#anthropogene extinction

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This ties into one of the big conundrums of restoration ecology. When trying to decide what plants to add to a restoration site, should we add those that are there now, even if some of those species are increasingly stressed by the effects of climate change? Or do we start importing native species in adjacent ecoregions that are more tolerant of heat?

Animals can migrate relatively quickly, but plants take longer to expand their range, and the animals that they have mutual relationships with may be moving to cooler areas faster than the plants can follow. Whether the animals will be able to survive in their new range without their plant partners is another question, and that is an argument in favor of trying to help the plants keep up with them. We're not just having to think about what effects climate change will have next summer, but also predict what it's going to look like here in fifty years, a hundred, or beyond. It's an especially important question in regards to slow-growing trees which may not reproduce until they are several years old, and which can take decades to really be a significant support of their local ecosystem.

For example, here in the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades, western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is experiencing increased die-off due to longer, hotter summer droughts. Do we continue to plant western red cedar, in the hopes that some of them may display greater tolerance to drought and heat? Or do we instead plant Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), which is found in red cedar's southern range, and which may be more drought-tolerant, even though it's not found this far north yet?

Planting something from an adjacent ecoregion isn't the same as grabbing a plant from halfway around the world and establishing it as an invasive species. But there is the question as to whether the established native would have been able to survive if we hadn't introduced a competing "neighbor" species. Would the Port Orford cedars and western red cedars be able to coexist as they do in northern California and southern Oregon, or would the introduced Port Orfords be enough to push the already stressed red cedars over the edge to extirpation?

There's no simple answer. But I am glad to see the government at least allowing some leeway for those ecologists who are desperately trying any tactic they can to save rare species from extinction.

#restoration ecology #ecology #habitat restoration #climate change #global warming #anthropogenic climate change #nature #wildlife #plants #botany #trees #endangered species #extinction #environment #conservation #environmentalism #science #scicomm #science communication

[rupertbbare]

#extinction #mass extinction #anthropocene #anthropogenic climate change #doomsday #apocalyptic #scary signs

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

Homo Sapiens Are Working Overtime to Join 'The Great Silence'

And if it does affect the economy, we’ll find a way to                      extract a profit from it…. Driven mostly by rising global temperatures from the continued burning of fossil fuels, extreme weather events such as typhoons, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves and drought are becoming more frequent, increasing 83% worldwide in the past 20 years (as of 2020), and the costs have increased by 800%…

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#6th Mass Extinction #America&039;s Crumbling Infrastructure #Antarctic Ice Melt #Anthropocentrism #Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) #Atmospheric Rivers #Billion Dollar Natural Disasters #Canadian Wildfires #Climate Tipping Points #Complexity Trap #Ecological Overshoot #Extreme Weather Events #Flickering #Luke Kemp #Noam Chomsky #Ocean Heatwaves #Planetary Boundaries #Planetary Tipping Points #Prof Johan Rockström #Prof Tim Garrett #Professor Tim Lenton #Sea Surface Temperatures #William Rees

[pangur-and-grim]

I’m mostly good, but sometimes people will accidentally trigger my cat autism and then. and then they suffer.

like last weekend my aunt said she felt bad for cats whose owners didn’t let them freeroam, and I was like HOOOO HOO YOU HAVE ACTIVATED ME, YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO MY TRAP, here look at my phone this is the current state of the anthropogenic mass extinction event, here is its rate in comparison to previous mass extinctions, here is how many birds species have been wiped out by free roaming cats, here is the comparative lifespans of indoor vs outdoor cats, here is my fenced in catio, here are my cat wall shelves, here is my seven foot cat tree that is styled to look like an actual tree, here is my six foot cat tree, here is the special rug by the heating vent for them to sleep on, here is…..wait where are you going, come back……aunt martha………

[headspace-hotel]

So growing up I heard these kinds of statements: "X number of species goes extinct every year" and "Most species that go extinct are undescribed/undiscovered"

And I could never really picture what that looked like. What species were going extinct? Where? Why? If they're undiscovered, how do we know about it? It's only recently that I've been able to understand.

This is an example:

Since European colonization, 99% of old growth forest in the eastern United States was cut down.

In Eastern Kentucky, the coal industry led to waste and rubble being dumped in valleys, literally burying countless mountain streams in gravel and toxic sludge.

