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Chinese paddlefish, one of the world's largest fish, declared extinct
- gadf 5y agoSad
- 4f77616973 5y agoWhy can’t they split the river in multiple parts with a small tributary for wildlife that meets up with the rest of the river downstream? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bifurcation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bifurcation
- zwirbl 5y agoThey could have, it just didn't happen that way. And more than likely it's to late for that species anyways. It could still save others though
- _Microft 5y agoDo you maybe mean something like a fish ladder? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder
- ambicapter 5y agoCan all fish jump? Feels like it may be something that salmon are pretty good at, but a gigantic fish may not.
- _Microft 5y agoJumping is not always necessary. You can get an idea of possible designs for fish ladders from the photographs in the section "Types" in the article.
- Zababa 5y agoOr the cool "Salmon cannon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA
- OJFord 5y agoAm I seeing that right, they have a guy stand there, pick fish up, and load them in to a pressurised cannon? I wad expecting something a bit more sophisticated/under the fish's control, even given the name!
- robocat 5y agoThey also have an automated system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGzdOpCisnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGzdOpCisnQ
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoWhen the dam was built, they didn’t know they were cutting off the fish from it’s only spawn point in the world (it was discovered later). Still, there’s an argument to be made for building a bypass or fish ladder in every single new and existing dam regardless of what the current expected impact is.
- salawat 5y agoI have issues with comprehending how that wasn't factored in from the start. Then I remind myself most of humanity history is characterized by a marked tendency toward anthropocentrism, and I cease being surprised. What surprises me now even more was that there were designs for fish ladders even as far back as the 19th century.
- xbar 5y agoStudying fish habits when building dams is an ancient practice. My guess: a political, hasty, rush to success to curry favor and clout drove bad decisions regarding a massive government project. Is that not the way of public bureaucracy, universally?
- dalbasal 5y agoI feel like someone somewhere should be wearing a black armband. Goodbye, giant paddlefish.
- kordlessagain 5y agoMore like goodbye earth.
- hunter-gatherer 5y agoWe are going to need a lot of black arm bands
- dalbasal 5y agowe have a lot of arms. I didn't say everyone.
- okareaman 5y agoWhat was wrong with the better original title "The Chinese paddlefish, one of world's largest fish, has gone extinct"
- Enginerrrd 5y agoPerhaps because that title completely omits any form of attribution, which as the article suggests, is largely because of the Gezhouba Dam which completely cut paddlefish off from their only spawning grounds. Why would you want to omit that part? That said, this title is a poor attempt at communication.
- okareaman 5y agoI thought the guide was to use the original title
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoWell now you have a title that's, to me, incomprehensible
- GordonS 5y agoIt's not just you - the new title makes no sense at all to me either. It reads as a jumbled collection of random words :/
- travisgriggs 5y ago"The paddlefish has been dammed to extinction"
- philshem 5y agoYou’re hired
- Chris2048 5y agoThere's nothing wrong with: The Chinese paddlefish, one of world's largest fish, has gone extinct *because of Yangtze dam* The problem is this part: Paddlefish, largest, from spawn, now extinct
- boringg 5y agoSerious question here - not starting a flamewar. Are there any real organizations in China with power that protect the ecosystem and animals there? From an outsider it seems like they just build whatever they want without any concern for the environment they live in which ultimately will do significant damage to their own human population after the environment collapses and can't support them.
- dragonelite 5y agoThe whole article is talking about China attempts to preserve endangered fish species. It mostly talking about how in the 80 and 90s they didn't do those preservation research when building dams. The article also talks that its not only happening in China these old paddlefish species are endangered all over the globe.
- boringg 5y agoTo be fair you haven't answered my question but stated that there are nascent efforts to preserve endangered fish after the damage is done. I don't doubt there are efforts however I refer to any arm of the government with real power or any institution that isn't related to the government with real power. Agree species are dying everywhere after all we are in an Holocene extinction event. That said it seems to happening at a faster pace in places like India and China with unfettered development.
