Slashdot Mirror

Magur fish or Clarias Magur first described in 1822, with habitat in Ganga and Brahmaputra river basins in northern and northeastern India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh is very commonly known to have walking capabilities. The link mentions this fish as "Commercial pond aquaculture of the catfish, Clarias batrachus (Linnaeus), commonly known as "pIa duk dan" in Thailand, "ikan lele" in Indonesia, and walking catfish in the U.S.A., first developed in Thailand in the late 1950s". This newly discovered species has climbing capabilities, so this might be just related to walking fish with more developed muscles.

What part of "sitting unwanted in freezers" and "killing whales" is part of your moronic idea of popluation study? Oh! The Bald Eagle is Endangered.... Guess What's For Dinner! Get bent you idiot.

Just an FYI: not all whale species are endangered. You can see some examples here (prepare to give your L type cones a function test):
Humpback whale, Minke whale, Southern Right whale.

As you can see, those species are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, which happens to be the same category that the sewer rat receives. There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible.

BTW, there have also been allegations that the "Least Concern" bald eagle (oh, also FYI: it's no longer endangered) have been killed by the Amish chicken farming industry.

I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of whaling "least concern" whale species. I consider that concept similar to the beef industry. Why is killing and eating cow acceptable if killing and eating non-threatened whale species is not? Of course, you will notice that the ethical consideration is orthogonal to the legality consideration.

I am vegetarian, so I am not faced with cognitive dissonance about the situation, but I don't care which animals that other people eat if it isn't actively promoting extinction of a species.

What part of "sitting unwanted in freezers" and "killing whales" is part of your moronic idea of popluation study? Oh! The Bald Eagle is Endangered.... Guess What's For Dinner! Get bent you idiot.

Just an FYI: not all whale species are endangered. You can see some examples here (prepare to give your L type cones a function test):
Humpback whale, Minke whale, Southern Right whale.

As you can see, those species are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, which happens to be the same category that the sewer rat receives. There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible.

BTW, there have also been allegations that the "Least Concern" bald eagle (oh, also FYI: it's no longer endangered) have been killed by the Amish chicken farming industry.

I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of whaling "least concern" whale species. I consider that concept similar to the beef industry. Why is killing and eating cow acceptable if killing and eating non-threatened whale species is not? Of course, you will notice that the ethical consideration is orthogonal to the legality consideration.

I am vegetarian, so I am not faced with cognitive dissonance about the situation, but I don't care which animals that other people eat if it isn't actively promoting extinction of a species.

What part of "sitting unwanted in freezers" and "killing whales" is part of your moronic idea of popluation study? Oh! The Bald Eagle is Endangered.... Guess What's For Dinner! Get bent you idiot.

Just an FYI: not all whale species are endangered. You can see some examples here (prepare to give your L type cones a function test):
Humpback whale, Minke whale, Southern Right whale.

As you can see, those species are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, which happens to be the same category that the sewer rat receives. There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible.

BTW, there have also been allegations that the "Least Concern" bald eagle (oh, also FYI: it's no longer endangered) have been killed by the Amish chicken farming industry.

I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of whaling "least concern" whale species. I consider that concept similar to the beef industry. Why is killing and eating cow acceptable if killing and eating non-threatened whale species is not? Of course, you will notice that the ethical consideration is orthogonal to the legality consideration.

I am vegetarian, so I am not faced with cognitive dissonance about the situation, but I don't care which animals that other people eat if it isn't actively promoting extinction of a species.

What part of "sitting unwanted in freezers" and "killing whales" is part of your moronic idea of popluation study? Oh! The Bald Eagle is Endangered.... Guess What's For Dinner! Get bent you idiot.

Just an FYI: not all whale species are endangered. You can see some examples here (prepare to give your L type cones a function test):
Humpback whale, Minke whale, Southern Right whale.

As you can see, those species are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, which happens to be the same category that the sewer rat receives. There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible.

BTW, there have also been allegations that the "Least Concern" bald eagle (oh, also FYI: it's no longer endangered) have been killed by the Amish chicken farming industry.

I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of whaling "least concern" whale species. I consider that concept similar to the beef industry. Why is killing and eating cow acceptable if killing and eating non-threatened whale species is not? Of course, you will notice that the ethical consideration is orthogonal to the legality consideration.

I am vegetarian, so I am not faced with cognitive dissonance about the situation, but I don't care which animals that other people eat if it isn't actively promoting extinction of a species.

