In Perspective, Planet: Loss of Billions of Birds in North America!

[James Lemon]

Pesticides, plastic,fertilizers leaking into water bodies, Fukushima no wonder. I am sure there are a number of reasons .

Could these be valid reasons for a decrease in bird,insect and contaminated shell fish populations or not?

 

[Antonio Correia]

I receive National Geographic mails frequently.
Here is an article from the last one I have received I would like to share with you

 

[Asher Kelman]

What do we know about the rate of creation of new species. Do we just expect less of each major avian group with more resilient species filling changed ecological niches?

Could this be a positive trend in wiping out less competitive species?

Or are we actually on a path to a grim CO2 and methane bathed lifeless planet?

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

As I mentioned earlier that it is impossible to know what the bird population was in 1970. There are numerous remote places such as the Boreal forest where counting of birds was non existent.

 

[DavidHookes]

We should stop the blame games and come forward together to save these bird species and overall humanity from global warming. The leaders should not play anymore, but take effective initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. The developed nations should take the lead here and of course others should follow them.

 

[James Lemon]

We should stop the blame games and come forward together to save these bird species and overall humanity from global warming. The leaders should not play anymore, but take effective initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. The developed nations should take the lead here and of course others should follow them.

Maybe we should wait and see what happens during the next solar cycle. We wouldn’t want to jump to any rash conclusions based on ideology.

In the meantime we should hope nothing serious happens like some huge volcanic eruptions. Wouldn’t want some debris blocking the sun. We could all freeze to death.

 

[Antonio Correia]

...In the meantime we should hope nothing serious happens like some huge volcanic eruptions. Wouldn’t want some debris blocking the sun. We could all freeze to death.

Or a more serious nuclear accident... or even a nuclear war !

 

[Asher Kelman]

Or a more serious nuclear accident... or even a nuclear war !

Antonio,

Let me play the Devil’s advocate here!

Paradoxically, a nuclear war could actually save the planet by wiping out the industrial nations and allowing the planet to heal. It could take next century, as the resultant ice-age could permit a “reboot” of ecosystems.

Horrible for us, but paradoxically to the advantage for most other lifeforms.

But first we’d need to hear from eco-biologists, as to relative cost in extinct species after a nuclear war versus if man is left more peacefully pollute as he so pleases!

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

Circle of Poison

This short documentary for those interested.

Circle of Poison spans the US, India, Argentina, Mexico and Bhutan, with a wide range of interviews with activists in these countries, the people affected by crop-spraying, and experts and key figures who have led the fight against pesticides, including former US President Jimmy Carter, Patrick Leahy, Noam Chomsky and Vandana Shiva. The documentary is an important look at how dangerous pesticides have been imposed on developing countries and how people are now fighting back.




See the video at the link below.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programme...ticides-developing-world-161115084547144.html

 

[Asher Kelman]

Circle of Poison

This short documentary for those interested.

Circle of Poison spans the US, India, Argentina, Mexico and Bhutan, with a wide range of interviews with activists in these countries, the people affected by crop-spraying, and experts and key figures who have led the fight against pesticides, including former US President Jimmy Carter, Patrick Leahy, Noam Chomsky and Vandana Shiva. The documentary is an important look at how dangerous pesticides have been imposed on developing countries and how people are now fighting back.




See the video at the link below.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programme...ticides-developing-world-161115084547144.html

A great link, James. Much appreciated.

On chemical poisons this is important to read. Valuable!

Full kudos.

Still, there is, apart from that, some remarkable irony. Given the skewed “selective outrage” of Jimmy Carter and Noam Chomsky, both being extraordinarily anti-Semitic and anti Israel as the tiny Jewish homeland, the words, “Circle of Poison” does have a biting immediate meaning to me!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Common sense dictates that products designed to kill insects are poisons. Just as it digging out and burning carbons which have been hidden in the ground for 200 millions years all in a matter of decades is unlikely to be without any consequences.

 

[Asher Kelman]

....and an economy based on the concept that “perpetual growth” is somehow “good” puta is on a path of self-destruction that escapes consciousness, conscience or both!

