Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 17, 2007; A07

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Walruses, too, rely on the ice; mothers stash their calves on it, then dive down to feed on the ocean floor. When ice recedes from prime feeding areas, mothers and calves can get separated.

In 2004, University of Tennessee professor Lee W. Cooper was off the north Alaskan coast when he saw about a dozen calves swimming toward his boat. His theory: The calves, alone and desperate without ice nearby, thought the boat might be a large iceberg.

There was nothing the scientists could do to help, Cooper said. "I think they were doomed."

As Channel Seven tonight (28/10/08) showed the story of the "unique" leopard seal at the New Taronga Zoo Aquarium in Sydney, as Gus' picture of a leopard seal in Sydney Harbour in the late 1970s sits proudly above the top blog, the earth is going down the tube... Not YouTube, but down the degradation of environments that in terms of human life is fast and in terms of geological time is catastrophic...

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Amphibian populations at Yellowstone - the world's oldest national park - are in steep decline, a major study shows.

The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change.

The results, reported in the journal PNAS, suggest that climate warming has already disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on Earth.

The park covers some 9,000 sq km (3,500 sq miles) in the western United States.

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Gus: As well as climate change through CO2 and methane, one has to add the fact we're poisoning the planet with garbage, insecticides, herbicides, super-phosphate, surfactants, various numerous deadly chemicals, genetically modified organisms, bombs and of all thing over-population — leading to the loss of habitats, despite "protecting" some areas for our vicarious pleasure of "beauty". Thus the places with no interest get the chop, the gas and the napalm... and the deliberately lit fires. 

The second national part in the world is the Royal National Park, just 30 kms south of Sydney, Australia. This park was only second to Yellowstone because the people who decided to protect the area back in the 1870s, took a long time to write the declaration papers... but this is only a side issue in the reality of the destruction of the planet. In the last few decades the Royal National Park has seen fires that would have destroyed much of its wildlife.

It is Gus' view that even areas of "non' significance should be also protected from further human intrusion to protect what's left out there... Trees in Australia, Indonesia and Brazil are cut and whether the felling is called legal or illegal logging is irrelevant. The damage is done, massively...

In Tasmania, the home of the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger, killed in huge numbers by white settlers, the last live specimen of which died in 1933, the Tasmanian Devil, (as seen in the funny WB cartoons) once prolific is now also an endangered species, as weird new viruses are deforming their faces till they die. Breeding programs with remnants of healthy population of Devils are in place on the mainland but the results are still in the hands of the denatured humans, us. 

And when considering humans against humans, one has to remember the lies about the Indians in the USA and one has to watch the very well-made series "The First Australians" to see the way humans were treated and decimated... Australia's Heritage also pointed out to this tragedy but, since its part-work publication in 1971, it has not surfaced properly on the web, to inform the younger generations. Imagine, in 1971, I was already old... and since then I have witnessed far too much destruction of the natural and historical environments in this country in the name of progress. Thanks to the likes of Jack Mundey's green bans, and the first greens protests in the world to preserve natural environments, we've still have some conservation and Sydney is still a "City of Villages" but our thirst for stuff demands we overtake more and more of what we love... and destroy it.

Let's take a breath of fresh air in this climate of capitalistic tumbling. Let's wake up from the comfortable nightmare we've created...

We're a sad lot. We can do better... We NEED to do better for our own sake. But we wont learn, will we?

The next few years will be crucial but we won't know till it's too late...

World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch
• Two planets need by 2030 at this rate, warns report
• Humans using 30% more resources than sustainable

    * Juliette Jowit
    * The Guardian,
    * Wednesday October 29 2008

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection.

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read all the comments on this line of blog and go to only at number 37? and ponder about the pictures...