| Climate never killed a species! |
- The Catastrophist
One of the most popular and most persistent causes the 'experts' propose for the extinction of species, is
climate change. We see it everywhere, from the Cambrian to the Holocene. Climate change is a popular
mechanism of extinction because it is politically correct. Every person on the planet can relate to this theme
which is in the news every week and which lobbyists and politicians talk about in their interviews. Who hasn't
heard of global warming?
So, yes! You can't go wrong with climate change. The trilobites died because the temperature rose or fell.
The dinos died because the weather turned on them. And so on. Everyone just nods. No questions asked!
Actually, the mathemagical paleontologists have a single cookie cutter for every extinction. They start with
flashy, special effects catastrophe that Hollywood can put on the screen to awe the viewers and work their
way to the nightly, miniskirted weather girl. The sequence of all their theories goes more or less like this:
- 1. A sudden catastrophe kills many plants and animals locally and triggers global disaster.
It could be a volcanic eruption or a comet or a gamma ray burst from a supernova -- it
doesn't really matter -- but it's got to be flashy for else neither NOVA or the BBC will make
a documentary of it and the theorist won't get his name in lights. You have to give jobs to
the special effects guys in Hollywood in order for your theory to have any chance.
2. Toxic gases kill those that survived the catastrophe and spread to the other side of the
planet in search of more victims. These gases either emanate from the volcano or from the
sea beds, or the meteorite just so happened to land on a pile of sulfur that some careless
animal left lying around. The reaction rises to the clouds and acid rain pours down and
alters the acidity of the seven seas. Then, it's your standard Charlie Darwin 'survival of
the fittest'. The mighty mosasaurs can't take it. The fish somehow can.
3. A temperature drop or rise kills whatever is left. Only those who are 'fit' continue to the
next round (credit: Charlie Darwin).
4. After killing ALL the species of plants and animals on the planet with impacts and
explosions, with deadly fumes and extremes of cold, the narrator marvels at how resilient
life is. Miraculously, some creatures survived the devastating event, the smog and pollution,
and the ice and heat. No one can explain how or why. Somehow, some creatures, including
our ancestors, made it across the divide to the next era. God has been kind.
The contemporary mathemagical paleontologist coming out of college is trained to memorize all this by
heart. He also is also trained to know his market well. He had better know it! Or else he becomes extinct.
The modern bone collector is keen to cater to the documentary market because otherwise his career is
over. He doesn't get a call from the Discovery Channel.
Miraculously, some plants and animals always survive. We never discover how exactly; that part of the
movie is never shown in any detail. The physical process remains a mystery. The mathemagical bone
assembler just states it as a matter of fact in the form of: "Well, the Staurikosauruses survived because
they walked on two legs and this enabled them to outrun the lava... and the Megazostrodon thrived because
they burrowed themselves in the mud and probably ate detritus for the next million years." And you wonder
how the manuscript passed the ever vigilant peer review censors...
However, it is patently obvious that neither the volcano nor the asteroid can do a thorough job. Certainly,
local catastrophes cannot account for animals on the other side of the globe. The impact or explosion is
put in there to shock the crowds and to get the ball rolling. Therefore, the catastrophist now has to put on
a new hat if he is to make sense of extinction. He becomes an environmentalist.
The environmentalist
The environmentalist is a bleeding heart idealist concerned more about bequeathing a pristine Eden to
his great grandchildren than about what really happened to archaic life. He wants to scare and nudge the
politician into believing that our own extinction might be at hand if he doesn't do something quickly about
the legislation that the environmentalist just so happened to put on his desk.
The environmentalist begins his presentation with smog and pollution, and the crowd nods. We can all
relate to that. We see it all around us. The filth will kill Man if we don't do something about population and
the tons of garbage we release into the atmosphere every minute. He casually states as a matter of fact
that something happened to the air and the water millions of years ago and that was what drove the
animals to extinction. There was a macro chemical imbalance of some kind -- CO2, NO2, methane, anoxic
event, etc. -- and the plants and animals had trouble breathing and bathing and drinking. There is no need
to dwell in detail on the matter because everyone takes it for granted that that's what happened.
The problem here is that gassing life to death may leave some critter gulping for air in secret somewhere.
Or perhaps its eggs are protected from the extreme conditions by their shells... You have to cover all the
bases to make sure no animal escapes alive. That's when the environmentalist takes you to the third phase.
He begins to toy around with barometers and thermometers...
- The Weather Girl
Having paved the road with catastrophe and pollution, the environmentalist now takes the crowd to climate.
He has already killed every plant and animal in sight with the asteroid or volcano and with the secondary
gases and acid rain, but just to make sure that you won't ask how so and so survived he brings in heat
followed by cold. The CO2 gases raise the temperatures of Earth to unprecedented levels. Whatever was
dead is now more dead. But the greenhouse gases create such a dense smog that sunlight can't get
through. The Earth undergoes a lengthy period of global cooling: an ice age. The plants and animals don't
come back to life throughout the transition from hot to cold, but eventually some plant and some animal is
created out of thin air again. Life returns to normal, but with new plants and animals on the scene. How it
all happens is of no concern to the paleo-mathematician.
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| The History of Life on Earth |
| Wolves SLEEP in the snow!!! It's their natural habitat! |
Animals solve climate problems easily
Pollution and climate are problems that animals solve easily. They walk, swim or fly away. They migrate.
It's just that simple! An animal may not be able to outrun the lava that is coming out of a volcano that just
exploded, but that is a far cry from saying that the disaster selectively wiped out species on the other
side of the planet. Likewise, if the Earth moves into a glacial age, the animals simply migrate to more
temperate zones. Any wild animal can outrun a thermometer!
Actually, polar bears, Arctic seals and Antarctic whales don't need to migrate. They are quite comfortable
sleeping in their beds of glaciers and soft snow. Gaia can throw as much snow as she wants at them.
How the dinos died The heat and pressure were so high that Bronto died of cardiac arrest. |
Conclusions
The theories they kick around today have much to do with the fact that we are overly conscious of the
destruction we are inflicting on our environment. It has little to do with what happened to ancient flora and fauna
and a lot to do with the amount of news we constantly receive on endangered
species. Therefore, a paleontologist who champions climate or environment is safe. He will have a pretty
easy time pushing a theory involving some kind of environmental disaster because people are conditioned to
nod at such proposals simply from daily experience. It's the story of the boy who cried 'the sky is falling' all
over again: "the ice caps are melting", "the species are dying because of loss of habitat", "the ozone is
thinning", "our runaway population is polluting". The common man can relate to all that.
Therefore the question is whether what is happening today has anything to do with what happened millions
of years ago. The fact that humans are multiplying and polluting the environment does not automatically
translate into a mechanism of extinction. This has more to do with politics than with Paleontology. Indeed,
idealists remind you in every video that the same fate may await us if we don't do something about it quickly.
This is not Science. It is nothing more than a commercial for special interests, lobbyists who want
governments to implement their programs and who use the speculation of ancient extinctions as a justification
for their pet peeves: "Look at what happened to the megafauna. It could happen to us if we don't do
something about it quickly."
Snowball Earth