11/17/2004 Entry: "RATE OF EXTINCTIONS ACCELERATING EXPONENTIALLY"





RATE OF EXTINCTIONS ACCELERATING EXPONENTIALLY

15,568 species now face extinction

NewScientist.com









The number of threatened species on the planet is increasing at unprecedented rates across almost all major animal groups, according to the most comprehensive evaluation of the world’s biodiversity ever undertaken.



A total of 15,568 species now face extinction, according to the 2004 Red List of Threatened Species published on Wednesday by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). This represents a rise of 3300 species compared to the 2003 list. One in three amphibians and almost half of all freshwater turtles are now threatened, as well as one in eight birds and a quarter of known mammals.



For the first time, the Red List includes an index that shows the overall change in threatened status and the projected risk of extinction for each particular species group. The conclusion is that there is an even greater sense of urgency, says Simon Stuart at Conservation International, Washington DC, US.

cont...





The distinctive rostrum of the Largetooth sawfish often becomes entangled in West Pacific fishing nets



Callum Rankine, international species officer for the World Wildlife Fund, agrees: “Year-on-year we know that the situation is getting worse, but this time it just seems to be getting worse much faster."



New to science



There is still much to be understood about key species-rich habitats, such as tropical forests, marine and freshwater systems, says Craig Hilton-Taylor, one of the Red List’s authors. This is despite these appearing to be some of the ecologies most at risk.



For example, in Madagascar more than half the freshwater fish now face extinction. One of these, a type of killifish which is so new to science it has not yet been formally named, used to live in what was the Sakaramyi River.



But this has now been diverted for domestic water supplies leaving the last remaining specimens of this fish existing in “a handful of puddles”, sustained only by poor plumbing. “If all the people in Madagascar fixed their taps, these fish would die out,” Hilton-Taylor says.

Human geography

In addition to the list itself, the IUCN published results of a four-year analysis entitled the Global Species Assessment (GSA) which highlights problems not just in terms of biodiversity but also in terms of human geography and socioeconomics.



For example, although some countries like Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico have a disproportionately high number of species at risk, the number of threatened species is likely to increase more rapidly in regions where human population growth rates are high, such as in Cameroon or India. “This is the first time we have been able to overlay species distribution maps with population growth data,” says Stuart, one of the authors of the GSA.



Habitat loss is by far the greatest threat to biodiversity but, in regions where human population growth is particularly high, “the traditional protected area approach might not work”, says Hilton-Taylor.



The challenge lies in finding ways to enable people living in poverty to develop a sustainable relationship with their local resources. “But it’s extremely difficult to get these people to live sustainably, because often they are just concerned with trying to live,” says Rankine.



The new data also offers the chance to identify countries for pre-emptive conservation initiatives. In countries such as Bolivia, Papua New Guinea and Namibia, there is currently a low human population density but a high rate of population growth, which could threaten wildlife in the future.



Duncan Graham-Rowe

Viewer Commentary: 26 comments

Who do those stupid ass Liberal-commie frogs think they are?.

Their lower on the food chain than people. If they keep complaining about their trees getting cut down we'll declare a 'war on frogs' and we'll bomb them into the stone age and stuff. Then we'll stick Anthrax from that military Anthrax place we got in the US(you know where those anthrax letters came from? teehee, fooled yu's. Then we'll give them frogs to those left-wing tin foil head frenchies to eat, then they'll die and then George Bush can take over the world!

P.S - My mum tucks me into bed at night and I like tiny teddies and warm milk

Posted by Unknown American Idiot @ 11/18/2004 07:06 AM EST

The George W. Bush pre-election massacre has already happened! Central Texas, a whole town, 120 men women and children. Three babies!

Posted by Lois Wayne @ 11/18/2004 08:23 AM EST

I think that was WACO TEXAS under Bill(Slick Willy)Clinton.

