The Common Decimator

The Common Decimator
8/2011

At the date of this writing, the world population is 6,908,800,000+, or approximately 7 billion people (US Census Bureau). The population will reach 9 billion about 2040, or 30 years from now.

To begin to grasp what this means, let a dime represent one person. If a dime is about 1 millimeter thick, and we stack 1000 dimes, we have 1000 millimeters, or 1 meter. Thus 1 meter represents 1000 people. If we stack 1000 of these meters atop each other, we have 1,000,000 millimeters, which equals 1 kilometer.

If we again stack 1000 of these kilometer stacks atop each other, we have 1,000,000,000 millimeters, which would represent 1 billion people. Now stack eight more of these billion-millimeter stacks atop each other, and we have the projected population of the world in 2040. It is a super-stack of 9,000,000,000 millimeters, or 9 kilometers.

This is slightly taller than Mount Everest. It is over 7 kilometers deeper than the Grand Canyon. It rises to the cruising altitude of a passenger jetliner. The stack of shiny little dimes, each representing one person, will reach up to a jetliner making its contrail in the sky. This is the world population, 30 years from now.

I am not sure what that world would be like, but I believe it will not come to pass. There are limits to growth of any organism's population. We will very soon reach our limit. Perhaps, in the long view of history, we will be seen to have already past it.

This concept of the limits to growth was first published by an Englishman, the Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus was skilled in political economy and demography. He wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (six editions, 1798-1826). According to Malthus, "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". In other words, there is only so much Earth.

This limitation of the Earth over the increasing needs of human population implied that at some point, humanity would begin to experience scarcity of food and other supplies. Said Malthus, "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race." Some of Malthus' critics coined the sardonic term, "Malthusian catastrophe". They believed that
improvements in science and technology would provide food and other supplies indefinitely.

It has been 213 years since Malthus published his theory. Let us look at the world of today, and see if Malthusian predictions are valid. We should first note that Malthus did not know about our environmental conditions. For instance, he could not have predicted the effects of air and water pollution, the worldwide dependency on petroleum, large-scale deforestation, and global warming. Now let us look at some facts.

Fish stocks:

According to the scientific journal Nature, stocks of large predatory fish, such as cod, tuna, and various sharks, have been depleted by 90% since 1950. Where there were one hundred bluefin tuna, now there are ten. Where there were ten swordfish, now there is one. In the past sixty years, the alpha predators of the sea have been literally decimated. With increasing demand for swordfish, tuna, and other fish over the next few decades, what will remain?

Sylvia Earle says, "We will never get back to what we had in the oceans 50 years ago, but we still have a small window of opportunity to save the last few big fish before they are exterminated." Consider that phrase, never get back. According to Earle, due to the increasing demands of human population, the seemingly endless supplies of fish are gone forever.

Some fisheries have already collapsed. In 1497, the explorer John Cabot reported that schools of cod, Gadus morhua, near Newfoundland were so thick that they virtually blocked his ship. The northern cod fishery on the Grand Banks increased over the next 400 years, until by the mid-1950's, 254,000 tonnes of cod were being caught annually. In the 1960's, large new factory-fishing ships from Canada, the United States, Europe and as far away as Asia began to take their toll of fish from the Grand Banks.

Seeing their catches of cod decline, Canada and the United States banished the foreign fishing fleets to 200 nautical miles off the coast. However, in order to increase catches, Canada soon introduced the great stern-trawlers. These "draggers" scoured the bottom of the sea with nets the size of football fields. They took not only whole schools of cod, but destroyed other species and the benthic (sea bottom) ecosystems as well. The extent of "collateral damage" to benthic species has never been documented, but the effect on cod stocks became evident within a decade.

In 1968, the cod fishery peaked at 822,960 tonnes. By 1975, despite the use of sonar and other new technology, the catch had fallen to less than 304,814 tonnes. In the following years, catches continued to decline. Then, in 1992, the fishery suddenly collapsed. Nets came up empty, and fishermen demanded that the government do something.

