The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 14, 2024


Invasive Species Cause Mass Extinctions as Do Open Borders (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_636)


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

135.48523

Word count

1,283

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Invasive species are either the culprits or the accomplice in the extinction of some 300 species across the planet, according to new research. This was a surprise to the researchers who had assumed habitat destruction would be the main cause for species extinctions in the past five centuries.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.300 Hi everybody, this is Scott Saad. This is, I believe, the first Saad Truth clip since the New Year.
00:00:08.760 Hope that your New Year is off to a great start. I just returned with the family from Florida.
00:00:16.460 I went there, I had a few professional meetings, also tried to relax a bit, but the weather was uncooperative.
00:00:24.680 In any case, I'm currently reading this book. If you can see it, it's Naturalist by E.O. Wilson.
00:00:33.780 It's his autobiography. Great book. I highly recommend it.
00:00:36.820 And in the book, he recounts all of the expeditions that he's had, certainly early in his career,
00:00:44.000 when he went to New Caledonia and Australia and what is now Vanuatu and other South Pacific islands.
00:00:54.000 And that triggered a thought in my head, which I tweeted earlier today, which, of course, led one noble person of perpetual peace
00:01:05.900 to then tag my university trying to get me fired.
00:01:10.680 And then when I put the heat up on this guy, he deleted his account.
00:01:15.020 And basically what I was arguing is that in the same way that many species go extinct or are severely threatened
00:01:26.520 when an invasive species comes in, it could be in the flora or fauna kingdoms,
00:01:31.520 the same logic applies when it comes to if there's an open border immigration policy where millions of people come in
00:01:43.320 who don't share the values of the host nations, with enough time, there will be the exact same type of extinction of the host culture.
00:01:53.260 But just to put in context, I wanted to read for you here.
00:01:58.860 This is an article written in the Wildlife Society a few years ago, March 18, 2019.
00:02:06.740 Invasives are the primary cause of global extinctions in the past five centuries.
00:02:12.720 So I'm just reading for you now. I'll put the link to the article in the description section.
00:02:18.840 Invasive species are either the culprits or the accomplice in the extinction of some 300 species across the planet,
00:02:26.680 according to new research.
00:02:27.900 It tells us that we have quite a challenge, said Tim Blackburn, an invasion biology professor at University College London
00:02:34.420 and the lead author of a study published recently in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
00:02:39.720 It shows us that alien species are a major cause of extinction.
00:02:44.080 Blackburn and his co-authors examined the International Union for the Conservation of Nations
00:02:48.840 Red List for species that have gone extinct since 1500, including the Passenger Pigeon,
00:02:58.120 I won't read the scientific names, the Tasmanian Tiger, the Dodo, and the Great Auk.
00:03:03.620 They also looked at the reasons the IUCN listed for this species' demise.
00:03:09.100 The team discovered that since the 1500s, 953 listed species had gone extinct.
00:03:15.380 Around 300 of those disappeared, at least in part due to pressure from alien species,
00:03:21.100 including 261 animal species and 39 plant species.
00:03:26.360 This was the primary driver for extinction among these species.
00:03:30.420 A surprise to the researchers who had assumed habitat destruction would be the main cause for species extinctions in the world.
00:03:38.160 Furthermore, 42% of the 300 species that disappeared was due solely to pressures from alien species.
00:03:47.240 Alien species are more than 12 times as likely to be listed as the cause of extinction than native species, Blackburn said.
00:03:55.800 According to their analysis, island species were particularly vulnerable to invasives,
00:04:00.360 and Hawaii alien species like cats had a hand in causing extinction in an entire genus of o-birds,
00:04:08.820 I don't know how to pronounce that name, including the Hawaiian o and the Ka'ua o,
00:04:16.320 while brown tree snakes have caused the extirpation of a number of the native birds on Guam,
00:04:21.940 as well as the extinction of the Guam, flycatcher.
