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White Dolphin Functionally Extict
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
Makes me feel bad about the tuna sandwiches I had for dinner last night.
White Dolphin really was the other white meat. Deliciously extinct now.
I, for one, morn the loss of our potential aquatic overlords.
Let's hope the earth doesn't get destroyed tomorrow to build an intergalactic highway.
Well done, humans...
Did they say 'So long, and thanks for all the fish'?
Ignore this signature. By order.
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The requested URL (science/06/12/13/1731222.shtml) was not found.
If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
But really, the best way to bring them back is to make them profitable. So... the answer is a "swim with the white dolphins" exhibit in China. Then, if the place can sell the swim with the dolphin experience for 200 bucks, people will start breeding and stop killing white dolphins!!
Perfect!
I've read this somewhere before..... Has anyone checked the local galactic construction office over at Alpha Centuari for hyperspace bypass plans?
How did they taste?
Hindsight in 20-20 indeed. Maybe now governments will get the idea that if you want to protect a species, you actually have to protect it. Just sitting arond and holding press conferences and askind advisors endlessly will not solve a single thing. This crap needs to change, and soon.
.-.
I know they're not really equivalent, but it's still funny to see this right above "New Zealand's First Land Mammal Discovered".
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Do we need more evidence that affirmative action is reverse discrimination?
Chalk another one up for the Human race! If only I could drink the blood of our eco-enemies!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
More than 995% of all zoological diversity, in total, ever, is extinct. Why do we need to sweat it when the White Dolphin, or the Black Rhino, or the African Elephant or the Manatee or the Tiger all disappear?
Wouldn't "Near" or "Almost" be more adequate than "Functionally"? For a moment, I thought this was a story about trained dolphins no longer wanted by the military since they were "functionally" useless.
So no more White Albacore? :(
Extinctions have happened all throughout the history of the earth, it's what happens over time. Sure, our species and it's utter dominance of the foodchain has hastened the extinctions of some species and areas, but that is to be expected and there's no getting around it happening because as a species we are not going to bend over backwards and harm our own civilization to save another species. And why should we?
- Last Chance to See
, which is really an amazing book for those of you who haven't read it. The sadness of this situation will no doubt be marred by countless slashdot posts by the rabid anti-environmental right who tend to post on these sorts of stories."Okay I admit it. We ate them all up. They tasted so good, we thought eating a few couldn't hurt. But then we couldn't stop!"
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
First off... you've heard the term "white elephant" meaning something you don't want? Well...same thing with dolphins
Secondly, the quote: "they have known to exist for 20 million years" is simply untrue because people have only been around for 6,000
Yes, it is true, they probably would have survived Noah's Great Flood (tm), but we all know that 20 million years is just too long.
I mean seriously, my grandpa was 91 when he died...that's, like, one one-hundredth or something similar of 20 million years.
That's not true...We take the Lexus to the environmental rally on Sundays, Saturday is Hummer day.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Does this mean there are none in captivity either?
Adventures in Shaanxi
it sucks that they're gone, but times change and evolution is cruel mistress. they should have grown opposable thumbs 20000 years ago and stopped our ancestors from inventing the plow then maybe they would have stood a chance.
lose != loose
and thanks for all the fish!
Best Slashdot Co
with apologies to Vonnegut
They called him Fripper, Fripper ...
I'm sure a new one will darwinistically evolve any day now. Stuff like that is commonplace around here, evidently.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Those of you referencing HHGTTG are off a bit....
Douglas Adams wrote "Last Chance to See...", with naturalist Mark Carwardine, and one of the endangered species they sought out was....
The Baiji river dolphin.
And now, the last chance has passed. I miss Mr. Adams, but I'm glad he didn't have to see it.
- j
fuckin' unelected lying Chimp
He and the GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS killed the white dolphin
it probably drowned because all the ice on the Yangtzee thawed thanks to Halliburton.
All you stupid Christian idiots probably think Osama bin Laden did it.
Even though there is NO connection between 911 and white dolphins!
White dolphin tastes just like chicken....
Laborare Est Orare
1) We got another one
2) THIS is the October Surprise
3) Yet another thing George Bush couldn't protect
4) Pork, the only white meat left
5) This is a result of the trade imbalance
6) 42
This
My question is, is anyone preserving DNA samples from the existing specimens? Maybe another 20 years it will be feasible to produce clones of the species. I'm not saying try and repopulate the species into the wild, though that could be an option, but rather perhaps just for preservation in a zoo or similar habitat. Whether or not this actually happens in the future, we'd need to start thinking about gathering and preserving the DNA samples now. If we hurry, it may not even be too late to come up with 20 to 25 unique sets to match the number the article suggests is the minimum number of dolphins needed to even hope for a resurgence of the species.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
Ehem?
I assume you mean that the dolphin had been assumed to exist for that long. How could it be "known"?
Regardless, this is not good. The losing of any species replaces diversity with monotony, and perhaps gives off the impression to some malevolent humans that less is better.
Diversity is a good thing, if only that it makes us appreciate ourselves for what we are, and not what other people are not, even if it is "just" in a dolphin.
Have you read my journal today?
Any species that consumes without taking responsibility for the survival of the communities it consumes, and thereby destroys them, is suicidal. This was a main point in Derrick Jensen's book "Endgame":
Endgame
a couple quick excerpts relating to these dolphins:
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Fourteen: From birth on - and probably from conception, but I'm not sure how I'd make the case - we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes - and our bodies - to be poisoned.