Colonialism and exploitation moved faster than leaf-sketching and bug-collecting European naturalists did. It's very simple, and very sad. When the coal mines polluted the streams, many species of fish that only lived in one specific stream must have gone extinct. When Native Americans were forced off their lands, we can presume that rare plant species found in meadows, canebrakes and oaks savannas dependent on particular anthropogenic disturbances went extinct. When old-growth tracts were logged, God only knows how many lichens, mosses, ferns and plants went extinct because the trees they lived on were chopped.

We can extrapolate from the diversity in the fragments that remain, and the number of rare endemic species in especially isolated areas, and guess what probably existed in areas that were obliterated early on.

Keep in mind: All is not lost. New species are still being discovered.

The Bluegrass region of Kentucky was once called one of the most peculiar plant communities of the South—an eastern island of oak savanna with an understory of Arundinaria bamboo and legumes. Early European settlers reported that the ground was incredibly rich and covered with knee-high clover and dense thickets of "cane" (bamboo) that made navigation next to impossible.

Some people say the Bluegrass was always a forest and the savanna theory is wrong. Bullshit! I know this because of several reasons:

The earliest records don't mention any sycamores at all in the Bluegrass, whereas river cane (bamboo) was everywhere. Arundinaria bamboos are fire dependent species, whereas sycamore is HIGHLY intolerant of fire. From this we can infer that the area had a history of frequent burning.

Everyone in the Bluegrass knows about the Old Trees. In horse and cattle pastures in the Bluegrass region, you will sometimes see gigantic, twisted old oaks, with great spreading crowns. Nowadays you hardly see an oak that properly merits the term "gnarled," but the gnarl of the Old Trees is crazy. Just look up google images for Kentucky tourism and you'll see one of those huge trees in the background of several of the photos, I bet. Hardly anyone consciously thinks about it, but these are pre-colonization trees. And they are all obviously open-grown—their growth habit over the centuries has spread out, rather than grown straight up as in a forest.

Early colonizers' records report big walnut and cherry trees in the area. Most of the old houses in the area are made of walnut wood. Those are mid-successional species—you wouldn't find them dominating in an area that was heavily disturbed regularly and recently, they're trees, but you wouldn't find them in a forest that had been minimally disturbed forest for centuries either. The fact that they got huge suggests that a regular disturbance pattern of the Bluegrass region was abruptly interrupted and mostly ceased.

It was a pretty special place, a savanna environment with a mix of giant twisted oaks, rolling prairie hills and bamboo thickets, with deep sinkholes connecting the surface to subterranean cave ecosystems. In places the limestone bedrock reached the surface, creating limestone glades—unique desert-like habitats with many rare plants including Opuntia cactus.

It was also one of the first ecosystems west of the Appalachians to be destroyed by settlers.

BUT! Just a few years ago, we discovered Trifolium kentuckiense—Kentucky clover. A unique species of clover that has only been found in two spots in Central Kentucky.

This means the Bluegrass species that probably went extinct because their habitat was ignorantly logged, plowed and grazed before they were studied by European science may not be entirely gone.

We have been able to fund exhaustive inventories of potential holdouts for big flashy animals like the ivory-billed woodpecker, but so many people view the place they live as "boring" and thoroughly explored, when there could be surviving plants hanging out just about anywhere.

But...I don't think most people realize how much of the Holocene extinction has already happened. Most of the losses are plants and bugs that you never knew existed in the first place.

I feel like lots of people are anxiously waiting for the mass extinction to "start" hitting, but that's not quite right. European colonization of the globe WAS and *is* the mass extinction (combined with climate change which is very related). It's actively ongoing in the Global South. In eastern North America, the major wave of extinctions hit between 100 and 300 years ago.

I feel so much grief for all that was almost certainly lost forever, but I also recognize that I live in a unique period of time where the future can still be changed, and in particular, the heavily damaged ecosystems of the Southeast can be restored and used to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and provide resilience to the entire globe. And I strongly suspect at least a few mysterious new plants will start popping up once that happens...because a lot of plants stick around in the soil seed bank for a long, long time, and seeds can happen to be preserved by freak accident and then sprout later.

we (researchers, scientists, people who work in this field) will desperately need to consult tribal nations for this though because from my reading into it, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. The most basic things like controlled burns are still struggling to catch on and in some places just, spraying herbicides willy-nilly on invasive plants without understanding what makes them invasive.

