Jurassic Park - why we have nothing to fear

The once commonplace saddled dinosaur

Global warming is blamed for everything. Too warm? global warming. Too hot? Global warming. So it was only a matter of time until some "scientists" blamed global warming for killing lizards. Here is the start of the press release:

For many lizards, global climate change is a matter of life and death. After decades of surveying Sceloporus lizard populations in Mexico, an international research team has found that rising temperatures have driven 12 percent of the country's lizard populations to extinction. An extinction model based on this discovery also forecasts a grim future for these ecologically important critters, predicting that a full 20 percent of all lizard species could be extinct by the year 2080.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513143447.htm

The first step of reading a Press Release is to check the photos. Unfortunately in this case the photo doesn't look photoshopped so we can't deny the science out of hand on this occassion.

Next read the press release carefully. Everything we need to deny can be found in the press release - don't waste time tracking down the "journal reference", that's just some notes or something. Examine every sentence of the press release very carefully for problems.

Okay the first thing we can exploit is how much this all cost. They say they spent decades surveying a lizard in Mexico. That must have cost a lot. Who paid for it? No doubt it was the taxpayer. Is there even a stationary audit? FOIA anyone? Immediately I am very much opposed to this press release.

Then there is evidence that this "international research team" is far from objective. For example they seem to know way too much about lizards for their own good. It's a vested interest. I would have been far more convinced if it was a team of international car mechanics who reached the same conclusion without knowing a thing about lizards.

Also note this is a Research Team, so yep that means team science. Social networks anyone?

The Team admit to using an extinction model. I've never heard of such nonsense. So now GIGO computers are used to predict extinctions? Computers can only say what they are told by the tape operator. I know this for a fact. So one of the Team must have fed in a line of code like:

IF LIZARD THEN KILL LIZARD

Then they ran the program in a LOOP until all the lizards were dead. Then they blame it on global warming. I should be shocked at such shenanigans, but this kind of postnormal science is sadly all too common these days in climate "science".

The press release also uses the phrase "a grim future", blatant Alarmism. Who decides whether a world with less reptiles is more grim? What's the optimum level of grimness? Perhaps less lizards would be better? In fact YES it would be better with less lizards. Notice that the Team try to convince us the lizards are friendly by calling them "critters" rather than the cold blooded bastards we all know they are. The Team use a trick to hide a little known fact about the origins of the word Dinosaur (the trick is called omission). In Greek dinosaur means Terrible Lizard.

Dinosaurs - Terrible Lizards, Terrible Dangers

So naturally we come to Jurrassic Park. One of the key lessons Jurassic Park taught us was that dinosaurs are notorious killers. They gang up, chase after cars and have even learned to open doors. Certainly we do not want them returning. A future with less dinosaurs will be far from grim.

How many dinosaurs exist today? If you exclude alligators and Reptilians then there are probably none. But remember a key lesson from Jurassic Park was that Life Will Find A Way. There are things about Intelligent Design that science doesn't yet understand and it's just possible that a pair of Sceloporus lizards in Mexico could breed and produce a proto-tyrannosaurus (or worse - one of the key lessons from Jurrassic Park is that there are as many bigger and better dinosaurs as you can make sequels of a movie. It's best not to tempt fate).

You might argue that the little ones don't matter, so lets keep the little ones for our amusement and just kill the big ones. Wrong! That's a logical phallusy called the Slippery Slope. If we tolerate the regular little lizards then we'll end up legitimizing the kinda-medium lizards and before we know it a whole herd of of fully blown T-Rex will appear from left of field. And then it will be too late. It'll be Jurassic Park I, II and III all over again, possibly combined with Mad Max if the oil runs out at the same time.

So even if carbon dioxide DID cause warming, that's a good thing as it will prevent the return of the dinosaurs. I checked and SkepticalScience.com doesn't have any response to this argument so I feel I am onto something.

My interpretation. My facts. This is the kind of stuff money can't buy unless it's funnelled through a network of think-tanks.