Premise Nineteen: The culture's problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Thanks for all the fish,
Are you sure they didn't just leave?
I blame Darwin. That lousy bastard!
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Al gore and Michael mooore tell me this would not have happened if geroge bush had not stolen the election. One more reason to vote for a democrat in 2008.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Do you think it will help save us from the intergalactic overlords if we lay on the ground and put paper bags over heads?
Bite my shiny metal ass.
Chinese river dolphins (of both the pink and white variety) are covered in a lesser-known but extremely good book by Douglas Adams called "Last Chance to See", which covers a variety of endangered species.
I love how the publicity for the dolphins led to a media circus that resulted in them actually being considered a delicacy in the area.
Choice quotes from the book here: Douglas Adams: Last Chance to See Quotes
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
they went to new zealand
Yeah, yeah... we know the Wii is cool and all, but calling the Gamecube already extinct is a bit over-dramstic, don't you think?
8==8 Bones 8==8
n/t
I agree. In the book he gives a poiniant description of the environment of the Baiji. Due to heavy traffic the river itself contains constant mechanical noise. For a creature that uses sonar to see and move life in white noise is blindness. He compared it sleshwere eloquently to spending your life in a snowstorm able to see but seeing nothing.
As much as people may want to celebrate this, or at least gloat, about the weak dying off and this being part of the "natural cycle" I say that's just a bit sick and way too short sighted.
I'm an environmentalist for many reasons chief among them is that I'm selfish. No matter how much we may like to hide in our offices we depend, completely depend, upon the life on the earth around us. Between Dolphins dying in the Yangtse, to the sheer number of ocean species that will die as the ice retreats the web we depend on is, strand by strand, being cut. Sitting around and saying "I told you so" to each other will do no good. Either we all (all animals) survive or we don't but resorting to simple stories gets us nowhere.
Find one (nouveau New Zealand mammal), lose one (Chinese White Dolphin). It evens out, no? :: Goes and votes Republican ::
I kid, I kid.
We just found a new land mammal to make up for it, so Nature, we're square, okay?
. . . with frickin' laser beams that killed off the white dolphin>
What?
Says who exactly. Dating dirt is a theory. But why 12 Million and not 50 Billion or the six thousand the bible says.
Like the any grammar nazi here, a geography nazi would bring up this:
Can we please call the river by its true name: the Long River?
This mistake of taking the name of a small part of the river (Yangtze) and using that name for the whole river has been compounded by nearly every English-language atlas and reference book. But it's still wrong.
At least we use the proper names of the Yellow River and Pearl River in China. And some people even call the Amur River the Black Dragon River (Heilongjiang).
I can just see the "alien anthropologist" saying the same thing a few thousand years from now - "I WAS JUST A FREAKING MAMMAL."
First Zonk now ScuttleMonkey. Keep up the good work guys. Don't bother checking your submitted journal entry queue for stories.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Giveth.
Taketh away.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
There was a whole chapter about these dolphins in Douglas Adams' "Last Chance to See," back in 1992. Everyone he interviewed seemed to think that it was just a matter of time.
(It was his best and funniest book, imho, and also nonfiction.)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
The baiji has been endangered for years, and its situation just wasn't one that had any realistic hope of a happy outcome. River cetaceans are particularly fragile and a sustainable (or even short term) captive breeding program is totally out of the question, and given how economically important the river is it's not like China was going to just stop all traffic on it for the dolphin's sake. Imagine if the US found out that there was a severely endangered marine mammal that lived only in the San Francisco Bay or the Hudson River that could only be saved if all shipping traffic was cut off. There's no way anyone but extreme wingnut-level environmentalists would ever agree to that. It's sad that they were wiped out, but sometimes there's really nothing that can be practically done.
Would it kill you to show a little humanity? It's almost Christmas for Christs sake.
No more dehydrated White Dolphin Balls to keep my dick hard
I /thought/ my tuna sandwich tasted different today.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
If evolution can bring us new species, surely we can bump off some of the older species. It can be seen as a form of survival of the fittest or even natural selection. When we're not the dominant species anymore, then we can be knocked off.
yes, 99.9% of all species have gone extinct before mankind came around. but it matters when a creature goes extinct not because of meteors, or climate change, or volcanoes, or what not
but because of us
it's about responsibility and accountability. us humans are powerful enough now that we are responsible for this globe. we have have our hand on the global thermostat, we have our hands around the necks of thousands of species. and we can do pretty much whatever we want to
hear that?: we can do pretty much whatever we want to
and some of us choose to actually care about what we do to this globe
i know you don't care, but the fact that you don't care does not move those of us who do care
and our agenda and our concerns will not be blocked or pushed around by the likes of you
if you had an agenda of your own, that would be another thing. we could bargain
but you don't have an agenda. you just don't care what meltdowns or is choked on trash or is paved over with a parking lot. you simply don't care
fine. hurray for you
but don't assume that therefore your opinion matters to those of us who do care about the fate of our ecosystems
you simply don't matter. you are inert. you are a loud ignorant voice
and you are ignored
but keep up with the trolling anyways, everyone needs comic relief
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... and affected by fishing business, check out this sad and gruesome YouTube video: "Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, this powerful video shows the annual massacre of dolphins that takes place in Japan." :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I won't believe the white dolphins are dying until Netcraft confirms it.
Is that the environmental rally being held in the Olive grove?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
So we humans aren't part of nature? That is the only way I can see our impact on things being artificial.
