The good folks at the National Wildlife Federation sent me an email last week warning me that Moose were disappearing from northwestern Minnesota because of global warming.
Because of global warming? Nonsense.
Moose are disappearing in northwestern Minnesota because of a type of brain worm or fluke that has spread into the area with a rapid rise in non-native Whitetail Deer densities.
"Global warming" may be the "cause du jour," but it is not what is causing Moose populations in northwestern Minnesota to plummet. Cyclical episodes of "Moose sickness" have been documented in Minnesota since 1912, and brain worm has been implicated since 1965.
This is not the first time I have seen "global warming" trotted out as a make-weight excuse for one problem or another. Up at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland, for example, where the marshy ground has been channeled, plowed, planted in corn, and invaded by non-native nutria (coypu), a droning video in the visitor's center says the threat to Blackwater is "global warming." Horse feathers! The threat to Blackwater is (and always has been) humans who have channeled, plowed, planted, drained, and brought non-native nutria into the marsh. Global warming has nothing to do with that one. Let's not oversell global warming, eh? If it's a real disease (and it very well may be), we shouldn't have to invent symptoms, and crying wolf when it is not there will only harm the cause. More science and less marketing might be a good idea at this point.
Of course, it hardly matters what I think; "global warming" is now a "meme" that is self-replicating across the nation.
About 30 years ago, Richard Dawkins coined the term to refer to a unit of cultural information that propagates itself from one mind to another like a viral email, a parable, a pop tune, or an urban legend.
A successful meme is not necessarily "good" culture; often it's low-brow stuff like a TV-show catch phrase ("Where's the beef?") or a commercial jingle. Sometimes it's a news story or a joke. At other times it's a story as resonant as Moby Dick or a value expressed in such deeply meaningful phrases as "Tune in, drop out and turn on."
If you're following me up to now, then stick around and watch this little video clip of Dan Dennett talking about memes and brain worms, terrorists and radical Islam. It takes a while to load, even with a broadband connection, but it's well worth a watch. I promise.
4 comments:
I take your point and it is certainly true that global warming can be used as a boogie man inappropriately. But on the other hand, when global warming changes local climatic conditions to allow "foreign" animals to move in and propagate to the detriment of "local" animals not adapted to deal with the newcomers, it IS appropriate to blame global warming. Perhaps the worms and nutria's populatioin explosions are the result of more favorable climate conditions that would not have existed previously.
EmilyS
Climate change has had nothing to do with any of the invasive species (plant or animal) in the U.S. From Starlings to Nutria, Mediterannean Fruit Flies to Tumble Weed (aka Russian Thisle), from Black and Brown Rats to Chestnut Blight, from Dandelions to Brown Trout, from Gyspy Moths to Monk Parrots, all these species got here at the hand of man, and often intentionally.
Where inter-nation migrations have occured (Northern Pike moved to California, Whitetail Deer moved to Minnesota, Raccoons moved to Colorado, Oppossums showing up in Maine, etc.) this has occured because humans either intentionally moved the animals over what had once been massive geographic barriers (such as the Great Plains) or else the migration north and west was made possible by the creation of artificial habitat and food sources (very important for Raccoon and Possums, for example).
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been a little late in figuring out how destructive some of these migrations have been, but they are trying to play catch-up now (without too much success). The Zebra Mussel, for example, is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle, and that may be true for the Northern Pike in California as well. Asian Carp are here to stay, and so too are the Snakehead Fish and the Brazilian Pepper Tree. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working hard to try to contain Chronic Wasting Disease which has been spread by moving Whitetail and elk (Wapiti) around the country, and rabies (which was spread north by intentionally relocating Raccoons out of Florida) seems to be (very slowly) spiraling downward a little bit thank to a massive aerial vaccine baiting campaign.
Of course the biggest vector for change was that damn boat load of Europeans showing up in 1492. They brought with them diseases that quickly wiped out a thousand cultures and scores of millions of people spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles. As with all the other invasives, this did not have a thing to do with climate, but it was decimating nonetheless.
What we have going in Minnesota right now is "1492," with Whitetail Deer (and their diseases) standing in for the Europeans and the Moose standing in for the Native Americans.
P.
I think "man-made global warming" is a straw man, and so are the sub-topics like SUVs = Satan. In a way, they are examples of macro and micro bullcrap. Global warming is so large, complex, and like our weather, in flux. It is a rallying cry that is boldly meaningless, and as such, it supports the slacktivists in their "I'll bitch but since it's such a large problem, I really can't do much except demand that other people and big corporations do the work for me!"
SUVs are a micro-meme that smacks false too. Unlike GLOBAL (too bad they can't call it GALACTICAL or UNIVERSAL...despite some evidence that it just might be SOLAR) warming which is so large as to be intangible by an individual, SUVs are a small price for _someone else_ to pay.
See, it's really convenient to displace your slactivism onto another minor irritant, the car that is bigger than yours and blocks your vision when you're sitting in traffic on the 101 while on your way too and from work... despite the fact that you're driving a 20 year old Volvo that is exempt from emmissions requirements and burns fuel less efficiently and cleanly than it ever has and blows more smoke out it's talepipe than you ever did while hot boxing it in your youth.
I respect people who are passionate and practice what they preach, especially when they follow a "first do no harm" ethic. That way, even if they're wrong, the only thing they've wasted is their own time.
duh, doubts on global warming? Look out the window. Its far warmer than it was in February!
Does the otehr half of the globe with its inverse seasons have problems with global colding?
We know stuff "spins" in the opposite direction down there so I assume their issues are different from ours.
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