#ecology #plants

[magnetothemagnificent]

Just got back from an incredibly moving symphony and a bunch of posh people in the bathroom during intermission were saying how much they hated it because it made them feel guilty and upset (the composition is specifically about environmentalism and anthropogenic mass extinction) and I just want to say.....

Art isn't supposed to always make you feel happy.

It's supposed to make you feel.

Good art makes you feel, whether it's joy or guilt or sadness or anger or fear. If you're not prepared for art to give you complicated feelings, you don't actually care about art, you just want to be entertained.

#art

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Quaternary includes both the Pleistocene and Holocene extinction pulses, even though the first may not be entirely anthropogenic

I’m not including the great oxygenation event because that is the least clear in terms of whether or not it actually was an extinction

#poll #palaeoblr #prehistoric life #mass extinction #history of life

[endlingmusings]

A Twitter thread by author and Assistant Director of the University Museum Of Zoology, Jack Ashby, on a recent paper discussing the identity of the last captive thylacine.

The paper itself can be found here, and its abstract reads:

"The last known captive Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died at the Beaumaris Zoo on Hobart's Queen's Domain on the evening of Monday the 7th September 1936. However, within six months of its death the date of its capture was being inaccurately reported. Over the ensuing years there has been much debate and controversy relating to its source, sex, period of display, welfare, and more recently the fate of its remains. Whilst there has been some agreement, significant confusion has been created by the disparate, fragmentary, and often contradictory sources of evidence, with five distinctly exclusive provenances proposed for this specimen. For a species whose extinction was hastened by anthropogenic interventions, we have a moral obligation to preserve as much factual detail as possible about the Thylacine. To this end, the authors have undertaken a thorough review of the hypotheses advanced by Smith (1981) & Paddle (2000); Guiler (1986) & Bailey (2001); Sleightholme et al., 2020; Linnard et al., 2020 and Paddle & Medlock (2023), and have evaluated each against a synthesis of the evidence accrued over the previous 93 years to examine whether a definitive identification and history of the last known captive Thylacine can be determined. The authors found a sufficiently strong correlation between the evidence and the position advanced by Linnard et al., (2020) to maintain that the last captive Thylacine can be identified as the juvenile male captured at Penney's Flats on the Arthur River by 19 year old Roy and 59 year old Dan Delphin on the evening of Monday 7th July 1930."

#Thylacine #Tasmanian tiger #Marsupial #EX #Text #Photos #Live specimen #Captive #Benjamin #Upload

[fatehbaz]

[T]he modern environmental history of sandalwood (a widely-accepted 16 species of fragrant trees within the genus Santalum including the species Santalum album [...]) [...] [is] a history defined by anthropogenic impact endangering the genus across its range. [...] Selling at about $147,000 per metric ton, the aromatic heartwood of Indian sandalwood (S. album) is [among] [...] the most expensive wood in the world. Globally, 90 per cent of the world’s S. album comes from India [...]. [T]he species came to the brink of extinction [...]. [I]t is not until 1974 that supply of the most valuable species of sandalwood was depleted in the major sandal-bearing region of India. [...] Part of the difference, then, lies in each region’s history of governance and relationship to the market.

Islands [in the Pacific] abruptly brought into the modern world system were quickly overexploited, whereas areas such as southern India [...], which had [...] been centres of world sandalwood trade since at least the eleventh century, managed to negotiate the pressures of the European trading companies and forest bureaucracies in the nineteenth century. [...] In contrast [...], much of the Pacific was introduced to the international market by sandalwood traders who moved from one island to the next harvesting the tree until there was no more left to harvest. India and Timor had been the sole suppliers of sandalwood to the world market until the late eighteenth century.

While there had long been a world market for S. album, at the end of the eighteenth century European, American and Australian merchants tried to take control of the sandalwood trade by selling newly discovered Pacific species of sandalwood to China. By the mid-nineteenth century these sandalwood traders had systematically stripped most of the Pacific islands of this precious tree. Time and again sandalwood species were exploited until they went locally extinct, or nearly so, often with massive ecological damage, not to mention the political and cultural toll on the islands.

In Hawaii, also known as Tahn Heung Sahn or ‘the Sandalwood Mountains’ to [some of] the Chinese, the sandalwood trade collapsed by 1828, only decades after it began.

