Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 01/18/2011 7:50:54 AM PST by The Comedian
WE ARE living through a massive species extinction event that rivals the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But while an asteroid collision likely did in the dinos, today’s extinctions are a direct consequence of human activity, writes DICK AHLSTROM , Science Editor
Whatever the cause, the result could be a complete collapse of the marine ecosystem, according to new research from the US. Far from being no more than a theory, they warn that two marine wipe-outs have occurred in the past and we may be triggering a third.
Researchers from Brown University and the University of Washington catalogued the results of the two earlier extinction events by searching the fossil record. Their study of an extinct distant relative of today’s squid and cuttlefish showed just what can happen if you start messing with the marine food web, publishing the details in the journal Geology .
“It is definitely a cautionary tale because we know it has happened at least twice before,” states the paper’s lead author, Prof Jessica Whiteside, an assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown.
The research also showed that once you knock the marine ecosystem out of sync, it can take millions of years to put it right again.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishtimes.com ...
This is most definitely something to be concerned about, but what is needed is solid data.
As Michael Crichton pointed out so brilliantly, we don’t really know how to control ecosystems, and our clumsy attempts to do so often make matters worse.
The answer, as always, is more knowledge, which requires a lot more research.
To that I say, so what? If one believes in evolution, then one must accept that extinctions are a natural part of the evolutionary process.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
DUM DE DUM DUM
Wasn’t Jaques Cousteau predicting the death of the coral reef and thus the oceans in 20 years back in 1970?
We had nothing to do with it then and we have nothing to do with it now.
Period.
L
We were camping on a lagoon in North Florida about 15 years ago and we saw an example of this problem. One morning a group of guys came in with rowboats and a mile of gill nets and completely encircled the whole lagoon - maybe 20 acres, with gill nets. It took them a whole day to net every living creature in the lagoon. They kept the legal fish and threw the by-catch back, but most of it was dead. They killed undersized snapper, grouper, crabs, flounder, white trout, sail cats, etc. that were caught in the net.
This went on every day all along the coast. It’s no wonder that species like mullet that were once so plentiful you could catch them in hand nets were almost wiped out.
Are DemonRats going extinct????????? Darn!
There is no doubt about it, the way we live puts 100’s of thousands of metric tons (perhaps millions) of toxic chemicals into our environment every day. Folks on this forum always laugh off mass deaths like the seal thread yesterday, I guess that’s the macho cool thing to do, but in the end, things are really pretty messed up.
Can't happen that way. AS an example, we reduced the population of Blue Whales to nearly the point of extinction. These are the largest carnivores that have ever lived on earth, with adults weighing as much as 100 tons.
They fed on krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp like critter found in immense quantities in the Antarctic Ocean. Despite the removal of the top carnivore in the entire history of the world, and the removal of many other whales, the only result was that many, many, many krill were not converted to whale scat.
When the whale population bred back, no change occurred, other than many krill again became whale scat.
Conclusion: The earth is composed of exceeding resilient ecosystems/habitats.
It is human civilization which is fragile. I suggest we concern ourselves with preserving the traditional American civilization, which is in danger.
Look for Obama to promise Hu that China will be allowed to send her fishing fleets to US waters as a monthly minimum
payment on the debt.
A global collapse in marine ecosystems gonna hit the Asians HARD baby!
Over-fishing, I believe.
I try to eat primarily farm-raised fish.
And, yes, I know all the supposed horror stories. So don’t waste your breath.
I know the wild critters need that ocean to themselves, and I still want to eat fish. So farm them like chickens, cows, or whatever else, and feed the world protein.
The potato blight which caused the Irish famine and migration affected 1 plant in 1 country.
Of course, perhaps that backs up your assertion about the fragility of human civilization...
Conclusion: The earth is composed of exceeding resilient ecosystems/habitats.
Agreed. The problem is that the resiliency is achieved via dramatic contractions and expansions of niche organisms. And if a dramatic contraction results in the loss of a niche human diet staple, and is in turn filled by a non-edible alternative, entire human populations will starve to death.
Good one! LOL
Anecdotal evidence. And two can play at that game.
The potato blight which caused the Irish famine and migration affected 1 plant in 1 country.
I am perplexed at your use of “anecdotal evidence” in either of the two cases. The whale/krill case is well documented, and anyone who doubts the Irish Potato Blight has only to look at the Kennedy Klan to realize that all levels of Ireland’s talent pool came here.
Perhaps correlation argument would fit better? As in 90% of all heroin addicts have a history of smoking pot. May be true, but so what - virtually 100% of heroin addicts have a milk history.
Causation is the essential issue, and whaling did reduce the whales, and reduced whales allowed for a larger krill population.
“...indicative of how any particular ecosystem predator die-off would affect the prey population.”
I think the more worrisome aspect of any of these relationships is not so much what happens if the predator dies off, but what if the prey is gone.
The over-fishing of some areas is a concern. And pollution from third-world countries. But I always get a kick out of the environmentalists always pointing their fingers at the U.S. of A. when it comes to pollution, etc. If they were REALLY concerned about the environment they would want more drilling, minining, factories etc. in America where our environmental rules are so much better. (And many rules are over the top).
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