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Botkin on Nature, the Environment and Global Warming

Podcast Highlights

Time
Mark Highlights
0:36 Intro. What is some of the history of how we look at nature? We think of it as
starting with Silent Spring but 4000 years old. Three metaphors. What is nature
like undisturbed by people, how does nature affect people, how do people affect
nature. Ancients believed gods made world so it must be perfect. Great balance of
nature. If something's perfect and you change it, it would have to be less than
perfect. Mother nature, taken literally, as an organic being. Before scientific era,
nature was thought of as alive. Jesuit priest went into a volcano and described it
organically. Lucretius's writings, mountains are wrinkles of aging nature. Recurs
in Gaia hypothesis. Nature as a machine, watch must have a maker so world must
have a maker, mechanical system, steady state, leads to idea that nature has a
perfection. But nature isn't perfect. Why is nature in balance an appealing
metaphor? Stability of ecological systems is appealing but misleading. Religious
influence. Ancient Greeks and Romans, Judeo-Christian views. Perfection was
static. For Greeks, beauty lay in symmetry, so height of highest mountain had to
match the deepest depth of ocean. Couldn't allow for dynamics. Can be seen in art,
nature painted in static beauty.
9:01 Why is the view that it is in balance wrong? Data shows it isn't true. Always
changing. Hudson Bay fur trading company, number of furs sold, lynx, not just
minor variation in populations. History of climate, always changing over time.
Climate is one of the drivers for nature so those things will always be changing.
Most species have evolved and adapted to change and depend on change, so
assuming steady state goes against their needs. But metaphor of balance and static
state permeates policy, fisheries, etc. We strive to create a world without human
beings--modern idea. A world without people was not considered a desirable
world till the 1980s. Wilderness as a good didn't exist. Crossing the Alps was
horrible. In 18th century, with rise of science, travelers started to view it as less
horrible. Romantic poets were the first to see wilderness as powerful and
beautiful. Gilgamesh was a hero for going into the forest and cutting the trees
down to let light in. Through civilization we find nature beautiful. If you don't
have a down jacket and you go into the Alps, you die. College textbooks still talk
of nature as static. Teach that populations grow according to 1838 growth curve,
simple curve that levels off. Balance between predator and prey. We are creatures
of our culture. Early 20th century ecologists said it has to be in balance or
otherwise it can't be explained. The math is cleaner, appealing. Stochastic
processes are, however, good at dealing with risk and uncertainty, so there are
analytical methods available. Parallel in economics, treating it as physics, a giant
 machine, econometric models of the economy; but is that accurate? More
biological model, Austrian school. Textbooks teach equilibrium: it's easier, and it
does capture some of the dynamics isolating one change at a time. In ecology, that
last step is not done, model is believed as a reality. Engineering systems analysis
tried but never got any headway. Schumpeter podcast.
24:29 Can people manage nature? Only partially controllable. If we believe we've had
negative effects then we must believe we can affect nature. Forests, fire-
dependent; Europeans suppressed the native Americans' fires. Animals require an
oxygenated atmosphere, so biology had to affect the environment on a grand
scale. Since we have affected nature, we should not just get out of the way. But we
tend to act from wrong mythologies. Have to get new metaphor for nature.
Missouri River: flooding, never know if you are going to harvest corn or catfish.
The moose as a metaphor: depends on young forests and creates them by eating
trees down. Morph the Moose. Nature is dynamic and changing. Application to
forest management: how would river or moose metaphors change what we do?
Fires in the West, Arizona State, ponderosa pine, if they burn at frequent intervals.
Since 1870s fire suppression has created less fertility, thickets, but you can't just
light a match. Have to cut back first and then light fires. Fires in Southern
California, chaparral, pine woodlands, produces a lot of fuel, likely to burn in hot
summers. Plants are adapted to frequent fires. Smokey the Bear approach,
suppressing the fires, creates more and more fuel on the ground. The way to
manage it is to have controlled burns done carefully. "Great Baseball Bat Crisis"--
bats made of white ash, have to have clearings to get it; but nobody plants it in
plantations, may be problem in supply in long run. Barry Bonds started to use
sugar maple for bats.
36:38 Thoreau. "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Pro- and anti-
environmentalists both interpret comment as return to wilderness. But he was an
inventor--invented raisin bread at Walden. To him "wildness" is a state of being.
You can read nature. Mount Katahdin in Maine: said of the wilderness that a "poet
would pine there." Preferred a local swamp. Wanted mix of intellectualism with
nature. Saw woodchuck, spoke of eating it raw because of the wildness in it. John
Muir. Gifford Pinchot, first head of forestry service, Yale, sees forest as to be
managed for man. Muir opposite view.
42:54 Evidence on whether global warming will affect life. Latest statements are that
there could be mass extinctions. Botkin's multispecies model. Concerned that
rationality has been left behind. 16 scientists in response to statement in 2004
Nature article, Thomason. Review of paper: methods and data in paper are
terrible. "Forecasting the Effects of Global Warming on Biodiversity," last times
when climate changed, almost nothing went extinct. A few did, caught between
alpine and arctic glaciers, but most did fine. Most species are adaptable. Polar bear
evolved 500,000 years ago; since then there have been periods of global warming,
has still persisted. Data contradicts the predictions of disaster. Models are steady
state. IPCC listed three threats, assertion that 20-30% of species are likely to be
made extinct. Saying it repeatedly doesn't make it right. Maybe we don't have
good data? Tom Lovejoy, editor, recent book, very few species actually went
extinct. To say that maybe there were species we didn't know about isn't science
 any more. Imagining up worst-case sea rises isn't scientific, though of course it
would have disastrous effects--it's not plausible. NASA report, current warming of
arctic waters are due to cyclic phenomena, about to reverse, not to global
warming. Slide from science to speculation. Could this end up making people
reject science? Quest for truth.
53:33 Balance of nature rears its head. "A one or two degree rise in temperature is
dangerous" is not a scientific statement, fallback to constancy, steady state,
balance of nature views. Climatologists are arguing about just how warm it
actually has gotten in the last million years. Unresolved extent. Would a degree or
two more matter to the polar bears? Probably they can adapt to that, since they
adapted to the last warming. Think about it the same way as buying an insurance
policy. Buy earthquake insurance in California, versus fire insurance: earthquake
insurance is probably not cost-effective relative to the risk. Look at global
warming as risk assessment. Protect habitats, water use, because these are
important even without global warming.
58:40 Habitat protection. How successful or unsuccessful has the national park system
been? Original purpose of national parks wasn't habitat protection. National Parks
are great, but funding to preserve species is way too little. Our mouths are bigger
than our actions. We're talking about it, but if we really believe it we need to pay.
Yellowstone, grizzly bear is listed as endangered species. Fish and Wildlife
Service has no population history of grizzlies to determine what they should
recover it to. Wolves, Paul Schillering, elk hunting. Could talk about a range of
wolf populations that you'd want if you know enough about them. 40-60 wolves
currently; don't want less than 20 or they won't likely repopulate. Probably want
between 20 and 100. WSJ piece. Truth test, McCarthyism. You have to answer that
you believe global warming is happening or people won't talk to you, cast as evil
or morally corrupt. Politically oppressive.