- wyattpeak 5y agoThe distinction you're applying seem to be arbitrary. What makes Chinese efforts nascent but American efforts (where species also continue to go extinct) developed? Most efforts to preserve animals come after the damage is done. That's why we maintain an endangered species list. I'm not going to argue that China is as committed to, or as successful at, the goal as say the US is, but "not as good" is very different from claiming they fundamentally lack something the West possesses.
- 5y ago
- faitswulff 5y agoHopefully they have a DNA sample somewhere. What a shame.
- worldsayshi 5y agoI was just thinking, are there any initiatives in long term DNA storage of extinct or endangered species? Then there might at least be a chance to bring them back one day?
- Someone 5y agoLong term DNA storage can be done digitally. I doubt DNA alone will be enough, though. Mothers provide proteins and messenger RNA to their offspring, and the young may learn crucial skills from their parents. If you put mammoth DNA in an elephant egg, you may get something that looks like a mammoth, but will it ever behave like one?
- plank_time 5y agoOne DNA sample isn’t enough. You need dozens or more to repopulate a species. If you just had one or two, you would have to rely on inbreeding to repopulate which would create too many bad genetic problems from bad genes.
- _Microft 5y agoEven hundreds or thousand of samples of a species would most likely still be an enormous genetic bottleneck. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere are numerous vertebrate species with only a few thousand (or fewer) extant members. Many have been greatly reduced over the 20th century, some have been on a long decline before that. Some have been small / relict / outlier populations for much or all of human history. Whether this means the bottleneck hypothesis is overstated, or that we're looking at a tremendous number of bottlenecks, isn't clear.
- jacksonkmarley 5y ago> Yangtze dam separates Paddlefish, largest, from spawn, now extinct What does this mean?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Y_Y 5y agoThe spawn of the paddlefish look a lot like commas.
- pvaldes 5y agoFish embryos look often like that
- bombcar 5y agoAfter reading the article it parses out as “dam separates the largest paddlefish from its spawn, fish is now extinct”.
- Chris2048 5y agoBut it's not "largest paddlefish", it's "paddlefish - the largest fish"
- jacksonkmarley 5y agoIt seems like a poor HN title for a very interesting article (which has a perfectly serviceable actual title btw). The saddest thing is that there are apparently technical solutions to this that could have potentially saved the species. The article mentions fish ladders and bypasses for dams. I'm not sure if the ladders are suitable for a huge fish like this, or whether it has the necessary jumping ability, but some sort of fish bypass seems like a good idea. Hopefully this can be implemented in the future for other similarly endangered species.
- msrenee 5y ago
- kordlessagain 5y agoPopups for email. No images of said fish.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoReader View in Firefox gives image and no regwall modal.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoSame with safari mobile.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoDownvoting frequently makes no sense.
- rolph 5y agoi lifted this link to an image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paddlefish_Polyodon_spathula.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paddlefish_Polyodon_spath... from here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddlefish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddlefish
- williesleg 5y agoFucking Chinks. Fix your country before selling your shit to the rest of the world. Assholes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago> This dam, which was constructed without a fish ladder or bypass, cut off the paddlefish from their only spawning grounds upstream, which had only been discovered in the late 1970s. How effective are fish ladders? If they’re effective, shouldn’t we focus on building a fish ladder on all existing dams?
- reportingsjr 5y agoFish ladders are minimally effective. They are typically installed to add a rubber stamp to dams and say "look, we tried! It's not our fault the ecosystem is getting destroyed". Same thing with fish breeding and release programs.
- rhodozelia 5y agoCitation?
- paulcole 5y agohttps://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective https://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladder...
- rhodozelia 5y agoThank you. The article notes that other pressures such as overfishing also contribute to the decline of fish populations, and that fish ladders on the Columbia river are successful. No doubt there are some ineffective fish ladders out there, and no doubt dams have a negative impact on fish populations. Could better designed fish ladders and compensation channels mitigate the effect of the dam? I think so. Fish stocks across all species are collapsing due to overfishing.
- jmclnx 5y agoWell these fish were very large. I cannot imagine what a fish ladder would look like. There is one for salmon where I live and it is not that big. They have been trying to bring salmon back for over 30 years. Not much luck so far.
