs.com

a. All you have to do is plug the “findings” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the desktop, and, voila, 33 percent of species are definitely about to go extinct! See “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert,” Donna Laframboise, a book that ‘blows the lid off the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’






6. “It seems that we live in a world where environmental policy is based on the following logic: despite the fact that we have no idea how many species there are by at least one order of magnitude, and despite the fact that only 2.7 percent of known species have gone extinct since the last ice age, we nevertheless believe that one-third of the species on the planet are about to go extinct.”
Nickson, “Eco-Fascists,” p. 202-203.

7. “Model builds upon model which builds upon other models, all of which make approximatiosn and assumptions and so on. This is not the kind of work in which to put your beliefs. It it not the kind of work to write treaties or raise taxes. Yet it has become so.”
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29


Conservation science?
Studies show that 91.8 % of all statistics are made up on the spot. True story.

Good god. Global warming is its own mess.of a.conversation.

On extinctions that was a little.bit of interesting reading.

I read a bit of your source for point 3. It is pretty questionable and somewhat liberal in its habitat classifications to obtain its claims. Not to difficult to think of famous extinct bird species though although if you discount all.species which suffered from anything in addition to habititat destruction I guess they just mislead you and did not lie.

Also I did not realize our environmental.protection agency did THAT good of a job once a species was endangered. Seems like money well spent.

So yeah, blah blah greenhouse gasses raise temps in enclosed environments for sure. Some dont believe the earth will work the same way. Same debate.

And I do agree environmentalists can be dramatic as well. But man, we channalize the Mississippi and darn near drive some species extinct. These things do happen.

 

[westwall]

Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions

Abstract

Unqualified, the statement that &#8776;1.3% of the &#8776;10,000 presently known bird species have become extinct since A.D. 1500 yields an estimate of &#8776;26 extinctions per million species per year (or 26 E/MSY). This is higher than the benchmark rate of &#8776;1 E/MSY before human impacts, but is a serious underestimate. First, Polynesian expansion across the Pacific also exterminated many species well before European explorations. Second, three factors increase the rate: (i) The number of known extinctions before 1800 is increasing as taxonomists describe new species from skeletal remains. (ii) One should calculate extinction rates over the years since taxonomists described the species. Most bird species were described only after 1850. (iii) Some species are probably extinct; there is reluctance to declare them so prematurely. Thus corrected, recent extinction rates are &#8776;100 E/MSY. In the last decades, the rate is <50 E/MSY, but would be 150 E/MSY were it not for conservation efforts. Increasing numbers of extinctions are on continents, whereas previously most were on islands. We predict a 21st century rate of &#8776;1,000 E/MSY. Extinction threatens 12% of bird species; another 12% have small geographical ranges and live where human actions rapidly destroy their habitats. If present forest losses continue, extinction rates will reach 1,500 E/MSY by the century’s end. Invasive species, expanding human technologies, and global change will harm additional species. Birds are poor models for predicting extinction rates for other taxa. Human actions threaten higher fractions of other well known taxa than they do birds. Moreover, people take special efforts to protect birds.

I love estimates based on nothing more than a hand wave. In these years of supposed "extinction events" where for some darned reason they have never, ever been able to produce a single documented extinction, we find that in one year ALONE 18,225 NEW species were type classified.

Yep, that really sounds like an "extinction event" to me...



"In the 2010 State of Observed Species researchers have announced that 18,225 living species were discovered in 2008. In addition, 2,140 new extinct species were discovered byway of fossils.

For researchers the easiest new species to discover were insects: over 48 percent of the new species described in 2008 were insects. Over a third of the new insects were beetles. Mammals were among the most difficult: researchers discovered only 41 new species of mammal in 2008, nearly a third of which were rodents. Five times as many extinct mammals were found as living species.

To date insects represents a majority of the world's species with just over a million insects described. Plants come in second with just over a quarter-million. As of 2008, researchers have described 9,997 birds, 8,863 reptiles, 6,644 amphibians, and 5,528 mammals. In all, scientists have described almost 2 million species (1,922,710) since taxonomic work began in the 18th Century."