The first shipwrecked Europeans to land on Fiji’s second largest island, Vanua Levu, also called it Sandalwood Island. The sandalwood trade collapsed there within 20 years of its discovery and inauguration.

In the Marquesas, the British and Americans decimated sandalwood in just three years, between 1814 and 1816.

A similar story can be told in the case of S. austrocaledonicum of Vanuatu.

---

All text above by: Ezra Rashkow. "Perfumed the axe that laid it low: The endangerment of sandalwood in southern India." Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 1, pages 41-70. March 2014. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#abolition #ecology

[andy-paleoart]

The great dying: Permo-Triassic extinction | A grande morte: Extinção Permo-Triássica

🇬🇧

The Permian-Triassic Extinction is the most devastating mass extinction event in Earth's history, occurring approximately 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic period. This mass extinction resulted in the loss of up to 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species.

The exact causes of the Permian-Triassic Extinction are still debated among scientists, but several theories have been proposed. One of them is intense volcanic activity, such as the massive eruption of the Siberian Traps, a large volcanic province in Russia. This activity released huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing drastic climate change and ocean acidification.

These catastrophic events caused widespread mass extinctions, affecting both marine and terrestrial organisms. The recovery of biodiversity after the Permian-Triassic Extinction took millions of years and profoundly influenced the subsequent evolution of life on Earth.

The relationship between the Permian-Triassic Extinction and current climate events can be observed through similarities in causative factors and consequences for life on Earth. Similarly, contemporary climate events are largely influenced by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This anthropogenic activity has led to global warming, changes in precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification, among other impacts. These changes are putting immense pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity, leading to species extinctions and ecosystem degradation. Both the Permian-Triassic Extinction and current climate events highlight the profound impact that changes in climate can have on life on Earth. Understanding the parallels between these events can help inform efforts to mitigate the current climate crisis and protect the planet's biodiversity and ecosystems.

🇧🇷

A Extinção Permiano-Triássica é o evento de extinção em massa mais devastador da história da Terra, ocorrido há cerca de 252 milhões de anos, no final do período Permiano e início do período Triássico. Esta extinção em massa resultou na perda de até 96% das espécies marinhas e 70% das espécies terrestres.

As causas exatas da Extinção Permiano-Triássica ainda são objeto de debate entre os cientistas, mas várias teorias foram propostas. Uma delas é a atividade vulcânica intensa, como a erupção em massa dos Trapps Siberianos, uma grande província magmática na Rússia. Essa atividade liberou enormes quantidades de gases de efeito estufa na atmosfera, causando mudanças climáticas drásticas e acidificação dos oceanos.

Esses eventos catastróficos causaram extinções em massa generalizadas, afetando tanto organismos marinhos quanto terrestres. A recuperação da biodiversidade após a Extinção Permiano-Triássica levou milhões de anos e influenciou profundamente a evolução subsequente da vida na Terra.

A relação entre a Extinção Permiano-Triássica e os eventos climáticos atuais pode ser observada através de semelhanças nos fatores causadores e nas consequências para a vida na Terra. Da mesma forma, os eventos climáticos contemporâneos são amplamente influenciados por atividades humanas, particularmente a queima de combustíveis fósseis, que libera gases de efeito estufa na atmosfera. Essa atividade antropogênica tem causado o aquecimento global, mudanças nos padrões de precipitação, aumento do nível do mar e acidificação dos oceanos, entre outros impactos. Essas mudanças estão exercendo uma pressão imensa sobre os ecossistemas e a biodiversidade, levando a extinções de espécies e degradação dos ecossistemas. Tanto a Extinção Permiano-Triássica quanto os eventos climáticos atuais destacam o profundo impacto que as mudanças climáticas podem ter na vida na Terra. Compreender os paralelos entre esses eventos pode ajudar a informar esforços para mitigar a atual crise climática e proteger a biodiversidade e os ecossistemas do planeta.

