Showing posts with label Biodiversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biodiversity. Show all posts

Monday, July 06, 2009

Shouldn't this bother the creationists more than the evolutionists?

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I mean, we'd be wasting what God made for us 6000 years ago, right? It shows we aren't very good stewards of His creation....
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 800 animal and plant species have gone extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now threatened with extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported on Thursday.

A detailed analysis of these numbers indicates the international community will fail to meet its 2010 goal of bolstering biodiversity -- maintaining a variety of life forms -- a commitment made by most governments in 2002.

Based on data released in 2008 in the union's Red List, the new IUCN analysis is being released now to precede the 2010 target year and to draw a connection between crises in the financial and environmental realms, said report editor Jean-Christophe Vie.

"We don't want to make a choice between nature and the economy; we just want to bring nature to the same level when you have to take a decision," Vie said by telephone from Switzerland.
In fact, I'd assume if God gets really pissed we should watch out for plagues of locusts to Canada and droughts to California and that kind of stuff....

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Present day Noah's Ark

The Italians have the right idea:

ROME, April 6 (UPI) -- Italian environmentalists are drafting a plan to protect the country's biodiversity.

The World Wide Fund for Nature and the Environmental Protection Agency are working together on the plan, which will be used to protect Italian plants, animals and ecosystems.

The two groups will focus on key "eco-regions" -- the Alps and the Mediterranean -- ANSA reported. The Alps, one of the last surviving natural areas in central Europe, are home to 13,000 plants and 30,000 animals.

The WWF says the Mediterranean has 25,000 plants, 62 species of amphibians and 179 kinds of reptiles.

The WWF is coordinating Italy's efforts with groups from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to protect areas that cross international borders. ANSA said 20 different groups are targeting the Mediterranean region.

A recent report said over 45 percent of Italy's vertebrates, 40 percent of its plants and 30 percent of its natural environments are threatened.

As do the Norwegians:
Norway is building a Doomsday bunker that has every known crop seed in the world.
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So... will we stop denying the coming catastrophe or continue trying to ignore it?
The {UN} report claims that global warming will lead to desertification, droughts and rising seas and that those living in the tropics will be the worst hit -- from sub-Saharan Africa to the Pacific islands. Billions could face water shortages, and ocean levels might rise for centuries to come. It could lead to a sharp drop in crop yields in Africa and bring heatwaves to Europe and North America. Europe's Alpine glaciers will disappear and much of the coral that comprises Australia's Great Barrier Reef will die from bleaching.
The scientific conclusions -- based on 29,000 sets of data -- also said that up to 30 percent of the Earth's species faced a higher risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average in the 1980s and '90s. "The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program at the conservation organization WWF. "Doing nothing is not an option."