Comments on: 21% of Cetaceans Could Go Extinct Due to Global Warming

By: Tom Carvagno

Tom Carvagno — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:23:36 +0000

I would like to know where you get your facts from. I would also like to know how you came to the conclusion that melting ice is killing beluca whales and narwhal. How are the oceans warming if the ice caps are melting? The answer to that is, They aren’t. The oceans are actually cooling. You misinturpret Global warming. Due to the ice age cycle we are at one of the closest points to the sun that the earth inhabits. It is expected that there will be another ice age in 15000 years. The earth is killing off most of its species. This happens because only the strong will survive the long harsh ice age.

By: Cim Toote

Cim Toote — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:43:42 +0000

@ Tim Coote

You must be a fan of genocide. You seem to imply that it’s ok to lose variations of a species as long as the more populated species remains.

The argument here (assuming the article points to humans as the culprit of global warming) is that because of humans, sections of the genetic genepool of animals will die off. These variations have been successful enough to become a population, aka species (those animals sharing specific characteristics). They will not be dying off because of their mutations, they will be dying off because of an intrusion to their habitat. Also, in the animal kingdom something is always eating something. I’m not sure anyone knows what would happen if a portion of that cycle goes missing.

Without the various species of animals, we wouldn’t have many of the things we have today, especially in Modern Medicine. By limiting the genepools we have less to work with, to experiment with.

By: Tim Coote

Tim Coote — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:03:02 +0000

I’m not sure that I understand the concept of species extinction. A ‘species’ is merely a man made concept. Animals and plants live and die as individuals carrying genomes to the next generation, or not. Genetic variability may be important in the face of changing environmental variability. But it’s hard to assess how much is ‘enough’ (if such a concept exists).

So a single species with lots of variability within it and lots of individuals *may* be ‘better’ than lots of small pockets of low individual count species. I use the term ‘better’ here in the same way that it’s implied in the article that it’s ‘better’ not to ‘lose’ species.