21–30 of 67 posts
If you want to read more about this kind of thing, I can highly recommend this book: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan It's incredibly well researched and written, and gave me a much better understanding of what's going with the ecosystems.
While I understand the point about zebra mussels cleaning up lake Erie, I can't agree with the idea that we should welcome all invasive species. After all, the presence of e.g. feral cats on various islands or foxes in Australia is just another one of the messes humans made, and we should feel as responsible for the damage they do as we feel responsible for pollution. Zebra mussels may be one of the few examples wher…
We had ConEd workers come to our schools in Ohio in the 80-90's to educate us about how they had to spend millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours annually power washing the mussels out of the lakewater cooling pools and pipes at the Fermi II nuclear plant between Detroit and Toledo because the mussels prefer the warmer waters. I cursed and still cursed stepping on the sharp mussel shells lining the now clean an…
Quite interesting read - about the author, from that website:
> John Michael Greer is a widely read author and blogger whose work focuses on the overlaps between ecology, spirituality, and the future of industrial society.
> He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and currently heads the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. He currently lives in East Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife Sara.
"Ancient Order of Druids in America" and "Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn" - who has heard of those before?
I looked them up and found
- http://www.druidical-gd.org/
I'm not one to dismiss something just because it is... unusual. I must admit I would not ask if this was some professor of biology at XYZ University. I have no idea what to think about an American Grand Archdruid. Does anybody have any well-founded opinions about those organizations? I like their page title "Frequently Thrown Tantrums" though -- http://www.druidical-gd.org/ftt.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that Greer is claiming that we should "welcome all invasive species" as much simply pointing out that Nature doesn't stand still. What we call an "invasive species" is, from a broader perspective, simply Nature adapting to changing circumstances, which includes opening up new habitat to previously unknown species. This only looks odd or threatening if we assume that Nature should be static and fixed, an…
Also, that evolution works by "the survival of the fittest". If an invasive species (that didn't evolve in the environment it's invading) is better-suited to the environment than the native species (who did evolve there, and by rights should be better suited to it), then that's a win for evolution. The fitter species survive, and will then evolve into the niches available. The introduction of mammals to New Zealand i…
It's not a win in either case. It's just what happened. Evolution and nature and the biosphere don't have goals.
I don't understand the title.
While I understand the point about zebra mussels cleaning up lake Erie, I can't agree with the idea that we should welcome all invasive species. After all, the presence of e.g. feral cats on various islands or foxes in Australia is just another one of the messes humans made, and we should feel as responsible for the damage they do as we feel responsible for pollution. Zebra mussels may be one of the few examples wher…
And maybe just this ecosystem. As noted elsewhere here, zebra mussels have caused tons of other problems. In less-polluted lakes, they filter the water clear, which not only reduces fish populations but can lead to massive growth of algae.
Some background: as a kid, my family boated on the SF Bay. I can remember when cormorants were rare on the bay. There were no porpoises or dolphins in the bay. It was rare for a whale to enter the bay. There were zero brown pelicans. All of those observations are entirely opposite of today's bay. Acts of government have seriously improved water ecosystems.
Now that memory is a data point of one. But we also all should know that the Cuyahoga has not caught fire in 50 years and that's not because of the work of zebra mussels -- they don't consume stuff which is volatile enough to catch fire spontaneously.
In summary, before reading the piece everyone should be aware that waterways have generally been substantially cleaned up in the last 50 years.
With that as background, I have immediate questions: What evidence is there that Erie was cleaned up by mussels and not by new environmental laws? Even if the mussels helped, were they a necessary condition to cleaning this up? Or did they simply advance the cleanup by a few years?
The piece contains good skeptical thinking, but it does not sufficiently lay evidence that Zebra Mussels were a cause of Erie's cleanup, rather than a coincidence. It's pretense at being a factual explanation of history is unearned.
> And the human reaction? That’s where things get interesting. The human reaction was all-out panic
Zebra mussels grabbed headlines in the local paper for years. Everyone went nuts. We all thought it was doomsday and believed you'd never be able to float a boat in the bay ever again.