42 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

Here is some more evidence not only of the cumulative damage to the ocean's stocks through overfishing but a warning that the methods being used could be creating a long term damage to the spawning regions of deep water coral.

http://story.news.ya...nment_corals_dc
Aggressive Fishing Threatens Oceans-UN
Fri Jun 4, 1:13 PM ET Science - Reuters
By Emma Graham-Harrison

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) sounded an alarm over the health of the world's oceans Friday, warning that aggressive fishing threatened little-understood corals it called "kindergartens of the oceans."

Mysterious cold water corals -- some 8,000 years old -- help nurture young fish and if they are destroyed it could be hard to restore the world's depleted fish stocks, according to research released before Saturday's World Environment Day.

This year's events, from a port cleanup in 2004 Olympics host city Athens to the launch of an international photographic competition, focus on risks to marine life.

The United Nations Environment Program said the corals, cousins of creatures that build better-known tropical reefs, can live in sunless waters up to 3.5 miles deep and are home to a wide variety of marine life.

They are particularly threatened by 'bottom trawling,' which involves pulling huge weighted nets behind ships. The nets drag along the sea floor scooping up all the marine life in their way -- from valuable fish to inedible species and delicate corals.

"Everyone must be aware (that) without intact coral reefs, warm and cold water reefs, you will not be able to restore fish stocks fully," UNEP head Klaus Toepfer said in an interview.

"This is another alarm call to ... change the techniques of fishing, especially bottom trawling which has quite disastrous consequences for these kindergartens of fish," he told Reuters.

Greenpeace also called Friday for an immediate ban on high-seas bottom trawling, saying it can alter the ocean floor in a way that prevents coral growing back.


VORACIOUS APPETITE

Environmentalists trying to persuade governments to cut back on fishing to protect reefs and precarious fish stocks are up against a formidable enemy, however -- a voracious international appetite for seafood.

From sushi in Tokyo to fish and chips in London, consumer demand drives a market worth an estimated $75 billion a year and also supports jobs in coastal areas of many countries where other employment options can be limited.

Fishing of more usual commercial species is depleting stocks at an alarming rate, and a target to replenish overfished waters by 2015 is still far off, Toepfer said.

But tumbling numbers of traditional favorites like cod only encourage some fishermen to turn to more exotic deep sea options like orange roughy or blue ling.

The fate of these fish is intimately tied to that of the slow-growing cold-water corals they live in and around, and it can be hard to catch them without damaging or destroying the reefs.

Even if deep sea fishing is scaled back, however, seabed telecommunications cables, waste dumping and fossil fuel prospecting would still threaten the fragile coral beds, which scientists say are more extensive than they originally thought.

Found in seas from Norway to New Zealand, some of those in the east Atlantic have already been destroyed.

And there is little hope of any short-term recovery for the reefs, which Toepfer said could also hold the key to new medicines or industrial products. The cold water corals grow at one-tenth the rate of their tropical cousins.

[Mind]

The numerous actors on the international environmental field need coordination by a new Global Environmental Organization (GEO)

How about they (international environmental organizations) just start coordinating better, instead of creating more bureaucracy. If a GEO is created it will just be one more level of paper work, 1,000 more bureaucrats, and a bigger waste of money and time. The most efficient environmental organizations I have ever seen are local. I have seen Ducks, Pheasants, and Trout Unlimited restore more natural ecology than than Greenpeace ever has. People in my community (just regular folks) clean up parks, plant trees, and protect local streams without any laws being passed or GEO's telling them what to do.

[Lazarus Long]

Mind, local control and input to the process is critical to the Environmental movement but they are really powerless in the larger sense. It is irrational to approach the environment on *only* a local stance. Environment is the quintessential *global* issue. It must also have structural components that address this aspect and are larger than any single government.

This may be seen as a conundrum but it is a reality that also trumps classical political reasoning. I would argue for both Local and Global organization as these are not mutually exclusive propositions. The excess bureaucracy is a *real* hazard but relying upon local control only is just not rational.

[Mind]

Laz: I would argue for both Local and Global organization as these are not mutually exclusive propositions.  The excess bureaucracy is a *real* hazard but relying upon local control only is just not rational.

Yes, yes, I understand what you are saying. My main point is one that you also make...that too much bureaucracy hinders more than helps.

[Lazarus Long]

I think it is very relevant to your point to reference a few other overlapping threads at this juncture Mind.

Designer Ecosystems; David Suzuki
http://www.imminst.o...1&t=3760&hl=&s=

Evolutionary Economics (CIRA)
http://www.imminst.o...6&t=2181&hl=&s=

Evolution & Human *Racism*
http://www.imminst.o...6&t=1103&hl=&s=

Forces Beyond Biological Evolution
http://www.imminst.o...11&t=882&hl=&s=

Parasitism
http://www.imminst.o...f=106&t=2417&s=

Sociological impact of immortality
http://www.imminst.o...06&t=808&hl=&s=

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped The Evolution
http://www.imminst.o...44&t=233&hl=&s=

[Mind]

Ok, I am going to post this even though this is supposed to about all the bad things that are happening in the world. Kevin, if you think good news does not belong here, then let me know and I will start a new thread.

