The sixth mass extinction on Earth has officially begun and could threaten humanity's existence, famous false prophet says

Ya gotta laugh.  Paul Ehrlich just cannot give prophecy up, despite all his previous failed predictions.  And the species loss count is highly speculative.  New and previously uncounted species are still being discovered all the time.  And straight-line predictions are rarely justified in the life sciences anyway.  An ogive is a more common trendline, with an approach to an asymptote towards the end of it.  In less precise but plainer language, an upwards trend may level out in future.

We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence, researchers have declared.  Researchers say a new study shows 'without any significant doubt' that we are entering the sixth great mass extinction on earth.  The study says that the window for conserving threatened species is rapidly closing.

'The study shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,' said Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment who led the research.

The new study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate.

'If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on,' said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.

Using fossil records and extinction counts from a range of records, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate estimate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses.

This way, they brought the two estimates – current extinction rate and average background or going-on-all-the-time extinction rate – as close to each other as possible.

Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating 'a global spasm of biodiversity loss.'

The answer: a definitive yes.

'We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity's impact on biodiversity,' the researchers write.

To history's steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats.

Now, the specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species.

'There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead,' Ehrlich said.

Despite the gloomy outlook, there is a meaningful way forward, according to Ehrlich and his colleagues.

'Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations – notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change,' the study's authors write.

In the meantime, the researchers hope their work will inform conservation efforts, the maintenance of ecosystem services and public policy.

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More Greenie people hatred

'Meat eaters don't deserve to live' says a nasty little eco-Fascist

She’s known for her controversial diet, which can see her eat nothing but 51 bananas and two kilograms of potatoes in a day while sticking to raw food until 4pm.

And self-proclaimed YouTube ‘diet guru’ Leanne Ratcliffe, also known as ‘Freelee the Banana Girl’, from Adelaide, South Australia, has now claimed meat eaters ‘don’t deserve to live’.

The 35-year-old has previously drawn criticism for endorsing the so-called ‘raw until four’ style of eating – meaning she has no cooked meals until the evening and advocating a low processed food, low-fat and high-carbohydrate vegan diet.

But she takes her views a step further in her recent video, slamming educated people who ‘continue to eat meat and dairy’ every day despite knowing the ‘impact of their diet choices on the planet and animals’.

‘They know all the facts – they’ve been educated but they choose to continue eating animal products – whether they actually deserve to continue living?’ she claims.

‘And that might mean so extreme sounding to you and so dramatic but I’ve got to break it to you – we live in an extreme, dramatic world. There’s a lot of f***** up s*** going on.’

The social media diet star, who shared the video to more than 370,000 of her followers, took aim at animal cruelty, saying slaughterhouses 'are still there regardless of you turning a blind eye to them.’

‘Animals are still having their fur ripped off their back. Animals are still having a*** electrocution. They’re still having their throats slit. Their skulls crushed,’ she said while posting graphic animal cruelty photographs along with her video.

‘Yes it’s negative. We need to bring attention to it to make a positive change. That’s what’s positive about the focus of animal rights activists and people who actually give a s*** about the planet.’

Freelee didn't spare those closest to her, singling out family members who ‘continue to eat meat and dairy’ every day.  ‘I love them very much but we are in this situation where drastic change needs to happen and people aren’t taking it f*****g seriously enough,’ she said.

‘If their position on the planet was threatened because of their dietary choices, they would change to vegan in a heartbeat. That’s the truth of the matter because it’s so f*****g easy to be vegan as well.

‘You shouldn’t have a choice. You should absolutely be forced to be vegan. The situation the planet is in – we cannot wait for you to get your f*****g s*** together. We cannot wait. The animals cannot wait.

‘As you can see I’m very passionate about this and do I want to kill people? No, I don’t want to kill people and yes, I was in that situation before where I didn’t know about the meat and dairy industry. I didn’t have a f*****g clue but I educated myself.

‘So there’s people who have educated themselves but they are like “I don’t feel like doing it right now. I knew a vegan once and they were a little bit weak and they couldn’t do this and that”.'

The health blogger continues ranting about people ‘looking for excuses’ to avoid becoming vegan and claims they should ‘not have that option’ to choose.

