|
Pages: [1]
|
 |
|
|
Author
|
Discussion? - Ecological Niches | (Read 260 times) |
|
alexisavoire
Posts: 120
|
 |
February 24, 2008, 10:04:58 PM |
|
Over the past several months there have been a couple of news blurbs about bees dying off. Tonight there was a 60 Minutes show on the overnight disappearance of thousands and thousands of bees from a bee keeper's hives down south.
Bees occupy an important niche in the ecosystem - the pollination that produces and sustains crops. They are dying off for some mysterious reason. Without them famine - worldwide famine if enough are lost - is a very real possibility. Frogs, like bees, are another nearly invisible living indicator of collapses in the ecosystem, at the bottom, that lead to massive failures across species (including our own). Frogs, too, have begun to disappear from their ecological habitats - an observation first reported about five years ago by concerned field researchers in South America, Central America and southeast Asia, three wet regions loaded with frog species.
The implications are staggering and call human choices about things like genetically engineered crops, pesticides, consumption and waste practices and overpopulation into question.
It is scary that "going Green" has been around for several decades now and is still struggling to make a difference and it gets even harder to implement green practices every few years as social complexity increases.
Anyway, these topics, political and sometimes unpleasant as they are, remind me why it is important to keep considering "Green concerns" and to keep trying to make "going green" easier instead of harder.
Is anyone else worried sick?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
MJ Solaro
Administrator
Posts: 131
|
|
February 25, 2008, 09:32:39 AM |
|
It's funny you should mention this. I was reading an article on the BBC just this morning talking about how an unseasonably mild February has caused many of the bees in the UK to emerge from winter hibernation too early, and start building colonies. They expect that they will all be killed off by frosts in March. It's only too easy to see how with a few simple weather changes, the patterns of bumblebees could be disrupted irrevocably.
We all understand the cascading impact of the extinction of bumblebees..
I do have hope though. I see first world nations like the EU and Australia stepping up their policies and their commitment to the environment. I see that all of the major candidates in our presidential race have a firm commitment to the environment and reforming our nations' policies. I see an unprecedented surge in technology around green in Seattle and the Silicon Valley: the best minds that were previously on the computer and internet revolutions have flipped a switch and are now determined to solve the problem.
And more importantly, I think more people are taking going green more seriously than ever before. Having been raised in a household where environmentalism was equated with satanic worship, I've watched a complete paradigm shift occur in my nuclear family. My dad installed solar panels on his roof last month, and my mom has started recycling for the first time in her life. They both want me to come over and give them energy audits and teach them how to cut back on their carbon footprints.
The situation is dire. There's no doubt about that. But when I see the way people around Seattle and the world are rallying, I have a great deal of hope.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
alexisavoire
Posts: 120
|
|
February 26, 2008, 12:01:58 AM |
|
"Albert Einstein once said "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left." Bees pollinate about one-third of humanity's food supply. Without them, we would have some serious food shortage problems. "
Around 1996 medical science began to study Einstein's (actual, preserved) brain to find out what accounted for his brilliance (see bottom of page) We are that interested in the originality, depth, and significance of his insights some 68 years after his major contributions. Insight into bees in the food chain was not his main field of intellect so I find it interesting he was concerned enough about bees in the food chain to think - significantly - about it during his lifetime when the non-green practices we inherited from that era were in full and unapologetic effect. The environmental movement only moved mainstream after WWII ("...only after the Second World War did a wider awareness begin to emerge." Wikipedia, the Common (Wo)Man's Reference).
Einstein died in 1955 and WWII ended in 1945 - ten years at the end of his life were of enough concern to him to elicit such a major (and previously unmentioned) insight into the sciences of Ecology and Biology. Would that we had more such inspired and singularly unique minds churning over the world's problems in all those Think Tanks.
The Doomsday Seed Diversity Vault (Svalbard Global Seed Vault) went into effect yesterday as well. Check out the website for the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
I think we are all (including the EU) a lot more worried than we let on...
And, maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that politicians speak Green most ardently before their election, that state and federal green policies are too inefficient to be as effective as citizens would like them to be with no recourse to political redress for the problematic areas; that legitimate Green Concerns - like simplifying some of the complexity that technology wizards and the Tech Industry (among others) heavily endorse - have been heavily diluted by advertising trying to promote the consumerism of poseur natural products as Green when it is the antithesis of environmental awareness.
Seattle's condo craze, property inflation, skyrocketed cost of living (since the DotCom industry boomed and busted) and commitment to appearance over substance in its general policies of government belie its seeming commitment to improving the environment. But it was voted the "Best City to Ride a Bicycle" in a few years back...
Anyway, could be worse than Seattle - could be Detroit!
Fr: Einstein's Brain
After the removal of the brain, Dr Harvey cut it into 240 fine sections and embedded it in celodin to allow
for microscopic examination. After the discovery of parts of the brain in a cider box in Dr Harvey’s living
room in 1996 by Steven Levy, the remaining pieces of the brain were presented to Dr Elliot Krauss, chief
pathologist at Princeton Hospital.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
alexisavoire
Posts: 120
|
|
February 26, 2008, 12:04:48 AM |
|
This researcher thinks genetically modified crops...segues into that whole Svalbard Global Seed Vault thing.
(online)
Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
By Gunther Latsch
Der Spiegel
Thursday 22 March 2007
"A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous"
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Pages: [1]
|
|
|
|
|
