Peak Oil News and Message Boards

pstarr wrote:

jupiters_release wrote:

pstarr wrote:
Better to offgas the methane. Extra CO2 in the atmosphere is great for growing cattle fodder.

Is this sarcasm or do you still really believe "global greening" beneficial to Gaia?

Do you have evidence of the contrary?

For those predisposed to the supernatural I will explain the simple science one more time, to wit: excess carbon in the atmosphere has generated a continent-sized patch of new trees on the planet earth. Those trees have just begun to sequester carbon. It is their way.

Trees live to sequester carbon. Trees are carbon sequesters. The best at sequestering carbon. The Way of the Trees

Species of reptiles, amphibians and other vertebrates are becoming extinct in Haiti as deforestation has claimed more than 99 percent of the country's original wooded areas.

A research collaboration that included two scientists affiliated with Oregon State University found that 42 of Haiti's 50 largest mountains have lost all of their primary forest.

Moreover, mountaintop surveys of vertebrates showed that species are disappearing along with the trees, highlighting the global threat to biodiversity by human causes.

... "Species extinction is usually delayed until the last habitats are gone, but mass extinction appears imminent in a small number of tropical countries with low forest cover," ... "And mass extinction is already happening in Haiti because of deforestation."

Along with the mass extinctions, the findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that over the next two decades Haiti will lose all of its remaining primary forest cover.

JuanP wrote:I invested in underground cisterns, a deep well, and a rainwater collection system at my micro farm in Uruguay, planning to make it through regular 10 year droughts, if necessary. Humans and droughts were my two main concerns.

REAL Green wrote:

JuanP wrote:I invested in underground cisterns, a deep well, and a rainwater collection system at my micro farm in Uruguay, planning to make it through regular 10 year droughts, if necessary. Humans and droughts were my two main concerns.

JuanP, how can you invest in a farm in Uruguay when you are never there. I realize this is the internet so maybe what you are saying about your life in Miami Beach is reality or Uruguay is reality or neither. This really doesn't matter except that you represent yourself as respectable here but tell so many different stories about your life. We should be able to trust comment among fellow members. If you are lying then you are misleading us which is not proper membership behavior.

dissident wrote:

JuanP wrote:I invested in underground cisterns, a deep well, and a rainwater collection system at my micro farm in Uruguay, planning to make it through regular 10 year droughts, if necessary. Humans and droughts were my two main concerns.

I know some people who lived in Russia who were Ukrainian by origin who had small farms in Ukraine which they would maintain remotely and visited for part of the year. They were cut off in 2014. What JuanP says is fully realistic. He likely has family in Uruguay that takes care of this land in his absence. You also do not know how often he visits Uruguay in any given year. The current Covid-19 travel restrictions are not relevant.

The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible. Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human caused and accelerating.

The acceleration of the extinction crisis is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates. In addition, species are links in ecosystems, and, as they fall out, the species they interact with are likely to go also. In the regions where disappearing species are concentrated, regional biodiversity collapses are likely occurring. Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking massive global actions to save humanity’s crucial life-support systems.

The ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire species. Populations and species extinctions have severe implications for society through the degradation of ecosystem services. Here we assess the extinction crisis from a different perspective. We examine 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates, and determine which are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals. There are 515 species on the brink (1.7% of the evaluated vertebrates). Around 94% of the populations of 77 mammal and bird species on the brink have been lost in the last century. Assuming all species on the brink have similar trends, more than 237,000 populations of those species have vanished since 1900. We conclude the human-caused sixth mass extinction is likely accelerating for several reasons.

First, many of the species that have been driven to the brink will likely become extinct soon.

Second, the distribution of those species highly coincides with hundreds of other endangered species, surviving in regions with high human impacts, suggesting ongoing regional biodiversity collapses.

Third, close ecological interactions of species on the brink tend to move other species toward annihilation when they disappear—extinction breeds extinctions.

Finally, human pressures on the biosphere are growing rapidly, and a recent example is the current coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, linked to wildlife trade. Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking much-expanded worldwide actions to save wild species and humanity’s crucial life-support systems from this existential threat.