Bio Irony, Warmer Is Better Dept.
The new thing is biodiversity.
Globalists recognize the growing collapse of gloooobal waaaarming alarmism as a tool to advance One World Authoritarian government, so they have revived the U.N. Agenda 21 scare over allegedly declining biodiversity — to accomplish the same goal [here, here].
But, and here’s the irony, warmer climates have greater biodiversity. The warmer it is, the more biodiversity, and the cooler it is, the less.
Technically, biodiversity means the number of plant and animal species per unit area. In the tropics (warm climates) there are sometimes thousands of species per acre. In boreal and/or tundra regions (cold climates), there may be less than a dozen species per acre.
The definition is important. The U.N. defines “biodiversity” in a squishy fashion [here]:
Biodiversity is an all encompassing term to describe the variety of all life and natural processes on Earth.
The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources [...] this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (Article 2, CBD).
But technically, biologists measure biodiversity using indices such as Simpson’s diversity index [here], the Shannon index [here], or species richness [here].
Those indices all express some variant of number of species per unit area. And measurements of biodiversity all indicate the same general condition: Equatorial latitudes have high biodiversity, and polar latitudes have low biodiversity (Antarctica has the lowest biodiversity on the planet).
A new study from Harvard hypothesizes that seasonality impacts biodiversity [here]. The authors note that during the Eocene (54.8-33.7 mya) [here], biodiversity was at its highest point in the history of the Earth. The authors conjecture that the onset of seasons, with wide temperature swings between summer and winter, were the primary cause of subsequent biodiversity loss.
But overall temperature appears to be a more important factor. Global temperatures reached their highest post-Cretaceous levels at about the Paleocene-Eocene transition, and they have been falling ever since. At least five major extinction events occurred in the Eocene alone:
The Lutetian-Bartonian event (41 mya)
The Bartonian-Priabonian event (37 mya)
The Late Priabonian event (35 mya)
The Terminal Eocene event (33.5 mya)
The Late Rupelian event (30.5 mya)
All these extinction events were associated with reductions in global temperature, thinning CO2, declining rainfall, and falling sea levels.
Seasonality has always been a phenomenon of our planet, and is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, also known as obliquity [here]. The tilt is nothing new. The Earth has been tilted for billions of years.
However, seasonality did become more pronounced as the Eocene gave way to the Oligocene (35.4-29.3 mya) [here] and even more so during the Miocene (29.3-6.7 mya). Then the Ices Ages ensued, and seasonality grew even stronger. But it was not the difference between the seasons that was so damaging to biodiversity — it was the fact that the climate across much of the globe dropped below freezing.
When the temperature is so cold that water turns to ice, life in general perishes. Living things are liquid water-based. We die if the water in our bodies turns to solid ice.
Some plants and animals have evolved defenses against sub-freezing temperatures, such as thick fur, internal body heat regulation, and dormancy. The Order of Mammals arose during the Eocene but really expanded as the climate grew colder. Deciduousness (winter dormancy in trees) also arose in the Eocene, first in response to six-month dark periods above the Arctic Circle. Trees that expressed winter dormancy migrated south during the Oligocene and Miocene, where their resilience to freezing conditions gave them competitive advantage.
The article about the Harvard paper states:
At the time [the Eocene] the McAbee fossils were created, Earth’s climate was far less seasonal at all latitudes, allowing tropical species, such as palm trees and crocodiles, to live in what is now the high Arctic.
But as must be obvious to everyone, lack of seasonality was not the thing that allowed crocodiles to bask under palm trees in the Arctic. Warmth was. Crocodiles and palm trees today live where seasons come and go, but they do not live where it’s cold.
The article continues:
When the Arctic was warm in the past, like the rest of the planet, it had a high degree of biodiversity, like the tropics do today.
That statement is more acceptable. Note that it says nothing about seasons.
When the earth was warmer than today, such as in the Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene, there was much greater biodiversity.
If significant global warming occurs in the future (which is very doubtful), it will be good for biodiversity.
The U.N. is working at cross-purposes with itself. It wants to chill the planet but also wishes to increase biodiversity. Those are mutually exclusive goals.
The U.N. also desires One World Authoritarian government, but as must be obvious to everyone, One World Authoritarian government would not improve anything. We would still have nutzo leaders who work at cross-purposes with themselves, much to the detriment of humanity as well as to the environment.
One Worlders are not your friends. Nor are they friends of the environment. But that is restating the obvious.
