Are Mermaids an Endangered Species?

A friend is worried about the plight of the polar bear. Apparently, with global warming, they are suddenly endangered, at least according to the IUCN and the NRDC. The claim is that, with less ice in the Arctic, they will lose the diving platforms from which they hunt for their prey.

And the “US Commission on Ocean Policy” has come out strongly to “significantly increase federal spending on ocean science and education.”

I can’t get excited.

The IUCN is essentially a consortium of people who have a vested interest in convincing the public that at least some species are endangered. If they are not, IUCN ceases to have any reason to exist or to be funded. The same is true for the self-appointed “Natural Resources Defense Council.” As for the “US Commission on Ocean Policy,” could anyone really expect a commission so named ever to come out with the opposite finding: that the government should give them less money in future? That there is no need for such a commission and the government has wasted money by funding it? Does that sound vaguely consistent with human nature?

Rare individuals can sometimes be honest. Committees never are.

This is the basic flaw in too many, and quite possibly all, of the sources calling for more money to be put into the preservation of various species, and all ecological research. The calls come from people who stand to gain money and power if we buy the claim.

Of course, this is a bit of an ad hominem argument on my part. The fact that they have an obvious vested interest means that what they say should never be taken at face value; their claims and their methodology must be carefully examined. Nevertheless, their studies might be correct.

The IUCN comments on the polar bear, topping off their list of endangered species worldwide, suggest otherwise, though. They are purely speculative—polar bears _might_ run into a problem in future due to global warming, if there is global warming. They make no reference to the recent studies (e.g., see http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=143012005) that suggest the polar bear population is rising rapidly; if only to explain why they discount them. This suggests intent to deceive.

And it bodes ill for the rest of their list—if the polar bear is their best shot, they don’t have much of a case.

Remembering this bias, it is well to realize how limited our knowledge of what goes on in the biosphere really is; we are not much better at understanding or predicting its complex interrelationships than at predicting the weather, or predicting climate change. All are systems so far known to be too complex for reliable computer modeling. Because this is the case, studies can be made to appear to show almost anything.

Here’s an example: are the number of species known to exist in the world growing or declining? Answer: they are growing. We are still discovering new species all the time, while documented extinctions are rare.

Of course, being Darwinians, we believe these “new” species have always been there; we’ve just never noticed them before, in all of human history.

Still, our practical experience is of a growing, not a shrinking, species list.

But consider this as well: if we are so bad at spotting species that have always been there, how sure can we ever be that a given species is “extinct”? Indeed, many species, once thought to be extinct, have then been spotted again in the wild.

And how about this? Every time a new species is spotted, it goes immediately onto the “endangered species list.” Necessarily—it must be rare, or someone, out of six billion and over five thousand years, would have seen it before.

The natural impression this produces is that many more species every day are becoming endangered. My friend’s source, IUCN, reports the figure “16,119 species of animals and plants” are “threatened with extinction” as if this is an important number. Yet much of it may simply represent new species discoveries, not really a threatened decline in biodiversity at all.

We know even less, of course, about what goes on in the oceans, than about what is happening on the land. This makes the oceans an especially rich field for those who want to fudge data—and it is therefore telling that they seem to get a lion’s share of the attention of the doomsayers.

And next to the oceans, we know least about the polar regions. Intriguing, therefore, that it is from here that warnings come about supposed rapid global warming, ice shelf collapse, and holes in the ozone layer.

Travellers’ tales have always come from such places. A few hundred years ago, the inhabitants of the North Pole had tails, or wore a bright red suit and drove reindeer. Or Saturn ruled a temperate paradise where, beyond a whirlpool, people lived forever. Just as, in the oceans, there were vast sea serpents, below which beautiful mermaids lived in their coral palaces, in a place called Atlantis.