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1/3 of Amphibians Dying Out
Death Metal sends in a Scientific American article reporting that 2,000 of 6,000 amphibian species are endangered worldwide. A combination of environmental assaults, including global warming, seems to be responsible. "... national parks and other areas protected from pollution and development are providing no refuge. The frogs and salamanders of Yellowstone National Park have been declining since the 1980s, according to a Stanford University study, as global warming dries out seasonal ponds, leaving dried salamander corpses in their wake. Since the 1970s, nearly 75 percent of the frogs and other amphibians of La Selva Biological Station in Braulio Carrillo National Park in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica have died, perhaps due to global warming. But the really bad news is that amphibians may be just the first sign of other species in trouble. Biologists at the University of California, San Diego, have shown that amphibians are the first to respond to environmental changes, thanks to their sensitivity to both air and water. What goes for amphibians may soon be true of other classes of animal, including mammals."
The real question is, do they taste good fried?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PufNFWo9mm0
The endangered species act is a national disgrace.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I happen to notice that Human is also in category of mammals. Does that mean we are the endangered specie now? ...
Has someone told phelps? Has to be said. :)
The rule for species survival is simple: adapt or die. There are historical events of much greater scale and effect than this global climate change will be. If a species can't adapt, then it will die out. A species that can't adapt to a minor change in environment was probably doomed to extinction anyways regardless of Man's contribution to global climate change.
Nature rule, Danial-san.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Global Warming is a giant scam. Plenty of Ice core samples going back half a million years ago in Greenland and Antarctica confirm wild swings, often in very short spaces of time (decades) in global temps. No connection either btw to CO2 levels either.
Duh, it's SOLAR OUTPUT that determines temps. Which does indeed vary (we may be in for some real cooling too).
Amphibians are terribly sensitive to pollution, including precipitates from air pollution, particularly mercury and sulfuric acid from the Coal that China burns like crazy, and drifts over most of the US. Habitat loss is also terrible.
We have serious problems with pollution and habitat loss, none with "Global Warming" which is nothing but a scam to take advantage of Gaia-worship and gullible fools.
So, pools of water didn't dry up prior to global warming? Frogs and salamanders didn't die prior to all this? Is there any animal population from humans to flies that have not gone through expansion and contraction?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I thought about X-COM Terror From the Deep. First Rosewell, then we sent probes to Mars. Now there is Gwoba Woba and methane starts coming out from the ocean bed. With the increased drilling for fossil fuels we might hit some nasty water creatures. And they might be mad the shrooms are killing the little amphibian overlord ambassadors on the surface.
Ok. Nevermind. Need some sleep.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
...and it is filled with concrete and hairless apes.
so let's find out.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I take it the rest are immortal.
"... amphibians are the first to respond to environmental changes, thanks to their sensitivity to both air and water."
What's the point of evolving amphibious capability if not for greater environmental tolerance?
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego, have shown that amphibians are the first to respond to environmental changes, thanks to their sensitivity to both air and water.
So maybe we're seeing why the dinosaurs died out. They were too sensitive to environment change. They couldn't adapt to the changes in climate and died.
The article starts out blaming man and herbicides, but then has to conclude that even areas free from herbicides, such as national parks "provide no refuge." So that is blamed on global warming (no doubt man-made), causing the ponds to dry out. Neither of these are supplemented with facts, but is all speculative. Frogs and salamanders are dying, so we must be causing it.
Even though we may want to, there is no way we can save every species from extinction. We talk time and again about survival of the fittest in science class, yet we can't seem to acknowledge that species must adapt or die. Animal species that are hardy will thrive. Those who are not will not. We could have the perfect ecosystem for frogs and salamanders, and that would threaten some other species that found the weather too damp or warm to thrive. We blame ourselves for everything, when in fact there's no evidence that, if we all vanished tomorrow, animals wouldn't continue to die out as they always have.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1012-frogs.html Strange, and I thought the big threat was coming from the fungi that are devastating species. Good thing they tied the threat to global warming, now we can all do something about it! ::smirk::
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
EXTINCTION CRISIS FOR AMPHIBIANS
this time its not our fault... but maybe we can help them (or... is it not nice to fool with Mother Nature?)
The Admin and the Engineer
Let's say you had a group of tool wielding apes who had advanced to such a high level of technology that their activities changed the environment, and upset millions of years of evolution and balance. Despite detecting this early on, they failed to adapt the way the transport themselves, the amount of natural resources they needlessly consume, and did nothing to change course.
Let's say those apes did not survive the correction that the environment made to re-establish equilibrium. Wouldn't that be a tragedy.
You can make all the excuses you want for yourself, but your children don't exist on rhetoric, they exist on planet earth. If you're even willing to take a chance on continuing the path that has led to the decline of every single system of life on earth since the industrial revolution, you're mad, or a fool, or both.
The epidemic of cancer is certainly proof that something that we are doing to the planet it making it and us very ill, let alone the undeniable evidence, built up over the last fifty years, that wherever industrial developments are, vibrant ecosystems are not.
What was never addressed was the fact that the amphibians were dying off because researchers (who were trying to protect and count them) carried microbial parasites from one frog hole to the next. They would return to a hole a while later and presto many dead frogs.
End of the story:
*If you are a frog counting biologist - just jump to the immediate conclusion man is bad. End story. No need to go on.
*If you are a normal person - "wait a second, isn't there more to the story"? FCB - "no there isn't" NP - "but I thought YOU were actually responsible for ..."
FCB "The story is over, discussion is over, no more questions, man is bad - period"
Personally, I wouldn't take advice on the law or public policy from two jokers who make a living from misdirection and yelling profanity at reasoned arguments.
Furthermore, I wouldn't cite as evidence of how horrible the ESA is a video that builds part of its argument around the notion that there is no mass extinction event going on right now in an article about a mass extinction event going on right now.
Good Lord, give me back the past 30 minutes of my life. What an irritating mishmash of profanity, name-calling, and irrational conservative talking points. Lindy's story was kind of sad, but the impact of the story was blunted severely by all the smug, sneering, venomous, and immature posturing that overlay it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The responses here are infuriating.. Why are nerds so insensitive? How can paving 25% of the land and doubling population multiple times not be pushing other species off the edge? Dont we produce tens of thousands of industrial chemical in huge volumes that had not been in the environment previously? The list of 'mistakes' by industrialists, not to mention the by-products of our massive wars, is too long to list. ugh.. listen up
Is there anything global warming can't do?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
But even the containment of Chytrid might not be enough to save amphibians, which face a barrage of other threats including pollution, the introduction of alien species, habitat destruction, over-collection, and climate change.