This article is in fact about health, but I couldn't pass up the good news contained within. Yes, a case can be made for rational optimism.

Reccomendations for eating oily fish

Here is the positive quote I am talking about.

The concentration of dioxins and PCBs also varies between oily fish. For example, herring has the highest levels, with salmon second, while trout has lower levels, states the report. Methylmercury is particularly high in the large predatory fish such as shark or swordfish, as it tends to accumulate up the food chain.

But overall, levels of dioxins and PCBs in the environment are falling, having declined by about 70 per cent in the last decade.

[Lazarus Long]

This is good news and shows that many of our efforts over the last fifty years to clean up rivers and coastal marshlands are finally paying off; even though total stocks are way below normal counts. However it is also possibly due to the fact that few top of the food chain fish are living to true maturity and have the time to accumulate the toxins.

[kevin]

Mind..

In the past month I actually have come across some positive posts..and I debated including them in this thread or starting a new one... but it seems I gravitate to the idea that as soon as people feel the pressure is off they'll move back to business as usual.. but I have to say I myself have been encouraged by the efforts being made by different industries in supporting environmental controls..

Maybe I *could* be a little more positive about things..

[Lazarus Long]

The issue of population and global warming is not an idle one, especially combined with a religion of consumerism. Here is the latest analysis that says we are all living far beyond our means and getting worse.

I understand that some of you don't approve of the source but examine the data without bias before drawing too many conclusions please.

LL

http://story.news.ya...ment_wwf_dc&e=4

World Living Beyond Its Environmental Means-WWF
Science - Reuters
By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - The world is consuming some 20 percent more natural resources a year than the planet can produce, conservationist group WWF warned on Thursday. Urging governments to move rapidly to restore the ecological balance, the Swiss-based group said rich countries, particularly in North America, were largely to blame for the situation.

"We are running up an ecological debt which we will not be able to pay off," Dr Claude Martin, director-general of WWF International, told a news conference.

In its 'Living Planet Report 2004,' the fifth in a series, the WWF said that between 1970 and 2000, populations of marine and terrestrial species fell 30 percent. That of freshwater species declined 50 percent. "This is a direct consequence of increasing human demand for food, fiber, energy and water," it said.

What WWF calls the "ecological footprint" -- the amount of productive land needed on average worldwide to sustain one person -- currently stood at 2.2 hectares (5.43 acres). But the earth had only 1.8 hectares (4.45 acres) per head -- based on the planet's estimated 11.3 billion hectares (27.9 billion acres) of productive land and sea space divided between its 6.1 billion people. "...humans consume 20 percent more natural resources than the earth can produce," WWF said.

This contrasted with the position in 1960, the year WWF was launched, when the world used only 50 percent of what the earth could generate.


MISS TARGET

On present trends, countries would miss a target of reducing significantly biodiversity loss by 2010, agreed at the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002, Jonathan Loh, one of the report's authors, told journalists. The fastest growing component of the footprint was energy use, which had risen by 700 percent between 1961 and 2001.

Overall, resource use as measured by the footprint rose eight percent in per capita terms among the planet's richer one billion inhabitants in the years 1991-2001, but fell by the same percentage among the rest of the world, WWF said. North Americans were consuming resources at a particularly fast rate, with an ecological footprint that was twice as big as that of Europeans and seven times that of the average Asian or African, WWF said.

"If we all reached the level of per capita footprint of the average North America, it is clearly an unsustainable situation. The planet clearly would not be able to sustain that level of consumption for very long," Loh said.
Bringing the world back into balance involved action on a number of fronts, including slowing world population growth. But technology could play a vital role, particularly through the use and development of more environment friendly energy sources, Loh said. "If you look at that 20 percent excess, a very large part of our footprint is coming from the consumption of fossil fuels. And that is the biggest problem to target," he said.

[Mind]

OK, I am going to restrain myself from any anti-socialist tyrades. Yay!

I don't think we should be running willy-nilly over the environment, but I usually have differences with the likes of WWF on the methods to properly steward the envirnment. I think it can be done without sacrificing many freedoms or property rights.

Anyway, let us try to figure out the math here. From what I gather, WWF is saying

The world is consuming some 20 percent more natural resources a year than the planet can produce

For simplicity's sake let us set the aggregate resources of the earth at 100 units. In one year we would be down to 80 units. In 2 years we would be down to 64 units. In a little over 4 years we would be below 50 units. This cannot be the calculation they are doing because we would have been screwed long before now.

