Numufu

I never understood the fascination of “going green”. Perhaps it is because we are humans, and therefore blessed (or cursed, whichever you perfer) with self-conscious and therefor feel guilty whenever someone litters, or someone turns the key to their car, thinking to themselves how awful it is to truly be human because we are destroying the planet. After all, that is what we’re taught nowadays. You can’t turn on the TV, turn on the radio, ride the bus, walk down the street, or practically do anything anymore without hearing the words “go green” or “environmentally friendly”. What does this even mean, and why should we care? Are humans really having that much of an impact on the planet?

Of course, it is nice that people are finding much better alternatives to the resources we have today. However, I am not at all excited about people trying to force us into changing our way of life. We are not cavemen. We are not destroying the planet. Anthropogenic Global Warming was a proven fraud. We all know Al Gore laughed his way to the bank off of his box office hit An Inconvenient Truth. He sells people Carbon Credits… which are basically saying “give me your money and you will be guilt free for ruining this planet”. Yes. That’s exactly it. A carbon credit has no use, it does nothing for you, you can’t do anything with it. I suggest you all Google it. You BUY ONE and it says, “emits one tonne of carbon”. Ok? How does it do that? Oh, right, because you just wasted 50 bucks on it, you sap.

Not only that, but the court has identified 11 errors in the movie. That is a lot for supposedly telling us the truth! The court announced, “in order for the film to be shown, the government must first amend their guidance notes to teachers to make it clear that the film is a POLITICAL WORK and promotes only one side of the argument.” If teachers present this film without making this clear they may be in breach of the Education Act and guilty of political indoctrination. The teachers must also draw attention to those 11 inaccuracies of the movie.

But I’m getting sidetracked. Worrying about our planet is one thing, but trying to solve those problems is another. I find it funny that those who are determined to do something about it end up just causing more problems in the long run and don’t even realize it. For example, I know lots of people who claim that humans are overpopulated. They piss and moan that we are an overpopulated species that cannot control ourselves until one day we will destroy ourselves due to some of the issues aforementioned. Then they will go on to say things like, “As part of my Going Green plan, I’m no longer eating meat, I am becoming a vegetarian.” Can you see the correlation? No?

Well let me explain it to you. In a simple trophic pyramid, the producers are at the very bottom, with primary consumers on top, followed by secondary consumers (which are normally humans). Grass is a producer. Herbivores are a primary consumer, since they can only primarily eat grass. I hope you understand where I’m getting at now. No? Well then, let me borrow a quote from Dr. Charles Kay:

“Plants turn sunlight into stored energy that can be used by herbivores. Herbivores then convert those plant tissues into more herbivores, but in so doing, there is a major loss in stored energy because the herbivores have to expend energy on body maintenance and respiration, in addition to reproduction. The consumed energy is given-off as heat or waste products. The same, in turn, happens when carnivores eat herbivores. Ninety percent or more of that energy goes to carnivore body maintenance and respiration, not population growth.”

This image explains a trophic pyramid. In societies where humans are pure hunters, human populations are very low, but if humans move down a trophic level, then the human population will increase ten-fold. This is why carnivores are always so rare when compared to herbivores. More wildlife habitat has been destroyed in the name of agriculture than any other human activity, therefore it is hilarious to see those “going green” unconsciously supporting the destruction of the planet.

Oh, yes. Completely abandoned her, we have. No two ways about it, I’m afraid.

Quite right, it is really a rotten thing, but it is not—

Oh, no! It is not like that at all! It isn’t that we don’t love her — not at all! We love her, and we likely always will.

Well, it is not that simple, you see.

If you heard the whole story, I am sure you would understand why we did it.

Please, just let me tell you the whole story. It is a sorry mess, of course, but what can be done? We could not very well tolerate the way things were. She still tries to — ah, well, I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

We are not really sure how it all started. Mother never did give any straight answers. I think she drinks, personally; that would explain plenty. Maybe she hates us, but there is no point in guessing at why. Anyway, as for how we got here, there are plenty of theories, of course. All are fairly wild if you stop and have a think about them. I suppose it does not matter too much how we got here; we can all see how things are, but the most popular explanation certainly does not make mother look very good. Maybe that is why she kept it secret for so long, or maybe it isn’t true at all, but, as I said, it does not really matter. We had reason enough without it.

As far as anyone can tell, she as always harbored malice for us — well, all of her children really. Oh, she would feed us and clothe us, but that was about all, and we had to work hard for that much. There were no free meals from mother. That would not have been so bad, really; one must teach children to work hard, of course, and work hard we did, but it was still clear that she hated us. She always had the most wild temper, and she was as capricious as a manic cat. From our earliest years, she would be perfectly serene one day, but, on the next, she would come at us howling and screaming with all manner of violence. She would topple our works, smash our belongings, and even kill us. Sometimes she would set our things alight and let the flames consume us.