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

Common sense dictates that products designed to kill insects are poisons. Just as it digging out and burning carbons which have been hidden in the ground for 200 millions years all in a matter of decades is unlikely to be without any consequences.

Yes after we burn it all up we will go back to living in caves in a blink of an eye. Image what your world will look like without any petroleum based products, without a keyboard to type on?

James

 

[Asher Kelman]

Is it possible to have a stock exchange firing up the economy, but only growth is health and “good life” of people but steady state of sustainable, eco-friendly replacement.

Do we need to have billions more people and increases in sales of building cranes, cars, universities football stadiums and engineers?

Muslims, and there are so many, Catholics and other fundamentalists won’t allow contraception or birth control.

Companies like population increases as it keeps markets high and labor costs low!

What is the solution besides war?

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

Is it possible to have a stock exchange firing up the economy, but only growth is health and “good life” of people but steady state of sustainable, eco-friendly replacement.

Do we need to have billions more people and increases in sales of building cranes, cars, universities football stadiums and engineers?

Muslims, and there are so many, Catholics and other fundamentalists won’t allow contraception or birth control.

Companies like population increases as it keeps markets high and labor costs low!

What is the solution besides war?

Asher

Asher

Some are suggesting to change the current banking system.

"The banking business is too crucial to be left in the hands of the private sector. The banking sector must be socialised, which means expropriating the banks and placing them under popular control (by bank employees, customers, associations, and representatives of local public institutions), because banks should be run as a public service and the revenues generated by banking activities used for the common good.

Public debt incurred to save the banks is clearly illegitimate and must be repudiated. A popular audit must be conducted to determine other illegitimate, illegal, odious or unsustainable debts, and to help to create mobilisation through which a credible anti-capitalist alternative can emerge.
The central banks must be radically reformed, and their missions must be redefined. They must resume their role of printing money and contribute actively to financing the environmental transition and the struggle against social injustice.

Citizen mobilization and social self-management are indispensable conditions for putting the different proposals for solutions into practise."

http://www.cadtm.org/The-Banking-Sector-and-the-Global-Crisis

 

[Asher Kelman]

On the denial of the warningscon global warming:

I am not sure there’s an agenda. Certainly not of fairness to entire populations.

There is a political mechanism of recruitment that leveraged the ideas that we belong to a group that is inherently superior.

It might simply be a religious, Reagan, Le Pen or Trumpiam meme, so neither rational deduction and purpose is needed.

It’s obvious to Muslims that Mohammad, PUBH), is the last true prophet of God. Likewise it’s obvious to Catholics that the Pope is infallible or to Christians, that there is an actual real force of evil and that Jesus is the only path to redemptions and salvation.

Likewise it takes no contemplation to “know” that ideas of man-made global warming are invented by socialists to ruin economies!

These sets of absolute conviction are archaic mechanisms that worked for migrating communities, founding new settlements around the globe. If a meme “worked” the group survived. Then there were no other instruction books!

Now we suffer from collective overlapping delusions!:

• Growth is the fuel for progress
• We don’t have a global warming crisis
• Trickle down economics
• God won’t let the planet die
• If species die out then God has a better plan for us

Unfortunately, none of these are true!

But folk argue against reality!

James, even if we support one of these memes, we are in delusional!

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

On the denial of the warningscon global warming:

I am not sure there’s an agenda. Certainly not of fairness to entire populations.

There is a political mechanism of recruitment that leveraged the ideas that we belong to a group that is inherently superior.

It might simply be a religious, Reagan, Le Pen or Trumpiam meme, so neither rational deduction and purpose is needed.

It’s obvious to Muslims that Mohammad, PUBH), is the last true prophet of God. Likewise it’s obvious to Catholics that the Pope is infallible or to Christians, that there is an actual real force of evil and that Jesus is the only path to redemptions and salvation.

Likewise it takes no contemplation to “know” that ideas of man-made global warming are invented by socialists to ruin economies!

These sets of absolute conviction are archaic mechanisms that worked for migrating communities, founding new settlements around the globe. If a meme “worked” the group survived. Then there were no other instruction books!