Read more at 18,225 new species discovered in 2008




18,225 new species discovered in 2008

 

[westwall]

1. “… one paper published in the journal Nature in January 2004 that “warned of the loss of thousands of species with a relatively small warming over the next century.” http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29

a. “ E. O. Wilson suggests the problem is particularly bad, indicating that each year 27,000 species are doomed to extinction, which means 74 a day, or 3 every hour. He notes that the normal rate of extinction for species is around one species per million every year, and explains how, as the result of human actions, this rate is now somewhere between 1000 and 10 000 times greater in some areas of the world, such as the rainforests.” About Eco Faith and IDEA





2. Aside from throwing one’s hands up an screeching ‘the sky is falling!,’ what is one to do??? Answer: check the source of the data.
Aynsley Kellow, Professor of Government at the University of Tasmania, did just that, and found that the data was based on a computer model. “Despite this, the predictions made by such models are now contained in scientific papers published in leading journals, which gives the status of science to what is often little more than wishful thinking.,,, Kellow notes that a similar warming over the previous century had not left anything like the trail of species devastation being proposed in the paper, yet this observational data was considered irrelevant compared with the virtual world of the models. However virtuous, virtual science is no substitute for the real thing - Opinion

a. Get the point? The bogus numbers are used because they are threatening to the gullible, to force bad public policy. This is not real science, it is ‘conservation science,’ a very different breed! “We often hear that the predictions accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are based on "the science". It's important to realise that this is often a very different type of science to other sciences, [the real science] that explains why a jumbo jet won't fall out of the sky or why a certain treatment will cure a certain disease.’ Ibid.





3. "The fact is, since the white man arrived in the Americas, there have been no forest bird or mammal extinctions from any cause. "Where are the Corpses? | Reprint

4. The Pacific Research Foundation, a moderate environmental auditor, has used the IUCN Red List, and the Heinz Center’s State of the Nation’s Ecosystems project, that only 2.7 percent of species have gone extinct since the last Ice Age.

a. “"So far, only 1 to 2 percent of all species have gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly,… Barnosky's team chose mammals as a starting point because they are well studied today and are well represented in the fossil record going back some 65 million years. Biologists estimate that within the past 500 years, at least 80 mammal species have gone extinct out of a starting total of 5,570 species (1.43%). The team's estimate for the average extinction rate for mammals is less than two extinctions every million years,…”
Has Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?





5. So, when envirowackos warn of great numbers and deleterious effects, remember that they are speaking not of real danger, but of ‘desktop dangers.’ These are computer models, with input by folks whose goal is to prevent human activity rather than to protect habitat.
“GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) is a concept common to computer science and mathematics: the quality of output is determined by the quality of the input. So, for example, if a mathematical equation is improperly stated, the answer is unlikely to be correct. Similarly, if incorrect data is input to a program, the output is unlikely to be informative.”
What is garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) ? - Definition from WhatIs.com

a. All you have to do is plug the “findings” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the desktop, and, voila, 33 percent of species are definitely about to go extinct! See “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert,” Donna Laframboise, a book that ‘blows the lid off the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’






6. “It seems that we live in a world where environmental policy is based on the following logic: despite the fact that we have no idea how many species there are by at least one order of magnitude, and despite the fact that only 2.7 percent of known species have gone extinct since the last ice age, we nevertheless believe that one-third of the species on the planet are about to go extinct.”
Nickson, “Eco-Fascists,” p. 202-203.

7. “Model builds upon model which builds upon other models, all of which make approximatiosn and assumptions and so on. This is not the kind of work in which to put your beliefs. It it not the kind of work to write treaties or raise taxes. Yet it has become so.”
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=29


Conservation science?
Studies show that 91.8 % of all statistics are made up on the spot. True story.

Good god. Global warming is its own mess.of a.conversation.

On extinctions that was a little.bit of interesting reading.

I read a bit of your source for point 3. It is pretty questionable and somewhat liberal in its habitat classifications to obtain its claims. Not to difficult to think of famous extinct bird species though although if you discount all.species which suffered from anything in addition to habititat destruction I guess they just mislead you and did not lie.

Also I did not realize our environmental.protection agency did THAT good of a job once a species was endangered. Seems like money well spent.

So yeah, blah blah greenhouse gasses raise temps in enclosed environments for sure. Some dont believe the earth will work the same way. Same debate.

And I do agree environmentalists can be dramatic as well. But man, we channalize the Mississippi and darn near drive some species extinct. These things do happen.

