Archive for the 'Ecology'

More boat than fish

How is it, living in the Anthropocene? Sea levels will likely rise a few feet by the year 2100. Current fish wet biomass is about 2 billion tons, so removing them won’t make a dent either. (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century, which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion: Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than fish.) The current world shipping fleet has a displacement of about 2.15 billion tons (most of which is oil and ore), so yeah, we humans are now bulking out more volume in the oceans than the fish do (we’ve got a long ways to go before we overtake invertebrates and bacteria, I suspect). The other depressing point in the article is that global warming is adding more water to the oceans every second, and that every 16 hours we’re adding more than that 2 billion tons of water to the ocean.

Nevada seems to have more than its share of idiots

Finally my lifelong lack of a college degree pays off! As it turns out,  college degrees are bad for living things. At least that’s according to sterling citizen Cliff Gardner of Ruby Valley in Nevada, who said this to the New York Times: “I’m sure most of the people being considered for Read more

What is a species, anyway?

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Humans versus wildlife

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Paper describes cost of biodiversity, though not its value

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