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Study Finds Humans Are Worse Than Radiation For Chernobyl Animals
derekmead writes: A study published today in Current Biology shows that wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is actually more abundant than it was before the disaster. According to the authors, led by Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith, the recovery is due to the removal of the single biggest pressure on wildlife—humans. "The wildlife at Chernobyl is very likely better than it was before the accident, not because radiation is good for animals, but because human occupation is much worse,” Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith says. “We were trying to emphasize that this study is a remarkable illustration of an obvious, but important message,” he said. “It is ordinary human habitation and use (farming, forestry, hunting) of land which does most ecological damage.”
The message is that the real risk of radioactive exposure has been greatly overblown. What is happening (or not happening ) in the Chernobly area is only a surprise to those who believe the anti nuke agenda driven FUD.
chernobyl is actually in ukraine, just outside belarus
it was a soviet disaster (although the soviet union was merely a construct of russian imperialism, so it can be thought of as a russian disaster, so perhaps i'm just tweaking the meaning of your joke)
but like the holodomor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), and the continuing vivisection of east ukraine and crimea, russians sure do treat their slavic brothers like shit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bikini atoll, devastated by a nuclear blast is in great shape, thanks mainly to the lack of people :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3339485/Marine-life-flourishes-at-Bikini-Atoll-test-site.html
And certainly in much better conditions compared to Indonesia or the Philippines reefs with no radiation and huge populations.
Another example is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, apparently with great wildlife. Again, because of the lack of
people.
In the rest of the world, while the human population has doubled from 3.5 B to 7B in only 40years, the wildlife (both marine and non) has halved :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26290-worlds-wildlife-population-halved-in-just-40-years.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-16/half-marine-life-lost-in-40-years/6779912
Even the relatively protected Great Barrier Reef has halved its cover in 27 years :
http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Full-PNAS-paper-for-publication.pdf
There are a couple of interesting documentaries on the subject. PBS did Radioactive Wolves and another is Chernobyl Wolfpack from National Geographic. The PBS production is actually quite well done. The second isn't bad but it's not my favorite. They make for interesting viewing for those who are interested. I believe they can both be found on YouTube.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There is some uncertainty about the extinction of North American megafauna. Human migrations to North America tended to occur during climate change, so which was the cause and with the effect of human migration and of extinction is a fascinating question.
The destruction of the Nazca native American civilization due to overfarming and damming of rivers for agricultural control, coupled with unexpected floods, is very convincing.
They didn't manage the land and its resources. They lived a nomadic lifestyle. Once they'd depleted an area of its resources, they simply picked up everything and moved somewhere else. This had the effect of distributing their environmental impact.
That only works so long as population density is very low. Europeans arrived with a much higher population density. They would've had the same detrimental effect on the North American environment even if they'd lived as the native Americans did.