The other problem is species. It wasn't that long ago that genetic research forced the reclassification of northern right whales into two distinct species (essentially slashing the population size). I don't know how much research has been done on pilot whales - not much, if it's as data-deficient as it appears to be - and it may well prove that there's only one distinct species there. On the other hand, if there are N+1 species or subspecies then there's a maximum of 1/(2^N) of the estimated numbers in the smallest-numbered group.

That the northern right whale split was such a surprise (it was only discovered around 2000, long after the discovery that dorsal fins uniquely identify cetaceans and certainly after the invention of photography) tells me that the assumptions being made aren't always being checked very carefully.

The numbers probably are sustainable, provided N=0 or 1 (ie: 1 or 2 species), not convinced the numbers are as good if N is any larger.

The ethical issues get a bit trickier. It's observed that bottlenose dolphins and orcas can manufacture tools, work with intermediate languages when pods gather, and can even operate touchscreen panels with purpose (well, orcas might well use porpoise sometimes, they're like that). That starts getting into cloudy issues, especially as you can't really do similar studies on whales very easily. What sized screen would you use for a blue whale, anyway? The Japanese argument that this makes cetaceans no smarter than a dog just doesn't hold up. Dogs don't manufacture tools and the only thing they're likely to see touchscreens as good for is as a chewtoy. However, we can't compare species directly, research is way too primitive to draw any meaningful conclusions, and even if we could, we've no framework for defining when something shouldn't be a food item for intellectual reasons, only environmental ones.

What are you on about? "People" aren't remotely in danger of extinction, but 18,351 species are on the IUCN's Red list of threatened species. Most because of habitat loss, i.e. human activity.

Instead of fretting about the long-gone mammoth, why don't we prevent the extinction of thousands of plant, fish and animal species that is occurring EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY OF EVERY YEAR due to HUMAN ACTIVITY?

Hi,

I browsed through the article. A couple of things I would like to see better backed up by scientific references.

ISSUE 1: Viking farms

Article: "There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. "

"Reference" linked from article: "Greenland in the Middle Ages: Eric the Red had named Greenland "Greenland" to encourage Danish
settlers, because in his time south-western Greenland was indeed green. It was ice-free, and was extensively cultivated until c.1425 AD, when the farms were suddenly overrun by permafrost. The Viking agricultural settlements remain under permafrost to this day - a powerful indication that the Middle Ages were warmer than the present, and that there is little cause for alarm at the current melting of Greenland glaciers because they are very likely to have melted to more than their present extent during the mediaeval warm period."

Permafrost or not, it seems that some vegetation does thrive in Greenland summer: http://www.narsaq.dk/green-00.html

A related article I found on the web: http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 776
According to this, the farms are indeed under permafrost. However, it seems the reason for failure of the farms was not frost, but sand blown over the farms. Which is naturally caused by runaway erosion, which I had understood the Vikings had caused themselves by chopping down everything resembling trees (as happened with Iceland). If there were forests before, losing them would also mean changing the local microclimates, exposing the farms to chilly winds, and thus triggering the local freezing?

So to me it is not certain that global temperature change caused the freezing or non-freezing of the farmed areas. Somebody got harder facts?

ISSUE 2: Polar bears and iceless Arctic

Article: "There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none."

Reference linked from article: "In 1421 a Chinese Imperial Navy squadron sailed right round the Arctic and found no ice anywhere. It is possible that at that time there was less of an icecap at the North Pole than there is now, particularly in summer. Yet the polar bears survived. Though there has been much discussion of the supposed threat posed by the warmer Arctic, the polar bears are thriving in the current warm period. Eleven of the thirteen principal known families are prospering as never before."

What does it mean "thriving as never before?" The Polar Bear Specialist Group has a table of the population status of 20 polar bear populations (http://pbsg.npolar.no/status-table.htm). Two populations are decreasing in numbers, and *additionally* "thinner bears, lower female reproductive rates, and reduced juvenile survival in the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population in Canada, which is at the southern edge of the species' range and the first to suffer impacts from global warming."

Most of the populations are tagged "W - evidence global warming effects on sea ice or populations"

The populations do not change in a few years time. "Polar bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival so that large scale changes in their habitat will impact the population (Derocher et al. 2004). Global climate change posses a substantial threat to the habitat of polar bears. Recent modeling of the trends for sea ice extent, thickness and timing of coverage predicts dramatic reductions in sea ice coverage over the next 50-100 years (Hassol 2004)." http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/2282 3/all

I would be extremely surprised about the adaptivity of polar bears had they survived without polar sea ice during hundreds of years during the assumed iceless period, and then within hundreds of years fully retaken