00:04:25.780 With perhaps 400 to 500 new alien species populations turning up around the world every year,
00:04:32.580 Blackburn said the problem may become even worse in the future.
00:04:35.880 In an effort to deal with this issue, he called for heightened biosecurity measures
00:04:40.300 to protect native ecosystems from stop-away species on container ships, airplanes, and other means.
00:04:47.440 In a lot of cases, we don't know what the impacts of those species are going to be, he said.
00:04:52.920 So now, I discovered this article after having posted my epiphany, my insight earlier today,
00:05:01.160 drawing an analogy between invasive species in the animal and plant kingdoms,
00:05:08.240 the flora and fauna kingdoms, with the extinction of cultures and societies,
00:05:13.440 either through war, one culture, you know, comes in by force and takes over and other eradicating
00:05:21.680 all of the cultural fossils of the conquered culture,
00:05:27.340 or in the case of the current reality where the West is involved in an orgiastic faux empathy
00:05:35.320 of open border policy where you let in people that don't share any of your foundational values
00:05:42.380 with enough time, it's only demography, demography is truly destiny,
00:05:49.020 you will end up having an extinction of the host societies.
00:05:52.340 There are endless such examples in history, but perhaps no cases where a host society
00:06:00.560 was the willing and proud participant in its self-destruction.
00:06:07.320 I am a product of immigration, so I don't need people to lecture me about the virtues of a rational
00:06:17.240 and sane immigration policy.
00:06:19.960 People do face hardships, usually because of their religion or their race or their sexual orientation,
00:06:28.120 where they might be killed and executed, their entire families erased because they're not born into the right religion. 0.91
00:06:41.820 And therefore, we might decide as an empathetic society to say,
00:06:47.980 hey, there'll be some minimal number of people that we will allow into our countries 0.99
00:06:52.680 because, you know, we are an empathetic people.
00:06:57.220 Other people were born with a poorer lot than ours,
00:07:02.100 and so let's open our societies to them.
00:07:06.080 And that has, of course, worked well, as long as it was measured, it was rational,
00:07:12.960 it did not violate reason and logic.
00:07:20.120 So, for example, the concept of cultural relativism where you shouldn't judge the cultural and religious beliefs of others
00:07:27.240 because that would be cultural imperialism is an idea pathogen that I discuss in the parasitic mind
00:07:32.580 because that's insane, right? 0.85
00:07:34.680 If you let in people from societies that have 95% to 99% endemic Jew hatred
00:07:40.860 as measured by non-partisan survey companies,
00:07:45.880 and then you let them in the thousands, if not millions,
00:07:50.160 how is it surprising that the whole society will have an exponential and astronomical growth in Jew hatred?
00:07:58.740 The same applies for any other mechanism, right? 0.95
00:08:02.320 If I let in people who, for whatever reason in their societies, they abhor gay people,
00:08:10.000 well, then if you let in millions of such people that come with the cultural and religious baggage 0.99
00:08:15.040 of holding those nefarious, bigoted views,
00:08:18.240 then it's not surprising that there'd be greater homophobia in the whole society.
00:08:22.440 I've explained before, when you start any given day,
00:08:26.640 only one of three things can happen to your weight.
00:08:29.060 Your weight can go up, it can stay the same,
00:08:32.160 or it can go down as a result of decisions that you make that day.
00:08:35.460 There is no other possible option that can happen.
00:08:39.580 Same thing applies to immigration.
00:08:42.160 When you let in people in the millions who come from particular societies
00:08:47.020 that are defined by certain values that are perfectly antithetical to those of the host nation,
00:08:55.280 will that result in a safer society, a freer society, a more enlightened society, or the opposite?
00:09:03.320 It's not rocket science.
00:09:04.640 I still hold out hope that the West will wake up at some point,
00:09:10.660 but believe me, it doesn't take much for you to blink your eyes
00:09:15.840 and then to wake up and say,
00:09:17.920 hey, whatever happened to our free and enlightened societies?
00:09:22.640 Happy New Year, everybody.
00:09:24.440 Don't forget, your voice matters.
00:09:26.860 Get engaged.
00:09:27.660 Cheers, everybody.