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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

ROGUE EXPERIMENTS."In 2012 Russ George, founder of Planktos, and collaborators conducted an iron fertilization experiment dumping 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean ... which resulted in increased algae growth over 10,000 square miles. Critics allege George's actions violated the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea."" " http://lnkd.in/dFkbqUn 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

RECENT IRON SEEDING TRIALS. "Since 1993, thirteen international research teams have completed ocean trials demonstrating that phytoplankton blooms can be stimulated by iron addition. The most recent open ocean trials of ocean iron fertilization were in 2009 (January to March) in the South Atlantic by project LOHAFEX, and in July 2012 in the North Pacific off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, by the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation."" " http://lnkd.in/dFkbqUn 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

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

"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

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

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

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