She was harsh — very harsh and unpredictable. We are still trying to figure out what we can expect tomorrow, and she is still puzzling sometimes. The worst part, though, was her other children. Oh, yes, we were not her only children, but, back then, I am sure we would have sometimes wished that we were. She was very neglectful — all of her children were permitted to run around doing simply whatever they pleased. There was little reason for them to do anything else, or, at least, that is how they must have seen it. Her punishments were always certain but never precise. No one really was punished by mother for any particular reason, so there was no reason to avoid doing anything.

Of course, left to their own, our siblings became rotten to the core. They were always squabbling, and the strong dominated the weak. Most of them never even survived. We even have a saying now, “survival of the fittest”, and it was certainly true. Those of her children that could not bully or avoid their siblings simply died. This particular state of affairs did not seem to bother mother much; she simply went on being careless and cruel.

We kept trying to build something better for ourselves, and it seemed that we were the only ones that realized how abusive mother was. All of her other children seemed quite content with it up until they got eaten. They also frequently tried to eat us as well. Oh, no, we were not exempt from their abuse either, and their rampages were often worse than mother ever was. Had you heard of the Black Plague? Well, then I am sure you will agree that mother should have stepped in there.

So you see, we just could not take it anymore. If mother had her way, we would all be dead, or, at least, we would all be savages that tear each other apart. Harmony? Harmony, you say? Mother was never good at harmony. It was always competition. If you did not fend for yourself in the most ruthless fashion possible, you were dead. Mother showed us compassion from time to time, but her cruelty was equal or greater.

Mother Earth never did love us.

Here we go again! I stumbled upon this article a few days ago and thought I’d blog about it. A Mongolian wrestler apparently was invited to work with Japan Wolf Association in raising wolves that are planned on being released into the wild (part of Japan’s reintroduction/recovery plan). They say the reasons for wanting the wolf back is because their deer population is out of control and also because the wolf has a place in nature just like anything else.

You know, I’ve heard this whole “deer population out of control” story before in the news. They’ve also claimed it was about boars eating all of their crops. Either way, there is a very simple solution: hunting. There are regulated hunting seasons for a reason, and if pest animals (like boars and deer) become too much of a problem, then loosen the regulations! Allow year-round hunting seasons, or allow trapping and baiting in some zones. Introducing a non-native subspecies where a predator that is NOW EXTINCT is not the way to go about things. This whole concept of “re-wilding” is absolutely asinine. (Woolly mammoths anyone?)

Now, they say a good reason to reintroduce the wolf is because they have a place in nature just like anything else. Well then, by their logic, we should reintroduce polio, as it is an endangered virus and deserves a place in nature as well.

I should also like to point out that Japan is host to a subspecies of the Asian black bear, Ursus thibetanus japonicus. Although Asian black bears feed primarily on herbs, they are also known to kill and eat whitetail deer fawns. So there you have it. The bears can help reduce the population of the deer by reducing the cow:calf ratio. Predation on fawns means not enough fawns survive to replace the adults that die each year.

But I thought “a wolf is a wolf is a wolf” and that “wolves don’t recognize invisible lines drawn in the ground” and all of that baloney? Subspecies are all the same, correct? We already discussed that nothing is biologically or legally “pure”. So why am I getting bent out of shape about it? First let me be very clear that I advocate the distinct-ness of subspecies 100% – it is the wolf advocates, the “wolfaboos” that do not! Now let me quickly go over the history of Japan’s native wolves and leave you to decide why introducing a non-native subspecies into Japan is a bad idea:

First of all, there were two known subspecies of gray wolf that resided in Japan: the Hokkaido wolf (Canis lupus hattai) and the Honshu wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax). The Honshu wolf occupied the main and southern islands of Japan, while the Hokkaido wolf only occupied the northern most island (map here for clarification).

The Honshu wolf was extremely small, standing at around one and a half feet at the shoulder. It was the smallest subspecies of the gray wolf. The Hokkaido wolf, however, was a bit bigger, and looked a bit more like a traditional gray wolf. Biologists confirm that both of these subspecies descended from the Holarctic wolves. The Honshu wolf went extinct due to a rabies outbreak and environmental changes. It is said that the Hokkaido wolf went extinct due to governmental campaigns to eliminate predators such as the wolf with strychnine as they sought to “modernize the nation”.