Gosh, I guess we shouldn't worry at all then! I mean, if Chytrid is screwing them over, it's not like we should bother with climate change. I mean, why put out a cancer patient on fire? The cancer's going to kill 'em anyway.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How did amphibians survive the much greater temperature swings in Earth's history? They've been around for a long time. Were there partial extinctions and then they rediversified?
I see the concrete, but where are these apes you speak of? Place is deserted...
In addition to what the previous person responding to your post mentioned, it's worth noting that some researchers think the most likely origin of the spread of this fungus to a wide range of habitats is due to widespread use of a research frog species from Africa, though there is some evidence that puts some doubt on that.
Another prominent theory is mentioned in the article you linked:
In Costa Rica's Cloud Forest Preserve of the Tropical Science Center, biologist J. Alan Pounds and his colleagues recently reported the total disappearance of the Monteverde harlequin frog, along with one golden toad species -- caused, he said in the journal Nature, by their increased susceptibility to chytrid disease as rising global temperatures have weakened their ability to resist the toxin.
In other words, chytrid is likely to either be an invasive species introduced around the world by human actions or a species that amphibians were previously able to resist before rising temperatures weakened them. Or both. Either way, saying "this time its [sic] not our fault" is disingenuous at best.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Humans are fucking with stuff they don't understand. Raise Earth's average temperature 1 degree, what's the big deal right? 3-4 degrees won't hurt. People have no fucking clue what it will do, and that's why they shouldn't fuck with it.
It's the good 1/3!
I'm a pretty green-leaning person and the last thing I want to do is deprive people who have devoted the best years of their life studying herpetology from getting grant money to make a living, but I think amphibian decline research is bordering dangerously on public relations BS pseudo-science.
Amphibian populations are notoriously hard to measure accurately. Populations rise and fall wildly. When you go out to do your first sample, if you're not careful there's often a heavy bias to picking the area with the highest population, so when you do your followup study and that pond has returned to a normal population, it looks like you've detected population decline. That's not to say amphibians aren't wildly vulnerable to all the usual things humans do to an environment: drain it, pave it, spray it. But rather than get half the environmentally-sensitive population panicking randomly about crisis, I'd rather see 1% or 0.1% of the population deeply educated in field biology as serious hobby, keeping long-term consistent records of observations and measurements.
( by the way, the best way to completely destroy a long term population study of a pond is to dredge it and add fish to make it "look more natural" )
"They are alone. They are a dying species. We should let them pass"
They are in the concrete...
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
They're only a part of the Holocene extinction event.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
The cause of worldwide amphibian population declines is the Chytrid Fungus. However many do think that global warming is making the situation happen faster and to a more serious degree. Here is some quick links if you want to read more on the subject ...
From Nat Geo:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080401-frog-fungus.html
The NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/04frog.html
The CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no12/03-0804.htm
Even in the most populous state (California), only 800 square miles are developed out of 155,000. Gee, that leaves us with a mere 99% left to work with. What will we do?
We nerds are insensitive - especially to people who believe any crap they want (25%, hah!) because they want to believe it, and who can't do basic fact checking and math. Most of the environmental movement is based on "feeling" and not facts. When you let anecdotes dictate your philosophy, you are doomed to live in unhappiness.
Send some of our remaining frogs to Australia, say, in exchange for some Koalas, maybe. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.
The problem with this type of reasoning is that we have evolved to a stage where we can "beat" any other species. Human-level intelligence has transformed evolutionary competition into a straight out massacre. We also have the ability to change the environment in ways which are effectively catacylsmic from the point of view of evolution - if you radically alter the environment over the course of a few decades or even centuries, then there is nowhere near enough time for a typical vertebrate to adapt via natural selection to a hostile environment.
If we are indeed affecting the climate, as seems likely, then I find it plausible to think that we could quite easily end up wiping out most species on earth, save for a few super-hardy ones. Unfortunately we will probably survive ourselves, which hardly seems fair. If you want to compete until the end, I hope you like the sound of a future filled with cockroaches, feral cats, rabbits, rats and flies because those are the types of animals which will thrive in a man made environmental apocalypse.
I would like to think that if we are intelligent enough to realise that we have the power to exterminate the other varieties of life on earth, then we are also intelligent enough to realise why we shouldn't (including both cold rational reasons and aesthetic/moral reasons).
Do you really believe that it is ok on any level if, say, every last tiger dies as a result of human impact on the environment? What if we go out and shoot them all? Because we could, and it sounds like you're saying that would be good and proper, or at least 'evolutionarily correct' in some way.
Read Pynchon.
correlationisnotcausation
correlationisnotcausation
correlationisnotcausation
I swear, half of the people who write tags on stories on this site would leave their hand on a red hot hotplate to burn whilst arguing that the pain in their hand correlates to the hotplate being red hot, but that clearly as correlation != causation we should consider the other theories about burning hands which are given less airtime by the ignorant media, who do not understand deductive science as well as we do.
correlationisnotcausation
correlationisnotcausation
correlationisnotcausation
Read Pynchon.
From the gripping hand global warming begin turning huge expanses of northern taiga forests to wetlands. Aren't wetlands an ideal environment for amphibians ?
I don't think its only our fault and the global warming we are blamed for that caused the distinguishing of these 2,000 amphibian species. Everything that happens is correlated to previous and current human deeds, to the forces of nature and to natural laws of evolution. If the global warming did not endanger them, I suppose something else would.
When trying to maintain a balance amoung animals it is often necessary to cull the herd from time to time. Like in america where hunters are often told to hunt deer when their pupulation gets too high. We do this because there are no longer wolves r primitive man to kill off the deer. If we do not do this then many deer starve and become diseased because of limited resources. While I do not think we have to start culling the human herd yet, I do think it is time we start to make it unpopular to have more than 2 children. We could have a "Save the planet, stop breeding!" campaign. :)
I usually do not agree with Chinese policy, but I thik they have it right on this one.
BTW, I notice that the professor of heliophysics quoted says there is no relation between sunspots and solar output. Goes a long way to make that point.
Okay, but that's not the theory that is argued. It's not whether solar spots are related to output, but whether the sun's total output rises and falls. And in fact, it does. It also coincides nicely with earthside temperature variations. BTW, I'll see your article and raise you one: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html
... must just be some crackpots from Duke... http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html
and Columbia ... and .. well, I could go on with several dozen other links, but who what's the point. Google it yourself if you want. If we're all gonna die, I have better things to do. Come to think if it, I do even if we aren't all gonna die.