After much debate, in 1993 the Canadian government imposed an indefinite moratorium on fishing the Grand Banks. This put 40,000 people out of work in five Canadian provinces, and required several billion dollars in relief to coastal communities. Recently, there have been some signs that cod are increasing in numbers. Yet as of this date, the northern cod fishery has not recovered.

Immature Maine lobsters, Homarus americanus, are one of the cod's favorite foods. Without cod predation, the lobster has increased in numbers, such that the price of lobster has held steady or actually decreased. That is why we see tanks of lobsters in grocery stores all over the USA.

A pattern of fishing has emerged. When people decimate one species, they target another. Often this species has increased due to the removal of its predator. For example, in the Chesapeake Bay, sharks have been virtually fished out. Sharks were a major predator of bullfish, or cownose rays, Rhinoptera bonasus. The loss of sharks resulted in cownose rays increasing to great schools and wreaking havoc on the oyster banks.

In place of sharks, and to relieve pressure on the oysters, the fishing industry has now targeted cownose rays. They are being marketed under the more pleasant name of Chesapeake rays. The ray's flesh looks more like beef than fish. What will happen if people develop a taste for Chesapeake rays, and the demand begins to rise as with cod? Perhaps we will soon be eating "Chesapeake worms".

The ability of fishing to satisfy human demand has reached its limit, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The IFPRI recommends that fish farming and better fishing management, will be necessary to continue to meet the demand. However, fish farming has its environmental price as well.

In southeast Asia, fish and especially shrimp farming has resulted in the destruction of large areas of mangrove forest. Besides destroying complex ecosystems, the loss of mangroves endangers human occupation of the coast. The mangrove forests, like wetlands elsewhere, protect the coastline during storms.

The concentration of fish in aquaculture pens results in the spread of diseases and parasites, which in turn requires the use of antibiotics and other chemicals. Fish droppings and uneaten feed accumulate around the pens, polluting the water and making it unfit for natural populations of organisms. When the water becomes too filthy to use, the farmers simply move on to another area, creating a cycle of habitat destruction and pollution.

Fish farming is also very inefficient. For instance, 1.1 kilograms of feed are needed to produce 0.5 kilograms of salmon; 11.8 kilograms of feed produce only 0.5 kilograms of bluefin tuna. The feed consists of varied seafood such as squid, blue mackerel, and sand eel (San Francisco Chronicle). Thus huge amounts of smaller fish are needed to supply the fish farming (and land animal) industries. Fish caught and ground into feed currently amount to 37%, over one third, of all global seafood.

The human response to overfishing is first to use more efficient technology to get more fish. Then, when the fish stock collapses, fish out another species, or else begin aquaculture at great cost to the environment. Perhaps we should fish directly from the bottom of the food chain. A future advertisement might read, "Good for whales, good for you. Have some delicious plankton stew!"

In 1954, The Inexhaustible Sea was published by Daniel Hawthorne and Francis Minot. In those days, the vast expanses of ocean must have seemed indeed an inexhaustible source of food. Only fifty years later, it has become clear that the human race's increasingly voracious appetite for seafood cannot be supported forever. Whether fish are wild-caught or farmed, there is really no such thing as a sustainable fishery. The inexhaustible sea is becoming exhausted.

Deforestation:

Half the world's tropical forests have been cleared or degraded (Forestry Dept, FAO). Rainforests once covered 14% of Earth's surface, but now cover only 6%. Today, 6.1 square kilometers of rainforest are destroyed by cutting, clearing, burning, and bulldozing, every second. This amounts to a forested area twice the size of Florida being lost every year. Scientists believe that the world's rainforests may be completely destroyed within 40 years.

In particular, the Amazon Basin contains over half of the world's remaining rainforest. Currently, forest covers an area of about 5.5 billion square kilometers. This is the size of the United States east of the Mississippi.

