The same day as someone said to me (not untypically now) that there’s not much good news about in Britain, someone contacted me out of the blue to point out a numerical error – or rather outdated information – in an old post. His update was actually a reminder that if we lift up our eyes to the natural world, we always see good news of abundance, variety and beauty.
My piece, back in 2019, was about the dubious peddling of mass extinctions due to climate change, and no doubt to microplastics and whiteness too. I included a count of the number of described mammalian species, and my correspondent updated that information and suggested a plug for the organisation he belongs to, The World Animal Foundation. Plug duly plugged. The revised number represents no less than a 25% increase in scientifically described mammals since the source I found five years ago, which as I pointed out in my revision comment, massively outweighs the number of confirmed extinctions over a much longer period.
Other lessons could be drawn, such as the continuing fruitfulness of old sciences like field naturalism and taxonomy (and probably some newer ones that have discovered genomic differences in what were thought to be single species). For now, though, I just refer you to the weblink provided by my correspondent Kane, which is here. The article is nothing world-shattering, being a lay-person’s collation of publicly available data on the number of species in various taxa, estimates of total populations, with a few non-exhaustive references to fossil species thrown in. And it contains a few biological errors of minor importance. In other words, it’s a Golden Wonder Book rather than an authoritative reference source.
Yet just the bare fact that there are an estimated 8.7 million total species on earth (of which a couple of million have actually been described) is sufficient justification for the piece. Most of these, of course, will be micro-organisms (and maybe viruses if the original source included those). But if we were to take the “red in tooth and claw” view of nature seriously, we might rather have expected the stronger to eradicate the weaker, as Darwin assumed of humanoid evolutionary precursors and expected of the “inferior” human races in future. It does not seem implausible under Darwinism that the modern world would contain a few big winners slugging it out to mutual extinction on a pile of extinct corpses.
But despite the current claims that Homo sapiens is just such a monopolist species, the postulated sum of life-form types is actually eight times larger than was estimated when I was studying zoology at school. Furthermore, the expansion of ecology (the science, not the political movement) shows ever more surely that our world is a cosmos in the original Greek sense of a wonderfully functioning system in which everything has its proper place. To put it another way, the biosphere is analogous to a smoothly operating machine with 8.7 million uniquely created types of moving part. The number of individual organisms, of course, is incalculable – and that in turn would be smaller by orders of magnitude than the total number of cells (or virions) each doing its vitalistic thing.
It’s very tempting to reiterate Michael Denton’s speculative version of the ancient Principle of Plenitude, and suggest that God really has made every creature that can logically exist in our kind of world. The number must be increased to include all the taxa that flourished at earlier stages of the world’s existence and became extinct, but perhaps not by the huge factor assumed by gradualist evolution, which implies that today’s species are only 1% of those that have ever existed, a view which, in my view, the fossil record thoroughly refutes. But it’s still a big number.
Yet the bottom line implication of the linked article, illustrated as it is by just a few pictures from the cornucopia of life, is that despite the sorry chronicles of sinful mankind, of the devil, and of all his angels, our world is rightly viewed with reverent awe and wonder for its biodiversity alone (maintained by its Creator for 3 billion years without the aid of the WWF or Greenpeace). This morning’s appearance in the north-western sky, as we got up, of a bright Mars close to the stars Castor and Pollux, reminds me that our Father’s inventiveness also extends across near-infinite space and unfathomable time. And the thick branch that Storm Éowyn wrenched off one of our beech trees (providing several weeks of firewood) drives home that not everything which demonstrates God’s power and Deity is alive.
So I recommend you flick through the stats in that article, admire the pictures and marvel at the numbers, and regain more of a childlike – or perhaps divine – perspective on things.
PS – my link to the webpage does not imply endorsement of WAF – its statement of principles extends diversity, equity and inclusion even beyond humanity, which is a potential problem if an okapi gets elected to the White House.
No alligators or swamps but I’m ensuring the generator doesn’t run out of fuel whilst thinking a wee bit about the singularity – and the coddling of the mind. The degree to which we depend on the power umbilical cord is brought into sharp focus. Winter power cuts might just persuade those conscientiously concerned about DEI, ESG, anthropogenic wotsit, of the use of chainsaws perhaps even Milei ones. Meanwhile I’m trying to stop the cockapoo staring directly into the open fire embers whilst we toast bread huddled on the hearth. There’s something comforting about a simple existence despite concurrently using this device!
Ah – you’ve actually had the power-cuts we’ve only been preparing for here. I thought there was one in the night, but it was only a flash of lightning. I was seriously thinking just now about running our generator to remind it what its duties are.
As for chainsaws, mine has been doing overtime firstly on a dead holly tree which I managed to fell without killing myself before Eowin, and then on a large bough that tore off a beech tree into the adjacent bridleway during the storm. All grist to the logburner mill, while the Rayburn keeps the kitchen warm and does my porridge, and the generator will enable us to run the oil central heating if the Unreliables fail.
My ecologically minded brother, though, with his heat pump and Tesla, would be cold, dark and isolated should the grid go down. But he is setting a good example for the Chinese and the Americans.
Inevitably, living in South West Scotland, we too experienced a power cut. All credit to SP Energy Networks – they couldn’t have been more attentive, providing regular updates, and restoring our power before I contemplated starting up the generator. We don’t need power to keep warm as we have a log burner, but we do need it to keep both our oil combi-boiler and our AGA going, and to pump water to the house from the well.
Yesterday was a busy day cutting up a rather large fir tree that had fallen across our drive. Once the logs are split and dried we’ll have enough wood for a couple of years.
The storm reminded me of how dependent folk are on the ‘just in time’ deliveries to their local shops. Castle Douglas was entirely shut down, including Tesco, and we were caught out, being short of a few fresh provisions. Fortunately, a few years back we decided to become ‘preppers’ and created a store of non-perishables in the cellar; so all I had to do was raid the store. Tinned curried chicken; yummie.
Most of our disaster supplies are in rice and beans, with tins that get raided when we forget to go to Tesco or, all too frequently, they go out of date. We could survive for quite a while, albeit it with scurvy and hallucinations of prime steak…