- xiaolingxiao 5y agoI recall visiting the Yangtze river by boat tour around 1997. This was before the dam was built and the place was beautiful. Imagine the grand canyon but it was covered with lush vegetation. We visited a center where there were models of the three gorges dam would soon to be built. On the tour they said we would be the last tourists to see the Yangtze as it stands, after the dam, many landmarks/settlements would be flooded, and even back then people critiqued how many species of fish would die because they can no longer swim up river to spawn.
- morsch 5y agoFWIW, the dam in question, the Gezhouba Dam, was completed by 1988.
- yellow_lead 5y agoPeter Hessler writes about his experience in Sichuan during the time the three gorges dam was being built [1]. Many people have had to sacrifice a lot for these dams. However, IIRC many receive some form of compensation from the government (adequate or not). [1]https://www.amazon.com/River-Town-Years-Yangtze-P-S/dp/0060855029 https://www.amazon.com/River-Town-Years-Yangtze-P-S/dp/00608...
- samstave 5y agoWhat compensation do the paddlefish get ;-)
- ioquatix 5y agoExtinction :(
- samstave 5y agoThey'd like a refund.
- Andy-AO 5y agoSturgeon itself does not need to get any compensation, it is not human, no human rights. The construction of the dam can bring a lot of immediate benefits, which is insignificant compared with the ecological damage caused, because if the economic development is not good, the environmental pollution will only be more serious, and the phenomenon of survival through predation of wild animals will only be more common.
- bioinformatics 5y agoAfter reading HN voraciously for the past years, I though Chinese ecological protections and records were flawless, and the dam was a sign of prosperity, jobs, opportunities and freedom to the Chinese people. What went wrong?
- rolph 5y agoeditorializing the title is addressed in the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 5y agoYes, that was bad. Submitted title was "Yangtze dam separates Paddlefish, largest, from spawn, now extinct". That spawned a whole school of complaints and offtopicness in its own right. We've changed it now. Submitters: please don't do that. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- gadf 5y agoThat's weird... I think the original title of the article was wordier than mine, so i cut out words to fit the limit. But now when i check the article it has a shorter one. I could be wrong tho, but I'm pretty sure that's what i remember seeing....
- dang 5y agoOh - it's not uncommon for articles at big media sites to change their headlines. I don't remember seeing that at NatGeo before though. Sorry for the misunderstanding!
- rolph 5y agoone of my own personal habits is to include the full non truncated title in a comment if the title is too long, this would also demonstrate the title at time of submission, so this would also make it evident that the title has been changed by the site operator. something that was pointed out too me earlier was the two different titles associated with a page, are both acceptable to title a submission. re:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26638804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26638804]
- DubiousPusher 5y ago> survived unimaginable changes and upheavals, such as the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs and marine reptiles like plesiosaurs that it swam alongside. It's generally my understanding that extant species have all continued evolving and while a creature may have strong morphological resemblance to its ancestor it is not the same species. Therefore, to say this creature "survived" the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event would be to say all extant species survived it. Am I misunderstanding this?
- rolph 5y agothere is a framing and context that comes from massive consumption of biological science. when you hear statements like this, the thing that survives is the overall anatomical structure and adaptations indistinguishable from fossil remains except by the fact that fossilization has occured youare asking a legitimate question, and trying to clear up your own self recognized misunderstanding, sorry to see your comment going gray like that
- rob74 5y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil
- rolph 5y ago>>The minimal superficial changes to living fossils are mistakenly declared the absence of evolution, but they are examples of stabilizing selection, which is an evolutionary process—and perhaps the dominant process of morphological evolution.[4]<< if you want to talk about genetic modifications that is sequitorial however the framing of the statement involves anatomical structure, thus the confusions that have arisen over time.
- blondie9x 5y agoThe unbridled enthusiasm of man again pushes us deeper into this 6th mass extinction event, the Holocene extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction. I still remember the Baiji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji or the finless porpoise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow-ridged_finless_porpoise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow-ridged_finless_porpoise . Can we realistically ever taper down and live more simple minimalistic lives that strike a better balance with our ecosystem? Moreover does anyone know why the Wikipedia pages do not show the Baiji or Paddlefish animals extinct? Under the EW or EX status?