SOURCE





Warming is GOOD for you

The academic study below finds that lower all-cause death rates were correlated with warmer years.  Warmists are always trying to show the opposite -- though any hospital administrator knows that winter is where the deaths and illnesses are most frequent


Air Temperature and Death Rates in the Continental U.S., 1968–2013

John Hart

Abstract

A previous test of global warming theory, on a local level, for Texas revealed inverse correlations between air temperature and death rates. The present study expands the test field to the continental U.S. Using an ecological design, mean daily maximum air temperature (“temperature”) in the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia by year from 1968–2013 was compared to age-adjusted all-cause mortality (“deaths”) in these same jurisdictions for the same years using Pearson correlation (n = 46 years). The comparison was made for three race categories, white, black, and all races, where each category included all ages and both genders. There was 5.0 degree F range for the years studied (62.7–67.7 degrees F). Correlations were moderate strength, inverse, and statistically significant, as follows. Whites: r = −0.576, p < 0.0001; Blacks: r = −0.556, p = 0.0001; and all races: r = −0.577, p < 0.0001. These correlations are consistent with the Texas study, both of which indicated that warmer years tended to correlate with decreased death rates. A limitation to this research is its (ecological) design, but is an initial step towards further investigation.

SOURCE






Shell Oil Foots Bill for Environmental Disaster Created by Environmentalists

A group of Greenpeace “kayaktivists” took to the waters of the Puget Sound a few short weeks ago in an attempt to stop the Polar Pioneer, Shell Oil’s newest Arctic drilling rig, from taking a breather in port on its way up to Alaska. They were ultimately thwarted by the Coast Guard’s concern for their safety and Shell Oil’s determination to continue on its mission, and just a few short days ago, the last kayaks finally pulled back.

Little did we know, as they left, that our story on Greenpeace’s hypocritical opposition to Arctic drilling – they get plenty of funding from their own team of petroleum profiteers – wasn’t the end of our coverage of the odd ironies of #ShellNo. As Greenpeace pulled away, they left behind an environmental disaster, littering a popular dive site and rolling over a marine wildlife habitat, causing around $10,000 in damage to a protected locale, and angering local environmental groups who had been working to save the natural resource and its inhabitants.

Near the kayak line, divers cleaned up a site damaged by the activists’ barge. Used for staging their protests, the barge anchors were originally dropped into a popular dive spot. They dropped 4,000-pound anchors into a habitat known for several different kinds of marine species.

“A lot of people come here to see Giant Pacific Octopus,” said Koos Dupreez.

Dupreez works with Global Underwater Explorers. They coordinated the clean-up, asking the activists to cut their lines so as to avoid any further damage. Divers removed huge cement blocks and chords, worried for the safety of people and animals

It cost $10,000 and created some wake among environmental groups.

“Having someone else who is concerned about the environment trash the environment, some people were upset, understandably so,” Dupreez said.

The cement blocks the activists used as anchors weighed between 1 and 2 tons, and the “Solar Pioneer,” the barge the environmentalists were using, was moored using strong cables that weren’t secured well enough to withstand tidal swings. As a result, the cables wrapped around structures in the dive area, Alki Cove 2, and destroyed marine life habitats.

The damage was obviously very expensive, and despite their substantial budget, Greenpeace was either unwilling or unable to foot the bill. Instead, Shell Oil, the company the environmentalists were protesting, stepped in to fund the environmental cleanup efforts, joined by Foss Maritime, the company that helped to house and repair the oil rig as it made its scheduled stop in Seattle. Those two companies provided teams of divers who helped to untangle and clear the cables and pull up the cement blocks as the Greenpeace “kayaktivists” floated out of the harbor.

A popular contention among environmentalists in favor of regulation is that no corporation is willing to clean up their environmental mess without prompting and oversight from the Federal government. Perhaps next time the issue is raised, someone should ask the environmentalists if the same presumption applies to them.

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Green Policies Kill Military Readiness and Vets

New attention has been focused on how the Obama administration's green energy policies are undermining U.S. military readiness and diverting resources from caring for America's veterans.

We reported [1] recently that the Obama administration didn't have time to develop a strategy to fight against global Islamic terrorism because it was too busy putting homosexuals into the Armed Forces and celebrating gay pride. In fact, there was something else on the agenda that Obama had ordered the military to handle that had assumed more importance than global terrorism-climate change.

On May 20, in his remarks [2] to the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement, Obama actually told the Coast Guard grads that "It is a dereliction of duty" for them to ignore this alleged problem.

The speech got enormous favorable attention from our media. "Obama Recasts Climate Change as a Peril With Far-Reaching Effects," was The New York Times headline over a story [3] covering the speech. CNN reported [4], "In Coast Guard commencement address, Obama buoys climate change."

Obama even went so far as to imply that climate change was behind terrorism. He said, "...climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram."

The bizarre claim that Islamist terrorists kill Christians because of climate change has been echoed by the British Guardian [5] and Mother Jones [6], both of them far-left outlets.

The other side of the story was provided by two excellent speakers at the recent 10th International Conference on Climate Change [7] in Washington, D.C. Jay Lehr, Ph.D., who is the science director at The Heartland Institute, said the U.S. Navy is being transformed into a "Green Navy" that will cost $1.9 billion in alternative fuels alone. The same money, he said, could buy a new aircraft carrier.

