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25 Myths That Are Destroying the Environment explores the many myths circulating in ecological and political discussions. These myths often drive policy, and Botkin is here to set the record straight. What may seem like an environmentally conscious action may very well be bringing about the unnatural destruction of habitats and ecosystems.
- Sales Rank: #399117 in eBooks
- Published on: 2016-10-15
- Released on: 2016-10-15
- Format: Kindle eBook
From the Back Cover
For decades, environmental scientist and conservationist Daniel Botkin has studied the world around us. He has traveled the globe observing nature and the human impact on the environment, and now he has collected his keen observations into this accessible and informative book.
25 Myths That Are Destroying the Environment explores the many myths circulating in both ecological and political discussions. These myths often drive policy and opinion, and Botkin is here to set the record straight. What may seem like an environmentally conscious action on one hand may very well be bringing about the unnatural destruction of habitats and ecosystems.
Topics include:
- Is life really that fragile?
- Is consensus science?
- Are recent weather patterns truly proof of long term weather change?
-Are wildfires really all that bad?
-Are predators absolutely necessary to control populations of other species?
In a world awash in misleading or false information about the environment, Daniel Botkin has written a straightforward and concise examination of the biggest myths hurting conservation efforts today.
Written in a clear manner that dissects each myth one by one, 25 Myths That Are Destroying the Environment offers readers an informative guide to navigating discussions on environmental issues.
If our society is to sustain the environment around us for future generations, solving environmental problems by understanding how nature works is not just helpful, it's necessary.
About the Author
Daniel B. Botkin is an ecologist who has been conducting and writing about ecological research for 45 years. After hearing so many false or flawed statements passed off as fact, he decided to write this book in order to help readers achieve a more complete understanding of their environment.
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Well written and entertaining but there are a few errors
By J. A May
This is a short version of a full book review on my website andymaypetrophysicist.com
I debated a while on 3 or 4 stars, but ultimately settled on 3. The book is very well written and Dr. Botkin’s anecdotes in each chapter are fun to read and educational, but it suffers from a lack of technical detail and several serious mistakes. In the end, the lack of solid scientific evidence and the mistakes knocked my rating down. That said, I am a scientist with 42 years of experience and the book is written for a lay reader. The good writing and the entertaining anecdotes may outweigh the lack of technical detail for many readers. The book is mostly accurate, the only errors I noticed while reading it are discussed in my review and summarized below. So, with those exceptions I do recommend the book.
All of us are for clean air and water, but as Peter Schwartz once wrote, the modern environmental movement is “anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human.” The radical environmentalists of today latch onto mythical assertions that have no basis in fact; but support the idea that man is bad, man is “destroying” the planet and the natural “balance” of nature. Dr. Botkin, an ecologist and biologist of some note, addresses these assertions. He has held positions at Yale, the University of California at Santa Barbara, George Mason University and Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory.
I agree with most of the points in the book, but it doesn’t help that in the forward to the book, by Alfred Runte, we see the following unsubstantiated and clearly false statement:
“Say everyone believed the Earth to be cooling instead of warming. Would we still not want to curtail the use of fossil fuels? Of course, we would, because they are pollutants.”
This assertion not only contradicts the whole point of the book, which is we need to be skeptical of environmentalist’s myths and look to the facts and science, but it is clearly wrong. Fossil fuels are largely responsible for our current high standard of living, our long life spans and arguably played a significant role in eliminating slavery.
When gasoline powered cars were introduced in the late 19th century they were hailed as a clean alternative to transportation by horse and buggy and kerosene provided cheaper, cleaner and safer light at night. Some credit the introduction of cheap kerosene with helping to save whales from extinction. And the truth is the high demand and cost of whale oil (more than $2 per gallon in 1854!) for lamps had drastically reduced the number of whales in the oceans. So, with a current population of seven billion people, fed by a green revolution based on natural gas fertilizer, one must ask what would replace fossil fuels? It is a shame that a book dedicated to exposing environmentalist’s myths should spread one.
One might want to call fossil fuels pollutants, but it is clear that New York, London and every other large city in the world is cleaner today than in the early 1800’s and the reason is cheap energy from fossil fuels. The rare-earth metals used to make windmills and solar arrays, the chlorine that makes our water and fresh vegetables safe, the batteries in our phones can also be called pollutants. This doesn’t mean we curtail their use. Intelligent choices based on appropriate cost-benefit analysis are necessary. This was a federal judge’s instructions to the EPA recently when he ordered the organization to consider jobs lost when considering air pollution regulations. One shouldn’t say “curtail the use of” anything as important as energy regardless of the facts or consequences. Fortunately, most of the rest of the book is more sensible.
The first myth discussed in the book is that man is the only creature that changes the environment. In truth, all creatures change their environment and the environment of the world to some degree. That is how they survive and thrive. The largest changes are made by plants when they produce the oxygen we breath and the wood that we build with and so on.
The next myth is that life and the environment are fragile and man is precipitating the next great extinction event. The Earth has seen five major extinctions. These were all before man evolved and they were truly horrific. The worst extinction was the Permian mass extinction (250 million years ago) when an estimated 70% to 96% of all species went extinct. Myth #3 is that extinction is unnatural, but today there are an estimated 1.5 million species on the Earth and roughly one species goes extinct every year on average. Most species that have ever existed are currently extinct due to the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth.
Myths 4 through 11 deal with the “balance of nature” idea. That is nature is in a delicate balance and man somehow screws this up. The reality is nothing in the environment is constant; everything is always changing.
Nature is not in balance and it has no need of balance. Man, especially land owners and the wealthy want nature to be in balance. They don’t want their property, buildings and houses threatened.