Posted by Unknown Soldier @ 11/18/2004 11:52 AM EST

You know you're all alone

Your friends they aren't at home

Everybody's gone to the garden

As you look into the trees

You can look but you don't see

The flowers seem to tease you at the garden

Everybody's there, but you don't seem to care

What's it with you man, and this garden

Turned into my worst phobia,

A crazy man's utopia

If you're lost no one can show ya,

But it sure was glad to know ya

Only poor boys take a chance,

On the garden's song and dance,

Feel her flowers as they wrap around,

But only smart boys do without

You can find it all inside

No need to wrestle with your pride

No you ain't losin' your mind

You're just in the garden

They can lead you to yourself

Or you can throw it on the shelf

But you know you can look inside

For the garden

I wasn't really scared

Lost my virginity there,

To a gypsy with blond hair

But now no one seems to care

Like a mouse inside a maze

Wandering round 4 daze

With a smile upon my face,

I never wanna leave this place

Only poor boys take a chance,

On the garden's song and dance,

Feel her flowers as they wrap around,

But only smart boys do without

Turned into my worst phobia,

A crazy man's utopia

If you're lost no one can show ya,

But it sure was glad to know ya

Bye bye

So long, bye bye

It's glad to know ya

Bye bye

Bye bye

Aw...so long

Posted by Unknown Soldier @ 11/18/2004 03:19 PM EST

Unknown Soldier, you seem to be on here at all hours of the day and night, so I must ask, do you even have a job, or is this your job?

Posted by Chris @ 11/19/2004 03:59 AM EST

Unknown Soldier likes the attention because he doesn't get enough at home.

Do you have to keep posting that horrible band "Guns and Roses" with that racist homophobe and drunk Axel Rose?

Next thing you know he will be posting Toby Keith lyrics.

Posted by Gums of Moses @ 11/19/2004 11:19 AM EST

What all the knee-jerk humanists fail to realize is that this object of their adoration, i.e. "civilization," is far more fragile than the most robust elements of nature. Sure, there are millions of fringe species that will disappear rapidly, but nature at its core is an all but infinite reservoir of adaptive potential, far more so than weakling humans. Cockroaches, rats, slime-molds, and common weeds can scrape out an existence under climatic conditions far below the minimum requirements of civilization, and if we keep pushing our "only humans matter" bullshit, we're going to watch this very truth unfold.

In what will be a grand irony, the most overbred, least fit humans, i.e. the Ruling Pig class, will then become the sole survivors, because they'll push everyone else over the edge to save themselves. We'll know this day has arrived when genetically altered pneumonic Ebola, etc., "mysteriously" breaks out everywhere, even as a whole new class of servant robots suddenly emerges to take our place. This obscene parasitic scum will be so fucking doomed, ha ha! Instead of taking the sensible and just route of reverting to "primitive" folkways, these connoisseurs of hubris will resort to more and more extreme and entropically unstable means of maintaining the surreal luxury on which they're utterly dependent. This will only deepen the present pattern of techno-stupidity. Picture actual bubble-cities with robots everywhwere, all run on -- oh goody -- nuclear energy. When their much-deserved extinction finally arrives, these weird mewling fetus-things will be sobbing with relief.

Then a liberated earth will finally heal itself.

Posted by Future Historian @ 11/20/2004 10:47 PM EST

Hi Vox,Just glad to see that you are back posting. I thought maybe the fascists had gotten to you somehow. FACT: The planet is going into hyper-change mode at the same time the oil is running out for the old technology. NOBODY knows anything about the future anymore because the rate of change is so fast and the data is all so new every moment that even the weather is now completely unpredictable. SAME goes for human behavior and geopolitics. NONE of the old models hold. Love your brothers and sisters. Keep your feet on the ground if you can and don't waste time FIGHTING with imbeciles. Respectfully, A&P.

Posted by Angry and Prepared @ 11/24/2004 01:16 AM EST

Hi Vox,Just glad to see that you are back posting. I thought maybe the fascists had gotten to you somehow. FACT: The planet is going into hyper-change mode at the same time the oil is running out for the old technology. NOBODY knows anything about the future anymore because the rate of change is so fast and the data is all so new every moment that even the weather is now completely unpredictable. SAME goes for human behavior and geopolitics. NONE of the old models hold. Love your brothers and sisters. Keep your feet on the ground if you can and don't waste time FIGHTING with imbeciles. Respectfully, A&P.

Posted by Angry and Prepared @ 11/24/2004 01:17 AM EST

We are at a point in time/space where evolution and de-evolution are running about the same rate. The Cyber-Culture Future Historian speaks of is already here. The Chip-Mobile is already putting implants in people because, well, it is simply there. Cybernetics might not be a bad thing if not for hidden lower reptilian consciousness still hiding beneath the threashold of human consciousness. People are taught to accept death as something better than biological immortality. This is the only strength of religion. If we had infinite space to evolve, then maybe, just maybe, the confines of gravity would not have such a disastrous effect on earthbound species. Oh, Angry and Prepared, I agree 100%, although I do occasionally like putting dopes in their place with facts and logic. Love will prevail in the end, that I know.