"A combination of environmental assaults, INCLUDING GLOBAL WARMING, seems to be responsible." What is with the mindless hype nowadays? Will there ever be a time when actual facts rule the day?
What is the rate at which new amphibian species are emerging, to replace the endangered?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
The epidemic of cancer is certainly proof that something that we are doing to the planet it making it and us very ill, let alone the undeniable evidence, built up over the last fifty years, that wherever industrial developments are, vibrant ecosystems are not.
I don't think the basis of your argument deserves the kind of consideration that your point itself does.
The industrial junk we've been pumping out can't be good; I don't think you'll find many people that are pro-pollution... The problem with your argument is studies show cancer has been decreasing for decades -- not just mortality, but also the diagnosis and development of. Considering detection has certainly improved and pollution has certainly NOT improved, it should be on the rise in a big way. Why the discrepancy? It did increase during the 70s and 80s, but was that because of better detection rates? It is easy to write it off as such, but who knows... I don't -- and neither do you.
Unfortunately, that's the problem. We don't have much reliable data to follow because the data itself has been a work in progress for decades. For example, whether or not you believe they have an agenda, the National Cancer Institute shows this downward trend, and it continues. I'm sure if you went back to 1930 or something, cancer rates per capita were far, far lower though; however, you cannot get accurate numbers because many people would have not been treated or improperly diagnosed. It's pretty easy to fudge the numbers and statistics to indeed lie.
As I'm sure you know though, the problem with 'the evidence' is it is difficult to concretely prove... either way. There are just too many variables to take in account with living organisms to do meaningful, empirical tests that prove something without a shadow of a doubt. Sadly, not many people will listen until such links can be made unequivocally.
In short, I wouldn't use cancer as your 'undeniable evidence', but your point/intentions are good and I personally agree with you, although probably to a lesser degree.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Where will I build tech 10 beam starbases now??
I've been keeping newts and salamanders on and off for over a decade as pets. And I've seen a huge decline in diversity of the animals available from breeders. Breeders have to get breedable pairs from the wild and when the wild caught ones disappear, so do the captive bred ones. There are a bunch of newts that I have rarely seen breed in almost 10 years now. China is a major source of the species loss too.
regardless of how large this is blown out of proportion, what freedoms to environmentalism will we lose this time?
Will someone please explain to me how global warming is causing mass extinctions? I believe that the average temperature has gone up something like one degree in the last several decades, which is no more than the amount of variation you would see from year to year anyway.
So say the average temperature in some amphibians environment is 70 degrees F. During the last several hundred years, the temperature could have been anywhere from 60-80 degrees and the amphibians were fine. Now the average has gone up to 71 degrees and they're dying out? I don't buy it.
or else!
Here, here! People have to be boring to have valid messages!
or else!
"Save The Whales"
"Save The Rainforests"
"Think Of The Children"
"9/11"
"Global Warming"
"Change"
"Polar Icecaps"
Thanks to this kind of news, every eco-department will have yet another "reason" to tell us how to live our lives. So far, the BAAQMD has now made it a *CRIME* to use your fireplace on "Spare The Air" days, regardless of how cold it gets during the winter. And no, they won't be reimbursing you for your electric bill.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
If only it were that simple.
1. Evolution takes time.
If you don't have damn good DNA repair mechanisms, different cells in your body change randomly to do different things than what's needed, and you die. (E.g., of cancer.) So there's an upper cap on how often mutations can happen, which puts an upper cap on how fast you can evolve. Heck, even small-ish evolutions in tens of thousands of years are called accelerated evolution.
We're talking about "since 1970" here, which isn't even a blip at evolution scales. _No_ species ever evolved in 38 years.
2. Evolution really works like in the joke about the guys camping, and one of the guys putting on his sports shoes when they see a pissed off tiger: you don't have to outrun the tiger, you have to outrun the other guy. You don't have to be the fastest gazelle, you just have to outrun the slowest when the lions drop by.
What I'm indirectly getting at is that it worked in situations where there was a slow changing equilibrium between hunter and prey, or between species and environment. On the whole, the species still has to be survivable in the short run. It doesn't work for "bang, you're dead!" situations. And normally they do get that short term survivability. Even a species whose become relatively unfit, gets breaks as its lowering numbers also causes the predator population to drop, and buys the prey some more time. Or viceversa, a relatively unfit predator gets a break as the prey over-multiplies and eventually it gets enough of a meal even from sick prey or corpses.
The natural selection will then keep culling from the lower end, and over millions of years, the species gets better.
No species can evolve into something better if you keep hunting it into extinction within decades, or dump poison into its water, or cut down its habitat and replace it with a parking lot. Or if you keep hunting it past the point where predator-prey equilibrium would have allowed it to rebound, that's it, really. Game over.
3. While I sorta see your point about climate change,
A) it doesn't apply for situations when we pollute a place overnight, or when we cause an eutrophication and the algae bloom suffocates everything else
B) you also have to remember that climate change is a bit over-sold these days. It's the #1 best selling sin, and _everything_ gets blamed on it first. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but that it does get blamed for more than it actually caused.
In this case, we don't _know_ whether these frogs died because of climate change or, say, because of pollution. As more and more third world and developing countries industrialize, they pollute more and more. And again, let's not forget that while the carbon cult is obsessed with CO2 only, early unregulated industry puts out a lot more immediately poisonous stuff. Both in the air _and_ in the water, which, as mentioned, is the amphibians' problem: they depend on both.
Seriously, half the world still doesn't have any filters on their factories, or any other environment protection, or still uses lead in its pipes and gasoline. You start worrying about the quality of air when you already have other more stringent QOL components covered. When you're dirt poor, you care more about getting food, clean water, medicine, and a job. As long as even those are hit and miss, or in a lot of places more miss than hit, you don't give a fuck about that factory dumping toxic stuff into the air or water. Lead in the air (e.g., from leaded gasoline) might affect you later, while lack of food will kill you right now.
As little as a new factory starting production, can poison the water of several species over night. Sure, someone out there will scream about all the CO2 from it, as if that were all that could possibly ever matter, and in the long run maybe it even is, but it will be the other chemicals that kill in the short run. Or if that factory produces fertilizers, again, you _could_ worry about the CO2 it produces, but that's an eutrophication event waiting to happen,
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sorry for the anonymous post - I'm on the dead run here.
