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Planktos Science tossing plankton about (senselessly)

Climate, Energy

Our favourite ocean / world saving investment opportunity saviour has been born again! Planktos, which was discussed before, has rechristened itself as Planktos Science. Way better of course, as now it really relays the joke to us.. it's a joke right? Please?

Russ George, founder as well as president of Planktos Science (-International?) deemed me worthy of a spam mail. Thanks Russ! Unfortunately Russ seems to be as shoddy a writer as myself (as CEO of Planktos Science International he should get himself a copywriter), and therefore I won't bother you with the complete letter. Instead some excerpts to give an idea:

• 
  If you are a religious person you might liken what we need to do as seeking absolution for our sins of emission by our acts of contrition and ecorestoration, otherwise the path to perdition is that of dissolution of those sins into dying oceans.
• 
  So as our reef beauties cry out and dissolve like Dorothy's wicked witch in our acidifying oceans, the acidification will certainly continue for at least another century unabated even if we never emit another molecule of fossil CO2 into the air. At the same time as the oceans suffer this chemical shock treatment, like those we give our swimming pools, they will continue as well to lose their photosynthetic capacity to counter this onslaught.
• 
  So where is there a source of emission free terrawatts of curative power we can devote to saving the oceans and help restore the balance of Nature? It is of course ONLY available from photosynthesis and therein lies the course we must chart to restore our oceans as we must surely not simply imagine the damage we've prescribed can simply be ignored and start from the present mortally wounded state. No mere conservation ethic or effort will suffice, we are far to far over the tipping point for that to work.

Eat your heart out Charles Dickens!

(Jenna seems to have a nice time though.)

Mapping extinct marine animals

Weird and Funny

I'm putting together a Google Earth layer of marine animals gone extinct.

As of now I've set up the basic thing and added seven thirteen (yes I made an update) animals (Steller's Sea Cow, Great Auk, Caribbean Monk Seal, Japanese Sea Lion, Labrador Duck, Tasman Booby, Yangtze River Dolphin, Pallas's Cormorant, Guadalupe Storm-petrel, Small St Helena Petrel, Eelgrass limpet, New Zealand grayling, and the large St Helena Petrel). Feel free to have a look. Google Earth will automatically load the latest version if you go to Extinct_Marine_Animals.kmz.

Some of the ones still to add are the St. Helena Petrel (two species apparently), Pallas's Cormorant and the Guadalupe Storm-petrel. The layer includes all extinct species mentioned in the IUCN Red List. I'm sure there's more to find though. Some fish maybe?

So. I'm calling on you dear reader: Extinct animals please! Extinction between 1900 and now would be grand,.. for doability sake let's say from 1500 till today. The idea is not to get a huge list but rather to get a list of interesting animals; if we already have 21324234 species of seal the next one is not that interesting, but a Cladocera (water flea) gone the way of the dodo by human causes certainly is. Ideally we end up end with something people can toy around with & accidentally learn some interesting facts from.

(ps. I first filed this under "conservation" but removed that tag as apart from dusting the occasional stuffed specimen there isn't much to conserve here)