Gordon Fitch:
> The problem with this sort of statement is that we don't know
> how many species there are, we don't know how many are actually
> being driven into extinction, and we don't know what the usual
> rate of extinction is, or even if there is something we could
> reasonably call a "usual rate". In other words, the statement
> comes with a big "KICK ME" sign pasted on its butt.
Eric Franz Leher:
> Sorry Gordon mate, but you're the one with the KICK ME sign tacked to
> his arse. Can't you sort out what is significant from
> what is not? Oh, a nice fact - we don't know exactly how many species
> there are on earth. SO FUCKING WHAT? We deal
> with this apparently insoluble problem by taking a sample. We deal with
> what we already do know. We look at a number of
> species in certain habitats at different periods of time. Those species
> that don't turn up at all during the later stages of our survey
> give us a rough idea of the rate of extinction. It's better than
> nothing.And then what little trick of the human intellect do we use?
> Yes! Extrapolation. We are quite justified in doing this because of the
> high degree of interrelatedness between species in a
> particular habitat.
>
> I can't believe the simplemindedness of your objections. It doesn't
> matter that we don't know how many species there are. It
> doesn't matter that we don't know 'actually' how many are being driven
> into extinction (that's what we're trying to get some idea
> of, for Christ's sake). Ditto for the 'usual' rate of extinction -
> that's what we're trying to figure out. And I'M the one with the sign
> on his butt?
> ...
Well, you're talking science, and I'm talking politics. So it probably depends which audience whose butt is facing. One audience is making money off this stuff, and another is paying for it, so they have different attitudes. If you're talking to the ones who are paying for it -- basically, the working class, because they pay for everything -- it's a bad idea to first exclaim "X is happening! Better do something about it!" and then, on further inquiry, say, well, you're trying to figure out what X is, anyway. Good science, maybe -- gets grants and nice jobs -- but bad politics: raises taxes and prices, produces burdensome regulations and restrictions, blah blah blah.
But don't believe me. Just keep the act going and see what happens. Unlike many other leftist concerns, enviro has had a lot of public support, so far. If it turns out that people have been asked to make sacrifices for numbers pulled out of hats and conclusions jumped to over long distances, I don't think the reaction is going to be pleasant. I had the same experiences as this "optimistic environmentalist" fellow, that is, I started out with a predisposition to believe and went looking for accounts of the related physical phenomena to support the arguments I intended to make. They weren't there.
If you think _I'm_ simple-minded wait 'til you run into the rest of the folk, who are being told, even as we speak, that the enviros are a bunch of creeping-socialist, nanny-state- loving power-hungry con artists who just want to take their SUVs away because they don't have the Soviet Union to worship any more.