[Coral-List] what agency should list corals
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Wed Apr 10 14:35:53 EDT 2013
Looks like the subject of "what agency should list corals" will not go
away. Probably the best answer is: no agency should list corals. Listing
them surely will not change Co2 levels in the oceans in time to make a
difference.
As for worries about population there is some good news in Science 2.0,
5 April 2013
<http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=654e4e28f2&e=804bb8caa5>.
It says global population is dropping and will continue until around
2090. As for the waste water situation in the Florida Keys which was my
research baby for more than 10 years, I remind people that everything
that happened to Keys reefs (centered mainly around 1983) also happened
to reefs synchronously around small isolated islands in the Bahamas and
Caribbean at the same time (and don't forget that was when Diadema died
throughout the Caribbean). It is a real stretch to blame sewage in those
cases. Remember there are species of bamboos that die off synchronously
worldwide about every 40 years ( some longer) and the cause is not
climatic. Here is a quote from an article in Annals of Botany. 82:
779-785, 1998. "Bamboos are woody perennials some species of which show
the peculiar habit of dying after flowering just once, in long life
cycles of 2 to 120 years (McClure, 1966). Should they be listed?
Fortunately there there are historic records of their death (and
resulting Panda demise) that stretch back hundreds of years. We don't
have long historic observations for corals but do have geologic evidence
of their demise in the past. Are not natural cycles interesting? Gene
Reference:
McClure FA. 1966. The bamboos, a fresh perspective. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. No
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