You would think that with all of these species supposedly going extinct you could produce one. Bueller? Bueller?

Anyone seen Bueller?

 

[Toronado3800]

You seriously can't think of one north american bird which went extinct.about a century ago.

passenger pigeon - Google Search

Not sure if the google link will work on a desktop.

 

[IanC]

Abstract
Loehle, Craig, and Willis Eschenbach. 2011. Historical bird and terrestrial mammal extinction rates and causes. Diversity and Distributions. doi: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00856.x

We examined historical extinction rates for birds and mammals and contrasted island and continental extinctions. Australia was included as an island because of its isolation. Only six continental birds and three continental mammals were recorded in standard databases as going extinct since 1500 compared to 123 bird species and 58 mammal species on islands. Of the extinctions, 95% were on islands. On a per unit area basis, the extinction rate on islands was 177 times higher for mammals and 187 times higher for birds than on continents. The continental mammal extinction rate was between 0.89 and 7.4 times the background rate, whereas the island mammal extinction rate was between 82 and 702 times background. The continental bird extinction rate was between 0.69 and 5.9 times the background rate, whereas for islands it was between 98 and 844 times the background rate. Undocumented prehistoric extinctions, particularly on islands, amplify these trends. Island extinction rates are much higher than continental rates largely because of introductions of alien predators (including man) and diseases. Our analysis suggests that conservation strategies for birds and mammals on continents should not be based on island extinction rates and that on islands the key factor to enhance conservation is to alleviate pressures from uncontrolled hunting and predation.

we should have seen hundreds of mammals and thousands of birds go extinct if the environmentalists numbers are correct. we have not.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions

Abstract

Unqualified, the statement that &#8776;1.3% of the &#8776;10,000 presently known bird species have become extinct since A.D. 1500 yields an estimate of &#8776;26 extinctions per million species per year (or 26 E/MSY). This is higher than the benchmark rate of &#8776;1 E/MSY before human impacts, but is a serious underestimate. First, Polynesian expansion across the Pacific also exterminated many species well before European explorations. Second, three factors increase the rate: (i) The number of known extinctions before 1800 is increasing as taxonomists describe new species from skeletal remains. (ii) One should calculate extinction rates over the years since taxonomists described the species. Most bird species were described only after 1850. (iii) Some species are probably extinct; there is reluctance to declare them so prematurely. Thus corrected, recent extinction rates are &#8776;100 E/MSY. In the last decades, the rate is <50 E/MSY, but would be 150 E/MSY were it not for conservation efforts. Increasing numbers of extinctions are on continents, whereas previously most were on islands. We predict a 21st century rate of &#8776;1,000 E/MSY. Extinction threatens 12% of bird species; another 12% have small geographical ranges and live where human actions rapidly destroy their habitats. If present forest losses continue, extinction rates will reach 1,500 E/MSY by the century’s end. Invasive species, expanding human technologies, and global change will harm additional species. Birds are poor models for predicting extinction rates for other taxa. Human actions threaten higher fractions of other well known taxa than they do birds. Moreover, people take special efforts to protect birds.

First of all, Rocks......I'm really glad to see you involved. This is the debate I think we should have.


1. If you haven't had a chance to see this OP, I led up to the current OP by explaining that environmentalism is not a science, nor based on science.
Here it is:
http://www.usmessageboard.com/environment/276686-conservation-biology-isn-t-science.html



2. Your link makes my point right in the opening sentence, which prominently states : "...an estimate..."


Essentially, the 'scientists' on your side of the argument allow themselves to guess in the direction they'd like the data to go.

Even Freud related such 'wish fulfillment' merely to the realm of dreams.


3. And, as you are experienced with computers, you know the truth of 'garbage in, garbage out.' Desktop data, computer models.....just too easy to fudge.

Policy based on same is simply a result of an 'error cascade.'



4.Now, let me remind you about science. The above tells what science is not.

What is the nature of science?

Surely not a discipline constructed from guesses and assumption, computer models and made up statistics.
In 1665, Robert Hooke recorded in his revolutionary thesis “Micrographia” that ‘The truth is, the Source of Nature has been already too long made only a Work of the Brain and the Fancy: it is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of observations on material and obvious things.”