... fuck.
Sometimes stuff dies.
/. where software monoculture is almost universally agreed is a Bad Thing(r).
y Id=6299480
Marginalizing an important issue like biodiversity is fun isn't it?
This is
It stands to reason a biologic monoculture carries with it even more dire consequences than software. Our best interests are served to ensure there are as many species as possible walking/crawling/swimming around.
Let me give you an example. Bees. The American commercial bee population is a monoculture. In California the central valley bee population has been decimated by a disease that the bee keepers can no longer control. Guess what? No tree nut harvest. How about the other plants that bees pollinate? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Now, what happens when it's cows or corn? Rice? Wheat? Please re-examine this belief carefully and mod parent down.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Saturday is Hummer day.
I wish.
Oh, you meant the car. Sorry.
... Yum Yum !
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
...be able to extract new pain releivers from their dead carcasses.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
...of my theory, "Survival of the tastiest." You don't see cows and pigs threatened with extinction.
/ mmm, bacon double cheeseburgers
404 Fish Not Found
Y'know... I just want one thing. And that is to have white dolphins with freakin laser beams attached to their heads!
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
Yet another thing the communists have killed off.
Thanks Communist China...
I have to give credit where credit is due, though. The stupidity of all the organizations - from Greenpeace to the Chinese Government - that could have made a difference but chose not to make a difference that mattered is not the mundane stupidity we see in everyday life. This is a highly trained, highly refined breed of stupidity that only the truly gifted hand-wringer could develop.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
These dolphins are not essential to the lives of humans. Not like rice, wheat, cows, corn, and not even in a less obvious way like your bee example. We should attempt to promote biodiversity, but sometimes shit happens. Species have been going extinct for as long as distinct species have existed. If this species was not an integral part of our environment, then why all the fuss about its death? We can't coexist with every other species on the planet. It is simply not possible. We have been killing off species and modifying others to our purposes for tens of thousands of years. There are plenty of threatened animal populations that are actually essential to our existence (fish populations for example). I say we focus on those instead of crying over what is essentially a sad but unimportant story.
In America only animals have human rights. I'm not so sure if people do. You and I will live to see the day where a Jury of My Peers puts a human to death for killing an animal. Oh well, I guess we can all feel noble and gratified.
We get all bent out of shape when some obscure mammal goes extinct and we can have endless newsreports about the fucking Panda bears which should be extinct given their complete lack of any desire to keep living and reproducing. Why are the animals we can anthropormorphize like it's some Pixar movie the ones we deem worthy of moving heaven and earth to preserve? Why is it that important in the end? Better we should build a better chicken to feed people.
Maybe the disease should kill off the bees. That would be evolution in action. You can have no idea of what other species may rise up to fill that gap, but since it's inconvenient to not have nuts you'd rather think that it's a "problem".
Other, better adapted species will move in and pollinate the trees as they consume the nectar that the blossoms produce. Either disease immune bees or something else (butterflies, etc, etc, etc).
The diversity exists, but is does not exist for our benefit. I'm sure the trees will get pollinated, but it won't happen when it's convenient for *us*. If it happens in 50 or 100 years, it still happens. It sucks for humans who want nuts, but that's not the way it works.
It seems that you're thinking that we're farmers and have a responsibility towards our "livestock", but that isn't the way it is. We have the intellect to take advantage of pre-existing relationships that we recognize, but we shouldn't mistake that for being in control.
It's the dolphin bits that give tuna that great taste.
Come to think of it they may have just gone by way of the coelacanth.
Don't you mods watch the Simpsons? I mean, sure, the Screamapiller episode wandered all over the place, and the ending was especially dumb, but the first part, that actually had the Screamapiller, was hilarious.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
they are the first of their kind to vanish earth... I think they sense something is wrong.. perhaps the rest of them will be gone soon as well..
You see?! This is what happens when you deny a glorious people the right to hug you with nuclear arms! We kill your fish!
I don't want Karma, I just want to be a smart ass. All in favor, mod me up.
The bubble-era vision of a Utopian ocean is dented and dirty...The white dolphin has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Evidence of the Baiji dolphin, previously thought to have been extinct, was discovered today in New Zealand. The remains appear to be those of a tiny mouse-like land mammal but scientists say that that's nothing time can't take care of.
The best I can give you is that the word "natural" is, somewhat pedantically, not quite the right word here. However, in your haste to educate the rest of us, you overlook the simple, obvious fact that it is very useful to distinguish between man and (the rest of) "nature". You also seem to be amazingly ignorant of the fact that the word nature has been used in that sense for hundreds of years at least.
My life is an open book ... up to a point.
Except that humans did live sustainably for tens and tens of thousands of years. it is only this particular civilization, western civilization, that has destroyed this equilibrium.
Jensen makes an excellent one sentence disproof of the notion that competition drives natural selection:
If you hyperexploit your surroundings you will deplete them and die; the only way to survive in the long run is to give back more than you take. Duh.
This culture - Western Civilization - has been depleting its surroundings for six thousand years, beginning in the Middle East and expanding now to deplete the entire planet. Why else do you think this culture has to continually expand?
Bleeding heart Commies. They love the white dolphins, but THEY DON'T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT AMERICAN BUSINESS.
Halliburton could go EXTINCT tomorrow because the white dolphins are destroying American family values. I don't see those Bush-haters in Heaven after the Lord returns, no way.