- selimthegrim 5y agoThis ain’t a mass extinction yet
- msrenee 5y agoDamn, from worshipped to wiped out in a human lifetime. That's a shame. As far as why they're not listed as extinct yet, it's really hard to definitively say there are none left. It's a big river and while surveys haven't turned any up in a long while, it's possible there are individuals out there still. One of the species I sampled for hasn't been seen in the state's waterways for decades. The last stream it was seen in was ruined by the landowner and is no longer suitable habitat for the species. There's other streams with suitable habitat, however. If the species exists there and is prematurely declared extinct, the legal protections on those streams are gone and those fish will be gone within a few years for sure. It's also kind of political. Maybe that fish is gone, but those streams harbor other species which need protection, but have not been listed as endangered yet. Species don't automatically get listed as protected. Someone has to care enough to gather the data and advocate for protection and listing as threatened or endangered. This can take years or decades and a lot of funding. One species listed in a disappearing habitat may also protect a half dozen or more bug species, plants, crustaceans, etc, which do not have the extensive data available or anyone focused on getting them protected. Oh, and then someone also has to care enough to sue the entities that aren't going to abide by the Endangered Species Act until they get sued a couple times. I'm not exaggerating. My first reality check as far as how conservation really works was an internship surveying a very cute and popular (among bird people) species of bird. The woman I was working for spent a decent amount of her time taking businesses, land owners, and other sectors of the government to court for flagrant violations of the laws protecting the species. And funding, don't forget funding. Those grants for the protection of that species are gone the second it's declared extinct and the biologists who rely on that funding to maintain species inventories in those areas can no longer afford to hire techs to slog through the middle of nowhere and inventory extant species. Generally, the only people in a hurry to declare a species extinct are those who want the protections lifted on that habitat. Maybe it's a little dishonest to take so long declaring a species extinct. Honestly, even if there are 10 Yangtze paddlefish left out there, the species still isn't coming back. However, as far as environmental health is concerned, it is beneficial to drag that funding and protection out for as long as possible, even when the listed species is well beyond saving.
- pvaldes 5y agoPadlefish and Baiji dolphin river. Both went extinct at the same time by the same dam. 2003 and 2007. Our time. The "Las Vegas Frog" have a stroke of luck, but it is always the same history And the californian vaquita is probably extinct yet.
- xbar 5y agoI had never heard of the California vaquita. Google revealed: "The tiny vaquita porpoise is the world’s most endangered marine mammal. Its numbers are decreasing with fewer than 19 remaining. Vaquitas die from entanglement in illegal gillnets which are intended to catch totoaba, in a lucrative illegal fishery that serves an illegal trade of swim bladders to China." https://www.mmc.gov/priority-topics/species-of-concern/vaquita/ https://www.mmc.gov/priority-topics/species-of-concern/vaqui...
- rsynnott 5y agoDifferent dam; the dolphin was probably Three Gorges, though it was only one of many contributing factors.
- morsch 5y agoIts cousin, the American paddlefish, is still around, though it's vulnerable. Among other similar reasons (overfishing, pollution), dams are related to its decline: "Series of dams on rivers such as those constructed on the Missouri River have impounded large populations of American paddlefish, and blocked their upstream migration to spawning shoals.[29]" But it's not too late... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_paddlefish#Population_declines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_paddlefish#Population...
- beauzero 5y agoFishing is highly...and I do mean highly regulated in Montana (spawning grounds). http://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=AFCAB01010 http://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=AFCAB0101... There are wildlife biologists that harvest the eggs and process the meat for you. You must apply for tags and the season can be shutdown if a limit is reached before the end of the season. I fished it once and was glad I didn't catch anything. My heart wasn't in it after I saw the first one caught. They reminded me too much of dolphins and they have to be snagged. They do not take bait so the fish...imo is not brought in as quickly and humanely as I was comfortable with. We hunted and fished because without it quality protein was scarce during my childhood. It was a creature I just chose to appreciate and eat more mac and cheese.