On the point made in the article about ponds drying up, this has never quite made sense to me. If the climate is warming, would that not imply more moisture in the atmosphere and thus more rain, or at least less evaporation?
I recall as a kid how my grandmother's yard was littered with American toads. She was certainly in the right place for wildlife. Right next to a state park. Two acre pond in the back yard. Woods all around. The lawn seemed to dance as I pushed the mower back and forth. If I saw anything less than a few dozen toads while mowing the front lawn, something was wrong.
My grandmother is gone and my parents have since moved into that house. Now it's a treat for my kids if I can find a toad or two there.
My own home has much the same problem. I'm on a wooded lot, backed up against a city greenway with a stream in the back yard. There is plenty of habitat for the toads, plenty of food. Every now and then we'll see one. The neighbors who have been here 30 years say that during the summer the houses would have treefrogs all over them. I have yet to see a single treefrog. And taking my kids back in the greenway to look for salamanders, we have yet to find a single one while flipping over rocks and rotten logs.
I still have my doubts about man's part in changing the climate. But something is wrong. The amphibians are like the canary in the coal mine. And it doesn't take an expert to see that they are disappearing fast.
Did anybody else read that as "1/3 of amphibians dining out"? I was wondering how so many of them could afford to do that, when most of us are having to cut back.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
We have such special machines named pyromether and thermometer. The lattrer one we use at surface, to measure local temperature and guess what, most of them are averaging to highter temperatures every year. But the real juice we get from the first one, we put them on satelites and measure the temperature averaged on a big area, and guess what, the global average temperature is going up too.
We can't be completely sure. But we can be some 80% to 99% sure that the bigest part of it is man-made. We know, from looking at other planets, from physics and chemistry, and from observing correlations (note that the two fist imply causation) that dumping CO2 at the atmosphere causes global warming. We are also able to make calculations, see how much CO2 we put at the atmosphere, and comare it with how much CO2 goes there naturaly. It is not hard to go from there to a conclusion, since our output is almost an order of magnitude highter.
See, no circular logic. Now, you won't listen anyway, so continue beliving what you want, should I advice you to put all your economies at realstate too? It can only go up.
Rethinking email
Correlation does not imply causation...
just because we can measure better doesn't mean it happens more.
I look at it this way, nature is cruel. We are just better at observing it. How many species have come and gone that we have little record of? Linking it to "global warming" is just sensationalism, an attempt to make the situation sound more dire and attempt to guilt everyone as having been a willing participant in the demise of something they know little to nothing about.
Yet I can predict that every attempt to show otherwise will be met with venom.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It would appear that your heroes are spreading bullshit. I don't have the credentials to place myself in this reality/bullshit conflict as a scientific authority, but I don't think we have any spotted owls here in California's 11th congressional district so Pombo's bullshit is categorically unqualified. Have you ever worked in a zero overstory? It doesn't require much intelligence to spot some of the errors. Herbicides will prove to be a gross error, ask the scientists in our soon to be fucked future.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Thinking hard about it, it looks like yes, they have.
Also, it makes sure that no valid message will ever be heard by the masses.
Rethinking email
that would be "Hear, Hear!"
We have come upon the start of the next era....Bladerunner
And perhaps due to a major meteorite impact that happened to go unnoticed.
They have about as much to do with science or even logic in their pointless rants as does the spring of 1734. have to do with popularity of colored condoms.
I am not a violent person, but from seeing those couple of episodes of that shitty show they put on - I got the urge to club the big loud shithead on the head until he becomes the little quiet shithead, and hang the little quiet shithead by the ankles and stretch him till he turns into a big loud shithead.
What? It would be done only in self defense.
They were hurting me first. Both physically and emotionally.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Like all those species that could adapt to bullets.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
food for the twenty-first century.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Remember the media hysteria over polar bear populations?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distribution
Of the 19 recognized polar bear subpopulations, 5 are declining, 5 are stable, 2 are increasing, and 7 have insufficient data.
Here's some insight into how the media works.
Did they report on the the 5 subpopulations that were INCREASING or DECREASING?
If they were fair, they'd've concluded the jury is still out and wait for more data to come in.
But they didn't.
They cherry-picked facts to fit the "man is evil" and "climate change is an URGENT" matter narratives.
no species ever became instinct until that evil Industrial Revolution. BTW, for those who didn't get the memo, the CYA term for Global Warming is Climate Change. Please scrub the phrase Global Warming from your memory banks. Thanks.
Sincerely,
The U.N. - Global Tax Collector
Let me try and put this in the way so a kindergarten kid could understand it.
There is this big cake.
And every species gets a part of the cake and eats it. And while the cake can go bad in places it can never go bad entirely cause it is magical.
Now... along comes one species that is particularly good at eating cake and grabs a HUUUGE part of the cake for itself.
And keeps grabbing more and more for itself or just plain ruining the cake just for fun. Just because they can.
So all the other species end up with less and less cake to share among themselves. And cake can still go bad from time to time.
Only now - even a small part of the cake going bad can mean that entire species can end up with no cake to eat at all.
So, because on species took almost all the cake for itself, all other species are running out of cake.
And when they lose even the tiniest piece of their cake - they could all just die out.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
1/3 of Amphibians Dying Out, thanks to mankind.
There.
What worries me is that mankind is a self-destructing species (whether that's caused by selfishness, stupidity or sin, belongs to another discussion). Ever heard of the Eastern Island?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island#Destruction_of_the_ecosystem
Well, if you're going to take it that literally, I guess not many things make sense to you.
1. We're talking about frogs, not bacteria. You know, a lot more complex stuff, where evolution happens a lot slower.
2. I never mentioned a start and a stop. That's your own strawman. But in a lot of these situations, yes, you could put such goalposts anyway. How about: from where we started changing their environment (e.g., turning a lake anoxic) to when they can actually survive there. If the second doesn't happen within a given time from the first, they're dead. That's your "start" and "stop" in that race.
3. I'm talking enough evolution to deal with radically different conditions, not about the minor mutations every birth has.
But on the whole, I'm under the impressions that you were just looking for some detail to take out of context, deliberately misunderstand, spout some irrelevat truisms, and get the ego-boost of "omg, I found someomne I could sound smart to." Well, I could put it nastier, but let's just put it like this: if your dose of ego-masturbation is to try to put someone between you and the bottom of the proverbial barrel, you already know where you are in relation to that bottom of the barrel. Nothing I could say probably can make it any worse.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In the olden days, when I was a kid, alto-cirrus clouds were so uncommon that I would call people out of the house to come look when I spotted one. Nowadays, they blanket the sky from horizon to horizon. I have heard that this shades the planet to a significant degree, compensating some for the warming effects which HAVE occurred. I have also heard that Canada has three quarters of all the fresh water available on our planet, which makes my Skeena River property seem a wise investment. If I catch someone spraying herbicide in my watershed there will be violence.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The worst thing that can happen to slow the solution to a human problem is its politicisation.