As the vast Amazon rainforest removes the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the air, it produces over 20% of the Earth's oxygen. For this reason, the Amazon rainforest has been called the Lungs of the Earth. Yet since 1960, when logging and slash-and-burn agriculture began to be widely practiced, 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of Amazonia will be deforested by 2030. Already, Amazonian lands cleared of forest are visible from outer space.

As population pressures increase in Brasil and other nations of Amazonia, all unprotected rainforest may be cut or burned in this century. It is difficult to quantify the loss of animal and plant species, habitat, food resources, and fresh air, should the Lungs of the Earth be completely deforested. Imagine losing 20% of your breath.

Logging and agriculture are also destroying rainforests elsewhere in the world. In Central America, 40% of the rainforests have been cleared in the past 40 years. According to the FAO, since the early 1900's, 77.2% of west African forest has been destroyed, and the remnants are often degraded. Nigeria in particular lost 55.7% of its forests between 2000 and 2005. In Madagascar, only 34% of the original rainforest remained in 1985.

Indonesia has the most extensive rainforests in Asia, but they are rapidly being cleared for timber and farming. In the 1960's, 82% of the country was covered by rainforest; by 1995, the forested land had been reduced to 53%, and today only 49% of Indonesia is forested. Much of this forest is second-growth and degraded.

Forests in temperate zones, although they do not receive as much media attention as the tropics, are receiving the attention of the timber, agriculture, and other industries. In the USA, about 90% of the original old-growth (virgin) forest has been cleared since 1600. Most of the remaining old-growth forests in the lower 48 states are on public lands, and in the Pacific Northwest, about 80% of this is slated for logging. Of course, forests have grown back (secondary forest) in some areas, but the demise of old-growth forest and its replacement with tree farms have destroyed entire ecosystems, and led to the extinction of species such as the magnificent Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.

Alaska is the last of the states with large tracts of virtually untouched old-growth forest. Even so, in what is now the Tongass National Forest, about 50% of the largest trees were cut before logging was restricted. Then in 2009, President Obama permitted Pacific Log and Lumber to clear-cut up to 1.5 square kilometers of this unique temperate rainforest.

In Europe, since prehistoric times, people have been cutting down old-growth forests. Many areas, such as the British Isles, have lost their old-growth forests completely. They now have a mixture of secondary growth, pastureland, and farms. In Eastern Europe, the boreal forest or taiga still covers much of its original land. However, China has virtually deforested itself, and now imports timber from the Russian taiga. Forests everywhere are being decimated by an increasing human population.

"Once there were Billions":

As I mentioned above, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker became extinct primarily due to the loss of old-growth forests in which it nested. It was gone before we knew it. There are several ways anthropogenic (human-caused) extinction may occur: through habitat destruction, the introduction of exotic and competitive species, and direct predation (hunting).

Following are a few of the species which have been lost due to human activities, with the probable causes, location, and date of their extinction, last reliable sighting, or last captive specimen.

Mammals:

Yangtze River Dolphin or Baiji, Lipotes vexillifer, China, hunting, by-catching with fish, habitat destruction, 1997. This is the first known extinction of cetacean.
Japanese Sea Lion, Zalophus japonicus, Japan, hunting, killing by fishermen, 1951.
Tasmanian Wolf, Tasmania, killing as pests,1930.
Sea Mink, Neovison macrodon, Northeastern US, fur hunting ,1860.
Arabian Gazelle, Gazella arabica, Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia, hunting, 1825.

Birds:

Dodo, Raphus cucullatus, Mauritius Island, introduced predators, habitat destruction, circa 1693.
Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis, North Atlantic, hunting, introduced predators, 1852.
Carolina Parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis, Southeastern US, hunting, killing as pests, habitat destruction, Cincinnati Zoo, US, 1918.
Laughing Owl, Sceloglaux albifacies, New Zealand, hunting, habitat destruction, introduced predators,1914.
Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, North America, hunting. When Europeans arrived in North America, there may have been 3 billion to 5 billion Passenger Pigeons; in the early 19th century, their flocks would sometimes darken the sky. When a demand for Passenger Pigeon meat developed, the great flocks were hunted to extinction. The last Passenger Pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo, US, 1914.

