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First reported mammal goes extinct due to climate change.

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W

Wilsongt

Member
RIP.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/16/3789568/global-warming-mammal-extinct/

When European sailors discovered “large rats” on a tiny island in the Great Barrier Reef, they amused themselves by shooting the animals with bows and arrows. Back then, there were at least several hundred Bramble Cay melomys on the island. Now, the rodents are the first mammal species to go extinct due to human-caused climate change.

A new report, co-authored by Natalie Waller and Luke Leung from the University of Queensland, indicates that rising sea levels destroyed 97 percent melomys’ habitat and much of their food supply, and likely drowned many of them. The island is only about 10 feet above sea level, making it especially susceptible to inundations. And, since the cay is only about the size of a football field, the creatures were unable to escape the flooding.

As the earth becomes warmer, ice melts and sea water expands, causing sea levels to rise. Sea levels have risen globally about 7.5 inches in the last century.

“For low-lying islands like Bramble Cay, the destructive effects of extreme water levels resulting from severe meteorological events are compounded by the impacts from anthropogenic climate change-driven sea-level rise,” Waller and Leung wrote in the report.

The last recorded sighting of the melomys, which is the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef, was in 2009. After a brief survey of the island in March 2014 failed to detect any of these animals, an extensive investigation through August and September in 2014 revealed no more melomys were alive on the island.
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A-melomys-from-the-Torres-Strait-which-gives-an-idea-of-the-size-of-Bramble-Cay-melomys-1024x538.jpg
 
V

Volimar

Member
While this should absolutely be a cautionary tale regarding global warming, it kind of reads like they were living on borrowed time anyway. One decent tsunami would have probably wiped them out too.
 
N

Nokterian

Member
Reading the article more than 20 species can extinct with this rate..awful and to think we still have deniers saying nothing is happening this is the result and now we have only pictures of this mammal :(
 
M

Madness

Member
We are already in the next mass extinction phase but this time Humans are the meteors that kill every other animal and creature. Think about all the megafauna gone extinct in the last 100,000 years alone. Think of how much we have changed the natural world. We're cutting down ancient rainforests to grow soy beans and palm trees etc. Killing sharks at a rate of 75 million a year so some rich businessman in China can eat a shitty tasting greasy soup. Think of how many bird species have been eradicated because humans need millions of cats as pets etc.

I was reading after the gator ate that child how humans brought over the Burmese python which has now started to challenge the american alligator as the apex predator in florida. Humans have effed up the planet forever.

Won't be long until wolves are spoken of like the Aurochs, bengal tigers like the sabretooth tigers, elephants like wooly mammoths, etc.
 
Lightning Count

Lightning Count

Member
*engage Republican mode*

This proves nothing, it's all a ploy to designed to undermine the US manufacturing sector so we cannot compete globally. They're just jealous of American exceptionalism.

The scientists are lying, do you know how much money there is in research grants, trust in God, not filthy liberal lies.
 
F

Foffy

Banned
Eh, it's not people, so it's not a big deal.

You know some self-centered cuckold will be thinking the above sentence.
 
X

Xe4

Banned
Man... poor guys.

RIP little dudes, the world is worse without you, and it's sad you got killed because of human ignorance and greed.

Humans are monsters. As a whole we've done vastly more harm than good. Not so different from many creatures I'm sure, but with the ability to actually do real hurt on this world and each other.

I'm sure these aren't the first mammals to go extinct because of climate change, just the first ones we know of.

I hope humans can one day become better and start being a net good on this world, cause right now we have a huge debt to pay.
 
K

Keasar

Member
Spyder_Monkey said:
The Earth is fucked.
Click to expand...

Like a famous, wise and hilarious man once said:

5b20719ea5ea0234f2b57266d331732a.jpg


Earth has gone through absolutely worse shit throughout its 4 billions years of existence. Humanity will be but a footnote in its history unless we figure out how to literally blow it up.
 
K

KimiNewt

Scored 3/100 on an Exam
half a moon said:
No one thought about introducing them somewhere else before 2009 or checking on if they still exist until 2014?
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Conservation work is hard and underfunded, and there's lots of animals to be protected.

Introducing them someplace else is a possibility but you'd have to find a place that's similar ecologically but that they won't be disturbing (replacing a different species or encroaching/killing others). What sometimes happens is that species are moved to places where they previously existed, but obviously this doesn't apply here.
 
X

Xe4

Banned
Keasar said:
Like a famous, wise and hilarious man once said:

5b20719ea5ea0234f2b57266d331732a.jpg


Earth has gone through absolutely worse shit throughout its 4 billions years of existence. Humanity will be but a footnote in its history unless we figure out how to literally blow it up.
Click to expand...

