Year: 2022

ROYAL SOCIETY REPORT: ACID OCEANS DUE TO ATMOSPHERIC CO2. This august collaborative report concludes that trying to change ocean acidification can only be effected by reducing CO2 emissions. Was this whole venture a red herring? " " http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf View in LinkedIn

BAD MACRO-ENGINEERING EXPERIMENTS are replete in recent history including attempts at biocontrol. Inadvertently, however, we have wittingly conducted truly macro-experiments on the planet, since the beginning industrial revolution: vast amounts of CO2 emissions, pesticides and fertilizers, and the dumping of large amounts of toxins into our soil and water systems. View in LinkedIn

100 YEARS: TONS OF TOXINS POURED OVER THE PLANET. "Over the past century humans have introduced a large number of chemical substances into the environment. Some are the waste from industrial and agricultural processes. Some have been designed as structural materials and others have been designed to perform various functions such as healing the sick or killing pests and weeds. Obviously some chemicals are useful but many are toxic and their harm to the environment and our health far outweighs their benefit to society."" " http://lnkd.in/dnj7VUw View in LinkedIn

"ANTHROPOGENIC PRESSURES ON THE EARTH SYSTEM have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems."" " http://lnkd.in/dv-KV_4 View in LinkedIn

EUCALYPTUS INTRODUCTION INTO THE US during the Gold Rush involved considerable research. The (wrong) species selected was quick growing but highly flammable and useless for railway ties. "The result was invariably the same: failure. The joint industrial effort evaluated 569 sources representing 103 species over a 14-year period." " " http://lnkd.in/dgQs487 View in LinkedIn

SPARROWS INTRODUCED FOR PEST CONTROL. "Less than 200 years ago, there were no House Sparrows in North America. Now these cosmopolitan birds are one of the most abundant songbirds on the continent, with an estimated 150 million birds established in all 48 states."" " http://lnkd.in/dX5fbW6 View in LinkedIn

KUDZU: AN EXPERIMENT GONE WRONG. "Kudzu was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control. During the 1940s, he (a Kudzu advocate) traveled across the southeast starting Kudzu Clubs to honor what he called “the miracle vine.” Now that it covers over seven million acres of the deep South, there are a lot of people working hard to get rid of it."" " http://lnkd.in/dA8hTBV View in LinkedIn

CANE TOAD BIOCONTROL BACKFIRES. "Cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 as a biological control method against the Greyback cane beetle that was destroying sugar cane crops. The cane toad is native to South and Central America, and has been used successfully as a biological control against beetles in Hawaii. This method of pest management went horribly wrong in Australia," primarily due to a lack of rigorous biological fitness evaluation for this ecosystem. " " http://lnkd.in/dzExRBN View in LinkedIn

"WHEN A PLAGUE of tree-climbing aphids afflicted pecan orchards in the southeastern United States in the 1970s, federal biologists released a tree-climbing ladybug from Asia to devour them. The multicolored Asian lady beetle (Harmonia axyridis) did a superb job." Unfortunately, it ate everything and quickly spread across America. Great article with many examples of well-intentioned biological control run amuck. " " http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/animals/archives/2005/good-bugs-gone-bad.aspx View in LinkedIn

ASIAN CARP EXPERIMENT BLOWS UP as Chicago decided to destroy the fish. "Such a move could cost up to $18bn (£11bn) and cause huge economic disruption to the city." "Cheaper options are also being examined, including making burgers out of the fish and eating them to extinction. They were originally introduced to southern US states more than three decades ago to control algal build-up in sewage treatment plants. But they escaped into the Mississippi River and proliferated, making their way north towards the Great Lakes."" " http://lnkd.in/diQRJyz View in LinkedIn