Politicised issues never get solved, because it is in no one's best interest to solve them: politicians earn their living by promising solutions to problems, and if they actually solve the problems that made the populace vote for them they will be out of work (unless they find another problem to solve). Therefore, a self-serving politician would never want to actually solve a problem that shifts the demographics in their favour. Of course there may be a few politicians who are enlightened and not only self-serving and may seek to really solve a problem, but the majority of them aren't so enlightened.
Unfortunately nowadays environmental issues such as global warming have been linked with politics, and this means that these issues will never be solved. One political group chooses a specific position over global warming ("it happens") and another group chooses the opposite position ("it doesn't happen"), and they just argue ad nauseum to make stupid people vote for them and keep them in their jobs so that they can continue receiving their income (official and unofficial).
Because the issue became political, it is very difficult to distinguish between science and politics now: a study saying "it happens" will be viewed as written by people supporting the political group that has chosen this position over the issue, while a study saying "it doesn't happen" will be suspected as being written by supporters of another political group. So, it became impossible to even contemplate about talking about this issue without being subjected to suspicions of people thinking in political terms. The end result is that scientists who seek not to be exposed to social stupidity shut up and the only people who talk about the issue are those who have no other interest in the issue than using it for political gain.
Environmental issues are scientific issues that should be solved by the experts in the field, the environmental scientists. It is in the university and the laboratory, not in the parliament or the senate, that we must solve our environmental issues. It is a scientific and technological issue that can be solved by developing new green technologies, and these can be developed by scientists in universities, not by old people arguing all day on television.
An issue becomes political when it involves different groups of people bearing different costs related to the management (or solution, if it's ever solved at all) of the issue. With the current technology it is difficult to solve the environmental issues without a change to a more frugal lifestyle (which is seen as a cost by most people) or slower economic growth (which is totally unacceptable to everyone on this planet, except for very few heterodox economists such as those who believe in technocracy). But I see no reason to solve environmental issues with the current, limited technology when we can develop new green technologies that would enable us to solve the environmental issues while in fact allowing us to keep our current lifestyles and most importantly creating new economic growth and new entrepreneurial opportunities as well (even for the current big players in the energy markets, so nobody would have anything to lose, it would be a win-win-win-win-win-win scenario). With new green technologies it would become possible to solve environmental issues without having to involve politicians who debate on television all day and have neither the knowledge, not the will to actually do anything.
Politicisation of science is harmful because it tends to make people suspicious of scientific studies ("is this report genuine or driven by politics?"), tends to attract non-scientists to talk about scientific issues thus fscking up everything, and in the long term is bad for a country and the world because it drives real scientists out of politicised issues, so the issue is left unsolved because of brain drain.
1/3 of Amphibians should be enough for anyone.
Awesome. It is truly jaw-dropping to consider that your arguments constitute a plan to simply leave things the way they are. Staying the course may provide some sense of security. I claim that we as a culture demonstrate the assertion that doing what we've always done will produce the same result that we have always gotten. Perhaps your perspective is that we needn't change anything.
Your contribution to the discussion is reminiscent of attempts to derail it with straw man attacks designed to inspire doubt. You also execute the "change the subject" move with great verve and flair.
You may want to consider that winning isn't everything. The inherent problem with winning at all costs is that it carries the risk of having nothing and no one with which to celebrate after victory. See also Pyhrrus of Epirus.
I also recommend reflection on who it is that you're trying to impress, especially in this forum. I assert that you have, indeed, made an impression, and that it most likely is not the one you intended to make.
I find your final paragraph to be most telling. You seem to be acutely aware of the complexity of the problem, but your contribution appears to consist mostly, if not entirely of mockery and derision. Given your claim that you are a seminary graduate--I presume that this is a Christian institution--you may wish to review how bystanders treated Jesus, and compare their behavior to yours.
The problem is important, but doesn't yet seem to be urgent to enough of us to take action. It looks to me like a case of denial, in the same way that many individuals ignore signs of failing health. Most of us don't like to confront our own mortality. Such feelings don't change the facts.
In short, we seem to prefer to avoid issues that we regard as potentially painful to consider. To grant credence to the idea that our planet is in trouble gives rise to a very difficult problem. If, for example, US policy and behavior changes, many existing models require profound revision.
The most unproductive choice in the matter is to assign blame. I agree with the argument that extinction is natural. I assert that it is folly to deny responsibility for our habitat, and that there is no integrity (i.e., power and strength) in avoiding the possibility that we may need to change our behaviors in order to survive.
In short, following the path of least resistance works only at the atomic level. We are a complex species; it follows that even the most simple problems require elegant solutions. It is folly to presume that simple is the same as easy.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I've been looking at China and southeast Asia in general, and it seems to me from what I've read that the rising cancer epidemic there is very good evidence.
According to even their own government, the rate is up due to pollution of the soil working it's way into their crops. There's also the factors of longer life span; new, awful, and Western eating habits; and more statistics becoming available, but I can't think of a single country that goes through industrialization where cancer rates stay low. It may be that everyone lives longer, but like you, I just have this hunch that covering everything in petrochemicals is a bad idea.
Ironically, it seems that countries like Cuba have the best chance of making the swing into the twenty second century. If global warming doesn't wreck their environment, they have already made it past peak oil, they have a thriving biogenetic industry, and no fundamentalist religious elements are stopping research. They still have no freedoms, and are being strangled by the US, but Castro's death should finally give us an excuse to stop looking like paranoid assholes. I wouldn't move there... yet.
And just to clarify, I do have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to "OMG I found something stupid and it's not worth reading any further!" kinds of messages. Among many other ways to add noise to the signal. And I find that Slasdot already has too many of that already. If it's not that, it's the local grammar nazis, and if it's not those, it's the "OMG, you're not worthy to question the scientists" gang, and if anyone managed to avoid even those, there's seven more layers of silliness to be had before running into any usable content.
Ah well... I guess some things just can't be helped.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Maybe it's just 'cause God is huggin' em' closer ;)
The reason the concept of god is "uncomfortable" is because the concept is without logic, irrational, and without merit. Even the concept of gods solves nothing. We are still left with all of the same problems and mysteries of the universe that we started with. There is "no reason" for gods.