Never forget! The WHITE DOLPHINS attacked on 911 because they hate us and they HATE OUR FREEDOM.
My actions only have consequences for others if those others can force me to admit that my actions have consequences. Otherwise, I've got mine so you all can go get stuffed.
Yeah, I hate those guys. However,
One less species of mammal = one less potential source of rabies.
One less species of mammal = less CO2 released into the atmosphere.
One less species of mammal = less heat generated into the oceans, and less thermal expansion.
(Damn Dirty Dolphins!)
TFA calls the Baiji "functionally extinct" and "effectively extinct" is there some sort of "non-functioning extinction" or "ineffective extinction"? They're either extinct, or not extinct (with a possible "believed to be extinct" and maybe even "extinct in the wild") why must people muddy things up with unnecessary qualifiers that add nothing to the facts?
Mods on crack today?
As for this issue, let's stick to morality, since this is a moral issue.
Um, just to clarify a few things, please lay out your moral framework, as it relates to which living creatures it's OK to kill, and by what means. If it's a moral issue, that should be very simple for you to describe, since surely you're not basing that notion on any mixed premises or anything.
Are you a vegan? And if so, what steps are you taking to make sure that a particular sub-species of earthworm that lives only in a little valley where thin, pale-looking organic farmers use ox-drawn iron-age plows to greenly raise the plants from which your Thanksgiving tofurkey was molded are all cut to ribbons in the process? You could be partly responsible for wormicide.
Or, do your moral considerations vary as a function of animal cuteness or whether or not it was portrayed as good or evil in Narnia?
I hate to see anything extinct, and wish that Giant Cave Bears still existed to eat granola-crunching naturalists that talk to trees on a first name basis, but you'd better be careful about the distinction between "dumb" and "immoral." Because once you cast the damage or support done to/for a particular species in moral terms, you're into some deep water. That is, if you have any intellectual honesty whatsoever.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why is it - knowing that the dolphin probably bailed out - I'm suddenly looking up in the sky wondering if a large fleet of construction ships will soon be overheard in preparation to create an interstellar bypass?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
When the Chinese can kill off a species of Locusts like the Americans have...then they have something to be proud of.
by your same logic, if i murder you, it's a natural act
so therefore, i should not be held accountable, right?
accountability and responsibility: what do those concepts mean to you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Because it's the moral attitude that leads to these kinds of extinction.
We've proven over and over that we're not capable of making that kind of distinction. We kill indiscriminantly. If we can't choose to NOT wipe out a species like this dolphin, how are we going to choose to not wipe out some species that is key to our survival?
No Comment.
Some people assocy automatically "synthetic chemicals" to bad things. See additive for example. It does not matter to them that the structure is the same , as long as it is synthetised, and tehrefore not "natural" , it is bad. Since this is my family, after trying educating them, I choose to ignore them and their antic (microwave is not cooking food naturally and give cancer, quartz clock give cancer, magnetic stone increase longevity, homepathy is a medicine and I won't citate the worst).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm sorry Douglas. I waited too long.
Can't we just genetically engineer some new super white dolphins, and this time throw in some genes to help them attack commercial fishing traffic, and also talk.
i couldn't have said what you just said better myself, nor do i have the slightest disagreement with your sentiments
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They were around for 20 million years. Time for them to get out. Make room for the Humans.
If we want an albino dolphin we can take a grey one and paint it or mutate with gene splicing/
Many ants (as an example) will herd aphids, and care for aphids much like humans care for cows. Other species care for acacia trees, to the point where they kill off competing plants in the area to maximize the survival chances of the acacia. Admittedly, these ants are instictivly acting to ensure their own survival, but another species benefits.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Take that, you blowholin' sons of bitches! Try playing ball with Shamu now!
I say we focus on those instead of crying over what is essentially a sad but unimportant story.
Did it occur to you that bee monoculture was a problem until you read that story? Yeah, me neither. See that's the problem. If we could tell which species and ecosystems were important to protect, I'd be right behind you: "pay attention to the ones that matter, and who gives a fuck about the rest?!?!"
But the problem is, we don't know what the hell we're doing. We don't know what species are important, what environmental variables do what, and we generally don't find out until things have gotten out of hand and shit like entire species have been destroyed. You can find innumerable examples where a seemingly insignificant change in an environment caused some fairly significant and harmful cascade.
Because we don't understand exactly how ecosystems work yet, we're limited to leaving them mostly alone and keeping them the way they are, because as every programmer knows, getting excited and trying to fiddle with a system you don't understand frequently leads to a crash. And unlike on a computer, we can't just reboot the planet.
If this species was not an integral part of our environment, then why all the fuss about its death?
1. I'm not here to teach you basic biology. Shame on you if you graduated high school without a basic understanding of the food chain.
2. Humans are creating biologic monoculture.
A pandemic WILL come along and without biodiversity we're all dead.
These are historical facts that cannot be argued away.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Species go extinct all the time. It's sad, but we can't expect to preserve every single species there is out there.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
So Long, and Thanks for all the fish!
buzzkills with a diminished sense of humor, like yourself.
damaged by dogma
Someday paleontologists (or their successors) might inspect white dolphin fossils from the Yangtze bottom and think of them the way we now think of New Zealand mice.
--
make install -not war
Yummmmmm, white dolphin, argh, ugh, argh
I'm sure the trees will get pollinated
Not without bees they won't. Magic fairy pixie dust maybe? Wait, Science will fix it? You mean when biologic mega-corps patent some half-broken version of pollination they'll just make it free out of the goodness of their corporate heart?
