BIODIVERSITY UPDATE

The "Biodiversity Crisis" has gained significant attention in recent years as the worlds' leading ecologists and environmentalists warn us that plant and animal species are going extinct in ever increasing numbers; this demise, commonly referred to as "The Sixth Extinction", being largely caused by human destruction of habitat and the consumption of natural resources. Acting on this impending doom, governments worldwide have been greatly stepping up wildlife protection and habitat conservation measures.The Biodiversity treaty signed by 153 nations in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, places species preservation at the forefront of the global environmental agenda, with staggering political, social and economic ramifications affecting virtually everyone.

Despite the emphasis placed on this dilemma, scientists concede that shockingly little is actually known about global biodiversity and extinction rates in the first place. Because of this, estimates are subject to wild speculations. Currently, these range anywhere from 10 million to upwards of 100 million species; based on these totals, ecologists have projected rates of 27,000 extinctions each year to as much as half of all living species to disappear in our lifetime!

For the first time, the total number of living species on earth, as well as actual extinction rates, have been calculated from reliable data. At most, there are 3.63 million species and the extinction rate is 3 to 5 species annually, vastly differing from the much higher estimates embraced by environmentalists and accepted by many policy makers.In light of the factual evidence presented herein, the entire issue of biological conservation needs to be reevaluated and various endangered species laws in both the United States and abroad reformed or abolished.

(Much) more here





ANOTHER GOOD COMMENT ON CRICHTON

Michael Crichton's new novel, State of Fear , is a gripping novel about eco-terrorism that may do more to raise public awareness about global warming than any academic book on the subject. In his research for the novel, Crichton spent three years immersed in the literature on global warming. His novel remains gripping despite and, in part, because of a wealth of charts, graphs, and footnotes from the scientific literature. Crichton embeds scientific arguments about global warming into the dialogue of the novel itself, so skillfully and lucidly that the narrative tension is enriched rather than hampered.

There are at least four open questions about global warming: (1) Is it bad; (2) Is it happening; (3) Are we causing it; and (4) Will efforts like the Kyoto protocols make much difference anyway? If you can't imagine that all of these really are open questions, consider this one word: Greenland. Notice anything funny about its name? Right. It's not very green anymore--but it was in the Middle Ages when, as we know, the planet was warmer. Thanks to that extra plant energy, it was also a good time to be a farmer. The extra warmth wasn't bad then and it certainly wasn't caused by man.

Crichton never stops being a novelist, but he handles the technical material with such precision and thoroughness that the book could serve as a primer on the scientific debate itself, and on the way the debate has been manipulated by environmental groups and the mainstream media.

Anyone who raises questions about the global warming hysteria usually very quickly gets made to feel like he's against the earth, against trees, flowers, and butterflies. Crichton is to be commended for his willingness to suffer years of extreme discomfort at cocktail parties for the cause of truth.

Source





LOUIS HISSINK DEFENDS THE VELIKOVSKY THEORY OF A CHAOTIC PAST

Some excerpts from here

It seems the ghost of Velikovsky has been resurrected again, which I suspect is my fault. The ad Hominem "Velikovskian" is the means by which the scientific mafia rid themselves of unpleasant truths that contrary scientists utter when facts are considered in preference to complex computer models purporting to be facsimiles of physical reality. In 1950 Immanuel Velikovsky, a Jewish - Russian psychoanalyst, published a controversial book - Worlds in Collision - which caused a furore in academia. His apparent sin was to question the omnipotence of gravity as the sole cosmic force, and accepting the Old Testament as literal fact.

Most of his critics seized on his account of Joshua Ben Nun stopping the sun, mentioned last week, as proof of his status as a crank. However if one actually read World's in Collision one would discover, shock and horror, that Velikovsky wrote no such thing, arguing instead that there must be another force operating in the Cosmos, in addition to gravitation. (Most of Velikovsky's critics have avoided reading any of his books. Your lowly scribe, like the famous American geophysicist, Harry Hess of Princeton University, owned a copy of Earth in Upheaval - Velikovsky's scientific explanation for his historical interpretation described in Worlds in Collision - for some 17 years before finally realising that Velikovsky was onto something).

Velikovsky also wrote, based on the historical evidence, that past civilisations seem to have been destroyed by some sort of cosmic cataclysm involving, at various times, Venus and Mars. I am not going to repeat those stories here as there is plenty of information on the web. However an unfortunate side effect is that religious fundamentalists often tend to favour Velikovskian explanations as scientific evidence for their beliefs, so many critics automatically assume that if one favours Velikovskian scenarios, one must be some sort of religious fundamentalist.

Alas, I seem to have been outed! But I must confess I don't have any religious belief, preferring to remain, as H. L. Mencken wrote, a religious moron. Velikovsky was a man of his time, a European Jew reacting to the German Historical Tradition and in his books, perhaps unconsciously, assigning a more significant contribution to Western civilisation by the Jewish people that available evidence suggests. We all make errors and Velikovsky was not exempt from this common human affliction. Except for Global Warmers and social democrats of course, most of whom are error free, apparently.

