Over the last year or two, we've seen the sense of urgency over anthropogenic climate change dropping off quite a bit. Most people just aren't too worried about their carbon footprint, and more and more, the evidence supports them having no particular reason to worry. The global climate is, after all, in a mild warming phase, and has been, barring a few dips and spikes, since the last major glaciation.
The result is that a lot of places around the planet are becoming rather more pleasant. Humans are, after all, still biologically creatures of hot, dry climates, and as such, we find we generally do better in warmer weather than cold. (Yes, I appreciate the irony of that remark coming from a guy who lives in Alaska.)
Another result of this is that the climate scolds are finding more and more phony-baloney study efforts to try to convince us that panic is in order. The latest - a problem-ridden study that claims climate change is killing off Amazon dung beetles.
“With ongoing climate change, rising temperatures may push dung beetles beyond their physiological limits,” said study lead author Kim Lea Holzmann of the University of Wurzburg in Germany, in an e-mail to USA TODAY.
“We studied the populations [of dung beetles] at altitudes of 250 to 3,500 metres above sea level,” said Holzmann, in a statement. “Unexpectedly, the number of dung beetle species fell rapidly between 250 and 500 metres above sea level.”
The reason for this: At an altitude of 500 metres, the temperatures are in a range that is ideal for the beetles, while the higher temperatures in the lowlands lead to heat stress.
There's just one problem with their methodology. Watts Up With That's Eric Worrell informs us:
The study “tested” thermal range of dung beetles by stuffing them in plastic bottles and leaving them in the sun, to see if they survived. “… The experiment was done by exposing insects in individual plastic tubes (2 or 5 ml depending on body size) to increasing temperatures using a programmable thermoblock (Eppendorf Thermostat C, Hamburg, Germany) …“
Study authors dismissed previous studies which suggested higher rainfall in alpine regions might be driving diversity – “… Water availability has also been identified as a potential factor determining diversity gradients in previous studies … While dung beetle reproductive success has been shown to increase under moist conditions …“
In my opinion this study is an absurdity. Dung beetles modify their environment, if they’re too hot they dig a little deeper – not something they can do when stuck in a plastic tube. The researchers have no idea what killed the beetles in the tubes. More reliable moisture in my opinion is by far the most plausible explanation for why abundance is higher a few hundred meters above sea level.
In short: This "study" placed dung beetles in plastic tubes with no water and no way to burrow away from a heat source, which is what they would normally do. Mr. Worrell is correct; this is an absurdity. But this is what the climate panic-mongers have resorted to now.
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Here's the thing: Even if the warming climate does deprive the world's biosphere of the Amazon dung beetle, there are a couple of other factors:
First, species go extinct all the time. Of all the multicelled animal and plant species that have ever lived on the Earth, over 99 percent are extinct now. In drastic events like the Permian/Triassic mass extinction, life was almost completely extinguished, and yet, life found a way. We'll find a way to get along without Amazon dung beetles. Some other creature will take over their niche. It happens.
Second, there's no indication of the degree to which human activity is causing these problems for Amazon dung beetles. Is the Amazon dung beetle worth giving up much of our modern, energy-hungry lifestyle? I'm betting most folks, in Brazil and elsewhere, will say "no."
Third, what about all the wildlife killed by various "green" energy sources? Climate scolds are, as I have pointed out many times, strangely silent about that. And yet, it happens, raptors killed by wind turbines in the thousands, square miles of habitat eaten up for solar farms. None of the climate scolds seems overly concerned about these matters.
I'm concerned. I like hawks and eagles. I like green, grassy meadows, good grazing land, and untouched wildlife habitat. I don't like huge, ugly wind turbines and fragile solar farms littering up the landscape. I am genuinely concerned about the environment because, unlike most of the most vocal climate scolds, I actually live out in the environment. I also enjoy my electricity, my high-speed internet, all the aspects of a modern, comfortable, high-tech lifestyle made possible by affordable, reliable energy.
Most people, I feel certain, would agree. That is why the scolds are losing ground, and that is why they are having to resort to pouring out more and more of the stuff that one finds behind the south end of a northbound horse - like a hand-wringing study that puts dung beetles in plastic jars, exposes them to heat, and acts surprised when they die.