So, for the evolutionist side - shouldn't this be part of natural selection? Survival of the fittest? Shouldn't evolutionary scientists expect extinction ... in fact, isn't that the only way species will continue to evolve?
I've always been confused at the modern day evolutionist's perspective that somehow, death and extinction is very bad, even though it's pretty much the primary part of the theory of evolution.
The same is true for those that complain the loudest about humans ruining the planet. I'm completely FOR treating the planet correctly, but for entirely different reasons. The evolutionist perspective, it seems, should not criticize the highest form of evolution (humans) for their natural behavior; by killing off much of the life in the world, am I not just helping prove what is fittest to survive? Certainly, you can't blame me, the product of evolution, for the way I naturally act.
On the other hand, and this is the part where I get modded troll, flamebait, or "stupid" (not sure what the Slashdot equivalent of "stupid" is :) guess I'll find out), preserving and taking care of different species and the world in general makes more sense in a Judeo-Christian worldview, because Biblically, humans were given that responsibility. "Responsibility" is not really in an ahteistic evolutionary worldview. Or if it is, I see no reason why you should tell me what my responsibility is.
So what? Species have been going extinct for billions of years. Those that can't hack it in the current environment don't get to live in it.
I'm not being deliberately mean or anything, but nature quite simply doesn't give a shit whether you make it or not. Our actions are in no way outside it.
The moment you consider human beings to be somehow outside natural selection in any way whatsoever, you've lost all perspective. We and everything we do are a part of natural selection. This absolutely includes contaminating environments with chemicals that don't normally occur there, and allowing our cat to hunt some birds to extinction.
It's hard to explain the tautology of natural selection here without just saying it: That which survives, survives. That's nature's only rule regarding species. There are no others and there are no exceptions or caveats.
If some monkey species develops a means to completely annihilate some insect species and does so, do we get all up in arms about it? No, we say, "well that was interesting" and write about it and document it and move on. We are no different. Even if we are causing amphibians to die out that's just as natural regardless of cause. If amphibians cannot survive in an environment that contains humans, they don't get to survive.
I don't personally think that killing off amphibians is good or anything, but nature doesn't give a flying fuck what I or anyone else thinks and it makes no distinction between us modifying the environment and some other force doing it.
Question everything
That's what we need here! Drop Bears and Funnel Web Spiders, Yay!
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Let me try and put this in the way so a kindergarten kid could understand it.
The problem with the cake analogy is that it's really not a useful analogy at anything above the kindergarten level.
Like many such false analogies (economics comes to mind as another area where such things abound), it assumes that everything is a zero-sum game: The more I win, the more you lose. That's true in things like sports and games, but it's true in very little else. Sometimes we both win (perhaps by cooperating with each other to do things neither of us could do alone). Sometimes we both lose (perhaps by each of us making it impossible for the other to accomplish anything).
Since I would hope that most of us here are past the kindergarten level, perhaps it would be best to avoid such oversimplified attempts to "explain" things.
You realize, don't you, that without scientifically rigorous documentation, your observation of mere physical reality means nothing to the willful ignorati. I too, have observed the same phenomena. I miss toads.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
You are missing the point. Nature doesn't give a shit about Earth being a dead and desert planet either. Nature does not give a shit about mass extinction nor total extinction. The point is that we should give a shit.
Biodiversity is something that has both practical and an ideational values and judging from the problems we have run in in the past, we can expect it to have values we are not even aware of. At the same time we know that if we cause the extinction of species, this is the final word: we will never see them again and we will never get back the ecological systems they helped to form. So in addition to losing specific species that could be of value to us or just nice to look at, study, or just have, their extinction will go hand in had with losing a working biological system that itself is usually part of greater systems of climate, erosion etc. We are not even close to understanding and even less to predicting what will happen if such changes happen and we are utterly incapable of fixing it, once it has been broken.
The comparison to the monkey species or any other species really is also missing one important point: no other species on earth as of yet was capable to make use of massive amounts of energy to influence their environment. While it has happened very often that species have caused the extinction of other species, sometimes of those they needed for their own survival, the scale of how humans are doing it now is unprecedented and can only be compared with the few occasions where mass extinctions occurred because of huge vulcanic or meteor incidents.
So while nature certainly doesnt give a fuck, I do and I think we all should, if we have an interest of our own species to survive over at least some more time in an environment that will remain a constant source of inspiration and wonder to us humans.
The 5 people on Slashdot who actually bothered to buy SPORE and play it will get this joke. The rest of you wont.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
By next century, I believe any remaining Polar Bear will be hybridizing or competing with the Browns. Of course they are going to be competing for space with the humans migrating to the polar (habitable) regions. You should be okay, the rest of us may also have to adopt an insect diet.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Depends on the change, I suppose. I can see your point if we're only talking about a temperature change of half a degree. Probably there are enough alleles for that.
In other cases, though, the changes are more dramatic. A lake can become outright anoxic within a record time, for example. I don't think it's even possible for fish to evolve to be anaerobic, and it'll take a lot more than 38 years.
Or as another example, let's put it like this, humans have used lead pipes, utensils, paints, cosmetics, etc, for millenia, and we haven't evolved immunity to lead yet. We've drunk alcohol for 5000 years or so (the Egyptians drank 4 litres of beer per day, including the women), but the liver didn't evolve to be immune to it. Duly noted, the frogs do reproduce a lot faster, but I still think that it's not that easy to just evolve immunity to a toxin.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As opposed to cherry-picked global-warming-is-a-hoax "facts"?
Yes.
AND as opposed to *not* cherry picking facts, but presenting them in as unbiased a manner as possible.
Which was the point I made, glad to see you did not argue with it.
Kudos for finding the hidden solution :) I've added you as a friend.
I would like to point out, for those of us denying our responsibility for the reality of the anthropogenic destruction of the one planet that all the scientifically proven existing lifeforms in the universe live on, that the economic implications dwarf anything related to ALL of the economic "crises" of oh, say, all of RECORDED HISTORY. Think. Please.
My friend, Patrick Laffey, used to point out that clearly our Fearless Leaders believed that they would be leaving on the Star Ship Enterprise. Did you get an appointment to Star Fleet Academy? Lucky you.