#science #paleontology #geology #universe #earth #paleobotany #biology #digital painting #space #artwork #climate #climate crisis #climate change #paleontologia brasileira #paleozóico #paleobotânica #paleomedia #paleoblr #paleoarte #paleozoic #paleontologia #paleoart #paleostream #permian #mass extinction #extinction

[craftingcreatures]

Spectember 2023

For this year’s Spectember I present to you the world of Earth, about 15 million years in the future, during the Ultracene epoch. This is a little project I’ve been working on on-and-off, and which I often use as a kind of “dumping ground” for spec concepts that don’t fit into any of my other projects. It’s a mixed bag of good, bad, and mediocre, and over the course of this month (weekends excluded; I do have a schedule, but it’s anyone’s guess if I can keep to it) I’ll be showing you some of my favourite concepts from this project.

DAY 1: Welcome to the Ultracene

15 million years in the future, the world has changed. The Anthropogenic mass extinction has brought an end to the Pleistocene Glaciation, and the world is now hot, wet, and verdant, much as it was in the ancient Paleocene. The deposition of massive amounts of greenhouse gases by humanity irreversibly altered atmospheric composition, and the subsequent high global temperatures melted ice sheets and caused sea levels to rise by nearly 100 meters. Vast tracts of South America, Eurasia, and Australia are now underwater. As a result of the increase in the ocean’s surface area and temperature, the atmosphere has much more water vapor in it, leading to higher precipitation across the globe; deserts like the Sahara are much wetter, sandy wastes replaced by rolling savannahs and grasslands.

The continents have changed, as well. Tectonic activity has led to the collision of western Africa with southern Europe, closing the strait of Gibraltar and raising up the Castillian Mountains where the western Mediterranean used to be. East Africa has broken away from the mainland to form a new island continent, Somalia. And Arabia has crashed into Iran, opening the strait of Suez into the Indian Ocean and pushing up the Zagros Mountains until they rival the Himalayas in height. In the western and southern Pacific Ocean, volcanic activity has led to the generation of new island chains and the enlargement of old ones. Australia has drifted north and collided with New Guinea. And so on and so forth.

The changing climate and colliding continents, combined with the action of humans in the modern era, have had serious effects on the biogeography of animal species. North America, for example, is now home to old-world pythons and monitor lizards. Descendants of the hippopotamus thrive in the swamps and coastlines of South America, and Elephants and Hyenas once again range across the palearctic, from Spain to Siberia. Humanity itself has succumbed to the ravages of time, having been devastated by mosquito-borne illnesses in the aftermath of the apocalypse; but the world they created lives on, forever bearing the indelible mark of the upright ape.

Over the next month, I will take you on an adventure through the wildlife of this strange new world. From Arctic Macaques to Arboreal Sharks, from the austere grasslands of Greenland to the stormy Argentine Sea, this world is at once intimately familiar and undeniably alien. Come with me, my friends, on this journey to the future. Welcome... to the Ultracene.

(Map modified from one created by Reddit user m4nu. I moved the continents around according to my basic understanding of tectonic plate movement speeds and directions, and added biomes where I thought they should go. Take it with a grain of salt - I study ecology, not geology or meteorology.)

#So I started a thing #God only knows if I shall finish it #I have a schedule but September's gonna be a busy month and I dunno if I'll be able to keep up #spec evo #speculative evolution #future biogeography #future evolution #spec bio #speculative biology #ultracene #Spectember 2023

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I remember as a kid in the 80s that these iconic large butterflies were everywhere in our garden, along with swallowtails of several species. It's been so disheartening to see an insect that was so plentiful be on the brink of extinction just a few decades later.

Individually we can only do so much about the effects of anthropogenic climate change, but here are a few things you can do to help monarch butterflies if you're in their range:

--No pesticides! These chemicals don't discriminate, and will harm all sorts of insects, not just the intended targets. In fact, the fewer yard chemicals you use, the better for your local ecosystem.

--Plant milkweed that is native to your area; even a few plants in pots count! Live Monarch (US), Monarch Watch (US), and Little Wings (Canada) all have free native milkweed seeds on a limited basis--and they appreciate donations of funds to help pay for more, too. Be aware that a lot of the milkweed on the general market consists of non-native tropical species that host parasites and also bloom late enough that they may cause monarchs to stop migrating south to overwintering grounds.

--Put out a watering station consisting of a shallow dish with a layer of rocks on the bottom and just enough water to not quite cover them so the butterflies can land and safely drink water without falling in.

--Support organizations like the ones mentioned above, and the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, which all help to protect monarch butterflies and other invertebrates.

