Just now I have learned that ostriches do not, in fact, bury their heads in the sand. Turns out it’s a myth.
The original slander of ostriches is attributed to Pliny the Elder, the Roman philosopher and statesman, who wrote in the first century A.D. on topics ranging from history to zoology. Ostriches, he suggested, “imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed.”
Maybe old Pliny, as he is known in my house (to avoid confusion with his nephew, of course), was intending that as metaphor, rather than science. If so, he may better have explored human behavior. As a species, we are head-buriers from way back, and the trait is manifesting itself ever more often.
Take, for example, a study published Friday in the journal Science that points to declining crop yields that are a result of global warming. In most of Europe, large parts of Asia and some parts of Africa and South America, temperatures in the growing season have warmed by several degrees in the past 30 years. This has affected wheat and corn yields in such places as Russia, China, India and France, according to the study’s authors, scientists from Stanford and Columbia.
The only reason this hasn’t had an even bigger impact on food production, ironically, is because humans are pouring more carbon dioxide into the air. Yes, that’s a greenhouse gas that causes warming, but it also acts as a fertilizer and encourages plant growth.
Losses from this climate-induced harvest decline can account for food price increases of roughly $50 billion a year, the study says — an undeniably big number but, to be fair, not huge in the context of the size of the world economy. Although, come to think of it, $50 billion could roughly finance the U.S. combat in Iraq for the rest of this year.
I will pause here to let more than a few readers fire off messages insisting that climate change is not really happening. That’s fine. I get all sorts of mail. Last week several people wrote to warn me that the world is going to come to an end on May 21.
You can’t work in journalism, as I do, and not be impressed by the human insistence on believing what we wish, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. It’s as though we’re going all ostrich, except that ostriches, as previously noted, don’t really do what we folks do.
Haven’t you heard people suggesting that Osama bin Laden isn’t really dead? Trust me: In just a few years, folks who believe that will be doing presentations on college campuses, just like the assemblages today to hear the misfits who deny the Holocaust happened or link the collapse of the Twin Towers to a government conspiracy.
This assertion of belief over fact is a staple of our treatment of history. Sometimes it’s not terribly consequential, like our local myth about baseball.
Last week the World Series trophy won by the San Francisco Giants came to Troy. It was a great tribute to the history of baseball in the community, which hosted a major league team in the 1870s and 1880s, before the trajectories of baseball and Troy diverged.
But as my colleague Mark McGuire wrote in these pages recently, it is not true that the San Francisco Giants originated in Troy. “Historical and factual over-reaching,” John Thorn of Catskill, Major League Baseball’s official historian, told McGuire.
No offense intended to Troy, a place I cherish. And in this case there’s little harm in exaggerating the actual — that some Troy players in the 1880s went on to play for a new team in New York City, eventually called the Giants, which 70 years later moved to San Francisco.
But in other arenas, treating notions as fact is more harmful. What should we make of those who suggested, absent any evidence, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya? Even after the release of his long-form birth certificate last month, 10 percent of Americans still think he was born outside the U.S., according to a new Washington Post poll.
Consequences of making facts malleable can multiply over time. Consider scientists’ projections that recent temperature increases will accelerate in decades to come. That suggests food production will likely decline further, even as population rises. Food shortages and conflicts seem inevitable.
But maybe you’re still doing the ostrich dance on the topic of climate change. If so, I’ll be happy to forward you the email address of the guy who says the world is ending in a few days. You probably have a lot in common.