A corollary to the “balance” idea is that we have a perfect set of species in the world today. Each plays a unique role and if any one of these are lost the whole ecosystem fails. Dr. Botkin explains that this is utter nonsense. There are roles to be played in any ecosystem and usually more than one species can fulfill a specific role. Some say man is not a part of nature, but is a contaminant. This is not true we are a part of nature, not separate from it. We did not arrive from outer space.
Myth #12: Are people the most important factor determining the Earth’s climate? Dr. Botkin says no. The processes affecting the Earth’s climate are complex and man is only a midget among giants. His discussion of this topic is quite good.
Myth #13 is that climate change will lead to a huge number of extinctions. The truth is that even though we are in the Quaternary ice age and have been for the past 2.6 million years, there have been very few extinctions. The climate changes, both warming and cooling, observed in the Quaternary far exceed anything predicted by the climate alarmists for the future, yet only one tree went extinct in North America in that period. Myth #14 is that recent weather is proof of climate change. How this myth persists in mainstream news organizations, like the Economist, when every qualified scientist (alarmists and skeptics) says no weather event can be attributed to climate change is beyond understanding.
Myth #15, consensus is science. Dr. Botkin notes that science is a process of questioning ideas. Scientific statements can be tested and proven wrong, otherwise the statement is not scientific. If the statement survives the tests; it is acceptable and potentially valid. Consensus has nothing to do with scientific validity. One of the problems with the “consensus statement” that man is causing dangerous climate change is it cannot be tested. Thus, the statement is not scientific.
Myths #23 and #24 are the first of his myths that I disagree with. He claims that solar and wind energy do not require large amounts of land and could provide a “large” percentage of US electricity by 2050. He doesn’t say what “large” means, but we can assume 30% to 40% or more for the sake of argument. He says rooftop solar should be sufficient for most homes and that wind farms don’t need as much land as the critics claim. He doesn’t provide any evidence to back up his claims. For another, more quantitative look at the practicality of solar and wind, I would refer the interested reader to the late Cambridge engineering professor Sir David MacKay’s excellent book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.
Dr. Botkin refers only to “solar and wind capacity” in his chapter and ignores the need for fossil fuel backup at night and on windless days. We will ignore these rather obvious flaws in his argument because he is missing the larger and more important point of cost. The costs of solar and wind must include fossil fuel backup, electrical grid enhancement to handle intermittent and out of phase power sources, and installation and maintenance. Using batteries to store solar and wind power are out of the question, they are enormously expensive. Germany’s Energiewende goal was to increase their share of renewable energy to 40% by 2050. According to an MIT Technology Review they are very unlikely to make it. Yet, German electricity costs are among the highest in the world and high enough to force factories overseas, often to the US where electricity costs about one-third as much. Siemans moved their oil and gas global headquarters to Houston from Erlangen and their natural gas turbine manufacturing to Charlotte, North Carolina. This move cost Germany 4,500 jobs. Austrian electricity is not as expensive as in Germany, but still over twice as much as in the US. For this reason, Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine built a steel making plant next to Corpus Christi, Texas and shut down a similar plant in Austria due to the lower cost of natural gas in Texas. Germany subsidizes their alternative energy through electricity-bill surcharges, the alternative power financed in this way will cost 25B Euros this year, but will only buy 3.6B Euros of electricity on the open market according to the German economics ministry.
Aside from the flawed forward by Alfred Runte and the unsupported assertions about wind and solar in myths #23 and #24, the book is generally a good read. Usually, qualified scientists, like Dr. Botkin, once they dig into climate science come to the same conclusion he did. That there is no scientific support for the ideas that man is the major cause of climate change and we are headed to a man-made climate change disaster. I applaud him for speaking out on the subject. His discussion on climate change is technically light, like the rest of the book, but I noticed no inaccuracies and it was a fair treatment of the subject.
The most interesting parts of the book were those that dealt with the ecological myths. These centered around the supposed “balance of nature,” species extinctions and persistence. He is a well-known expert in these areas and it shows. These chapters are very good. So, all in all, I do recommend the book. It is most appropriate for the non-technical reader.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A VERY IMPORTANT READ FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF CONTROVERSIES IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
By kenneth purdy
This is a truly important book. Dr. Daniel Botkin makes very valuable contributions offering clarity in what has been a very murky and often enervating controversy in modern times. Written for the lay reader, the book clears up a great deal of the distortion and deception that has had very bad effect on scientific integrity in the broad field of environmental science. Botkin, an eminent educator/researche/rauthor in the science of the earth is a courageous voice responding to the cacophony of distortion and outright fraud perpetrated by so many in this field. If you have wondered what has caused such an uproar of disagreement about the global warming controversy and so many other common beliefs about what has been going on in the environment, this is the book for you. Botkin offers compelling fresh insights about a long list of commonly held beliefs, showing them to be myths. A quick look at the list of chapters addressing the 25 myths makes it irresistible.
The language is lucid and the photos/ illustrations are fascinating, making it very reader friendly. I am a lay reader myself. I have read widely seeking to understand what has been going on in the contentious volume of writing/reporting about these matters. My opinion is that you will find it very hard to find any better source to help you penetrate these controversies. Go for it.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
I agree with Mr May in his fine book-review. But in my opinion the book for ...
By Tony Meyer
I agree with Mr May in his fine book-review. But in my opinion the book for sure deserves five stars. There are some minor errors, yes; but we need all the help we can get in fighting the phony environmentalists who are anti G-d, anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-mankind, and anti-progress. Mr Botkin shows courage to author such a study when he is a prominent ecologist. It wouldn't surprise me if Mr Botkin is receiving flack from his colleagues. The illustrations/ photos are excellent. The explanations are lucid and i highly recommend Mr Botkin's superb work.
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