Reptiles and Amphibians:

Rodrigues giant day gecko, Phelsuma gigas, Rodrigues Island, Mascarenes, habitat destruction, introduced predators, 1842.
Domed Mauritius giant tortoise, Cylindraspis triserrata, Mauritius Island, hunting and introduced predators, circa 1795.
Round Island Burrowing Boa, Bolyeria multocarinata, Round Island, near Madagascar, habitat destruction by introduced pests, 1975.
Golden Toad, Incilius periglenes, Northern Costa Rica, habitat destruction, global warming (?), 1989.
Hula Painted Frog, Discoglossus nigriventer, Lake Hula, Northern Israel, habitat destruction, 1955.
Fishes:

Thicktail Chub, Gila crassicauda, Great Central Valley, California, US, habitat destruction and introduced predators, 1957.
Lake Titicaca Orestias, Orestias cuvieri, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia-Peru, introduced Lake Trout, circa 1945.
Houting, Coregonus oxyrinchus, rivers in Western Europe, overfishing and pollution, 1940.
Utah Lake sculpin, Cottus echinatus, Utah Lake, Utah, US, drought and pollution, circa 1935.
Ash Meadows killifish, Empetrichthys merriami, Ash Meadows, Nevada, US, habitat destruction and introduced predators, circa 1955.

Plants:

Woolly-stalked Begonia, Begonia eiromischa, Penang Island, Malasia, habitat destruction, circa 1898.
Tree Cyanea, Cyanea arborea, Maui, Hawaii, habitat destruction, 1928.
Saint Helena Olive, Nesiota elliptica, St. Helena Island, habitat destruction, 2003.
Giffard's cyanea, Cyanea giffardii, Island of Hawaii, habitat destruction, 1917 (?)
Bennett's Seaweed, Vanvoorstia bennettiana, Parramatta River, New South Wales, Australia, habitat destruction and pollution, 1886.

This list could go on for many pages. It could list mollusks, insects, and other lower animals that have become extinct due to human activities. It could list even more species that are threatened or endangered, but not yet extinct.

In fact, so many species are being lost that some scientists refer to the modern period as the Sixth Great Extinction. The previous major extinctions were: First, circa 440 million years ago (mya). 25% of families were lost (a family may consist of hundreds of species); Second, circa 370 mya, 19% of families lost; Third, circa 245 mya, 54% of families lost; Fourth, circa 210 mya, 23% of families lost; and the Fifth, circa 65 mya, 17% of families lost. These five earlier extinctions were all caused by a change in the physical environment, such as natural warming or cooling of the globe, tectonic and volcanic action, or impact by a large meteorite.

This new mass extinction is being caused by one species, Homo sapiens. Scientists place the Sixth Great Extinction as starting approximately the time humans began intensively hunting, about 100,000 years ago. Then, around 10,000 years ago, humans invented agriculture, and the extinctions increased dramatically.

Currently, we are losing species at a rate of three per hour. Scientists estimate that 50% of the Earth's remaining species will be extinct by the end of this century.

Primary causes are exhaustive hunting, fishing, and other forms of predation; introduction of exotic predators or competitors; habitat destruction and pollution.

The Brown Tree Snake, Boiga irregularis, probably arrived on the island of Guam in shipments of cargo, shortly after WWII (circa 1945). Because the island lacked native snakes or other predators, the birds of Guam had no adaptations to protect themselves from this menace. The snakes began to proliferate, preying on birds, frogs, and other small animals. Today, 60% of the native bird species have been killed off. The forests of Guam are quiet.

Global Warming/ climate change:

Overall, the globe is warming, and 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are at least adding to the trend. There is really no scientific controversy about this. There are local cold areas and weather fluctuations, but the overall trend is to a warmer global climate.

