Tag Archives: biodiversity

The global threat of invasive species to marine biodiversity

Preface.  Although I consider peak oil to be the largest threat, since all other resources and economic activities depend on it, we’re faced with a convergence of hundreds of other problems enabled by fossil fuels, which caused the the huge … Continue reading

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Hydropower dams and the ways they destroy the environment

Preface. Hydropower comprises 71% of renewable energy worldwide.  Nations like the U.S. and Europe have dams that have reached the end of their lifespan — more are being torn down than built. In the U.S. 546 dams were removed between … Continue reading

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Deep-sea trawling harms biodiversity and carbon storage

Preface. Overfishing has eliminated 90% of the world’s large predatory fishes and is devastating marine ecosystems. Bottom trawling is one of the most devastating ways our oceans are being overfished, degraded and biodiversity destroyed .  This industry tossed 437 million … Continue reading

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Solar PV requires too much land to replace fossils

Preface. This is a brief summary of the Capellan-Perez paper that calculates the land needed to use solar to replace electricity as well as the land needed if solar were to replace all of societies use of energy (i.e. transportation, … Continue reading

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75% of Earth’s land is degraded threatening 3.2 billion people

  Preface. By 2050 95% of Earth’s land could be degraded and reducing or even preventing food production, forcing hundreds of millions to migrate. More than 75% of our planet has been altered by humans, a figure that will likely … Continue reading

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Biodiversity loss has gone beyond the planetary boundaries

Source: Tanja Folnovic, June 23, 2015 “Loss of Biodiversity”. http://blog.agrivi.com/post/loss-of-biodiversity Preface. The survival of homo sapiens depends on the ecosystem that supports us, so a loss of biodiversity is a threat to our survival and ultimately can lead to extinction. … Continue reading

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“World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”

Preface. I’m sure anyone reading this post knows it is too late to do anything but eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow …  Although this warning was widely published, it was left out of over half of the top … Continue reading

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Why vultures are so important — and dying off

University of Utah. May 5, 2016. Why vultures matter—and what we lose if they’re gone. Original paper: Evan R. Buechley et al, The avian scavenger crisis: Looming extinctions, trophic cascades, and loss of critical ecosystem functions, Biological Conservation (2016).Vultures in … Continue reading

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An invasive green monster that can double in 2 days and impossible to control threatens 20 states

    [ The 2011 House of Representatives hearing below is a discussion of how to control salvinia. We spend about $135 billion on invasive species a year – what will happen when the fossil energy to remove them is … Continue reading

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Biggest threat to biodiversity is not climate change: it’s agriculture, fishing, and hunting

[ This article makes the point that other factors are far more to blame for biodiversity loss than climage change. And with “peak everything“, especially peak oil, but also peak coal, and peak natural gas — greenhouse gas emissions will … Continue reading

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