The BBC’s droning, lecturing narrative about biodiversity continues unabated. Wonderfully (to me at any rate!), a new fish-eating species of mongoose has been found in a remote area of Madagascar. For the greenie chums at the BBC, however, this is not an occasion to rejoice or to marvel at Mother Nature’s endless variety, but rather to intone yet another solemn warning that despite the island’s vast 227,000 square miles and modest population of 20m, this is a species “under threat” – and at the same time to give a platform to Conservation International, a rabidly political organisation that hinges almost everything it does on its paranoia about “climate change”.
These perceived threats to wildlife are now becoming the major battering ram in the BBC’s alarmist agenda. To put them into context – to show what a load of ignorant hot air they are – I urge you to spend a few minutes reading the latest paper by the marvellous Canadian Donna Laframboise (website here). She debunks with masterful succinctness the nonsense about biodiversity being perpetrated via the UN/IPCC, and then amplified slavishly on a daily basis by the BBC.
How very wrong is Andrew Marr. Blogs have opened up a new world to enquiring minds!
I have downloaded the Donna Laframboise link and will read it tonight.
Now where else would I have heard about that paper? Not from Mr Marr or his colleagues.
Thank you Robin.
You just know the product these people are selling is rancid crap because they have to change the subject time after time.
One week its the poor cuddly polar bear drowning and the next its biodiversity and the next its drought and then its ocean acidification, on an on ond on.
Now they find a new ‘species’ and its endagered? How do they know that FFS! For all these nuggets know the place might be crawling with them and who decides its a new species? Its just a mongoose colony that has found a new food source and is doing what all animal groups do which is exploit it. Some chimps use tools so does that make them a new species? Its obvious that these people are simply using the term ‘species’ as a funding mechanism as it sounds much better than ‘we found a mongoose that eats fish’.
Its just gotta be a new endangered species or the funding is not there and it cant be used as just another ecofascist stick to browbeat us with
Spivs on the make describes these hustlers to a tee, its just another way of pimping the same old agenda wrapped up in new coverings.
Hey I have a brilliant new discovery of a new species of cat, my cat likes to eat my left over mushy peas 😀 and it winks at me when he is hungry so it must be a new species, can I have some funding please?
Nice try Cassandra, unfortunately for you the Durrell’s vontsira is actually genetically different from its cousin the brown-tailed Mongoose hence why it is called a new species.
Best do a bit of research next time before you denounce something as ‘rancid crap’!
Chin up. 🙂
Hi Paulo, long time no see.
I am genetically different from you and you are genetically different from everyone else on the planet, does that make each and every one us a different species? Its like saying that someone with a cleft nose is another species from one with a hook nose?
Groups in islolation widen the genetic gap simply by breeding among a closed group so what does that tell you? If you and me were lost on desert island for 100yrs our descendents would exhibit slight genetic differences and flaws carried through generations so would that make our little Paulos and cassandras and their offspring another species?
Think about it, the notion of species and the definition of seperate species has become so fine and so open to abuse that my original argument still holds water.
A mongoose is a mongoose and just like dogs and cats they come in different varieties, the point is that these disoveries are used as a money making scam and they are used to further a political ideal and narrative.
Having a genetic mutation is not something special or rare at all because every animal on the planet is in a constant state of genetic mutation and flux so the $64000 question is how different is the mutation and how seperate has the ‘species’ become to be different from its ‘cousins’?
Can the two ‘species interbreed for instance? and is there any proof of interbreeding yet between these two ‘species’ of mongoose? This is where the distinctions and the subtle differences are wide open to abuse and can be used to further an agenda.
What you see is the attempt to exploit tiny natural and frankly meaningless differences between what are to all intents and purposes the same animal.
Its a mongoose so what? My moggy is different to my posh friends pedigree Burmese cat so does that make my moggy an endangered species because its ever so slightly different? A wonky ear and a stubby tail is genetic mutation in action so does that mean I have a new species ripping my new curtains to shreds?
Oh and BTW research? Thats what the interweb is for innit 😛 but thanks for the reply its always good to read your musings on here so come back more often.
Absolutely spot on. Definition of species in closely related animals is a very tricky business. Has been since Linnaeus and this has not changed despite DNA analysis and the dreaded computer models. It could very well be within the range of population variability of an existing, recognised species. The elephant has numerous populations in Africa seperated by mountain or other georaphic barriers, but they are all Loxodonta africanus var.
But a nice, chipper little mongoose (vicious teeth, though) all new and in the standard ‘threatened habitat’ makes nice reading. Note the scientists want to go back, trap a few (how disruptive is that) and spend time researching. And time is money.
Fine. No problems with that. Quite like mongeese (sic) myself since I read Rikki Tikki Tavi by the hideously white Rudyard Kipling.
But conservation charities are businesses and need fund raising and thus a style of urgency coupled with sweetness and newness produces the funding stream. vide polar bears
RGH
You make a good point about trapping.
In the case of bird migration we have tremendous knowledge as a result of trapping, ringing, and releasing. I was at a conference once and asked the speakers if any research had been done on the effect of the process on bird mortality. You could have heard a pin drop !
Just a thought but yes you are right the “rancid crap” comment was a tad harsh and I didnt mean to imply that all biologists and natural scientists are frasudsters and scammers and out for the money and fame. Far be it from me to condemn a whole group of people for the doings of a small minority of er..uhm..whats the word I am looking for? Well anyway thanks for pulling me up anyway.
Yours
Cassie(always willing to learn)King 😀 .
Thanks for the Wiki link.