They must be lumping together renewable and non-renewable resources (like oil...which they mention). In that case there may be 100 units of reneable resources and (I am making this number up for the sake of this thought experiment) 900 units of non-renewable resources. If we use 20% of the aggregate every year then we start with 1,000 units of resources and after the first year we would be down to 800. We would have 80 units of renewables and 720 non-renewable units left. The question now becomes how fast do the renewables renew themsleves. Are we back up to 100 after a year, or does it take 5 years? No matter, the rate at which the resource units decline is still rapid. So rapid that there would be mass starvation and economic depression within a couple years. Since it hasn't happenned, I would say they are overestimating the percent of resources we use up.

Or....oil is the lynch-pin of their calculation. If they are using the peak-oil theory, then yes we will be out of oil before the end of the decade...and oil is the most significant resource in use today. Maybe it is making up 18 or 19% of the "20%" number they have come up with.

There isn't enough data in the article to verify their claims.

One thing I have to say is 1.8 hectares of land is more than enough to sustain one person. Again I think they must be somehow lumping oil production into this "footprint" estimate, which seems illogical. Even if oil runs out, we have energy alternatives to continue our farming/industrial processes. The transition may be bumpy but nowhere near fatal.

[kraemahz]

What WWF calls the "ecological footprint" -- the amount of productive land needed on average worldwide to sustain one person -- currently stood at 2.2 hectares (5.43 acres). But the earth had only 1.8 hectares (4.45 acres) per head -- based on the planet's estimated 11.3 billion hectares (27.9 billion acres) of productive land and sea space divided between its 6.1 billion people.

It's probably just these numbers they're using. 1.8 is 81% of 2.2, sounds like they're just saying that there's 20% less landmass than they calculated was needed to sustain a human. How they calculated this person/lan ratio is unstated though, as is what it actually means.

[Lazarus Long]

Before getting to the meat of this article (sorry I just couldn't resist) I should add that this article raises questions that make it appropriate to post under this topic, the Orwellian Threat and Environmental Economics.

I also want to address an aspect of nature that should be understood has been at work for millions of years but the results of it may be interesting.

The paradigm of predation can be viewed as a meme governing behavior from an adaptation model of evolutionary biology.

********

Super-predator is regular visitor
Thursday June 2, 2005
The Guardian

Fossil records show that around every 26m years, a mass extinction occurs on Earth, wiping out millions of species and leaving only a few hardy survivors.

Many scientists have blamed these regular catastrophic culls on meteorite bombardments. But now a paper in Physical Review E suggests that the cause could lie much closer to home.

Adam Lipowski, a physicist from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, has developed a computer model which shows that periodic mass extinctions could be caused by the evolution of a "super-predator". Most of the time, the model is populated by medium efficiency predators, but every so often genetic mutations lead to the evolution of a highly efficient beast.

"This super-predator is a fast-consuming species and it quickly decimates the population of preys, which in turn leads to its own decline," he explains. Any creatures that survive this destruction gradually mutate to fill the new ecological niches and the cycle starts afresh.

So are humans the latest super-predator? "It is the feeling that we have, but our model is too abstract to say this for sure," says Lipowski.

http://www.guardian....1496843,00.html

This computer model is very intriguing from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

Is there a paradigm of predator mentality that is logically selected for by evolution but also self limiting by virtue of its behavior?

Sentience by itself cannot necessarily be considered anything more than a degree of sophistication for the predator paradigm and it follows that the species would compete on a relatively level playing field against itself thus mitigating some of the benefits of sentience.

However there is also an alternative idea that humans are coming late (as a species) to the adoption of the paradigm of being a predator and because of their more socialized roots as an pack omnivore may offer a slight alteration on previous adapted evolutionary models. Nevertheless modern extreme forms of social capitalism could be viewed as inherently predatory in their memetic structure.

It will be interesting to see how the computer model plays into the compounding of risk for extinction when combined with climactic, volcanic, and extraterrestrial hazard.

The mass extinctions have occurred more frequently than specifically identified events and there are gaps in the models for such events that have never really been reconciled. The combination of the two could answer a lot of questions.

[bossplaya]

LOL @ the quote by Patrick:
[tung]

I say, if you want to save a species, put them on the dinner table. We're never going to run out of cattle. Tiger burgers, manatee milkshakes, whale fries, why not?

I think there is an element of truth in what you are saying, though -- if commercial interests in these animals as a food source or some other source of profit were to come forth, there would certainly be found a way to keep these species alive!

It's like, profit is the only motivation for governments and big business to get off their haunches and really get something done. Funding would definitely not be running short; money would suddenly come to the aid of the animals and trees if there was big bucks to be made out of exploiting them further. Conservation efforts run short of funding and manpower; with conservation as a motivation, they are barely scraping together teams of dedicated people who really care enough to do something about the environment and the species on earth.