Scientists Scan Horizon for Future Invasive Species Challenges

Shipping and mining in the Arctic. The spread of invasive microbial pathogens around the world. Changing agricultural practices. Use of genomic-modification tools. Those are among the 14 most significant issues that could affect the science and management of invasive species over the next two decades, according to an international team of ecologists, who published their findings in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Shipping and mining in the Arctic. The spread of invasive
microbial pathogens around the world. Changing
agricultural practices. Use of genomic-modification tools.
 Those are among the 14 most significant issues that
could affect the science and management of invasive
 species over the next two decades, according to an international
 team of ecologists, who published their findings in
 the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

“Environmental, biotechnological and sociopolitical trends are transforming risks of invasion worldwide. We have identified some potential game-changers,” says Prof. Anthony Ricciardi (McGill University), who led the study by 17 scientists from eight countries.

The journal article stems from a workshop organized by Prof. Ricciardi at the University of Cambridge last September, which gathered some of the world’s leading ecologists.

Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “Scientists Scan Horizon for Future Invasive Species Challenges.”

The Very Real Threat of Trump’s Climate Denialism

Some like the warmer temperatures, laying
 back, saying, "Bring it on!" blissfully
unaware of the real complications.

During the past few months, Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry, Trump’s pick to head the Energy Department, and Donald Trump himself have all said that they don’t believe in climate change. The most upsetting part of their statements has been the misuse of the word believe.

Religion is a belief system. You have to believe that Moses parted the Red Sea or that Lazarus was raised from the dead. Because these phenomena violate the laws of nature, they are matters of faith.

Science, on the other hand, isn’t a belief system. It’s an evidence-based system. For example, you don’t have to believe in the theory of evolution. All you have to do is examine 250,000 years of fossil records to know that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. You don’t have to believe in the germ theory. All you have to do is recognize that vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation programs have increased our lifespan by 30 years during the past century. And you don’t have to believe in the theory of gravity. All you have to do is drop your pen. None of these concepts are theories any more. They’re facts supported by evidence.

Read The Daily Beast story - “The Very Real Threat of Trump’s Climate Denialism.”

Climate change is a 'belief' beyond Ben's capabilities

I

f it weren’t such an incredibly pressing issue, it would be comical how Republican presidential candidates have responded to the simple question “Do you believe in climate change?”

Ben Carson - GOP presidential
 candidate doesn't have enough
faith to believe in
climate change or evolution.

At a campaign event on Wednesday at the University of New Hampshire, Ben Carson was asked: “You don’t believe in evolution or climate change, I believe. And I was just wondering, do you seriously not believe that climate change is happening?”

In responding to the question, Carson gives the tired conservative trope “the climate is always changing” before digressing into how he doesn’t have “enough faith” to believe in the Big Bang Theory and eventually musing “gravity, where did it come from?”

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, has been repeatedly ridiculed for his comments on climate change, not to mention his comments on sexuality and other issues.

Read the EcoWatch story - “Ben Carson Says He Doesn’t Believe in Climate Change or Evolution.”

(The trio of front-runners for the American Republican Party claim they don’t believe in climate change and Ben Carson, a GOP candidate for presidential pre-selection, not only rejects climate change, but doesn’t have “enough faith” to believe in evolution. Strangely, the retired neurosurgeon, has sufficient faith to believe in a god, whose existence is completely devoid of scientific evidence; evidence of the like upon which he built his career – Robert McLean.)

Lovelock's 'Rough Ride' was initially unsettling

James Lovelock.

Reading James Lovelock’s “A Rough Ride to The Future” was initially unsettling.

In the first line of the introduction he wrote: “This is not a book about climate change and what we should be doing to improve our carbon footprint –climate change comes into it, and the recent storms and inundations here in the United Kingdom and the cold breath of the polar vortex in North America remind us of that.”

The 95-year-old scientist/inventor/author is obviously concerned about the disruption humans have caused to the earth’s climate systems, but in explaining that through his Gaia hypothesis linked it to an accelerated evolution driven by human invention.

My wonderment about Lovelock’s true position was put to rest in chapter six, headed: “Can We Stop Climate Change?”