Posted by 666999 @ 11/24/2004 03:06 PM EST

this site is dead "vox" hasnt posted anything of substance in a year and nothing at all for six months. but you people are still here i dont get it. this guy has become about as active as a can of flat beer....move on people vox has lost his voice find your own...peace

Posted by yoyoma @ 11/24/2004 05:49 PM EST

I was expecting you to post a story on the vote fraud, vox.

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/Expldiscrpv00oPt1.pdf

Posted by vote @ 11/24/2004 07:50 PM EST

Then why are YOU here, Yoyoma cryptospook?

Posted by Har! @ 11/25/2004 12:37 PM EST

Dear Vox,

Glad to see new activity on your site. Please give us an update as to your situation over the last few months. It seems as though things came crashing down when you announced the radio program (which I was never able to find) in the summer. I see the monitors are still at work. By the way, the text of the article and comments is seen on my browser in the palest of greys, hardley legible, so it seems like they are still messing with you. Hope all is well.

Posted by Robschoen @ 11/26/2004 06:46 PM EST

Dear Vox,

Glad to see new activity on your site. Please give us an update as to your situation over the last few months. It seems as though things came crashing down when you announced the radio program (which I was never able to find) in the summer. I see the monitors are still at work. By the way, the text of the article and comments is seen on my browser in the palest of greys, hardly legible, so it seems like they are still messing with you. Hope all is well.

Posted by Robschoen @ 11/26/2004 06:48 PM EST

The US $ is in a free fall as the US goes into record debt to pay Halliburton (Cheney), Bechtel (Rumsfeld) and Carlyle (Bush, Bin Laden, Blair).

The US is the biggest threat to world peace and the world is ganging up to fight back.

Remind me again how the concept of perpetual war against being scared (terror) benefits me?

Posted by collapse @ 11/27/2004 10:12 AM EST

yeah, Ghosts are scary, I declare a war on ghosts!

Posted by Adrian @ 11/28/2004 04:57 AM EST

A key concept in brainwashing is to communicate directly to the reptilian brain (hippocampus) using emotional words.

The "invasion and occupation of Iraq" becomes the "war on terror" and the sheeple can't figure out why the rest of the world is so pissed off at them.

Remember Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan, who fought valiantly to stop the Russian invasion?

We've conveniently renamed them "Al Quaeda Terrorists".

Al Quaeda is like the boogey man - really scary until you realise he isn't real.

Posted by collapse @ 11/28/2004 03:40 PM EST

"Peace Will Come When All Hate Is Gone"

Posted by Buster @ 11/28/2004 06:51 PM EST

"...NOBODY knows anything about the future anymore because the rate of change is so fast and the data is all so new every moment ... SAME goes for human behavior and geopolitics. NONE of the old models hold."

Simply not true. For as long as civilization's existed, its defining pattern has been the pursuit of ever larger strategies of parasitism by the ruling class as a discrete group toward the totality of life, including other humans. The implications of this pattern for the future of humanity and the earth are very clear, and the "advancement" of technology has done absolutely nothing to modify this dynamic, other than broadening and deepening it. Technology as a reality is eclipsed by the primal human motivations that spawn it. Certain "primitive" bloodlines, e.g. Native Americans, have possessed the magnificence of spirit necessary to clearly see civilization's self-extincting destiny, but of course civilization has sought to exterminate such people along with their insights, leaving only morbidly fearful boob-hangers, for whom civilization's overriding promise is that they can remain infantile indefinitely. This appeal to their impaired psychology totally cancels any ability to generate a meaningful critique. Their faith in civilization is exactly like a fetus' faith in the womb: absolute, perfectly invulnerable to analysis, because any such analysis would first of all depend on alien experiences and profoundly latent intellectual capacities.

"The Cyber-Culture Future Historian speaks of is already here."

Oh really? My prediction involved the Supreme Psychopaths wiping out everyone else to alleviate population pressure. If this has indeed come to pass, why are there still Haitians? Why is everyone you know still here?

"Cybernetics might not be a bad thing ... biological immortality ... If we had infinite space to evolve..."

So, in your need to dismiss my initial post, you technodreamers have brought out the "big guns" of your favorite diseased fantasies, i.e. immortality and space colonization. Ya know, it's a really grim sign of how deeply fucked the human race is when even Vox readers can't think freely enough to see past all the techno-utopian horseshit shoveled at them by Popular Science magazine. There has yet to be a single solid indication that space colonization represents a viable future for the human race. Until such an indication arrives, and so far this is looking like the biggest longshot ever, bio-engineered immortality would be a singularly stupid idea. Yah, you wanna live forever, you're going to want to pop out a kid every so often, also free of chronological or numerical limits, and you're also gonna want THEM to live forever and do the same. Why am I the only person I know who can foresee how psychotic this population scenario is? You featherweight punks badly need to avail yourselves of a certain itsy bitsy subject called 'P-O-P-U-L-A-T-I-O-N D-Y-N-A-M-I-C-S.' One of the all-time great works, Thomas Malthus' 'Population Theory,' can be found right here on Vox's home page, upper right. Much as civilizationists despise Malthus' 250-year-old ruminations, his work remains essential because they never truly succeed in refuting him, they just love imagining they have.

