Will Send A Shiver Down Your Spine

[RinkyDink]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/maga ... lypse.html

It's long, goes off on some tangents, but it is an excellent article.

--Snip--
The current worldwide loss of biodiversity is popularly known as the sixth extinction: the sixth time in world history that a large number of species have disappeared in unusually rapid succession, caused this time not by asteroids or ice ages but by humans. When we think about losing biodiversity, we tend to think of the last northern white rhinos protected by armed guards, of polar bears on dwindling ice floes. Extinction is a visceral tragedy, universally understood: There is no coming back from it. The guilt of letting a unique species vanish is eternal.

But extinction is not the only tragedy through which we’re living. What about the species that still exist, but as a shadow of what they once were? In “The Once and Future World,” the journalist J.B. MacKinnon cites records from recent centuries that hint at what has only just been lost: “In the North Atlantic, a school of cod stalls a tall ship in midocean; off Sydney, Australia, a ship’s captain sails from noon until sunset through pods of sperm whales as far as the eye can see. ... Pacific pioneers complain to the authorities that splashing salmon threaten to swamp their canoes.” There were reports of lions in the south of France, walruses at the mouth of the Thames, flocks of birds that took three days to fly overhead, as many as 100 blue whales in the Southern Ocean for every one that’s there now. “These are not sights from some ancient age of fire and ice,” MacKinnon writes. “We are talking about things seen by human eyes, recalled in human memory.”

[oldmansurfer]

Read about the Passenger pigeon, that huge flocks would darken the sky for days as they flew by. Now extinct killed off by humans. Hard to believe a species so numerous could be entirely killed off just by a much smaller number of humans. In Hawaii extinctions go on and on due to small numbers and limited habitat but still caused by humans. The buffalo were once so numerous but fortunately they have been bred in captivity and are growing in numbers. In Hawaii the nene goose was once down to 30 individual birds in the entire world. Now due to captive breeding there are over 40 on the island of Kauai and more on each of the other islands around 2,800. The insects in Hawaii are not so lucky as the plants they live on go extinct or the habitat they lived in has been over taken by humans. It will probably never be known how many species have gone extinct already since new ones are still being found regularly.

[RinkyDink]

Read about the Passenger pigeon, that huge flocks would darken the sky for days as they flew by. Now extinct killed off by humans. Hard to believe a species so numerous could be entirely killed off just by a much smaller number of humans. In Hawaii extinctions go on and on due to small numbers and limited habitat but still caused by humans. The buffalo were once so numerous but fortunately they have been bred in captivity and are growing in numbers. In Hawaii the nene goose was once down to 30 individual birds in the entire world. Now due to captive breeding there are over 40 on the island of Kauai and more on each of the other islands around 2,800. The insects in Hawaii are not so lucky as the plants they live on go extinct or the habitat they lived in has been over taken by humans. It will probably never be known how many species have gone extinct already since new ones are still being found regularly.

I think it's scary that birds are now going extinct because they're STARVING to death due to the lack of insects to sustain them any longer. That's alarming. It just feels intuitive to me that if the insects die off, then an enormous number of humans can't be too far behind.

[oldmansurfer]

In the future we will be eating bugs so at least some bugs won't have to worry about going extinct. The windshield effect the author describes seems to me to be related to vegetation changes here in Hawaii as opposed to pesticides. Where the right vegetation exists there are plenty of bugs to mess up your windshield. I think humans have been causing species to go extinct ever since they found fire. New technology offers new ways to make species go extinct but also new ways to save them as well. Humans have been starving during their entire existence. Modern technology to blame for large numbers recently. People with good intentions have brought modern health care to third world countries. These third world people were used to having the majority of their offspring dying before they become adults so they have traditions of having lots of babies so that at least one or two will grow up to adulthood. Along comes these people with good intentions and vaccinations and sanitation and good diets and suddenly most of their children grow up and the population goes crazy outstripping the food supply and they starve to death. Oh well they had good intentions

[RinkyDink]

In the future we will be eating bugs so at least some bugs won't have to worry about going extinct.

I hope you're right.

[RinkyDink]

Keep yourself informed.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/in ... e1b17f097d