- windthrown 5y agoThis is going to come off much snarkier than I mean it, but were rice and beans not available in Montana at that time? I am a big fan of seafood but there is a lot of "quality protein" middle ground between meat and mac and cheese.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- beauzero 5y ago:). Yeah there were. "Mac and cheese" is a fillin for ramen, rice, beans, ketchup and tortillas, and whatever leftovers I could scrounge from friends and take home from washing dishes in the cafeteria.
- stakkur 5y agoThis title is something up with which, I cannot, put
- gadf 5y agoSorry was I doing postfix?
- jjt-yn_t 5y agoI was so glad the Paddlefish had gone extinct after reading the title as "yangtze dam separates" and spent a few seconds fearing another fukushima...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago> Furthermore, activities like fishing and dam construction deserve more scrutiny The Gezhouba Dam generates 2.7 GW of carbon free power. In the light of the critical nature of climate change, we need to build more dams like it if we can. Even if a few species on the go go extinct, compared to the massive devastation that will happen from climate change, that is still preferable. Climate change is an emergency, and we would be better off with more massive hydro-electric dams even at the cost of extinctions of species that might be native to the river on which it is built.
- reaperducer 5y agoEven if a few species on the go go extinct You first.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoOn some bright news. Thanks to declining American manufacturing (thanks China) The Detroit River has bounced back. Giant 'river monster' fish found in Detroit River may be over 100 years old https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/sturgeon-fish-intl-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/sturgeon-fish-intl-scli/in...
- alea_iacta_est 5y ago> Thanks to declining American manufacturing (thanks China) Spoken like someone who doesn't work in manufacturing...
- OJFord 5y ago(I'm not American so don't really have a horse to grind or axe in this race, but) why would an American working in manufacturing want American manufacturing to decline? Or do I misunderstand?
- moate 5y agoSomewhere in this chain, someone was being sarcastic.
- salawat 5y agoSpecifically, not all manufacturing processes have moved to China as I understand it, just the ones that tend to be made more problemmatic due to labor cost/environmental controls as far as I'm aware. I'm a bit out of date on my scratching the surface of that industry, but my understanding was things like NAFTA and regulatory requirements tend to lead to an absolute minimum level of parts (I'm bundling in resource extraction and processing into fabrication, which technically, I shouldn't be, that's supply chain management from the manufacturer's perspective) fabrication being done in the U.S., with the main focus being final assembly (read: relatively unskilled or labor conducive to being automated). The rest below a particular fraction needed to claim "made in USA", and thus avoiding some sort of import duty liability or some such. Some places like Boeing make sweetheart deals with suppliers internationally to gain political capital and better treatment incentivewise; other places just run after the cheapest source they can get away with (without robust attention paid to QC from the horror stories I've heard). There's a bit of an inflection point, because some fabrication/production has proved problemmatic beimg outsourced. For instance, turbine blades for jet engine manufacturing fabricated from certain lots of Chinese steel have had failure traced back to elevated sulfur levels in the atmosphere in China that weren't accomodated for in the original planning. That's just one example I know of. Take this with a grain of salt. It's a hobby of mine, not my primary day-to-day, so if I'm talking out my rear, I'd love to be corrected by someone inside the industry. I'm a logistics nerd deep down, so I love drinking in these types of arcane quirks of reality vs. in theory.
- HMH 5y agoInterestingly there is a term for the last known member of a species: Endling [1]. Scrolling through that Wikipedia article always gives me an eerie feeling. It looks like the Chinese paddlefish is not listed yet though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endling
- MawKKe 5y agoLast time similar topic came up (either here or reddit), someone posted this recording of a ”Kauaʻi ʻōʻō” bird [1] in which a male, apparently the last of its species, is trying to connect with a female. Reeally eerie. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDRY0CmcYNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDRY0CmcYNU
- shakezula 5y agoThis shit always just makes me so incredibly, deeply sad. It's the loneliest thing I can imagine.
- libraryatnight 5y agoAbsolutely beautiful and heartbreaking, thank you - I might never have stumbled upon that.