Opening the chapter, he wrote:

“Recently and interviewer told me. ‘Your book The Revenge of Gaia’ was the scariest book I have read”. I was surprised; I had not meant to write a doom story, but intended a wake-up call, a warning that climate change was real and deadly and could be a threat to all humanity in only a few decades. I based my warning, as did many scientists, on the reports of the IPCC. The questioner then asked, ‘Was you book over-the-top, and have you changed your mind? Do you know think that we can relax and continue business as usual?’

‘No, I do not,’ I replied. ‘I see the threat just as real; all that has changed for me is that I have less confidence in the present model-based predictions of the future climate. We are now less sure about when and where it will happen, but there is little doubt that there could be dire consequences for humanity’s current way of life if carbon dioxide and population continue to increase.

“What has changed my attitude since the end of the twentieth century is the loss of innocence. Twenty years ago I thought that we had understood the disease of global warming, and I was confident that we could cure it. Now I see global warming as one consequence of the evolution of the Anthropocene – as inevitable as population growth, economic instability and the emergence of artefacts beyond our capacity to control or understand.”

A warming climate looks and sounds good, but is a harbinger of death

Those who welcome our warming climate arguing they enjoy the warmer weather are either ignorant or sadly grossly misinformed.

All earth’s species, including humans, have adapted to live in what exists.

The Snow Leopard is one species
threatened by climate change.

Change the climate too quickly and many of earth’s species, including most humans, will die.

The speed of evolution among species varies, but even those which change the quickest are locked in a life and death struggle with a shifting environmental landscape arising from human-induced climate change.

The Guardian reports, in a story headed: “Climate change is happening too quickly for speciesto adapt”, that the speed of evolutionary change is far outstripped by the rate of global warming, meaning many species will face extinction.

“Past transformations that saw planetary temperatures soar took millions of years to occur,” The Guardian said.

“The one we are creating will only take a few generations to take place. Either evolution speeds up 10,000-fold, which is an unlikely occurrence, of there will be widespread extinctions,” the newspaper reported

Tearing up climate change abatement hopes

About 170 people assembled at Shepparton’s RSL Club on April 2 to listen to the Federal Member for McKellar (NSW), Bronwyn Bishop, and her counterpart from Murray, Sharman Stone, discuss matters of interest to senior citizens. Robert McLean was among who attended.

Bronwyn Bishop and Sharman Stone profess and profit from hugely confusing values.

Bronwyn Bishop

Ms Stone, the Federal Member for Murray, and her Liberal Party counterpart from the New South Wales seat of McKellar, Ms Bishop, rely on science to prove arguments, when it suits them.

As Australia’s Shadow Minister for Seniors, Ms Bishop, explained her Christian upbringing to about 170 people at a meeting in Shepparton organized by Ms Stone.

And then, in what was an alarming contradiction of her beliefs and value system, said she believed in evolution and wasn’t a “creationist” – I’m confused!

Ms Bishop spent considerable time expounding of the benefits of coal-fired power stations (the absolute villain in carbon dioxide emissions) reflecting the views of the three newly elected state liberal governments, which are tearing up whatever climate change abatement documents, and controls, existed in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

The absolute conclusive science that points to the reality of human-induced climate change brought on by our consumption of energy with electricity provided by coal-fired power stations being one of the most prolific of contributors.

Soon after that, Ms Stone lambasted the present Labour Government for its handling of the Murray Darling Basin Plan arguing that it was ignoring the science that disproved its position.

As serious as they are, Murray Darling Basin difficulties are nothing more than a sub-set of the challenges humanity faces that have emerged from climate change; something about which the science is clear and unarguable - a fact that seems to escaped the thinking of both Ms Bishop and Ms Stone.

The chasm in their thinking is alarming, but it seemed that most of those at the April 2 meeting were unable to sense the dichotomy.

Understanding ecological ethics

by Robert McLean

Tim Madigan

Reading a piece entitled “Ecological ethics” in the latest edition of Philosophy Now by Tim Madigan helped me understand why so many are troubled by the complexities of climate change.

It seems than many are not yet open and true believers of evolution and however slim or remote their belief in creation might be, it is for many a more comfortable position.

Madigan said:

“The debate about sustainability is intimately connected with evolutionary understanding of life. If one does not recognise the interconnectedness and fragility of life, then one’s moral framework will likely lack a commitment to sustainability”.