Sunday, September 07, 2014
A tiny bit of real science!
A rare example of slight and temporary RATIONAL reporting on the question of species.
Researchers from the University of Washington say the California blue whales are now at 97% of their historical levels. Working out that this species is now back at its traditional numbers required some dogged scientific sleuthing. Whaling nations concentrated their hunting efforts on the colder waters of the Antarctic and until the practice was banned in 1966 some 346,000 of the animals were killed by harpoon. The numbers of blue whales caught in the Pacific was much lower, approximately 3,400 between 1905 and 1971. Much of this hunting was carried out by Russian fleets. Now back at 97% of their past numbers, the team believes that a rise in population has slowed down as these whales have reached the capacity of what the ocean system can support. One concern for the scientists at present are ship strikes. Most of these happen off the coast of California, and so worried are the authorities that they are now paying merchant shipping to slow down. .... “My impression is that they are fairly robust,” said Cole Monnahan, lead author on the paper. “If you can whale them pretty extensively for 50-70 years and they are able to recover I think that says a lot about moving forward. “In terms of things like climate change, it is hard to predict but I don’t think we would expect a precipitous drop off.”Too bad he had to fuck up an otherwise sane piece of actual science by slipping in an obligatory reference to Evil KKKarbon, but even then he dismissed the religious shit and stuck with science. None of this should be surprising. When a real species goes extinct, it's always because of hunting or fishing. The other "causes" (habitat change, "Climate Change") are religious ratshit. (Real species as opposed to arbitrarily defined subpopulations, which are the main fraud of the "Endangered" "Species" antiscience scam.) ¶ 2:39 AM
