Great Barrier Reef: Gone in 20 Years

Posted by Alex in Travel & Places on July 17, 2009 at 2:06 am

First it was bluefin tuna, then Playboy bunnies, then the world’s wheat crop. Now the Great Barrier Reef is going to be gone in 20 years, according to marine scientist Charlie Veron:

Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”

Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

Frank Pope of The Times Online has the interview: Link

Everything’s going extinct like it’s going out of style! What’s (or who’s) next? Miley Cyrus?

From the Neatoshop: Having Great Vocab Didn’t Save the Thesaurus From Extinction

 
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Neatorama Shop » Home & Garden » Dishware, Drinkware & Flatware

Only 2,000 Left - The Rainbow That Can Fly

Posted by Queuebot in Animal on April 12, 2009 at 4:13 pm

The remarkable Rainbow Finch is found in Australia yet there are only around two thousand of them left in the wild.  Although conservation attempts are ongoing the question now seems to be whether or not this beautiful species will persevere for very much longer in its own original habitat. 

There is something about the Rainbow Finch that makes it look like an animal made up, using Photoshop, for an April Fool joke. The colors seem too bright to be real and each garish hue ends abruptly to be replaced by one equally as preposterous for a wild animal. The main part of its body looks like some psychedelic Neapolitan ice cream.

Link – via webphemera

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

 
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Did A Comet Wipe Out The Mammoths?

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on January 2, 2009 at 12:05 pm

Scientists have long pondered an event 12,900 years ago that caused the disappearance of the Clovis people of North America and the extinction of large mammals such as the mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed cat, and the North American camel. One theory is that a comet broke into fragments and showered burning material over the continent. Now there’s some evidence -a layer of nanodiamonds have been found at a layer of sediment buried 12,900 years ago. The diamonds could have only been formed by a high-pressure high-temperature event.

These diamonds are measured in nanometers — mere billionths of meters — and one of them would not suffice for an engagement ring unless the recipient had an extremely small finger. Indeed, these diamonds are visible only with the aid of the most advanced microscopes.

The wide distribution of the nanodiamonds could be a sign that the comet broke into pieces in space and that the fragments burned up explosively over a broad area of North America. The heat and pressure from the event transformed carbon on the planet’s surface into the tiny diamonds, the scientists said.

“Imagine these fireballs exploding in the air. A Clovis hunter standing and looking at these things would have seen a canopy of fire as these things came in and exploded,” said Allen West, a geophysicist and one of the paper’s co-authors. “There would have been no sound. There would have been massive explosions. Brilliant light, brighter than the sun. There would have been radiant heat — it would have been capable, at the very least, of giving him serious burns and, at the maximum, of incinerating him.”

This theory would explain the climate change at the time, when the warming planet was plunged into another, shorter ice age. Skeptics cite lack of a crater or other surface evidence in refuting the theory. Link -via Digg

 
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