"The money that we are spending in this manner is going to reduce our weaponry and reduce our ability to protect our fighting men and women, and it is entirely disgraceful," Lehr said.

James M. Taylor, vice president for external relations and senior fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute, discussed his group's publication of the report, "Climate Change, Energy Policy, and National Power [8]." It was written by three retired military officials who argue that the Obama administration's so-called National Security Strategy pays lip service to a balanced energy strategy, while in reality it is actually "defaulting on its responsibility to develop and execute a credible national energy policy."

In his own talk, Taylor discussed in detail how the costly energy schemes being imposed on the U.S. military impede military readiness and waste resources, even at the expense of veterans in need of health care.

Dominance in the world, he said, requires the projection of military power, which rests on a strong and growing economy. But Obama's plan for less reliance on fossil fuels and the increased usage of so-called renewable sources such as solar and wind power can only weaken the U.S. economy, he said. He noted that Russia is already moving into the Arctic area, with no credible U.S. military response.

What's more, Taylor noted, Obama has ordered the Defense Department to rely increasingly-as much as 25 percent of its energy-on "grossly expensive" solar and wind power that detracts from military preparedness. "This is coming out of the defense budget," he said. "It's a budgetary boondoggle that takes away from money that could be spent on men, machinery and weaponry, and instead is being spent on more expensive power."

He cited a machine [9] made for the military that is supposed to be dragged around on a battlefield and transforms trash into electricity, rather than being buried or burned. The contraption was highlighted [10] by the Mother Nature Network news service as one of the "6 green things the U.S. military is doing."

Citing another boondoggle, he said the Navy is paying an incredibly high price of $67.50 per gallon for a "camelina-based fuel" made from a plant in the mustard family.

Even more shocking, he cited a case of money from the Department of Veterans Affairs intended for military care that is instead being used to purchase solar panels. "That's coming at the expense of folks who are not getting the care they should be getting," he said.

Indeed, the VA announced [11] in 2011 that it had awarded $56.7 million in contracts to build solar panels.

However, it was reported [12] in Arkansas in April of this year by local television station KATV that a section of solar panels at the Little Rock Veteran's Affairs Hospital was being torn down after being built only two years ago and never turned on. The panels had cost $8 million.

The VA Secretary at the time, Eric Shinseki, said that "in order to continue providing Veterans with the best health care and benefit services, VA must adapt to climate change."

Shinseki's green campaign included installing a wind turbine [13] at the Massachusetts National Cemetery. The turbine cost $533,000 and was funded under Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The VA issued a news release [14] about this development, saying, "Under the leadership of Secretary Eric K. Shinseki, who flipped the switch at today's wind turbine dedication, VA is transitioning into a 21st century organization that better serves America's Veterans."

The VA scandal over poor or non-existent care for veterans forced Shinseki's resignation more than a year ago.

But he has bounced back, recently joining the board [15] of First Hawaiian Bank. Bob Harrison, First Hawaiian Bank chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, "He is a man of great integrity and character who has dedicated his entire career to serving our nation."

SOURCE





Questions remain on official Australian meteorology records

"Fiddling" of the records to show warming not addressed

The results of an independent ­review of the Bureau of Mete­or­ology’s national temperature records should “ring alarm bells” for those who had believed the bureau’s methods were transparent, says a key critic, Jennifer ­Marohassy.

Dr Marohassy said the review panel, which recommended that better statistical methods and data handling be adopted, justified many of the concerns raised.

However, the failure to ­address specific issues, such as the exaggerated warming trend at Rutherglen in ­northeast Victoria after homogeni­sation, had left ­important questions ­unresolved, she said.

The review panel report said it had stayed strictly within its terms of reference.  Given the limited time available, the panel had focused on big-picture issues, chairman Ron Sandland said.

The panel was confident that “by addressing our recommend­ations, most of the issues raised on the submissions would be ­addressed”, Dr Sandland said.  The panel is scheduled to meet again early in the next year.

Dr Sandland said that, overall, the panel had found the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network — Surface Air Temperature was a “complex and well-maintained data set that has some scope for further improvements”.  It had made five recommend­ations that would boost transparency of the data set.

Although the panel reviewed 20 public submissions, Dr Marohassy said it had failed to address specific concerns.  “While the general tone of the report suggests everything is fine, many of the recommen­dations (are) repeat requests made by myself and others over the last few years,” Dr ­Marohassy said.

“Indeed, while on the one hand the (bureau’s technical ­advisory) forum reports claims that the bureau is using world’s best practice, on the other hand its many and specific recommend­ations evidence the absence of most basic quality controls in the many adjustments made to the raw data in the development of the homogenised temperature series.”

BoM said it welcomed the conclusion that homogenisation played an essential role in ­eliminating artificial non-clim­ate ­systematic errors in temperature observations, so that a meaningful and consistent set of records could be maintained over time.

SOURCE

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