Now we suffer from collective overlapping delusions!:

• Growth is the fuel for progress
• We don’t have a global warming crisis
• Trickle down economics
• God won’t let the planet die
• If species die out then God has a better plan for us

Unfortunately, none of these are true!

But folk argue against reality!

James, even if we support one of these memes, we are in delusional!

Asher

Asher

Soon robots will do everything for us, we will colonize the planet Mars and aliens will come and teach us how to live forever.

James

 

[Asher Kelman]

Asher

Soon robots will do everything for us, we will colonize the planet Mars and aliens will come and teach us how to live forever.

James

In the meanwhile don’t sound off in a way that trivializes global warming or the ongoing massive die off of birds and insects!

Not that you are the most powerful influencer around, just that we don’t need extra dismissive voices when we have already suffered unacceptable losses.

Trumps voice is more than enough.

These are facts.

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

In the meanwhile don’t sound off in a way that trivializes global warming or the ongoing massive die off of birds and insects!

Not that you are the most powerful influencer around, just that we don’t need extra dismissive voices when we have already suffered unacceptable losses.

Trumps voice is more than enough.

These are facts.

Asher

Facts and science are not about a majority as you imply.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Facts and science are not about a majority as you imply.

An accepted working figure is approximately 30% of bird species are threatened!

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

An accepted working figure is approximately 30% of bird species are threatened!

Asher

It is a study of North American birds, based on a review of published bird counts going back to 1970, together with an interesting attempt to use radar data to count populations of nocturnal migrating birds over the last decade. Apart from the radar studies they did not do any direct data collection or data reduction themselves. These are amongst the best ways to count populations of birds we have but there are still many many known issues with bird counts.
Then, of the 3 billion reduction, 1.6 billion are from the ten most common species. 0.4 billion are from the nuisance invasive species, the house sparrow (0.33 billion) and European Starling (0.083 billion).. There are programs to reduce their numbers.
Others are birds that expanded over the US before the 1970s, as humans spread across the Americas cutting down forests and natural habitats. Some of the decline, if it is a real decline, may be due to species that had an artificial increase, and are now returning to earlier levels as habitats are restored.
Then the lists also include some bird species have increased markedly since the 1970s, especially the raptors. This is not necessarily always a conseration success. For raptors, the period starts with an artificial low in the 1970s due to the DDT poisoning of their eggs making the shells thinner.
For another possible bias, most of this study is based on population counts for species rather than an attempt to count all the birds in a region. But this makes it incomplete. They only have numbers for 76% of the US bird species.. They know nothing about the other remaining quarter (24%) of species that they leave out.
Given that 1.6 billion of the decrease came from just ten bird species, it's possible that increases from some of the many species they did not count may impact on the figures significantly.
Then, much of the attention has been on their extinction argument - which hardly really counts as an argument at all. It was just an argument by pathos based on the vivid image of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, not based on any actual risk of extinction of the most populous species of birds in the US.

https://www.science20.com/robert_wa...really_lost_3_billion_birds_since_1970-242037

 

[James Lemon]

The impact of free - ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States

If those "Liberal Cat Ladies" would just put bells on their cats.

A systematic review and quantitatively estimate mortality caused by cats in the United States. We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

 

[Peter Dexter]

If you are really interested in birds and population trends you should check out ebird: https://ebird.org/home?logout=true

If you are interested in specific species check them out on the Red List: https://www.iucnredlist.org

 

[Peter Dexter]

It shouldn't be hard to establish bird populations trends. Every year birding groups around the world carry out the "Christmas Count" in their regions. The counts are done on established territories so year to year comparisons can be made. I have participated in plenty of them both in the US and Colombia, There are also the "Big Day" counts occurring in May. These are also carried out internationally. And lastly there is now the global bird count day in October. There can not possibly be any shortage of data what with all these internationally done counts.

 

[James Lemon]

If you are really interested in birds and population trends you should check out ebird: https://ebird.org/home?logout=true

If you are interested in specific species check them out on the Red List: https://www.iucnredlist.org

Thanks Peter! It is obvious that birds die for a number of reasons that can effect populations. One thing you don't here about is the fact that many rare birds are trapped illegally in places like Asia. Also I don't appreciate the hype and the inaccurate story that was originally presented here and among numerous other places across the internet.