I'm on optimist, I do t think GW will kill us. Make society and progress slow or reverse, sure, but not kill us.

But it's not about us, or the planet, it's about our place at the top of the intelligence ladder. It should make us the stewards of this planet, but as of now, we're the menace.
 
B

Banderdash

Member
I know this is a dumb question... but can someone explain why a melting iceberg raises sea levels?
Doesn't the weight of the iceberg displace the water already?, shouldn't its melting not change that?


I'm not being snarky... I genuinely don't get it.
 
1

1upsuper

Member
This makes me sad. Sorry, little guys. :( I hope you're enjoying a nice, bountiful island in the sky. I only now know about you, but you will be missed just the same.
 
E

evanmisha

Member
Banderdash said:
I know this is a dumb question... but can someone explain why a melting iceberg raises sea levels?
Doesn't the weight of the iceberg displace the water already?, shouldn't its melting not change that?


I'm not being snarky... I genuinely don't get it.
Click to expand...

The article doesn't appear to make this claim, as far as I can see. The NASA source it refers to elaborates:

Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting land ice and the expansion of sea water as it warms.
Click to expand...

This article might also shed some light on your question.
 
K

Keasar

Member
Xe4 said:
I'm on optimist, I do t think GW will kill us. Make society and progress slow or reverse, sure, but not kill us.

But it's not about us, or the planet, it's about our place at the top of the intelligence ladder. It should make us the stewards of this planet, but as of now, we're the menace.
Click to expand...

I think the point Carlin makes is that in the end, what we do to earth won't harm it, it will harm us. We will engineer our own extinction in the end but Earth after a couple hundred thousands of years will shrug us off, heal and move on. Earth can easily heal stuff we have barely figured out how to do to it. We might take (almost) all the other animal species on Earth down with us but new ones will pop up in their stead.

All this time the active movements like Greenpeace etc. who proclaim "Save the Earth!" have had the wrong message, it should be "Save the People of Earth!" I think that would sell better to the selfish masses and the selfish companies who are the reasons why we are fucking our planet over. They don't care about the Earth, they care about themselves, saying that THEY will die due to their actions probably goes a much longer way than saying they are killing the planet.
 
P

Pantaghana

Member
Banderdash said:
I know this is a dumb question... but can someone explain why a melting iceberg raises sea levels?
Doesn't the weight of the iceberg displace the water already?, shouldn't its melting not change that?


I'm not being snarky... I genuinely don't get it.
Click to expand...

Melting icebergs are not the problem, but the massive amounts of ice on land.
 
Kiraly

Kiraly

Member
Lightning Count said:
*engage Republican mode*

This proves nothing, it's all a ploy to designed to undermine the US manufacturing sector so we cannot compete globally. They're just jealous of American exceptionalism.

The scientists are lying, do you know how much money there is in research grants, trust in God, not filthy liberal lies.
Click to expand...

No one thinks posts like these are funny.
 
B

bobnowhere

Member
I hope plans are under way to raise Rottnest Island or wall it off in some way.

Sad story and we have a current and probably continuing government that are out right lying about the state of the reef or just hiding the information from the public all for a giant coal mine that probably won't happen anyway. Jobs and Growth.

Cya Bramble Cay Melomy, you got in the way of profit.
 
Acerac

Acerac

Banned
As long as we don't kill off all the single celled organisms Earth will recover in a billion years or two no matter what humans do. Just think of all the interesting evolutionary paths that will occur with the established ecosystems out of the way.

In all seriousness, I don't know what could possibly happen to make the world come together to try and deal with this issue.
 
N

Nathan_Drake

Member
Keasar said:
Like a famous, wise and hilarious man once said:

5b20719ea5ea0234f2b57266d331732a.jpg


Earth has gone through absolutely worse shit throughout its 4 billions years of existence. Humanity will be but a footnote in its history unless we figure out how to literally blow it up.
Click to expand...

Yep. The Earth has taken a small size planet collision and it gave us the moon. That worked out well for all life. A meteor/and likely other events killed dinos, that worked well for mammals. There have been so many catastrophes that we know about and probably a lot we don't. It does suck that we are the problem but this beautiful blue dot will continue long after we are forgotten. Maybe we give rise to the machines. Maybe we die out and a different creature gets its chance. Imagine them finding our ruins and fossils in the rock and trying to come up with our story. Humans will absolutely not make it until the Earth is no longer life capable. The dinosaurs lasted millions of years. We are a footnote. Enjoy our special time on this special place. Though we have left plenty of space junk and sent out some cool probes that will help us last forever. Virtual reality on servers in deep space are our only chance!
 
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