Those of you who supplement logic with faith, Jesus is coming, and BOY, IS HE PISSED.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The reason frogs are dying is because they aren't worth any money to anyone, so nobody really cares. In countries like France I'm sure they have bio-security to stop travelers bringing in diseases for them. Countries are already recognizing the impact other countries can have on their climate and taking action to prevent unexpected changes. Trying to make people care by arguing that them dying off might affect the planets future is simply doom-saying unless you can prove it, and it will be hard convincing the majority without hard proof as it won't get media coverage. Change isn't always necessarily bad, it creates new opportunities. Sure people's hearts bleed when you talk about animals dying, but we probably kill many more to eat.
Here's a further question, however. The article hints at multiple factors, but then incessantly intones global warming, global warming, global warming! Actually, the article seems reasonably noncommittal about it, but the summary was excerpted primarily the global warming references.
Has the estimated 2/3 of a degree change in average temperatures over the last century really resulted in dramatic devastation of seasonal ponds or merely tended to shift their latitude and/or elevation slightly (trust me, dried out tadpole corpses already existed back in the 80's when Stanford started this study and I was catching critters in seasonal ponds)? What about increased human water use lowering the water table, and development altering drainage patterns. And don't forget other factor cited like pesticide use and changing pH in waterways.
I don't have anything against global warming science, but in this case, it doesn't sound like they have actually confirmed a link between global warming and the factors cited.
The problem with crying wolf over forecasted claims of doom is that we, as a species, are often wrong. Are we seriously going to believe that 1/3rd of amphibians have such a tenuous claim to life that a one degree shift in temperature is causing them to die off? Fine, let them die.
But what if it turns out to be mercury. Or Nitrates? Or perhaps it's just an over abundance of silt in the water. Or maybe its some sort of fungus. Maybe, just maybe, the frogs are the canary for global warming. But my fear is that we're going to mobilize the world to spend trillions on cutting carbon emissions and using heinously expensive alternative sources of energy (while china and the third world laugh and burn more coal than we conserve) all for nothing.
In the end, it will be something we stopped looking for and had no money / resources left to address that will kill us off.
All because we're too arrogant to believe we're wrong and stop asking questions.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Could the first mammals to die out be the man-made climate change wack jobs. Please?!?
They can't even tell me if it'll rain tomorrow with 100% certainty but somehow think that they can take unscientifically gathered temperature data and determine that the Earth will soon cook. Then magically work some greenhouse gas figures and tell us it's man made. Just like in the 1970s we were headed for an ice age if we didn't stop CFC use.
Maybe we should all just go back to using old fashioned CFC hair spray. It'll reflect enough sun to cool us back down.
Or maybe, just maybe - mans impact on global temperature is minimal and there are alternative cyclical explanations, including sunspots, for global warming. I personally am very happy to be living in an inter-glacial period.
I'll go back to my first statement, when we leave this wonderful period of stability and hit the next ice age, I hope the first to go are all the left wing, blame man - wackos. They can take the anti-human anti-hunting HSUS and vegetarians everywhere with them.
Yes, as a matter of fact it is. If I were among the jurors in Salem in 1692, I'd refuse to convict, despite the other jurors' pleas to protect the girls being afflicted by the witches, etc.
Because the proponents of the global warming, and, especially, those of the idea, that humans (the rich ones, of course — the class struggle is almost always cued into a green's argument) are responsible, have put forward nothing deserving anything other than mockery and derision (well, the Che Guevara-adoring among them also deserve a noose or a bullet too, but that's another subject). There may, indeed, be a problem, or there may not be one, but the inconveniences, that "the greens" demand we accept, are too serious to be undertaken "just in case". And, of course, the most famous of the greens are rather hypocritical, which ruins their case even further.
So, until the theory, that blames rich western societies for the global warming, becomes scientific (it is merely a political one now), and can explain the drastic climate changes of 5 and 10 thousand years ago, I shall remain skeptical.
And no, I'm not, in actuality a seminarist — I was just mocking the GGP. But I have enough education to be able to discern science from attempts to "restore social justice", and will not cramp my lifestyle, just because some Leftie thinks, I have not earned, what I own.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just thought I'd mention that I agree with you. The reason why we're seeing so many species extinctions now, as compared to the distant past is because we're alive now and the fossil record is not very accurate. The reason why we're seeing so many species extinctions now, as compared to the recent past is because we're looking more now. It's perfectly natural and I can't believe our society has become so fucking bleeding heart that we put the interests of spotted owls over the interests of humans. And, no, none of these extinctions make a lick of fucking difference to our survival. I don't need an ecosystem to support me, I'm a human, we make our own god damn ecosystem.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What sick mind would want to engage in intercourse with Kermit?
I think Ms. Piggy want to have a word with you before that...
Ah. I see that you prefer to lump your perceived opponents into easily dismissed groups. Apparently they're all of the same mind to you, e.g., no extremists on either tail of the bell curve. I'll grant that there are those who are derisive, and that their rantings haven't helped, and seem only to have stirred you and others like you to resist with insults and invalidation. In particular, your invectives ("some Leftie") are repellent, and do not serve to further your argument. To quote from your own post on another topic
Thanks for clearing up that you've no formal religious education. I'm now curious what you refer to when you claim that you have "enough education". It leaves the impression that you feel that you've had all the education you need.
I wonder at your blanket dismissal of empirical data. The planet is on a distinct warming trend. This isn't merely well-grounded scientific theory. It's a fact. If you insist, I'll provide multiple sources for hard evidence.
You seem to be stuck on the argument that human activity is responsible for global warming. I personally don't care why the Earth's temperature is rising. I'm interested in whether this is a normal cyclical trend. Even if it is, I want to know how these rising temperatures will affect our species, directly and indirectly. It's futile to suggest that we have lived through earlier warming cycles. We must at least consider the present state of the world in comparison to what we know and can discern about the states during earlier warming cycles.
Getting back to the main topic of discussion, I view it as puerile to presume that the extinction--or even a drastic reduction--of any species warrants investigation. Why are they dying off? How will it affect us? Is it something we did, and if so, what is the impact of changing our behavior? If we're not responsible, then what is, and can we influence the outcome, or must we accept the change and compensate for it? More importantly, what is the impact of ignoring the problem?
To wit, if it's a matter of simple economics, I view it as folly to put off remediation simply because of the cost, especially if the main consideration is that some would lose money on the investments that they have already made. Suppose that you discovered mold growing in your home. Would you put off rectification simply because the cost might affect plans you already have for the money? It's not important to determine whose fault it is: The priority is your own health and the value of your home.
If you would take care of your private residence, then by extension you ought to be curious about what's going on with the planet it's parked on. If you'd just ignore the problem in your own home, then you are likely ignorant in other areas of your life as well.