Small children get freaked out when they see and here things like this. My grand daughter was over for a visit one day after school and she was upset about all squirrels dying from car exhaust. Its unfortunate that "Climate Science" is nothing more than a propaganda tool for profits.

Have a look at the following carbon contrarian shocker by Patrick Moore a co-founder of "Green Peace"

James

 

[KIYATY]

The data added up to a grim conclusion: Over nearly half a century, bird populations in North America experienced a steep decline. There are 2.9 billion fewer birds today than there were in 1970 — a reduction of 29%.

 

[Andy brown]

Thanks Peter! It is obvious that birds die for a number of reasons that can effect populations. One thing you don't here about is the fact that many rare birds are trapped illegally in places like Asia. Also I don't appreciate the hype and the inaccurate story that was originally presented here and among numerous other places across the internet.

Small children get freaked out when they see and here things like this. My grand daughter was over for a visit one day after school and she was upset about all squirrels dying from car exhaust. Its unfortunate that "Climate Science" is nothing more than a propaganda tool for profits.

Have a look at the following carbon contrarian shocker by Patrick Moore a co-founder of "Green Peace"

James

Really James?
That’s what you’ve got?
How pathetically puerile!
Out of all the massive amount information available. Of all the extremely heavily researched information via the peer reviewed scientific method, you put up the rantings of a fool who sold his soul for money (not the first). And by the way, he puts in a merciless plus for his book! How on Earth can you not see through that.
Are you a complete idiot?
Sorry, I sincerely wish I didn’t have to ask that question.
But I’ll ask it again, to attempt to get through whatever it is is blocking up your brain. Are you a complete idiot?

For your information, while it is presumably quite chilly where you live, Australian is cooking, absolutely frying.
Thousands of bats are dropping dead out of trees.
Fires are burning out of control. Houses and lives are being lost. The air is smoke.
Firefighters are dying and others are having nightmares of Koalas screaming as they are burnt alive in their trees.
Please James, have a realistic think about the state of the world.
Temperature records are falling daily.
What do you see? Nothing to see here?

 

[Asher Kelman]

James and Andy,

Your positions of Science versus proof from chosen books is not a new facing off of opposites.

Imagine that even today today, educated folk get “detoxified” with either wheat grasses and other bitter herbs or high colonic, so called therapeutic enemas.

I have a nephew whose family boasts is a doctor like me, who had a 6 months course in herbal medicine and acupuncture but has no knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology or anything else that would be found in any academic library anywhere in the world.

But he is fluent in the Bible and is considered and assumed to be so competent by his community, that his “natural” clinic in London is always booked ahead and he himself believes he is a doctor and not for a second imagines hevis an ignorant charlatan. Such is memic belief!

Memic belief is perhaps the strongest barrier ton insight. It is a fair generalization that many devout God-fearing Christians don’t have much truck with ideas of man-made global warming. In any case, God promised to never bring another worldwide flood. The devout believe that promise would apply to global warming too!

Why, because they are more generally conservative, accepting a minimum package of being anti gay, anti reproductive choice At the least. These matters don't need thinking about.

I am not saying that you James are locked in such a memic belief, explaining your unwillingness to look seriously at Andy’s arguments! Certainly, you are no idiot!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Now as to James Moore, who I reflexly would dismiss, he has certainly presented an apparently plausible and persuasive argument that we are not at the dire risks Al Gore announced years ago!

I have no doubt that each of Moore’s Graphs and arguments have been strongly challenged and may have each been proven false.

So I would welcome any reference that debunks his logic decisively.

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

Now as to James Moore, who I reflexly would dismiss, he has certainly presented an apparently plausible and persuasive argument that we are not at the dire risks Al Gore announced years ago!

I have no doubt that each of Moore’s Graphs and arguments have been strongly challenged and may have each been proven false.

So I would welcome any reference that debunks his logic decisively.

Asher

Asher

His name is Patrick Moore and you can watch an edited version of his speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London 2015 at the link below. To date nobody has refuted these assertions.

James