#monarch butterflies #Danaus plexippus #butterflies #insects #invertebrates #invertblr #arthropods #endangered species #North America #extinction #environment #environmentalism #conservation #ecology

[covenawhite66]

On level 3 – the key find was 35 crania of large herbivores, all from species with antlers or horns. Most were from aurochs and bison; five were deer; and two were narrow-nosed rhinoceroses (a now-extinct species that liked the same terrain as said vole before going extinct about 40,000 years ago

The archaeologists didn’t find the animals’ jaws and teeth in the cave. However, over a third of the crania they did find still had their antlers or horns, as well as the eye and nose bones. They were missing their cheekbones, though

Scientists speculate why with no consensus on the reason.

This work examines the possible behaviour of Neanderthal groups at the Cueva Des-Cubierta (central Spain) via the analysis of the latter’s archaeological assemblage. Alongside evidence of Mousterian lithic industry.

Level 3 of the cave infill was found to contain an assemblage of mammalian bone remains dominated by the crania of large ungulates, some associated with small hearths. The scarcity of post-cranial elements, teeth, mandibles and maxillae, along with evidence of anthropogenic modification of the crania (cut and percussion marks), indicates that the carcasses of the corresponding animals were initially processed outside the cave, and the crania were later brought inside.

This behaviour seems to have no subsistence-related purpose but to be more symbolic in its intent.

#neanderthal #prehistoric #archeology #archeologicalsite #discovery #symbolic behavior #unknown purpose #spain #cave #skeleton #animal bones #human evolution #Mousterian #stone tools

[thehappybroadcast]

Drop a 🐳 in the comments to celebrate this historical event for fin whale and our environment!

Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus quoyi) of the Southern Hemisphere were brought to near extinction by twentieth century industrial whaling. For decades, they had all but disappeared from previously highly frequented feeding grounds in Antarctic waters. 'I'd never seen so many whales in one place before and was absolutely fascinated watching these massive groups feed,' said Professor Bettina Meyer, a biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute and co-author of the study. This came as something of a surprise to the researchers, who had previously only observed fin whales feeding in a group of maximum 13 individuals. While now a group of 150 whales was spotted feeding together near Elephant Island. Recovery of a large whale population has the potential to augment primary productivity at their feeding grounds through the effects of nutrient recycling, known as 'the whale pump'.

The recovery of fin whales in that area could thus restore ecosystem functions crucial for atmospheric carbon regulation in the world's most important ocean region for the uptake of anthropogenic CO2. Source: Nature.com (link in bio) #whale #conservation #nature https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgb8vIoLBn5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#whale #conservation #nature

[hapalopus]

I'm actually not that into the idea of cloning extinct animals. I believe extinction is one of the greatest tragedies possible, and that anthropogenic extinction is one of the worst things humanity has done. But I also fear that cloning will completely decimate the field of conservation. Humanity should live with the guilt of the thylacine, the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the quagga. Because if we can just undo those mistakes, what's the purpose of habitat conservation? You and I know what the purpose is, but do the people in power? If politicians don't have to worry about permanent extinction, what's to stop them from driving more flora, fauna, fungi, and habitat to the brink? Humanity is not ready for cloning. Humanity is not ready for an 'undo'-button.

[bonmonjour]

Denialism from Top to Bottom

[ This is another essay I wrote for college, back in Summer 2023. ]

It is quickly becoming evident that mass anthropogenic climate change is the single greatest environmental problem of our time and has been for decades now. It is surprising, then, that so many continue to promote denial of the reality of climate change. As climate change has become more prominent, the topic of denialism has also become more prominent in scholarship. The body of work is large, spanning many decades and drawing from many fields. Some authors have focused on the ties between climate change denialism and certain groups or institutions, e.g., Congress, journalists, and pseudoscientists (Hansson; Harrison; Zehr). Many papers have also discussed a variety of mental processes that explain the behavior of climate change denial, including motivated reasoning, authoritarianism, emotional regulation, self-efficacy (Jylhä et al.), anti-reflexivity (McCright et al.), or social denial (Norgaard). Interestingly, many authors have noted that having right-wing politics, comorbid with a belief in free-market capitalism, is a predictor for a given individual subscribing to climate change denialism (Björnberg et al.; Hansson; Jylhä et al.; McCright et al.)