You may wish to consider that responsibility and blame are not interchangeable.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I really like that so many people want the cold hard facts about whether man is responsible for global warming. And they want the numbers on pieces of paper - to crunch the data before they will decide to go out on a limb and say that they agree this is happening because these numbers say so, and that men do affect the environment around them. Problem is, the numbers can be manipulated to show either - or, and they can take decades to collect and analyze. I don't think we have that much more time. So here are the 'facts' as I've seen them. When I go to my favorite fishing holes, streams, and rivers, I cannot eat the fish I get. They are poison now. Because of man. When I am driving on the interstate, I can 'see' a big city I am approaching well before I get there, over the horizon, by the dome of brown, misty smog and crap in the air above it. The same brown smog that causes 'Know-Zone' days where you should not re-fuel your vehicle until 6PM. The same brown misty crap that causes smog alerts, where the local government has to warn the young and old to stay inside for their own health. Created by man. And I see that my Dad and the other farmers I know are not allowed to use certain pesticides anymore because those pesticides almost made the American Bald Eagle extinct, or they have contaminated water wells for a hundred miles in the recent past. Made by man. Sprayed on a field. Affecting our World. I see stretches of brown, dead trees that have been killed by acid rains because of contaminants originating hundreds of miles away. 30 years ago (?) a huge river caught on fire because of the crap that men were putting into it from many miles upstream. And does anyone remember the Love Canal making so many children so sick ? I see the laws that HAD to be made to stop people from dumping their used motor oil out back, or using and releasing all the CFC's that opened up a hole in the ozone layer ? Which, btw, seems to be closing again since the bans ? I see the Extra Diligence Required now in watershed areas, because what folks dump on the ground - ends up in peoples drinking water for hundreds and thousands of miles. Sept 11th, 12th, 2001. Aircraft are banned from the skies over America. Resulting in some of the most beautiful, blue, and cloudless skies anyone living can remember seeing. No artificial clouds from vapor trails. No unburnt fuel or nasty emissions ( stand on an airport tarmac sometime.. that crap is nasty, and it'll give you a quick headache ), none of that crap pumped into the air on those days, as it is every single day of every single week otherwise. I see signs of mankind affecting the environment in huge swaths, everywhere I look. And I marvel that we have grown so used to seeing it, that we come to accept these things as natural. Like being surprised at the cloudless skies for 3 days in 2001. Or we write it all off as a small price to pay for progress. Like the unfortunate sicknesses and cancers so many suffer when something mankind has been doing ends up being proven to hurt people.. usually many years after the facts, and well after the company responsible has made their money and vanished. So, somebody here wants to tell ME THAT MANKIND CAN'T AFFECT AND DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT !!?? That what is happening CAN'T BE OUR FAULT ? BULLSHIT. I got news for ya. Man has become a force of nature in a way. There are so many of us, pumping so many different un-natural things into the air and water and soil, that we are indeed affecting the world we live in. Big Time. That little smokestack you can see out your window, or on your drive to work each day, seems like it can't be cause for much concern. And by itself, maybe it isn't. But you aren't looking at the BIG picture. When you next see that smokestack, imagine many thousands of them right there, all beside each other, and all of them belching out crap. That is a small portion what America is putting into the air. Every Single Day. Now imagine Many Thousands MORE of those smokestacks, each one belching even more crap out of them than the first bu
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.
too bad it's not the creationists dying out. :) There's no reasoning with them since their views are based on irrationality. How can you reason with somebody who choses irrationality?
Then, once they were gone, we could actually talk about the real topic here (the dying out of an entire class).
Too bad, I thought we might be able to at least eat some green frogs in the future, once the other species die out, but this will not be the case, unfortunately, as I do love fried frog legs... and what about all those beginner science people, who won't know where to find something to dissect? Oh well, looks like soylent green will be human, after all. Well, we can all look on the bright side, at least we'll decrease our worldly population once the animals and plants aren't around to feed us. Kidding aside, what we can do to help is let these animal and plants heal by instead overconsuming the same things again and again, like red meat and black oil, why don't we decide to let our planet rest every once in a while. We need more trees planted, more rivers cleaned, less dumping in oceans, or polluting our sky. Just like the Natives of these lands once did, let the ground lie fallow for a while, let your car take a vacation in the garage, conserve water, electricity, and paper and plastic. We have been conditioned to equate our consumption to our livelyhoods, thinking we have to support the big exploitive companies that bring us our products so conveniently. We need to become determined to rescue ourselves from this 'getting worse' reality by being less commercialistically consumeristic, and more self reliant. I mean, how on Earth did they survive on "Little House On The Prairie"? Plant corn in your backyard, if you have one, along with some tomatoes, beans, squash and lettuce. So many things we can do in so little time means we still have a good chance to Save Our Ship called, Eartha Oceanus. Godspeed to US all, or Evolspeed, which ever you desire.
I thought /.ers believed in evolution?
Contrary to your apparent belief, I don't have to prove anything. The burden of proof is on people, who want me to sacrifice various modern-day conveniences to stall/prevent/reverse Global Warming.
That all (or nearly all) such people, under minimum of scratching, reveal themselves to be advocates for "social justice", makes them easily dismissable, yes. Not my fault, though. I don't have to "see their side" of the argument.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The problem with amphibians dying is caused by idiots messing with mother nature. My folks have a camp in upstate NY. The lake used to be stocked with just trout, bullhead and perch for as long as I can remember. Recently sport fishermen from down state started introducing bass and pike into the lake. There are no frogs because the pike eat up all the tadpoles. I'm not a scientist but if you introduce a predator without bothering to think of the impact on the ecosystem its just plain stupid. I saw a bumper sticker the other day, ignore the environment it will go away.
Climate has changed rapidly in the past without humans. Climate research shows that average temperatures have increased many degrees centigrade in a single decade. The old believe that climate changed slowly in the past is long gone. It is amazing that some people still believe it. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/story.html
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,as far as possible
I would suggest that all who believe in anthropogenic global warming read this. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-3YS9862-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f5228771e5b2eb13a78e4d93d3f7a004
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,as far as possible
Don't we have gene banks for plants and animals both? I just saw a program the other day that said Norway is funding a huge increase in it's arctic gene bank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault). I know that there is a lot of worry over species extinction, but as long as we've got the gene map then we've got the species preserved. I'm fairly confident that we'll be able to clone anything we've got stored. Call me crazy.
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been wide