Never the less his main argument, that the earth suffered global catastrophes in the past, is strenuously denied by mainstream science. This is, of course, contradicted by recent publications:

(1) NASA PREPARES SPACECRAFT TO BLOW A HOLE IN SURFACE OF A COMET
Bloomberg, 13 December 2004
(2) OPTIMAL PLANETARY DEFENSE AGAINST NEO IMPACT HAZARD PROPOSED
Acta Astronautica, Volume 55, Issue 12 , December 2004, Pages 991-1006
(3) SCIENTISTS CLASH OVER ORIGIN OF 'THE GREAT DYING'
San Francisco Chronicle, 13 December 2004
(4) DISCOVERY OF THE LARGEST IMPACT CRATER FIELD ON EARTH
Comptes Rendus Geosciences, Volume 336, Issue 16 , December 2004, Pages 1491-1500
(5) LET'S STOP SCARING OURSELVES
Parade Magazine, 5 December 2004
(6) HOPE FOR 2005 AND BEYOND
Michael Martin-Smith
(7) AND FINALLY: TECHNO FIX AND GREAT ESCAPE, OR HOW TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 12 | December 2004

No catastrophes happened in the past but we can expect future catastrophic collisions and all sorts of disasters in the future? Pull the other one....

So it comes with some irony that our scientific post-modernists, the scientific uniformists, deny past catastrophes happened despite an abundance of contrary oral and written evidence, but then have no difficulty predicting future catastrophes. One suspects there are more than the normal number of oxymorons in this mind set. (Excuse me for the use of a misplaced metaphor). Clearly their prognostications of the future are not based on historical precedent. Anthropogenic global warming is one imagined impending catastrophe.

Benny Peiser in a recent CCnet newsletter also pointed to a number of recent books all based on the topic of avoiding future catastrophes, some which I list here.

(1) CATASTROPHE: RISK AND RESPONSE
Oxford University Press, November 2004
(2) A BOOK TRIES, AND FAILS, TO QUANTIFY CATASTROPHIC RISK
Slate, 22 November 2004
(3) CALAMITY JUDGE: RICHARD POSNER'S "CATASTROPHE"
The American Lawyer, 1 November 2004

Ironic isn't it - totally rejecting past catastrophes as Velikovskian fantasy, mainstream science has no difficulty coping with future catastrophes, whether climatic, meteoritic or asteroidal. I am sure many would have been excellent subjects for Velikovsky's skills as a psychoanalyst.

Was Velikovsky right in raising questions about gravitation being an unsatisfactory force to explain the historical recorded facts? Yes - it is called Plasma cosmology and I quote a leading scientist in this field, anonymously of course, from an email I received from him a few days ago in response to a comment I posted on a restricted scientific forum, to which both of us contribute, about a question a poster asked reading a new book on the Plasma Universe without crediting existing scientific workers. I replied - "Not to matter Ian, it is the next generation which will change ideas, not ours. We are setting the foundations for others to build on". I received the reply-

"Louis,

Correct and that is really all I want. I am aware of the book Ian has found and like so many other new books on Birkeland, Auroral dynamics, and Space Plasma, we old-timers often don't see our names mentioned at all. But in fact, the Plasma Universe is now PROMOTED by the American Physical Society, parts of the American Astrophysical Society, and most certainly the IEEE. At conferences, the term Plasma Universe is freely used, but presenters at APS and AAS most certainly don't understand the importance of the circuit aspect and usually try a Tycho-Brahe compromise, acknowledging plasma throughout the universe, but trying to meld it with 'traditional' astrophysics ideas.

And why not? It is all about funding. On the other hand, the schools belonging to the American Geophysical Union, Space Plasmas division and the IEEE present the material in the true tradition of Alfven and Birkeland, avoid the non-physical 'magnetic-reconnection' nonsense. Nevertheless, while I saw several presentations of the Plasma Universe at the APS conference in Savannah in November, some even mentioning the big-bang as part of it, there were no presentations on a Big Bang Universe. Of course, it is different in the Astrophysical Cosmological group whose 'standard' cosmology today resembles in no way that presented a decade ago."

The Plasma Universe is the scientific result by those of us who thought Velikovsky's ideas had merit. But the science of geology remains hamstrung in its Lyellian Post-modernism and some us, including your lowly scribe, are starting to develop the science of Plasma Geology. The plasma universe incorporates electricity, in addition to gravity, as the dominant cosmic force. An excellent site is that of the US Scientist Anthony Peratt, the discoverer of Peratt Instabilities described in the scientific Plasma Physics literature.

So why do I even bother with this arcane topic of a Plasma Universe? Because it shows our mainstream understanding of the Sun, and the solar system, is seriously in error, an error that is being propagated into the Anthropogenic global warming frenzy we are being made to suffer by the Greens and their fellow travellers.....

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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