One phenomenon that has not received much attention is the source attribution effect. Furthermore, relatively few psychological studies have taken the social aspect into account. With this paper, I will examine the influence of the actions of industry and powerful individuals on climate change denialism, mostly in the United States. First, I will look at how think tanks, a prominent source of denialist rhetoric, promulgate denialism. I will then look at some connections between industry and politicians, another source. This will be followed by a psychological explanation for the right-wing public’s higher support of denial that draws on Hanel et al.’s description of the phenomenon of source attribution. Climate change denial is “well-moneyed and politically well connected” (Hansson 39). Industry and wealthy individuals ostensibly have considerable monetary and political power, and so it is important to examine the ways in which they affect our environment and society.

To start, one individual who is often brought up in the discussion of climate change denial is Charles Koch. Koch is an owner of Koch Industries, a multinational conglomerate involved in, among others, the petroleum and energy industries (“Charles Koch”). Of the three conservative think tanks Björnberg et al. mention, “the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Heartland Institute” (236), Koch has been involved in two. In 1977, he co-founded the Cato Institute, a think tank dedicated to disseminating the ideas of small government and free market through many channels, such as through news media, reports, and even podcasts (“About”). In 2006, they released a report that cast doubt on many predictions of climate change models, e.g., predictions about ice caps, freak weather events, or extinction rates. In doing so, they cast doubt on the computer models themselves as, apparently, they did not reflect reality (Michaels). This is similar to the phenomenon that Zehr describes of managing uncertainty. Instead of outright saying that nothing is happening, they point to flawed models as the reason for why there is uncertainty (94). In recent years, the Cato Institute has laid off the more extreme forms of denialism, but the same cannot be said about its spinoff, the Heartland Institute.

Founded by a former director of the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute describes itself as “the pipeline between the freedom movement . . . and the nation’s 8,400 national and state elected officials” (“About Us”). Even a cursory search for ‘climate change’ on their website reveals over 200 pages of articles, as well as two recurring segments called “Climate Change Roundtable” and “Climate Change Weekly” that are dedicated to promoting climate change denialism (“Browse Heartland”). One recent article entitled “[Fill in the Blank Climate Crisis] Season is Here” furthers uncertainty around climate change by expanding the problem (Burnett). That is, by bringing up new topics such as allergy season or maple syrup production, they promote the idea that scientists are not certain, and the science is not settled as it is always coming up with something new (Zehr 93). It is evident that rhetoric advanced by conservative think tanks is a key way that industry and powerful individuals can promote their interests, both to policymakers and to the public, by spreading climate change denialism.

Think tanks and policy centers are far from the only way that industry can influence legislators. Often, more direct methods are used. Although the diffusion of authority in the United States’ institutions can be an obstacle to climate change policy, it can also facilitate it. When favorable policy does manage to pass, the system can work to prevent backsliding (Harrison 77). Therefore, the gridlocked legislative system alone cannot explain why climate denialist policy is far more common than the alternative. Instead, connections between industry and policymakers must be taken into account. Although not her focus, Harrison gives examples of industries pressuring the legislature into acting a certain way. After the United States accepted its target during the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, a full 31% reduction in emissions, a group consisting of industry, businesses, and trade associations, led in part by the American Petroleum Institute, strongly voiced their opposition to Kyoto (68). Lamont Hempel, documentary filmmaker and chair of Redland College’s Sustainability Council (who has since passed), reported that “Congress bow[ed] to pressure from the fossil fuel lobby and energy-intensive industries” (qtd. in Harrison 78).

The lobbying efforts were not constrained to one party, however. Although the majority of funding from fossil fuel companies went to the Republican party, the Democrats were also lobbied by their local industries— “oil in Louisiana, coal in West Virginia, and automobiles in Michigan” (Harrison 79). Looking at statistical data gathered over the past 30 years, the Democratic party has received approximately 20% of all oil and gas contributions, while Republicans have received approximately the other 80% (“Oil and Gas”). It is clear, then, that the disparity between the types of bills passed is due, in part, to industry pressure. While not the attitude of climate change denialism per se, legislation that treats climate change as a non-issue still denies the reality of climate change and favors the corporations and associations that benefit from the continued use of fossil fuels.

