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My predictions

Guaranteed true, top to bottom!

Posted by biodiversivist (Guest Contributor) at 11:19 AM on 02 Jan 2007

In 2007:

  1. Prius sales will peak and begin a slow decline as consumers anticipate 2008 models from competitors that will have similar or better performance and therefore higher status.
  2. Electric hybrid bikes will become increasingly popular as a commuting tool thanks to improved battery technology.
  3. The SUV fad will continue to fade.
  4. The corn ethanol pyramid scheme will continue to play out based on the canard that the use of environmentally destructive biofuels is a necessary (but in theory, temporary) evil.
  5. Biofuel crops (primarily those used for biodiesel) will accelerate the loss of rainforests and other carbon sinks (and the biodiversity contained within them).
  6. More biofuel will be imported than in any previous year.
  7. More lifeforms will be declared extinct.
  8. The number of hungry people in the world will increase (as it did this year, by 4 million).
  9. Mustaches will return as an attractive and stylish fashion statement.
  10. Grist will kick some serious ass.

Happy New Year.

More lifeforms declared extinct...

Just a question for clarification: do you mean more life forms will be declared extinct than in previous years or simply more life forms will go extinct, period? The latter, obviously, has a significantly different meaning from the former---and barring a zero extinction rate, it is almost a foregone conclusion, rather than an earthshattering prediction.

extinctions

That is a good point, Maywa.  In this context, I understood Biodiv's prediction to mean that extinctions will continue at a high rate, but not necessarily higher than in past years.  But you are right, his sentence is ambiguous, and we should await his clarification.

He might also give us periodic extinction reports.  Of course it is almost never possible to know exactly when animals have gone extinct, but workers observing those that are most endangered can alert the scientific community that there have been no sightings of any individual of a certain species within a certain period.  That is what recently happened in the case of the Baiji, and possibly it has happened in the cases of some Central American frogs, though they receive less public attention.

The extinction of populations is also an important subject.  Whiskerfish has already reported in Gristmill on the likely imminent demise of the northern white rhino, of which only a couple of individuals remain.  WWF reports that the population of the Amur leopard is down to 40, so they will probably survive 2007, but perhaps not much longer.  There are some interesting populations of rare carnivores in the US Southwest: wolves, jaguars, ocelots.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Guess what? While the rest of us were ........

taking our Rip Van Winkle nap, Congress acted (!!)and we are now endowed with cleaner diesel fuel, beginning with this year!!  Europe already has diesel cars that get 50 mpg. We owe this not to our auto industries, Bless their greedy little hearts, but to the realization that if the stock market manipulators want us to continue to buy widgets and geegaws sent to us from overseas, the cost of getting those afore mentioned items of cheapness must be cheaper still.  Diesel fuel for those super large oil tankers and the LNG tankers has to burn cleaner and cause less wear and tear on the Diesel engine which works not with a spark but by compression.  The transportation across country of those ever-so-affordable home and body decors has to be the same profit-compliant formula.  

So, are we going to do without SUVs; are you kidding?  with a new efficient engine using new efficient diesel fuel?  Do you live on Earth?  

Brazil, which is the primary defoliant of the Amazon region, is clearing land to raise soybeans not corn, for the Asian markets.  Guess what?  that soy is GM.  Our own use of corn for the biofuels market, which is incidentally also GM, will continue as much of the rest of the world refuses GM crops for eating.  Remember diesels can burn almost anything, bless their little hearts.  Canada's and US's fields of canola (GM)and sunflower (GM), our corn and corn oil, cotton and cotton seed oil --Crisco(GM), soon rice and peanut products to be GM.

Guess what?  The new 2004 Crisco is a blend of saturated fats, the same saturated fats it replaced after WWII, palm and coconut oils, and blended with vegetable oils is now trans fat free!!  Should you cheer, No, not really.  The vegetable oils it is 'blended' with (one assumes that the vegetable oil is the major component) is GM!!  And that maligned saturated fat that was in common use before Crisco, well, its not so bad for you after all.  

All things old are new again.  

Ah, good points there, Maya, Canis

An earth shattering prediction it isn't. We have averaged about six or seven extinctions per year for the last four years, so it isn't a sure thing that any will be announced next year, just very likely. I suppose I could up the ante by being more specific like, predicting more vertebrate extinctions.

Statistically speaking we know that hundreds of species (insects, fungi, other invertebrates and vertebrates) are going extinct before we can discover and catalogue them. It has been estimated that a normal extinction rate would expect to see the loss of one bird or mammal every 500 to 1000 years. The microbe that would make cellulosic feasible may be laying in leaf litter or in some organism's gut, but if we let it go extinct, we will never find it. Also, it is unlikely that the extinction rate will exhibit linearity. It is much more likely to prove exponential.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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