Dobsonfly eggs

 

After seeing little structures of this sort in 2017, I asked local little critter expert Val Bugh about them. She explained that “the white stuff is a secretion that a female dobsonfly uses to cover her egg masses. Makes them look like bird droppings. The leaf should be over water so the hatchling hellgrammites will drop in.” These two July 12th photographs came from a bank of Bull Creek, as did those from five years ago.

 

  

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By temperament and from decades of teaching math I value saying things that are true, and saying them accurately. When my father, who had accumulated a great store of knowledge and wisdom, sometimes exaggerated for rhetorical purposes, I used to think that an accurate statement would better make his point. For example, he was fond of saying “The majority is always wrong,” where I favor “The majority is often wrong” or “The majority isn’t always right.”

And speaking of a majority not being right, I’m most of the way through Alex Epstein’s latest book, Fossil Future. This book is in accord with three others about climate change that I’ve cited approvingly:

• False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, by Bjørn Lomborg. (You can also watch a one-hour interview with him about climate change.)
• Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why it Matters, by Steven E. Koonin. (You can also read a December 2021 discussion he had on the subject.)
• Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, by Michael Shellenberger. (You can also read an article of his about the ability of nuclear power to greatly reduce carbon emissions.)

Epstein, Lomborg, Koonin, and Shellenberger are among a small group of investigators who stand against the majoritarian claim that we’re headed for a climate apocalypse. And yet all four of the writers I’ve mentioned marshal huge amounts of evidence to make their case. Follow up on any of the links above and you’ll learn about that evidence.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

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