It has to be said here that the Honshu wolf is small due to allopatric speciation/island dwarfing. How this animal behaved no one knows for sure. There are only historical documents which people often dispute or regard as “folk lore”. Now, I am not going to argue the fact that Japan never had any cases of wolf attacks – because they did – however, I am simply trying to point out the fact smaller predators are more timid and shy. This is proven with the case of the native Northern Rocky Mountain wolf (Canis lupus irremotus) years before the illegal dumping of the non-native subspecies (Canis lupus occidentalis). The much larger, more aggressive subspecies has been proven to be a burden on society, and the false labeling of an “endangered species” has not been helping the situation for the past 16 years. Remember a wolf is a wolf is a wolf? Whatever happened to that? Japan does NOT need its native wolf – the size of a fox – replaced with a Eurasian subspecies, which is roughly 3ft at the shoulder that can reach around 120lbs when fully fed.

Not only that, but there are citizens of Japan as well as taxonomists who still believe that the Honshu wolf still exists! This is obviously heavily disputed and there has been no official confirmation, but what a biological disaster it would be to this subspecies (due to such speciation/dwarfism) if it was truly out there and they wanted to wipe it out with the much larger Eurasian wolves. Oh, but I forgot – a wolf is a wolf is a wolf, right? (I wish the wolf advocates would listen to themselves when they say that and then try to make sense of the whole Mexican gray wolf recovery program they keep trying to support).

To add to all of this, larger predators need to eat more. Biologists came out and said that wolves eat around 15-20 deer per year per wolf. This, of course, is a conservative minimum. They aren’t taking into consideration the fact that wolves partake in what’s known as “surplus killing” – a phenomenon that usually only occurs in the winter for wild prey, but can happen at any time for domestic prey. It is when the wolves kill more than they can eat, and sometimes do not eat anything at all from what they kill. Therefore, in reality, one wolf consumes around 30 deer per year. So what will happen if Japan falls into a predator pit? They want to curb their deer populations, but have they given any thought to how they plan on handling the situation if the wolves kill off too many deer and then start consuming another resource? Probably not. A funny, yet disheartening, fact is that this same situation is being planned for the UK as well. Perhaps the UK should focus on their invasive rabbit problem first before worrying about wolves.

Support for the reintroduction of wolves to Japan was last at 14% in 1999 (surveys done by JWA).

A 3 year old YouTube video that is somewhat viral has sparked a lot of debate on the internet, especially amongst vegetarians, vegans, and carnivores alike. The video shows a calf rummaging through the grass while a baby chick “pew pew pew”s in distress. At first it looks like one of those cute “best friend animal” videos, if not for the name giving away what happens next. The calf hones in on the chick and gobbles him up.

Now, what’s wrong with an animal eating another animal, one might ask? Nothing, surely. We’ve all seen it before. Yet the thing that people find really disturbing is the context it’s displayed in. Cows don’t eat meat, they assume, and so they try to find any excuse for why this happened. So people replay the video. They notice the calf is tied up, and there are foreigners talking in the background. Aha! So that’s it… it must be some sick, twisted game that they play – starve the cow so it resorts to eating meat!

No, that’s just racist. In fact, by simply Googling the subject I was able to find out the story behind this silly little guy. “Meat-loving calf eats chickens“. Apparently a family would notice that every night several of their chickens would disappear. It was only until they actually witnessed the culprit: their cow gobbling them up! So what was the vets diagnosis? Lack of vital minerals. Of course, the family had their own reasoning: he was a tiger in his past life.

Yet people should not be surprised that cows eat meat. In fact, deer have been known to eat birds. This, too, is from mineral deficiencies from the vegetation that they eat. There are also sheep that eat birds. Wildlife biologists say it is a “dietary supplement” and that they are very careful to avoid swallowing the feathers, meat, and skin. It begs the question of how really good they are at avoiding the meat just to get to the bones, especially when viewing the YouTube video.

So why do people care that the cow is eating a chick? They really shouldn’t. The animals that you know and love kill and eat animals. It’s a way of life. Some common comments people say when watching the video are, “the chick’s foot is tied to the ground,” or, “that calf was forced to eat it.”  When people try to say that the calf was forced to eat the chick, all I can think of is HOW? How was it forced? You don’t see someone shoving that chick down his throat. They also call them “heartless”. How are they heartless, I wonder? Is it because they actually feed their animals? Yeah, it’s pretty sad the calf has a vitamin deficiency… but at least they are giving him his supplements. If they were truly heartless, they wouldn’t be giving him anything at all.

You would not be able to be in any particularly fervent environmental discussion without someone mentioning something about Native Americans, be it a brief and pity quote from a chieftain with a name like “Tall Bear” or “Little Wolf” or “Reasonably-sized Porpoise”, a lengthy rant about their treatment at the hands of that devilish scoundrel called “white man”, or simply the reassuring affirmation that the writer’s credentials include previous contact with someone that was at least partly of native descent. They form the Godwin’s Law of environmentalism, and they sit beside Sara Palin on the Activist’s-Argument bingo card.