What your position actually amounts to is that we should pursue space-faring immortality because you're too fucking chicken to face the necessity of your own death. That's the religionists' crippling weakness, as well, so put the blame where it belongs, already. This 'solution' of yours would solve jack shit, because the real problem here is the turd-like supine squishiness of your own intellect, which would now merely continue perpetually.

What causes you to imagine the Rockefellers would save a spot for you on their spaceship, anyway?

Meanwhile, the REAL world that sustains you in every way sickens and dies for lack of attention...

There is simply nothing visionary to be found in this techno-delusional rebuttal of yours, which in fact represents severe intellectual flabbiness, symptomatic of a person too weak to face immense realities staring them implacably in the face, many of which are clearly immutable. Physical law, for example. My diagnosis is not diminished in any way by the fact that everyone you know is as weak-minded and delusional as yourself; this only speaks to the sadly narcissistic state of the average American intellect. After spending 10,000 hours playing video games over the past decade, you pathetic cyber-vegetables have simply mistaken them for reality.

"Love will prevail in the end, that I know."

Uh-huh, "Love Conquers All," r-i-i-i-i-i-ight. How odd, then, that for 5,000+ years the people who view your existence as a tradable commodity have been getting such superb results from their hatred of all things plebeian, which has almost never been directed against them in kind. Maybe as a first step to actually fixing the world, you should stop puking forth the exact same sentimental idiocies installed in your head by their pseudo-spiritual church operatives.

Or you can not fix it and just die, you and them alike. That would probably be best. They, believe it or not, are fucked up even worse than you; the present dire prognosis for the planet is a testament to their mental disease.

Posted by Future Historian @ 11/29/2004 12:19 AM EST

Yo Vox: You're awfully silent since you re-opened your forum. Cat got your tongue? I can only conclude that this page is now being used by the Feds to capture names for the soon to be released "amoral enemies of the state list." If only they would just ask politely, I would be glad to provide them with the names of all my like-minded anarchist friends. Ya know, like Henry Reardon, Dagny Taggart, etc..

Hey (new)voxfux, kiss my fucking ass you pathetic pussy!

Posted by John Galt @ 11/30/2004 04:00 AM EST

To Future Historian: Having just read your posting above, I can't begin to express my dismay. Imagine, there exists among the weak, feeble-minded, religionist fucks who inhabit this site an actual man (woman?) of reason. We MUST talk.

I came upon this site about a year ago and thought that unlike the Renses, Joneses, Rupperts, et al, I had reason to be hopeful that the entity formerly known as Voxfux was, potentially, a man of both reason and ACTION. Unfortunately, this proved not to be the case.

The only reason for my occasional visit (other than to let the host of this site know what I thought of him subsequent to the end of our private correspondence) is an endeavor to locate rational human beings who may share my world view and may have an interest in actually doing something to veer the course of humanity from the current path of self-destruction.

I know, this site is hardly a sea of enlightened humankind from which to fish. And yes, I am acutely aware of the folly of my aspirations.

However, regardless of my success or lack thereof, one must begin at the beginning. Having given up on vox after reading an account of him tooling around Alex Jones in his "cigarette boat at the RNC, I was resigned to the fact that this site was no longer worthy of my continued perusal. Until now, that is.

If you feel as passionately as I do that all the significant advances in societal evolution have sprung from the minds of a handful of individuals who refused to accept the status quo and were certain in their belief that they could create a more perfect world, than we need each other desperately.

I have plans and means. Are you interested?

Posted by John Galt @ 11/30/2004 08:51 PM EST

http://www.voxfux.com

R.I.P. 2004

Posted by A @ 11/30/2004 11:11 PM EST

Your a strange little man John Galt.

Posted by Adrian @ 12/02/2004 03:54 AM EST

here comes the future

Posted by victor was right @ 12/03/2004 08:25 PM EST

I really don't care who operates this website. What I do like, is that I can post without an inquisition for personal information before my post is accepted.

Posted by eric swan @ 12/05/2004 02:44 PM EST