Earth’s City Lights Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC

Index Research

A history lecturer recently said that if one doesn’t believe in ‘global warming’ one is put in the same category as those who do not believe in the Nazi holocaust. This research of summer 2008 articles is not only about global warming but also about species that have become extinct or are an endangered species.

Mr. Bush’s (and ViPer Cheney’s) contempt for endangered species reflects a similar contempt for civilian lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

INDEX

1. Planet Earth: General; Air pollution; Biofuels; Coral Reefs; Dead Zones; Depleted Uranium Contamination; “Democracy,” Food (corn, rice, wheat, famine); Lakes (extinct: Greenland Lake: endangered Baikal); Nuclear Holocaust; Oil (Peak Oil, U.S. exploitation, The Car); Polar Ice; Rainforest; Water; Wetlands

2. Towards Extinction: General; Amphibians (frogs); Bees; Birds; Deer; Elephant; Fish (salmon, shark, sturgeon, tuna) Flora and Fauna (Lichen, Orchid); Mammals (deer, (elephant, lynx, kangaroo, mustang, polar bear, seal, tiger, whale, wolf, wolverine); Mammoth rhino), Primates (Great Ape, Homo Sapiens, Lemur, Monkey, Orangutan); Reptiles (lizard, turtle, tortoise.

3. Good News

1. PLANET EARTH

General

“It was one of those dreams where all things – the people, the houses and trees, the sky and the earth – are doomed at the outset to be merged in one gigantic vortex of destruction. Doomed from the start, but unless the dreamer is on the lookout he may not realize what is going to happen, because it is a maelstrom which begins to move only after a long while, declaring its presence in its own good time.” Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House (1955).

Living on the Ice Shelf: Humanity's Meltdown
26.06.08. Mike Davis, Tomdispatch. NASA's James Hansen, the man who first alerted Congress to the dangers of global warming 20 years ago, returned to testify before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming this week. This time around, he was essentially offering a final warning on the subject. …

The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. .. / Although the idea of the "Anthropocene" -- an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force -- has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent. .. / This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend ... and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that "the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks." Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory.

Planet Earth Burns, Mankind Pays for Its Ecological Sins: Books15.07.08.
Le-Min Lim, Bloomberg. If we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, greenhouse- gases in the air would reach a concentration level so high it would make the world too hot to live in during the second half of the century, Speth writes (The Bridge at the End of the World). In other words, our children and grandchildren would reap the full wrath of our excesses.

The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more -- if more should be required -- the future of human civilization is at stake. Al Gore, (17.07.08, transcript / video)

Tribute to a Vanishing World
26.07.08. E. Boodman, The Gazette, Canada. Ours has been called an age of extinction; species are vanishing at the same rate as in the five previous periods of massive extinction. The difference is that now, humans are the cause of this environmental crisis as well as the potential victims.

The Origin and Extinction of Species
26.07.08. Darrell Williams, American chronicle. Understanding the origin and extinction of species is of paramount importance to our own existence and survival. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humans understand neither. About 90% of humankind professes to adhere to a religious philosophy that has absolutely no interest or concern in understanding the most fundamental ecological relationships that exist in nature. Human failure to respect this relationship has resulted in human failure in our own stewardship of our own planet. … /Change is always constant, but the rate of change is never constant. Environments are too complex. Every species lives in a different environment and every environment changes in a different way. A species environment or habitat includes everything that is related to their existence. It includes their food supply, predicators, prey, climate and everything else in their territory that is important for their survival. These are different for each species even if they live in the same geographic location. On a geological time scale, most environments change extremely slow, but they all change. / Every species of living organisms that have ever existed on our planet have had a different rate of evolution. Some species change very fast and some change very slow. The word evolution has one simple meaning. Evolution means change but almost nothing changes at the same rate. …/ Most extinctions are caused by a change in the organism´s environment and the corresponding inability of the species to change fast enough to survive.

Humans were part of the natural ecological balance. / But humans did two things that ended this natural balance. The first and most important was the invention of agriculture. ….. / The invention of agriculture has resulted in the human population explosion which has directly assaulted many other habitats and species of both plants and animals. … / The second disastrous human invention was the creation of scientific technology and manufacturing industries. While most people consider scientific technology to have been beneficial to civilization, it has been devastating to the natural environment.

On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction
11.08.08. O. Tickell, Guardian comment. There's no 'adaptation' to such steep warming. We must stop pandering to special interests, and try a new, post-Kyoto strategy

Study: Earth may be facing mass extinction
13.08.08. UPI. U.S. biologists say devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign the Earth might be facing a new mass extinction. .. / The fungus that's been killing amphibians around the world has been called the most devastating wildlife disease ever recorded, Wake said.