Why is this? Why does anyone think that we should care what Chief Care Bear says?

There seems to be the notion that Native American culture is closer to Earth than the average Joe and Jane of modern civilization. They do, after all, live off the land—hunting for food, making crude tools, and generally battling the elements in order to survive. We have cars, supermarkets, air conditioning, and television.

There is the idea that all of this has corrupted us somehow. Mankind is more brutish, stupid, and careless because of technological progress. We have turned our backs on the forests that bore us through our less-knowledgeable times when we still thought that thunder was the sound of a divine chariot passing overhead, and we have lost our way because of it. Native Americans have not been tainted by all that thinking and doing, and they fully recognize and appreciate just how much better things are when people live in huts.

Well, that is the Native American that they mean—it is entirely reasonable to expect that modern Native Americans have recognized the benefits of technological progress, but it is still assumed that they inherit some degree of connection to nature. They are related to natives, so they can spout all the condemnation of the modern world that they wish, and they can do so on progress’s television in the comfort of progress’s air-conditioned building while eating progress’s food. It is in the blood, you see.

It is true to a point—Native American culture is, or at least was, “closer to Earth”, but that does not mean much. They had no formal method of understanding the natural world. They knew how to survive, but then all stone-age societies did, and that does not mean that they knew how it works. They were a primitive culture, still conjuring spirits to explain the workings of the world around them. They did not even have the wheel yet.

If you can agree that understanding is the best way to achieve the results we want, then you must come to recognize that modern science is more reliable than an indian chief. Following a rational and systematic method of research and experimentation is far more valuable than smoking pipes and talking to spirits; it has been demonstrated repeatedly. The efficacy of modern medicine alone should be a testament to that.

There is no purity in ignorance, and there are no answers in mysticism. If you must trust someone, trust a scientist before a medicine man. Compare the achievements of their methods, and you will see why serious environmentalist should not be relying on stone-age understanding.

It only makes sense.

Something that most people seem to forget is that the term “pure” does not biologically exist anymore. In fact, I tend to wonder if it ever did at one point. Phylogenetics teaches us the relationship among organisms (species, populations), which is discovered through molecular sequencing known as mtDNA studies. People will love to tell you their dog is “pure Pomeranian” – but that isn’t the case now, is it? Of course, we have been taught that dogs descended from wolves. This would mean that your dog is not “pure”.

We have also been taught that the red wolf is its own species, genetically distinct from both the gray wolf and the coyote. But is this true? Biologically, no. Ernst Mayr wrote the book Systematics and the Origin of Species which defines species as “a group of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” Because a red wolf can interbreed with both a gray wolf and a coyote, it is not a viable candidate for a species (according to this definition). Analysis of mtDNA indicated that the red wolf from current and historical populations possessed both coyote and gray wolf mtDNA genotypes. As such, the red wolf also isn’t a “pure” species – but does it really matter? Some might say it does, and that we should pull the plug on the red wolf recovery program. Some say it is a waste of our taxpayer money to be funding a hybrid in disguise. Yet the truth is nothing is pure.

This counts for the subspecies of the gray wolf as well. Wolf advocates love to talk about how the Mexican gray wolf needs to be preserved because there are only 50 left in the wild. What they don’t realize is that “wolves do not recognize invisible lines”. What’s funny is that they will use that very line when arguing with others about how it was illegal to dump a non-native subspecies into the Greater Yellowstone Area. They love to say, “a wolf is a wolf” and, “wolves don’t recognize invisible lines” – but then turn around and say, “preserve the Mexican gray wolf.” Well, how can you preserve something that isn’t pure?

The Mexican gray wolf, in fact, is under heavy dispute by taxonomists for its purity. Reason being because the animal was declared extinct in the wild in the 1970s when researchers captured the remaining 5 for breeding purposes in captivity. Taxonomists claim that the wild stock is now tainted with coyote and dog DNA – but we have already gone over the fact that wolves and coyotes have been interbreeding ever since the Pleistocene epoch!

And what about interbreeding with dogs? Well, that’s how wolves get their black coats, of course. The fact of the matter is, nothing is truly “pure”… as Dr. Mech says, “It’s nice to know what the origins are from the standpoint of curiosity, but from a conservation standpoint, it shouldn’t make any difference.” This is what mtDNA does for us: it lets us know the origins, but when it comes to conserving that species, we should not really be focusing on whether or not that population is “pure”. If a wolf wants to mate with a coyote, let it. There are thousands of hybrid plants and marine life that are still protected, so why should vertebrates be any different?

As a PS, non-wolf related comment: I scoff at the people who think there is a “master race”.