Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
|
I saw this story this morning
Quote:
Unexpectedly, they found that eight of the 13 oldest and five of the six largest baobabs had either completely died or had their oldest parts collapse.
|
It’s such a tiny numbers of trees it occurred to me that this could be intentional murder. Some of the oldest trees in the world are in California but they keep the locations secret because there are actually people who want to be the jerkoff that kills (or maims) an important tree.
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wi...ees/methuselah
Quote:
Methuselah
Until 2013, Methuselah, an ancient bristlecone pine was the oldest known non-clonal organism on Earth. While Methuselah still stands as of 2016 at the ripe old age of 4,848 in the White Mountains of California, in Inyo National Forest, another bristlecone pine in the area was discovered to be over 5,000 years old. Methuselah and its unnamed senior pine's exact locations are kept a close secret in order to protect them. You can still visit the grove where Methuselah hides, but you'll have to guess at which tree it is. Could this one be it?
|
Also, the impact of global warming on vector born diseases is a horrifying concern
http://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/78(9)1136.pdf
Most of the studies are on diseases that directly impact humans especially malaria but any disease that kills anything carried in a living vector is a concern. The range of inhabitability increases, the opportunity to reproduce increases, the vectors and the diseases have more time and opportunity to evolve into something even more insidious. And before anyone orgasms with the opportunity to correct me I understand this is just a
potential outcome for any disease and vector. None-the-less, some outcomes are certain to be unpleasant for some people (and that’s at a minimum)
It could be pollution in the soil, the ground water, the rain, heat, disease
And yes, it could be just another biological entity winning an evolutionary battle without any influence by mankind at all (but I doubt it)
Those are incredibly beautiful trees. Sad story.