Sixth Species Extinction Can Still Be Avoided
13.08.08. Christiane Galus, Le Monde / Truthout. The human species, 6.7 billion individuals strong, has modified its environment to such a degree that it is now hurting the biodiversity of terrestrial and marine species and, ultimately, its own survival. This to the point that an ever-growing number of scientists unhesitatingly talk about a sixth extinction, successor to the five others - all due to important natural modifications of the environment - that have punctuated life on Earth. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which focuses on over 41,415 species (of the roughly 1.75 million known) to establish its annual red list, estimates that 16,306 are threatened. One mammal species out of four, one bird species out of eight, a third of all amphibians and 70 percent of all plants assessed are in danger, the IUCN observes. / Is it still possible to curb this species decline, which is likely to intensify when our planet carries 9.3 billion humans in 2050?

The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in Denial
15.08.08. Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Our current way of life is unsustainable. We are the first species that will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive.

Evidence mounts that we're in midst of mass extinction event
19.08.O8. Jonathan Gitlen, Arstechnica. we're living in the middle of a mass extinction, and we're almost certainly the cause. The irony, if such a word should be used, is that the planet has only just emerged from a mass extinction at the end of the last ice age. / The picture is just as bad in the water; relentless overfishing, pollution, dead zones, warming, and acidification has had a profound impact on marine life. / All across the planet, from ecosystem to ecosystem, we're observing a massive loss of biodiversity—bat colonies being wiped out by a mystery pathogen, huge falls among common bird species, and an entire group, the amphibians, are closest to the edge

Air Pollution

Air Pollution Causing Widespread And Serious Impacts To Ecosystems In Eastern United States
22.07.08. Science Daily. If you are living in the eastern United States, the environment around you is being harmed by air pollution. From Adirondack forests and Shenandoah streams to Appalachian wetlands and the Chesapeake Bay, a new report by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and The Nature Conservancy has found that air pollution is degrading every major ecosystem type in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States.

Many US Public Schools In 'Air Pollution Danger Zone'
20.08.08. Science Daily. One in three U.S. public schools are in the “air pollution danger zone,” according to new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC).

Bush Administration Rule on Pollution Struck Down
20.08.08. Washington Post. A federal appeals court yesterday struck down a Bush administration rule that prevented states and local governments from imposing stricter monitoring of pollution generated by power plants, factories and oil refineries than required by the federal government.

Rebuilding Clean Air Policy
21.08.08. Robert Sussman, The Center for American Progress/truthout. "The US clean air program sustained a severe blow on July 9 when a three-judge court in Washington, DC, overturned a sweeping Environmental Protection Agency rule - the Clean Air Interstate Rule - that was key to meeting air quality standards. CAIR mandated deep cuts in nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions at fossil-fuel power plants in 28 Eastern states and the District of Columbia."

Biofuels

Biofuel threat to Indonesian forest
11.06.08. Simon Pollock, al jazeera. Indonesia is home to 10 per cent of the world's remaining tropical rainforests but environmentalists warn that it is rapidly squandering its natural bounty through deforestation. / The increase in oil palm plantations - in part to meet booming global demand for biofuels - has been cited as a major reason for deforestation. / Indonesia is expected to increase its production of palm oil by more than half over the next 10 years, largely in response to the biofuels boom, while palm oil prices have increased during recent years by about 50 per cent.

U.S. biofuel plants go bankrupt on feedstock costs
27.06.08. Reuters. Soaring corn and soy prices on top of rising construction costs and tight credit markets have pushed about a dozen U.S. biofuel plants to file for bankruptcy protection, experts said.

Biofuels And Biodiversity Don't Mix, Ecologists Warn
10.07.08. Science Daily. Rising demand for palm oil will decimate biodiversity unless producers and politicians can work together to preserve as much remaining natural forest as possible, ecologists have warned. A new study of the potential ecological impact of various management strategies found that very little can be done to make palm oil plantations more hospitable for local birds and butterflies. The findings have major implications for the booming market in biofuels and its impact on biodiversity. See also Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis (Guardian 04.07.08)

Setting an Important Precedent for Indigenous Lands
22.08.08. Marta Caravantes, Inter Press Service/truthout. An imminent decision by Brazil's Supreme Court on the demarcation of the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle region has the country's native communities on edge, because of the precedent it will set. / .. The reservation is home to more than 19,000 members of the Macuxí, Wapixana, Taurepang, Patamona and Ingarikó indigenous communities. ../ The pressure of agribusiness and large-scale agriculture on indigenous lands has intensified as a result of the "biofuels revolution" and the need to produce feed for the world’s livestock, says Barbosa.

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© 2008 Sarah Meyer

URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/26/index_research_on_the_road_to_extinction

SOURCE

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The People's Voice.

We want The People’s Voice to contain a certain breadth and to represent a variety of opinions. However, we do find the following idea floated at the beginning of this article to be pernicious:

”A history lecturer recently said that if one doesn’t believe in ‘global warming’ one is put in the same category as those who do not believe in the Nazi holocaust.”

We would like to point out that the Nazi Holocaust belongs in the past. It actually happened. Extinction, however, is something that MAY happen in the future . -We simply do not know yet. The Nazi Holocaust is fact. Extinction is conjecture. Past & future, fact & conjecture clearly are DIFFERENT categories. Those who keep saying that they are not either have an agenda or are walking in the dark.

Let us also take into account a quote by Michael Crichton:

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.

Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

Editors