And that is the flaw in environmentalism: '...already too long made only a Work of the Brain and the Fancy..."



Big Government, and the United Nations use what you call science as a strategy to advance global governance, and control.


More and more folks see that.
I hope you will see that.

 

[PoliticalChic]

You seriously can't think of one north american bird which went extinct.about a century ago.

passenger pigeon - Google Search

Not sure if the google link will work on a desktop.

You should read more carefully:
"The fact is, since the white man arrived in the Americas, there have been no forest bird or mammal extinctions from any cause. "Where are the Corpses? | Reprint

 

[Toronado3800]

List of endangered species in North America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wait guys. Remember all the complaints about the ridiculous amount of money we have spent or cost ourselves.saving spotted owls and other species? These guys are forgetting hiw good of a job we do keeping the last California Condors, buffalo or spotted owls lingering around. And don't forget an animal is not extinct until the last one in a zoo is dead.

Here, I will quote this young lady about some conservation efforts costing too much.

1. 'The Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) is a species of true owl. It is a resident species of old-growth forests in western North America, where it nests in tree holes, old bird of prey nests, or rock crevices….The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red list status for the Spotted Owl is Near Threatened with a decreasing population trend….. In February 2008, a federal judge reinforced a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate 8,600,000 acres (35,000 km2) in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as critical habitat for the owl.' Spotted Owl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. Ten years of research and more than 1,000 published studies detail the threats to its survival, but there's still no sure way to stop its decline. Saving the Spotted Owl : NPR





2. What is the cost of ‘saving’ the bird, and what’s the reason? Have organism’s become extinct? And the result?
“From the environmentalists' perspective, the benefits of preserving the northern spotted owl and its habitat far outweigh any of the costs….society ought to preserve this species and the unique ecosystem it represents because of their aesthetic value. “Ethics and the Environment: The Spotted Owl Controversy

3. The Spotted Owl campaign, as is so very many other environmental campaigns, a deceit. It is a way of advancing the real agenda, confiscating property, making land off-limit, and eliminating any human presence. No matter the cost. No matter the result.





4. “Look, I don’t doubt that the regulaertory processed thaet we put in place to produce the environmental goods that we wan have taken a toll on the economy generally and the rural economy in particular. Telling the story that rural communities are being harmed may tug at the heartstrings of rural people, but no one else will care.

5. You see, what the sage grouse is about is, they want to stop drilling in beautiful Wyoming. That’s the hidden agenda….Take the spotted owl case….One of the people instrumental in shutting down th forests told me that ‘if the spotted owl hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent it.’ The goal was to stop logging….It is totally questionable whether owls were endangered by logging. Was it good for the overall health of the forest? Probably not. Was it good for the spotted owl? It probably didn’t make a difference. Did it hurt the overall economies of the West? Yes.”
Nickson, “Eco-Fascists,” p.129.





6. Holly Fretwell is a Property and Environment Research Center (PERC): Senior Research Fellow, and an adjunct professor at Montana State University. She spent a year auditing the health Forest Service’s 446 million acres under it and the Bureau of Land Management’s command. The effect of fifteen years of sequestration of public lands has been a disaster. Thinning, salvage harvesting, cleaning deadfall are expressly forbidden by environmentalists, the areas are considered by the Forrest Service itself to be in immediate danger of exploding in a once-in-a-millennium fire that would burn so hot that not only would the seeds in the soil die, but also the dirt itself would be burned to dust. Fretwell, “Who is Minding the Federal Estate?” p. 54.






7. “The spotted owl was dying anyway. First of all, its prey was being eaten by the larger barred owl, which had been moving west for the last hundred years, but its supposed natural habitat was dying. In eastern Oregon and Washington’s Blue Mountain forests. 6 million acres are dead and dying. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest- formally designated spotted owl habitat- has so much root rot that it is called the Valley of Death. One breeding pair remains.”
Nickson, Op. Cit., p.131.



Yet, somehow, this is a higher value than the people who live and work in these areas.

Really?

 

[Ernie S.]

You understand no one actually reads your cherrypick manifestos, right?

Well, we understand that YOU refuse to read anything that pokes holes in your religion, but people who are open to opposing views read Political Chick's posts in hope of learning something.

Care to dispute what she said? Dismissal/deflection ain't cutting it malmouth.