On top of lobbying, policymakers themselves can have personal ties to industry. Harrison notes that “Bush was a former Texas oilman and his vice president was formerly the CEO of the world’s largest oil field” (76). Along with the party leadership, many other Republicans during the Bush administration also had connections to the petroleum industry: people such as White House editor Philip Cooney, former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute who left to go work with ExxonMobil, and James Inhofe, the man who peddled the conspiracy theory that climate change was invented by weather channels (86) and has connections to both Charles Koch and the Heritage Foundation (“James Inhofe”). When the economy of a region, or the profit of a corporation, is heavily dependent on processes that exacerbate climate change, the full acknowledgement of climate change can be a threat to profits. Hence, those corporations or individuals can use their considerable resources to implement policy that is beneficial to them. This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the United States; Norgaard mentions how central natural gas is to the Norwegian economy (349) and how Norwegian policy has favored that industry (365).

Having discussed how wealthy individuals and industries reliant on fossil fuels spread their message through policy centers and politicians, I will now look at a way this affects the public through a psychological lens. The source attribution effect, put simply, is when one is more affected by the source of some information rather than the content. In a series of four experiments, Hanel et al. presented two groups that stereotypically have opposing worldviews with either correctly or incorrectly attributed aphorisms. That is, Christians and atheists were presented with either a Bible verse or a quote from a Greek philosopher, while Democrats and Republicans were given quotes from each party’s presidential candidates (53). What they found was that “the actual origin of the aphorisms did not matter” (56). Christians tended to agree with a statement when it was attributed as a Bible verse, while atheists were more likely to disagree, in spite of the actual source of the quote. More relevantly, this same effect was also observed in the experiment consisting of Democrats and Republicans. A given individual tended to agree with a quote attributed to a member of the party they identified with, even if the quote actually came from the other party (58). This pattern is also not exclusive to the United States. Hanel et al. replicated the experiment in the United Kingdom, with quotes from Conservative and Labour MPs, and found similar results (60).

The source of claims and attitudes about climate change denial are, therefore, crucial to explaining why a certain demographic might lean one way or the other. As discussed previously, a large part of climate denialist rhetoric stems from these conservative Anglophone think tanks and policy centers that often have considerable right-wing funding. Conservative news presenters, podcast hosts, journalists, and politicians appeal to other conservatives because of the source attribution effect. When Bush cited “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” (Harrison 85), right-wing members of the public—largely Bush voters themselves—were more likely to agree with the claim the science is incomplete. When Republican senator James Inhofe put forward the idea that climate change was a conspiracy made up by weather channels (86), average Republicans were more likely to agree simply because the source was also a Republican.

Although many studies have focused on psychological factors, relatively few have taken the social aspect into context. The source of typically climate denialist claims and attitudes are equally as important as individual predilections. A large part of denialist rhetoric ultimately comes from industries that rely on climate change exacerbating processes, such as the American Petroleum Institute or the Norwegian natural gas industry, or wealthy individuals, like Koch, who have financially benefited from fossil fuels. This rhetoric, one that serves to keep regulation and intervention out of these ventures, is spread by well-funded think tanks and policy centers to both politicians as well as members of the public. The politicians are thus compelled to enact policy that benefits the industry. In addition, politicians that have ties to industry, especially conservative ones, also spread the same rhetoric to their party base. Those in the base, right-wing members of the public who support right-wing politicians, are in turn more likely to believe such rhetoric simply because it is coming from a source in the in-group. This article could not consider every aspect of the transmission from corporation to the public. The roles of other actors, such as activists and scientists, also need to be examined. The state of conservative think tanks in other Anglophone countries could also be explored. In addition, energy-intensive industries and wealthy individuals are just one aspect of the capitalist system. As such, studies focusing on other aspects, such as the propaganda model of media or false consciousness, and their relation to climate change denialism might also be beneficial. With climate change arguably being the most important environmental issue of today, affecting the entire planet, it is important to understand its denial from a multitude of angles. In addition to psychological or sociological effects, looking at broader systems and power dynamics is critical. As capitalism is the social, political, and economic status quo currently, it is necessary to examine all the ways in which it affects our environment and our society.

References

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“About Us.” The Heartland Institute, 2023, www.heartland.org/about-us. Accessed on 22 June 2023.

Björnberg, Karin Edvardsson, et al. “Climate and Environmental Science Denial: A Review of the Scientific Literature Published in 1990-2015.” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 167, 20 November 2017, pp. 229-41, doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.08.066. 

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