I always check references in wiki but on this occasion, Paulo, the following jumped out:
The two are genetically similar, but morphologically distinct, leading scientists to recognize them as separate species.’
I should really go further into this, but that is the crux. When Wiki states ‘leading scientists to recognise’, I ask the obvious question…..the literature.
Anyway there is a morphological difference, not a genetic difference suggesting that the variation signal is too small for current procedures. So it’s a case of it looks diffrent and it swims.
In answer to Paulo above who asserted the the ‘new’ mongoose is genetically distinct from the previously known and not uncommon brown tail
Elsewhere a comment regarding the madagascan (not) browntail mongoose and the question of is it a new species. (Am I writing this)
‘Are they seriously pointing to lemur taxonomy to justify the identification of a new species?? Oh boy! What a precedent that contentious topic has set….
Yes, although somewhere in the article they do say something like “the Alaotra bamboo lemur, whatever its taxonomic status may be”. I think this description is part of a larger debate around the status of morphologically distinctive isolates of more widespread species. There are some other examples: the beach vole of Massachusetts (currently regarded as a species, but a subspecies of the meadow vole according to some), the silver rice rat of the Florida Keys (currently included in the marsh rice rat; just how distinctive it is is debated), Artibeus incomitatus (a fruit bat) of Escudo de Veraguas (described as a species in 1994, but recently synonymized with Artibeus watsoni on the basis of a genetic study). We’ll see how it turns out; this one may well eventually end up as a subspecies.’
Well, the jury is still out.
What you read ain’t nessarily so. esp if it is an ‘environmental, ecology, biodiversity story and the BBC tells it.
Just caught up with this thread. Yes, the definition of species has always been controversial ( I remember a heated debate on whether the Scottish Crossbill was a separate species when I was doing my Zoology degree many years ago ) and scientists are always likely to disagree. A bit like Global warming really !
Put them in a cage together and see if they will breed?
Hell hath no fury like a Crossbill in a cage !
What we are witnessing is the creation of a backup to Man Made Global Warming. If MMGW isshown to be incorrect and Climate Change doesn’t fly then the same people will use the critical issue of bioodiversity to restrict our freedoms, tax us and control us. Don’t confuse the agenda with the method. The agenda is control and taxation, the method will be whatever looks like working at a point in time.
Nota,
Spot on !
The public are wising up.
“Won’t get fooled again”….
Remmeber how the three tossers continually go one about how climate change is killing off species? Yet we see more and more NEW species discovered every day. Isn’t nature wonderful.
on and on and on it goes. Thank God for cauliflower noses i say(new breed maybe?)
Donna hits the nail square on the head.
Another torpedo below the waterline for the IPCC and the climate catastrophists.
I detect an unease in the warmist community. A furtive glance to ascertain where the life boats are invitingly swaying from the davits.
One day, sooner rather than later, the whole edifice is going to come tumbling down; just like those Jericho Walls. Now, that’s the kind of catastrophe I’d love to see the Beeb report.
If only the Beeb were in danger of extinction! 😎
Ian ,
It could be worse, scientists might discover a new species of Beeboid which is even more toxic.
BBC jumped the gun on September 30th with a salutary lesson from science. A nice story of an ‘earth-like planet in the goldilocks zone’. Right temperatures, possibility of extra-terrestrial life etc.and a mere 20 light years away. Too good to be true?
Well, it’s not there. At least the signal is not doing what it should.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) 276 The Astrophysics of Planetary Systems: Formation, Structure, and Dynamical Evolution has just opened in Turin.
The social networks (Andrew marr’s nasty bloggers) from the meeting , yesterday are reporting some bad news.
Gliese 581g might not be there.
”We cannot confirm it [Gliese 581g] in our HARPS data” – Francesco Pepe (Geneva team) at IAU 276 in Torino.”
HARPS statement is stronger than “we don’t see it” – they find that if they force a solution they get a negative signal appearing, implying the planet is not there, not just that they are not sensitive to it.
50% more data since 2008 published series.
The BBC bigged the whole thing up as did others.
‘This is the first exoplanet that has the potential to have a solid surface and that is in the habitable zone around its star where liquid water can exist. We all immediately thought, “could there be life?” and one SETI researcher claims to have a possible signal’
However, at yesterday’s meeting, the following:
‘Gliese 581g could still be there, it could be in the orbit reported, but this needs some more work.’
Shame for this Beeb interplanetary space chick peice:
30 September 2010 Last updated at 12:22 GMT
‘Goldilocks planet just right for life’
By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News
Astronomers have detected an Earth-like exoplanet that may have just the right kind of conditions to support life.
Gliese 581g lies some 20 light-years away in its star’s “Goldilocks zone” – a region surface temperatures would allow the presence of liquid water.
Scientists say that the newly found world could also potentially have an atmosphere.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11444022
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2010/10/gliese_581g.php
.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8060211/BBC-told-to-ensure-balance-on-climate-change.html
While a welcome commentary on the BBC’s competence and ‘selectivity when it comes to science reporting (and ignoring), I fear this may not be as significant as it first appears.
At best, I foresee a few of the more extreme ‘throw a Humvee tire on the patio heater’ denier types being invited on to rant, at the expense of more reasoned sceptics, especially those who accept the climate changes, but are less convinced that giving Dave, Ed & Chris a windmill is going to lower GHGs much.
So Richard Bacon will be free to tweet on his NYC shopping trip still, after a rant about proles not supporting 10:10.
Frankly it reads more as a means to constrain further in many ways, rather than liberate.
“Those who turn themselves green will be eaten by goats,”
German folk saying ! sums it up for me lol!