 

[freedombecki]

Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions

Abstract

Unqualified, the statement that &#8776;1.3% of the &#8776;10,000 presently known bird species have become extinct since A.D. 1500 yields an estimate of &#8776;26 extinctions per million species per year (or 26 E/MSY). This is higher than the benchmark rate of &#8776;1 E/MSY before human impacts, but is a serious underestimate. First, Polynesian expansion across the Pacific also exterminated many species well before European explorations. Second, three factors increase the rate: (i) The number of known extinctions before 1800 is increasing as taxonomists describe new species from skeletal remains. (ii) One should calculate extinction rates over the years since taxonomists described the species. Most bird species were described only after 1850. (iii) Some species are probably extinct; there is reluctance to declare them so prematurely. Thus corrected, recent extinction rates are &#8776;100 E/MSY. In the last decades, the rate is <50 E/MSY, but would be 150 E/MSY were it not for conservation efforts. Increasing numbers of extinctions are on continents, whereas previously most were on islands. We predict a 21st century rate of &#8776;1,000 E/MSY. Extinction threatens 12% of bird species; another 12% have small geographical ranges and live where human actions rapidly destroy their habitats. If present forest losses continue, extinction rates will reach 1,500 E/MSY by the century&#8217;s end. Invasive species, expanding human technologies, and global change will harm additional species. Birds are poor models for predicting extinction rates for other taxa. Human actions threaten higher fractions of other well known taxa than they do birds. Moreover, people take special efforts to protect birds.

The way this model is presented seems a tad redundant to me.

In the "Number of Species on Earth" page, it lists that there are 9,998 species of birds known today. To calculate "26 extinctions per 1,000,000 species" you'd get: 26/1,000,000 9,998 / 1,000,000 x 26, wouldn't you? That would be .009998 x 26 = .259948, or 1 specie every 4 years would bite the bullet. That gives us a little time to do something about preservation.

I'm very sad we lost the Ivory-billed woodpecker in the last century. James John Audubon portrayed them in his early-American drawings, and two examples are preserved in the Massachusetts Museum (2007 photograph, from Birdwatching):

The problem with the sightings in Arkansas in 2004-2008 is that no firm, solid photographic proof of the "sightings" was procured and that the adage "people see what they want to see" is alive and well, according to Professor Jerome A. Jackson, eminent ornitholigist of Florida Gulf Coast University. Ivory Billed Woodpecker is Extinct, say two teams of researchers.​

Sad, really. From what I read back then, the reason the birds became endangered is that they will not nest within a mile of human habitation, and that their forest ranges just got to be too small and were too frequently visited by humans to conduct fledging their young, once a year being too frequent for their innate insistance of breeding the next generation their own way. It is thought there were 22 individuals left in their population in the wild in 1935 and none by 1948. ​

 

[PoliticalChic]

List of endangered species in North America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wait guys. Remember all the complaints about the ridiculous amount of money we have spent or cost ourselves.saving spotted owls and other species? These guys are forgetting hiw good of a job we do keeping the last California Condors, buffalo or spotted owls lingering around. And don't forget an animal is not extinct until the last one in a zoo is dead.

Here, I will quote this young lady about some conservation efforts costing too much.

1. 'The Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) is a species of true owl. It is a resident species of old-growth forests in western North America, where it nests in tree holes, old bird of prey nests, or rock crevices….The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red list status for the Spotted Owl is Near Threatened with a decreasing population trend….. In February 2008, a federal judge reinforced a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate 8,600,000 acres (35,000 km2) in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as critical habitat for the owl.' Spotted Owl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. Ten years of research and more than 1,000 published studies detail the threats to its survival, but there's still no sure way to stop its decline. Saving the Spotted Owl : NPR





2. What is the cost of ‘saving’ the bird, and what’s the reason? Have organism’s become extinct? And the result?
“From the environmentalists' perspective, the benefits of preserving the northern spotted owl and its habitat far outweigh any of the costs….society ought to preserve this species and the unique ecosystem it represents because of their aesthetic value. “Ethics and the Environment: The Spotted Owl Controversy

3. The Spotted Owl campaign, as is so very many other environmental campaigns, a deceit. It is a way of advancing the real agenda, confiscating property, making land off-limit, and eliminating any human presence. No matter the cost. No matter the result.