What about all of the other plants bees polinate? Those won't be around either.
Do you think McDonalds just manufactures hamburgers out of thin air?
Where will you get the micronutrients your body needs? Not McDonalds.
What about the hundreds of thousands of other products made with nuts and other pollinated plants?
Please reconsider your opinions in this matter carefully because right now you are advocating sudden and massive starvation either through food being too expensive for most to eat (even in the U.S.) or simply unavailable.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Alongside the search for the Baiji, the scientists surveyed also the population of the endemic Yangtze Finless Porpoise, and the total was less than 400. The situation of the finless propoise is just like that of the baiji 20 years ago, sais Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Hydrobiology Wuhan. Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second Baiji, said Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Science in Wuhan
http://www.baiji.org/expeditions/1/overview.html
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
liberal bias once again - this is offtopic, why isn't it modded that way?
Could someone please explain how this is "Insightful" and not just way off topic?
believed to have existed...
How did the machines know what tuna tasted like?
-1: Preachy and Assuming.
I'd believe that if it weren't for the extremely large number of pirates operating in Chinese waters. Assuming said pirates aren't operating with the full knowledge of the Government, of course. However, this gets back to the point I was making - the Government is unlikely to have made any serious effort to stop a group that saved said Government from political embarrassment or expense, particularly if said Government could claim credit for any success, deny responsibility for any failure, and collect bribes along the way. It's not in the interests of politicians to deny themselves free publicity and free money.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Speaking of steaming piles...Natural selection is about fitness. The fittest species survive. Longevity gets you nadda, buddy. Zero. Zilch. Ask T. Rex.
They could not adapt to their surroundings. They died. That is the losing end of survival of the fittest.
Of course humans played a part. That doesn't remove the fact that this species didn't adapt...and died.
Time to stop hugging that tree long enough to pull the splinters out of your brain.
There are so many variations to the meaning of the word "natural" that it's as fruitful a subject for critical analysis as it is useful for communication. When you use the word you convey as much about the way you view the world as you convey objective information.
The question of what is "natural" about human activity has been a point of tension for hundreds of years. That includes dramatic tension too--read "King Lear" with a critical eye and watch how its many interpretations are used to create drama.
Your post arises from a broad consideration that everything that exists, exists within nature--therefore everything is natural. But that ignores the broad historical use of the word as a distinction between conscious man and unconscious animals and processes.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Let me give you an example. Bees. The American commercial bee population is a monoculture.
This is actually something I know a little about, as my girlfriend took a bee keeping class last spring and wants to keep bees next spring. Commercial bees are NOT a monoculture. There's several different strains you can buy. Some are more resistant to the mite problem. Her instructor is actually developing a strain of "hygenic" bees that clean out hives quickly from mite infestations.
Now, what happens when it's cows or corn? Rice? Wheat?
I'm not sure any of those things are a mono-culture. There may be certain hybrids of each of those that are a mono-culture and that's a potential problem. Apples are an example of a plant that're all mono-culture (Apples trees are all clones of the original tree that produces that type of apple).
Anyway, your argument is kind of silly. A minor species of dolphins dying off has nothing to do with threats to the food supply. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent species from becoming extinct due to us changing the environment.
Mono-cultures of a the food supply are in general a bad idea since it can lead to an enormous shortage if some staple crop fails. But connecting that to dolphin extinction makes no sense, and only sounds like FUD.
AccountKiller
As my Another Chance To See blog has been keeping an eye on the Baiji Dolphin and all the other animals from Last Chance To See, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the Northern White Rhino is also on the final brink of extinction with between 2 and 4 animals left in the wild - 2 left?
And if you have a spare few quid, please send them to our Save The Rhino fundraiser. Even if we can't save the Northern White Rhino, there's plenty of other subspecies that need our help.
Oh good! One less species of Dolphin to have to protect our tuna from....
Business is Business and Business must grow, Regardless of crummies in tummies you know... -Onceler
If they didn't want to go extinct they could have spent all that time developing their own space program and left.
Duh, they did!
I can't believe people are worried about some minor species of dolphin going extinct when Bill Gates is being prevented from importing unlimited H-1b programmers. Can't people keep perspective anymore? How is Microsoft supposed to be able to afford the tens of thousands of programmers if it actually has to pay them real money? Can a fresh water dolphin program C#, VB, .NET, for $15/hour? No? Then let's hear it for dolphin sushi!
Seastead this.
>The problem with fishing was not limited to overfishing - >there are plenty of fish upriver of the dam. The problem >was that the Chinese saw no point in allowing the dolphins >and the fish to be in the same stretch of river.
Plentiful "fish upriver of the dam" is a myth. Do you know how big the Three Rivers dam is and the amount of urban and industrial pollution that continues in its proximity, upstream and downstream?
>The Chinese could - very easily - have moved the dolphins upriver of the dam, getting them out of the way of boats, pollution, etc. The decision not to do so had nothing to do with capability, money, resources, fish, pollution, or any other such problem. The decision not to was based on apathy.
Nothing's free. Transport of dolphins and cetaceans is more difficult then it sounds. The dolphins first have to be tranquilized, I believe. Then the dolphin movers use a special cloth harness, straps and suspension mechanism to keep their weight evenly distributed. You sound like a racist saying it's none of the above reasons but apathy.
>The environmentalists were equally capable of moving the dolphins.