- n00begon 5y agoThe podcast "Anthropocene Reviewed" has an episode[1] on the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō including the last time it was seen if you would like to know more about it. [1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/episodes/anthropocene-reviewed-qwerty-keyboard-and-kauai-o-o https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/e...
- libraryatnight 5y agoThank you I am going to give this a listen!
- dexwell 5y ago
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/6ppXT https://archive.is/6ppXT
- amelius 5y agoWarning: plays audio when you scroll down.
- gradschoolfail 5y agoSeeing that this animal depends on electroreception to survive it was probably a monumental mistake to RF tag the last of its kind.. >In 2003, Wei and colleagues attached a tracking tag to a Chinese paddlefish that was accidentally captured near Yibin, in south-central China. They released it to see where it might go, but within hours lost all signals from the tag. That was the last of the species ever seen alive.
- kaba0 5y agoAbsolutely not knowledgeable on the topic but a quick search says that RF tags are used on sharks — my naive guess is that biologists know better than to use tags that can heart the animal.
- forrestthewoods 5y agoI got downvoted in another thread for extolling the ecological consequences of dams. Dams should not be considered “clean” energy. They’re environmental disasters. Both upstream and downstream.
- medium_burrito 5y agoDams are incredibly damaging. By contrast, every time we have a nuclear disaster, the no-go zone becomes a wildlife paradise.
- thehappypm 5y agoBeing anti-dam is environmental NIMBYism. A dam focuses externalities on the same communities that benefit from the dam (jobs and revenue). Fossil fuels benefit the producers but everyone suffers the externalities.
- forrestthewoods 5y ago> Being anti-dam is environmental NIMBYism. Hard disagree. Dams simply need to be categorized as dirty energy. They are probably less dirty than coal or natural gas energy. However dams are dirty and they should be treated as such. Categorizing an energy source as dirty does not mean we don't use it. It doesn't even mean we don't build more of it. We don't have 100% clean energy today. I hope that someday we do. And when we are 100% clean energy I hope that 0% of it comes from dams. Because dam energy is extremely unclean, damaging, and harmful. And it's not "NIMBY" to say so.
- nine_k 5y agoThis makes them a rather unique class of dirty renewables.
- solarengineer 5y agoI have sometimes wondered if we could consider specific solar and wind energy sites as 100% clean if we could calculate their carbon costs and actively take actions to counter carbon release to at least that amount. E.g., if a 1 KM solar farm took 12 Tons of Carbon and 1 tree sequesters 25 Kilos of Carbon per year, then we could start a forest of 500 trees using the Miyawaki Method and keep it thriving. I have come across messages stating that Trees sequester Carbon for now only to release it all eventually, but Trees provide much more. They provide oxygen, a habitat for animal and insect life, they cool down an area, help attract clouds for rain, hold together the ground soil to prevent erosion, etc. We ought to be reforesting and afforesting land again to compensate for all the cover that we've lost. Ensuring forests would help carbon-offset the carbon-load required to set up Low Carbon energy sources for locations that need them.
- passer_chen 5y ago"Extinct" means no longer existing, but the news (https://3g.163.com/dy/article/GAVLG6910514TQ42.html https://3g.163.com/dy/article/GAVLG6910514TQ42.html) says "The Chinese Sturgeon Research Institute in Yichang, Hubei Province, is the only institution that continuously conducts the breeding and release of Chinese sturgeon. Founded nearly 40 years ago, the Chinese Sturgeon Research Institute has made a series of advances in the artificial breeding of Chinese sturgeon. The 2009 breakthrough in fully artificial breeding"
- crvdgc 5y agoHere it means "extinct in the wild", see the link from the post https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/extinction-wild-endangered-species https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/extinctio...
- Clewza313 5y agoThat's a different fish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_sturgeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_paddlefish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_paddlefish (Psephurus gladius)
- chrisbennet 5y agoI didn't see it mentioned, but the whale shark is even larger. One whale shark was found to be 62 feet long. (Yes, I know: "one of the world's largest") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark
- cferr 5y ago> Enter your email address to continue reading No. Thankfully reader mode can parse it at least.
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago(2020) were other posts around about it from smithsonian and phys.org at the time when this was news.