4. “Look, I don’t doubt that the regulaertory processed thaet we put in place to produce the environmental goods that we wan have taken a toll on the economy generally and the rural economy in particular. Telling the story that rural communities are being harmed may tug at the heartstrings of rural people, but no one else will care.

5. You see, what the sage grouse is about is, they want to stop drilling in beautiful Wyoming. That’s the hidden agenda….Take the spotted owl case….One of the people instrumental in shutting down th forests told me that ‘if the spotted owl hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent it.’ The goal was to stop logging….It is totally questionable whether owls were endangered by logging. Was it good for the overall health of the forest? Probably not. Was it good for the spotted owl? It probably didn’t make a difference. Did it hurt the overall economies of the West? Yes.”
Nickson, “Eco-Fascists,” p.129.





6. Holly Fretwell is a Property and Environment Research Center (PERC): Senior Research Fellow, and an adjunct professor at Montana State University. She spent a year auditing the health Forest Service’s 446 million acres under it and the Bureau of Land Management’s command. The effect of fifteen years of sequestration of public lands has been a disaster. Thinning, salvage harvesting, cleaning deadfall are expressly forbidden by environmentalists, the areas are considered by the Forrest Service itself to be in immediate danger of exploding in a once-in-a-millennium fire that would burn so hot that not only would the seeds in the soil die, but also the dirt itself would be burned to dust. Fretwell, “Who is Minding the Federal Estate?” p. 54.






7. “The spotted owl was dying anyway. First of all, its prey was being eaten by the larger barred owl, which had been moving west for the last hundred years, but its supposed natural habitat was dying. In eastern Oregon and Washington’s Blue Mountain forests. 6 million acres are dead and dying. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest- formally designated spotted owl habitat- has so much root rot that it is called the Valley of Death. One breeding pair remains.”
Nickson, Op. Cit., p.131.



Yet, somehow, this is a higher value than the people who live and work in these areas.

Really?

Did you miss this:

Ten years of research and more than 1,000 published studies detail the threats to its survival, but there's still no sure way to stop its decline. Saving the Spotted Owl : NPR



This alone obviates the wasted efforts of the 'environmental movement."


Extinction, it seems is a facet of nature.

Don't you agree?

 

[mamooth]

Care to dispute what she said? Dismissal/deflection ain't cutting it malmouth.

I did respond, by pointing out it was idiot babble. Chic and her suckups squealed and ran from that point, thus showing they couldn't refute it. No one is ever obligated to hack through a jungle of crap to get to some mysterious "I HATE YOU LIBERALS FOR ALWAYS BEING RIGHT!" point. Anyone publishes a unibomber manifesto, simple laughter is the refutation.

In order to get a serious response, you have to make a serious argument. A bizarre list of strange cherrypicks of dubious accuracy, leading through incomprehensible logic to a wacky conclusion is not an argument. Nor is making up fables about what-the-dirty-liberals-supposedly-believe an argument. But that's all Political Chic is capable of. Well, that and whining about how mean I am.

You need to try arguing like a liberal for a change. That means you state a point directly, and then make one or two clear arguments to support the point. Up to it? I warn you, it requires honesty and intelligence. That puts it way beyond the capability of Political Chic, but other conservatives may be capable of it.

 

[mamooth]

By the way, a simple check of wiki will show Chic's "no extinctions!" claim to be crap.

List of extinct animals of North America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Given her primary claim was such obvious total crap, the intelligent person assumes it's all crap, and moves on to something that isn't a waste of their time.

 

[westwall]

You seriously can't think of one north american bird which went extinct.about a century ago.

passenger pigeon - Google Search

Not sure if the google link will work on a desktop.

Oh yes, we also know about the Moa and the Wolly Mammoth that all went extinct a long time ago as well. So how about one in the last 25 years? Supposedly there is a critter going extinct almost every hour. Where the hell are they?

I have produced 18,000+ new species from a couple of years ago. How about you producing something.

 

[westwall]

By the way, a simple check of wiki will show Chic's "no extinctions!" claim to be crap.

List of extinct animals of North America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Given her primary claim was such obvious total crap, the intelligent person assumes it's all crap, and moves on to something that isn't a waste of their time.

Got anything in the last 25 years? Bueller? Bueller?