It takes money fool.
define for me the difference between
EVOLUTION (tail end of) and EXTINCTION
the thing was listed as being nearly blind, and how many millions of years old?
perhaps- the damn thing FAILED TO EVOLVE, unlike seagulls and pigeons.....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I personally and work with plenty of mainland Chinese. Not one of them thinks that China is getting worse. Indeed, the number of people living in poverty there is plumetting. Thirty years ago, one of my co-workers had to spend months each winter living essentially off of yams. Now is a professional worker in the US, and can easily take care of his mother back in China.
You can thank our DVD buying habits for that.
People have used humour to deal with tragedy for as long as humour has existed.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
to whoever tagged it "solongandthanksforallthefish"
I know that this is going to sound horribly callous, and I am personally very sad that we have to say goodbye to yet another species (and especially a species of dolphin, the puppies of the ocean), but does it really matter that the species has gone extinct? The human race nowadays spends more time adapting the environment to itself than vice versa, and all the while it is just getting bigger and consuming more resources...eventually there's going to be a collapse and humans will either disappear or at least be severely diminished. New animal species will evolve, life will go on, and the successors to humans will probably not mourn the massive wave of extinctions during the atomic age any more than we today mourn the massive wave of extinctions 65 million years (and six months) ago.
Maybe I'm just being cynical because it seems so futile to try and protect other species. We may be successful in protecting some, but it's only going to be a temporary solution unless we can stem human overpopulation, and - barring some catastrophe - I don't see that happening any time soon.
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Natural selection is not some fundamental law of physics. Its our name for something we observed in nature. The weak, sick, unfit specimens are killed by other animals, for reasons such as food. It has nothing to do with the indiscriminate killing of all specimens of an entire species under any circumstances, especially not through the destruction of their habitat. Natural selection applies to individuals, not to species.
And natural is specifically defined as not including those things which exist only due to humans. We make the word, we make its definition, and we define it as "that thing we escaped from". We are not part of nature, we have removed ourselves from nature.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
Now we'll just have to wait for those Vogon's
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Gilgongo!
(Look it up - although I admit it's not a very funny joke.)
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
If dolphins are so smart, why do they live in igloos?
No more waxing the dolphin :-(
Oh, and about the dolphins, bummer. But why are mammals more important than other non-mammalian species that have gone extinct? Because we're more closely related to them? That's rather self-centered, don't you think?
Have you read my blog lately?
He's using a rude joke as a moral bat to bash the less-moral-than-he.
And keep in mind that all the other species on earth need us (or another species like us) and our clever monkey brains to figure out how to get off this rock before the sun explodes in a couple billion years. Otherwise all life that we know of will die and the whole entire exercise will have been pointless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The Japanese dolphin hunting video is bloody pathetic. While the definition of what is edible varies between cultures, the point here is their way to hunt and kill dolphin is excessively violent and unnecessary (e.g. tie the dolphin tail to the back of a truck and drive away... for the surviving ones let them to die slowly after being stabbed with knief for a couple of times). Besides, dolphins tend to travel for a fair distance and are in the open ocean most of the time. They belong to more than a single nation. The Japanese do not farm them. It is not really comparable to say eating cattle or even dogs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?eurl=&v=4UOGgUdNhVM
I am *not* an environmentalist... If you don't like Joaquin Phoenix's commentary, switch off the speaker while watching the video... You can reach your own neutral judgement. But, please do watch.
... the white dolphin has been known for 20 million years?
So if we're going to feel bad about something, feel bad that some Chinese kid had food to eat and could go places.
China did just fine feeding itself for generations. Then subsidized U.S. agricultural products (the grain surplus) pulled the rug out from underneath Chinese subsistence farmers, driving many of them to the city to seek work. Open boarders and "Free Trade" let the U.S. Corporate class fire their expensive American workers and replace them with cheap Chinese 'slaves'. Search for a torrent of Noam Chomsky's talk, Class War.
My brother took a class that assigned Who Will Feed China?. I haven't finished it yet, but one of the points in the book was that China has replaced much productive farmland with factories. No matter your priorities, food is always more important than Ipods. Whoops.
The globalization blowback has already started, and will pick up the pace as the U.S. recession deepens.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
To save us from extinction!
The late Douglas Adams (along with Mark Carwardine) wrote a book titled Last Chance to See about a number of animals on the brink of extinction. The chapter Blind Panic was all about the baiji dolphin's predicament. Practically blind, the baiji dolphin relied sonar to navigate the Yangtze river - the trouble is that the Yangtze is really busy and hence noisy and polluted. The baiji didn't stand a chance, though from the book it seemed that the Chinese did put a lot of effort into trying to save them.
Scott
http://hornymanatee.com/ got three million hits this week.
s .
I'm an aardvark. Aardvarks are the only living members of the tubilidentata family.
Animals>things with backbones>mammals>tubilidentata>--->---->aardvark
My nearest relatives are the elephants, 3 species, manatees and dugongs, 4 species,and hydrax, critters that look like rodents or lagomorphs but aren't. The elephants and manatees are endangered.
There used to be mammoths (3,000 bc) and giant manatees (1750) but you guys ate them.
Hurry up and get off our planet, wouldja? And maybe take us with you, mars might be fun.
What if China hires Ace Ventura: Pet Detective to find the missing dolphins?
Daniel
When Vger returns we are all hosed.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
The only animals that matter are the cow, the pig, and the chicken. They'll never go extinct from environmental factors because we humans have taken over their care and feeding (and eating.)
