Editor:
In response to the letter, “ELF: stick to scientific logic” (Coast Reporter, Dec. 19), the points David Kipling makes beg these questions:
Science and logic are not the same thing. Science strives to reveal facts or knowledge through empirical research and requires that the results be tested and reproduced.
Modern science acknowledges its own evolution, and logic is by no means absolute either. It is a human cultural construct. Still, it’s easy to see what he’s trying to get at.
However, the leap from his examples of “scientific logic” to refute ELF’s claim that “clear-cut logging destroys biodiversity” is preposterous. The most obvious flaw in his argument is that the ecosystems he mentions didn’t evolve overnight. They took many decades to evolve.
Further, does Kipling compare these new ecosystems with the ones that have been obliterated in terms of their value to humanity? Not at all. Would he prefer to eat the mud-baked shrimp of the dry lakes of Utah over any fish that once thrived there? Does he not see that the 200 species of newly-evolving bacteria that plug up the jet fuel filters are a nuisance rather than a happy substitute for grassland now under tarmac?
As for his analysis of ELF’s motives for decrying clear-cut logging in the forested watersheds on our Sunshine Coast, I would ask him: What are your motives? Are you a biologist? Are you a logger, or otherwise employed in industrial forestry? Answer these questions and I will know where your arguments come from, but they still won’t hold water.
It is obvious to any thinking person that a clear-cut forest does not support the life it once did. It only fills the pockets of those few who have destroyed it.
Janet Oxley, Gibsons
