Last week, Nobel physicist John Clauser came out of the Clausit to speak his own inconvenient truth about global warming and CO2 . No good deed goes unpunished. Another physicist who was a personal hero of mine has expressed similar views. This is a big subject, and I don’t feel engaged enough with the issue to write a book, But I will say a few things about which I feel pretty certain, but to which Right Thinking People may take exception. 

  1. Global ecosystems are indeed in crisis, and this is the result of human activity.
  2. But greenhouse gasses, CO2 and climate change are peripheral to this story. The net effect of CO2 emission is likely to be beneficial, if at all relevant.
  3. Environmental activism may be the most important movement on the planet today, and its diversion into a narrow focus on carbon is dangerous.
  4. Weather manipulation is a well-developed, sophisticated science being practiced on a global scale, without open scientific backing and without democratic consent. This, too, is a crime and a major danger. 

1.  Ecosystem collapse

Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, The Sixth Extinction, is the best single guide to what is at stake. Species are disappearing at a rate that has only been rivaled five previous times in the 4-billion-year history of life on earth. These are seminal events, changing the face of the earth and the nature of life. The most recent extinction (#5) was the disappearance of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. 

We know just enough to realize that ecosystems are complex and interdependent in more ways than we can understand. Ecosystems are robust, and the loss or replacement of a few species triggers adaptations so that the ecosystem continues in a new equilibrium. But ecosystems can also collapse if a keystone species is lost, or if it is sufficiently disrupted. 

Some large fraction of the species on earth is either extinct or rapidly disappearing. It is impossible to offer a more quantitative estimate because most of the macroscopic species have not yet even been catalogued, and of the microscopic species, including bacteria and fungi, our understanding has barely scratched the surface. 

At some point, ecosystems collapse and species disappear because other species on which they depend are disappearing. This is happening in large stretches of the world. Ocean life is seeking a new equilibrium after the pollution, overfishing, and the killing spree of the last 50 years in particular. Forests and wetlands the world over no longer support the diversity of life that they once harbored, and the collapse of biodiversity has a momentum that continues over decades. The Center for Biological Diversity is a go-to source for information and my favorite environmental group.

Major reasons for this collapse include 

  • habitat loss 
  • deforestation 
  • every war is an environmental disaster
  • widespread poisoning of insects, which are at the base of the animal food chain
  • insects are also pollinators, and plant life becomes fragile when insects disappear  
  • draining of wetlands, mining of fossil water, and damming of rivers
  • deliberate targeting of apex predators, including lions, wolves, and whales
  • washing of topsoil into the rivers and oceans
  • wasteful practices in mining, agriculture, and industry
  • global travel, bringing invasive species that tend to homogenize ecosystems worldwide 
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