There may be a moral argument for keeping a species from extinction, but there's usually a financial argument for killing just one more. Every time a poacher kills an Elephant, his family gets to eat, or he gets to buy a new car. There will always be people for which finance trumps morals. The rain forests aren't being cleared because people hate trees, it's because they need more room for cows, pigs, and chickens.
Personally, I'm sad to see another species go extinct, but in reality, it will have no impact on my life that there are no more white dolphins in China.
I, for one, welcome our new natural overlords. I would certainly advocate razing (and recycling the steel) when these buildings wear out and replacing them with earthen buildings. Also wooden buildings should also be supplanted with earthen ones when their time is up. Cob and adobe last way longer, takes way less energy to create the materials (straw, sand and clay) and won't be destroyed by california's wildfires, and if built with a concrete pad in the foundation will also stand up to earthquakes. And I could quit my bullshit cubicle job and go be a cobber or adobe builder. Everybody wins!
Jon
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
The upside of all this, is that it will hopefully send a loud and clear message to the remainder of the dolphin species: Freakin stay in the oceans and out of the rivers! Who ever heard of a freakin dolphin in a freakin river anyway? We pwn the rivers, beotches! ...just one man's opinion.
Yeah, the tasty animals like chicken and duck! Bird flu! Kill us all. Pork and beef industrialized into smaller and smaller places, places so filthy we have to pump in intravenous antibiotics so WE don't get their disgusting diseases. It won't last forever, dipshits. Sooner or later your callous attitude and stupid, unfunny jokes will breed a flu virus or something that our science won't be able to stop.
Get it, dumbfucks? Too many idiots like you means death for us all. We need to start gathering up your kind and slaughtering YOU.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Look children! An asshole! See how it loathes everything that's NOT itself? Those things nearly killed all life on earth with pollution, war and greed. Good thing they're nearly extinct.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
What part of "some other animal" was unclear? If the trees exist and continue to provide a food source for insects, some insect will adapt to use that food source. I was considering the future of the trees and what insects may arrive to pollinate them.
You are worried about yourself, not the bees, the nut trees, or the extinction of other species (which is where this thread started). You want cheap and plentiful food, and you get worried when your food supply is threatened.
We really are just animals at the root, and I thank you for proving my point so well.
darn, and they tasted so much better than regular dolphin!
so long, and so sorry about all the over fishing...
Although we dont like to admit it, human beings are a virus to planet earth. We suck the resources, multiple then spread and destroy anything in our path.
I know it eats at you everyday, but because you naturally treasure life, you keep telling yourself over and over thats it not true that your not responsible for the damage of earth.. but i dont see you making a difference. Infact i dont think anyone in slashdot really cares enough to stop what we were created to do. Maybe this is how viruses feel aswell. I know myself that ill still be eating tuna.
Sure you say that you brought yourself a hybrid car to cut down on emissions, but your still poluting the earth with your share of eletricty, garbage, the products you buy, the water you use..
infact your PC is made up of 3 times its weight in wasted chemicals.
Its not a shame the earth has to end this way, but it is a shame that we are the cause, and that includes you!
A Virus is not an Organism, therefore it can NOT be a parasite.
;~)
A living organism has metabolic function - a Virus is a protein coated strand of DNA (or RNA with some RNA reverse transcription ability),
it is not alive, it does not breath, it does not consume energy, it does not produce anything, it can't even move, it does not have asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction...
A virus can only activate once inside some organism's cell - then it starts working like a little photocopier gone bad...
and strips parts of the cell it is in - to build copies of itself (it can not reproduce by itself - it is inert).
A parasite must be alive, and a virus has no function at all, until inside something else.
So humans are not a virus, but being heterotrophs, humans must feed on autotrophs or other creatures that feed on autotrophs.
Humans are more of a fungus - feeding off of the dead.
yeah right, just like when 9/11 happened every slashdot post making jokes about it got something else besides -1 troll.
The truth is that nearly all instances when one makes a joke about a sad event is when one does not really care about it nor feel its significance.
Not to say that humor is wrong or the joke post should be modded down as a troll, since it's a joke after all. It's the fact that it reflects the sentiments of so many people here that indicates something seriously wrong with our ethics.
From my experience reading and posting in Slashdot, I have to agree with the GeckoX in that the IQ here is higher, but morality may be not. In some cases such as "your rights online" articles it seems the morality is higher since everyone is quick to post in favor of civil freedoms, etc. but it maybe that we are just smart enough to see that it's something in our interests (the much needed privacy, for example).
I would like everyone in Slashdot to think hard about it (or more like "search your feelings", actually).
FINALLY!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
(n/m)
I'm all for eating tasty animals, but what they are doing in the video is illegal. There are international laws that the Japanese claim to be following, but this video shows that officials there must be looking the other way. There is also the point that the dolphin meat may be mis-labeled as whale meat, but there is no real evidence in the video. I sure don't want to eat dolphin meat when I think I'm eating a nice juicy, whale burger!
You are right that virtually all non-domesticated plants and animals are either threatened, endangered or critically endangered, and almost entirely at the hands of humans. Usually for no particular reason or for an entirely human-manufactured reason. (Ethiopia has suffered massive deforestation by people trying to obtain firewood. The rest of the planet has how many alternative fuel sources? Fast-growing trees specifically selected for firewood? Fuel-efficient techniques for generating heat or light, or for cooking with? If those with a solution knowingly - and that's an important word - do not apply it to a problem, is that the fault of the problem, the solution, or the person who didn't apply it?)
