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Polar Bears Encounter Nuclear Submarine

The following photographs were allegedly shot from the USS HONOLULU (a Los Angeles class fast-attack submarine) at the Arctic Circle, 280 miles from the North Pole. However, the Honolulu's number is SSN 718, and in the bottom photo below the number 543 is showing on some structural part. Even if these photos are a Photoshop hoax, however, they are quite fascinating, don't you think?

posted by LoZo 3:56 PM

 

Extinction is Forever
(Tim Radford, The Guardian, July 22, 2004)
[As the human population explodes, other species are running out of food and space. But, Tim Radford reports, it was never supposed to be that way]

Chimpanzees in the tropical rainforest of Ivory Coast are being killed by an anthrax epidemic . . . The anthrax outbreak is the latest in a series of threats to the great apes. An ebola epidemic is believed to have killed more than half the chimpanzees and gorillas in large areas of central Africa. But the most urgent threat comes from humans. . . . according to satellite studies, the Virunga National Park was being colonised by farmers at the rate of two square kilometres a day. The park is home to half of the world's population of mountain gorillas. There are only 700 left. . . . There are about 4,000 types of mammal on the planet, but one species has now claimed the lion's share. . . . There are six species of great ape: two species of chimpanzee, two of gorilla, two of orang-utan. All are now endangered. All could face extinction in the wild within a few generations. . . . there were about 414,000 great apes alive in the wild in 2003. This is roughly the number of people living in the city of Lyon, France. Yet, according to a biological rule of thumb, there should be roughly the same number of chimpanzees as there are humans, and probably the same number of gorillas. . . . Instead, human numbers have now passed six billion and are growing at the rate of 414,000 souls every two days. Each human needs roughly two hectares of land to provide food, water, shelter, fibre, currency, fuel, medicine and a rubbish tip to sustain a lifespan. So the more land humans take, the less that is available for all other mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. . . . Accordingly, humans and their livestock now consume 40% of the planet's primary production, and the planet's other seven million species must scramble for the rest. . . . If there is a biological rule about population size, humans have broken it. How did we do it? . . . "Well, we are able to do that because we are able to use fossil fuel. We sustain our society and our population density and are able to live in places at densities that are actually unsustainable without an energy subsidy," Lawton says. . . . "And what that allows us to do is grow food, because our crop production is oil-powered; we rely hugely on fossil fuel to grow food, over huge areas of the world. The reason you and I can sit here having a lively intelligent conversation without having to worry where our lunch is going to come from is because modern farming uses fossil fuel to increase hugely the efficiency with which an individual farmer can produce food for thousands of people. We are therefore able to use this fossil fuel subsidy to destroy the habitats of most of the other creatures on the planet." . . . The biggest threat of all is human settlement. Most vulnerable are big creatures that need large ranges, and have small litters and long gestation periods. That includes the big carnivores and the great apes. So the tiger population has fallen to (at the highest estimate) 8,000. There could be only 23,000 lions left in the wild in Africa; some experts think the lion population could have fallen to about 15,000. One eighth of all the world's 10,000-or-so bird species is at risk. At least 13% of all flowering plants could wither and fade away. One quarter of all the mammal species are endangered to some degree: 30 species of mammal are down to their last 1,000 individuals. The most poignant victims could be humanity's closest relatives. . . . "All the great apes are endangered," says Lera Miles, "but as the numbers make clear, some are more endangered than others." Gorilla beringei beringei, the mountain gorilla, numbers between 650 and 700 . . . "It's not how many there are, it's the rate of change and direction of change that matters. You can have as many of the things as you like, but if you are losing 5% a year, or 10%, then pretty quickly it can be an unsustainably small population," says Andrew Purvis. . . . "Quite a lot of species have survived, and survived for very long periods, in quite small numbers. The difficulty is that people are having such an impact: we are sharply reducing the numbers of other things and very quickly you can go from large numbers to nothing. So it is worth sounding alarm bells based on the rate of decline." . . . The logic of population pressure is that the so-called "megavertebrates" - the big, glamorous animals of the wild - could end up only in zoos, or carefully protected parks being photographed by tourists. In effect, one mammalian species that may once have been rarer than chimpanzees will have colonised the entire globe, and herded the rest of mammalian creation into a series of open prisons. In which case, what is being saved? It's a good question, says Purvis. . . . "When things are restricted to such a narrow part of their range, they are ecologically extinct anyway. They are not doing anything. So there are two things. One is, cynically, we are conserving our peace of mind. We feel better because we haven't wiped them out. More usefully, we are conserving the potential, so that if we ever get our act together - or if we are removed from the stage - then they can come back to some ecologically useful abundance. So there is the conservation of the long-term future, because extinction is forever."

posted by LoZo 4:36 PM