Yes, I blame quite a number of people. For a start, responsibility is frequently a collective thing and rarely an individual thing. If one of those responsible truly merits being called on it, then ALL who are responsible truly merit being called on it. Not all responsibility is equal, so not all blame is equal, but it is only unjust to hold someone accountable if you do so selectively. Society as a whole is to blame for holding in esteem the very qualities that make humans capable of the most inhuman and despicable acts. I should point out that blame, as I'm using it here, is not the same as shame and definitely not the same as punish. Blame, as I'm using it here, is to refuse to accept or tolerate any individual fault or failure ANYWHERE along the line, with special emphasis on those faults and failures that actually required greater effort than to do the next right thing.
There's also a hidden cost to all this. Biological systems are only stable because they are also extremely interrelated and interdependent systems. Extinction is not just a name off a list, you might as well pluck out bits of a Swiss watch and expect it to keep running. Sometimes you might pluck out a bit that didn't actually matter, but if you keep at it, the odds don't get better.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Personally I'm very careful before I claim any chicken-and-egg paradoxes as absolutely true.
I would make the uninformed guess that orphaned dolphins would have a tougher time than parented ones, but would not face a 100% death rate. Then the survivors can teach their kids their hard earned lessons
the yellow dolphin
I thought cows went happily to their these days, ever since that autistic woman redesigned the slaughterhouses.
See BBC Horizon programme "The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow"...
No sig today...
Yangtzee Famous Dolphin soup......$50,000 a bowl
I don't believe that for a second, and the article certainly doesn't support that.
It says "the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction."
That means it's been 50 years since an animal that is "large" AND "aquatic" AND "mammal" has gone extinct. I have no doubt that numerous other mammals have gone extinct in the past 50 years.
For example:
Pyrenean Ibex (~2000)
Cyprus Spiny Mouse (~1980--unverified)
Javan tiger (1972)
No doubt I could find many more if I cared enough to put some time and effort into it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I agree this civilisation is going the wrong way, but these premises look very suspicious.
About premise fourteen. First, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. Nobody teaches people to hate living things, people don't hate living things and spend their life fulfilling their urge to destroy life. They just don't care most of the time, and if they can improve their own lives while not caring about wildlife, they do it. It's all about gread and short sight. Hate doesn't enter into it.
About premise ten. The culture is not driven by death urge, this would not be profitable. This culture is driven by advertisment induced urge to consume tons of useless shit.
About premise six. I don't know what can be done to change this situation. But people crying to "put halt to it" also rarely do. How do you make billions of people to change their lifestyle overnight? Put all of them in prison? Stick guns to their heads and force them to do what you say for the sake of saving earth? How do you gain more power than corporations/individuals who profit from the current way of life? How do you make people join your cause if they are already living in comfort and don't want to get up from their couch?
The problem with earth, is that earth is commons, and tragedy of commons (see the wikipedia) applies to it. It will always be profitable to overuse/overexploit earth for personal gain, and screw the others. Regulation and government intervention can slow this down, but only a little.
--Coder
to paraphrase Agent Smith - "...in an attempt to classify your species...you move to an area, and you multiply, until you consume all the available resources, then you move to another area..."
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
It serves to remind us that being around for a couple dozen million years is no guarantee for the next couple million years.
There are far more species that disappeared than species living today.
I only hope _we_ stay around longer than 20 million years.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I blame the thousands of Indian restaurants serving onion baijis. They will now have to turn to substitutes for this traditional Indian delicacy
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I'd say the grandparent post was a lot more of a troll than the parent here.. it is stupid to dump waste directly into rivers just to make more of a profit, especially if you're wiping out whole species in the process. Just because a post is insulting doesn't necessarily mean it's a troll, just vehement :p
which is totally what she said
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
...and thanks for all the fish!
What's to feel bad about? This is simply a case of survival of fittest. Shouldn't evolutionists be applauding the elimination of a species that was clearly incapable of adapting?
Personally, I rather the enjoy the irony here.
Kangaroo rats strike fear into the heart of every desert landowner.
... turns out it lives everywhere along the west coast from Alaska to the far end of Mexico, and is not endangered at all. Biologists made the mistake of counting 'em like they would other owls, which will live in much closer proximity to one another. But a spotted owl's territory is about a square mile, so you DON'T see them as often as other owls that have smaller territories.
The damned things are everywhere at night here in the desert, almost as common as rabbits. Yet since they're considered "endangered", the state WILL freeze development on any land where they've been sighted. And then you've got an unsalable chunk of ground that you still have to pay property taxes on. And the state will not compensate you, either.
Hence you'll never hear anyone *admit* to seeing kangaroo rats on their property.
Sometimes it's just lousy science. Frex, the "endangered" spotted owl
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
When Adams went to see them in 1988, there were 200 dolphins left, and energetic efforts were being made to save them. Sadly, as impressive as those efforts were, it still seems to have been too little, too late. But at least they tried...
---
[after explaining how the river's cloudiness makes sight almost useless, and how the baiji had to rely on echolocation to navigate and communicate, Adams notes the problems caused by cramming it full of diesel engines, in a discussion with his co-author Mark Carwardine]
---
---
---
[The dolphin's hyper-endangered status was only discovered in 1984, and a crash-program to build a semi-nature refuge near Tongling to try to save it had nearly been completed when Adams visited about 5 years later. A large portion of the required funds were raise