The only controversy comes from people who do not want to face facts: who prefer, for ideological reasons, to deny the obvious. Denying that the global temperature is rising, that humans are at least partially responsible, or that warming is already causing changes in the environment, is like denying that humans evolved from lower life forms*.

Before discussing anything else, let us pause for a moment and remember the Carteret Islands and their people. Off the coast of Papua New Guinea, the Carterets formed an atoll, a ring of coral keys surrounding a sunken volcano. The people of the Carteret Islands, approximately 2500 altogether, were subsistence farmers and fishermen. They had an unique culture tied to the islands they had called home for over 400 years.

Then the sea started rising over the coral atoll. At first, only a few beaches were covered, but gradually the flooding became more severe. Carteret islanders had to use canoes to navigate what were once forests and banana groves. Especially low-lying inhabited areas were inundated, and people began to move to the highest ground available.

Finally, in 2003, Papua New Guinea authorized the evacuation of Carteret islanders to Bouganville island. By 2007, the relocation was complete. The people of Carteret had lost their islands, their homes, and their way of life. Even their cemeteries were immersed.

The Carteret islanders are the first known people to be relocated due to rising sea levels. They have been called the world's first environmental refugees.

We should really have expected global warming, with all its associated changes in weather and habitats. We are putting back into the air, carbon which was sequestered during warm and humid periods of Earth's history. Moreover, we are releasing the carbon (as carbon dioxide) at an extremely high rate, compared to the rate at which it was transformed into coal and oil. Such a sudden release of greenhouse gases would result in much greater reflection of heat back to Earth, with a subsequent warming of the atmosphere. Given the current conditions, it would be surprising if global warming did not occur. Nonetheless, we do need evidence to support this hypothesis.

Exhibit A: Glaciers
The condition of glaciers is an important source of evidence for global warming. Increase in a glacier's mass is called accumulation; loss of mass is ablation. The most important factor in
determining the condition of a glacier is mass balance. This is the difference between accumulation and ablation. Thus, if a glacier's mass balance increases, the glacier is advancing; if it decreases, the glacier is retreating.

Although some glaciers in western Norway, Iceland, and New Zealand have shown an increase in mass balance, this is likely the result of local weather changes. Overall, the worldwide glacier mass balance is rapidly decreasing.

Between 1961 and 1997, or 36 years, the world's glaciers lost 3709 cubic kilometers of ice. This is equivalent to a cube 15.5 kilometers on each side. Imagine an ice cube 15.5 kilometers high, a mountain of ice almost twice the height of Mount Everest and 8.6 times the depth of the Grand Canyon. That is the global glacier loss as of 1997, 14 years ago.

The glaciers are still receding. In Glacier National Park (Montana, US), there are now 26 named glaciers, whereas there were 150 glaciers in 1850. This is a loss of 83%, and many of the existing glaciers are shrunken remnants. Perhaps the park needs a new name.

The Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound is melting into the ocean at a rate of 24.4 meters per day. In Greenland, many glaciers are receding by several miles each year. In Bolivia, the Chacaltaya mountain range glacier has lost so much ice that a former ski resort, once the highest in the world at 5300 meters, is barren much of the year. The once-magnificent Chacaltaya Glacier, which covered 1600 square meters in the 1950's, may completely disappear by 2015.

Satellites monitored by NASA (National AeroSpace Administration) have shown that glaciers in Greenland are disappearing into the sea twice as fast as they were 10 years ago, and that the rate of glacial loss is increasing.

Exhibit B: Permafrost:
Another indicator of global warming is the condition of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost. Within the Arctic Circle, and at very high altitudes, the ground normally does not thaw out, even in mid-summer. However, many areas in the Northern Hemisphere have begun to show loss of permafrost.

Buildings in Fairbanks, Alaska have begun slumping or tilting as their foundations sink into the newly-soft soil. Northern Canada and Siberia, as well as high-altitude areas such as the Alps and Tibet, also report permafrost thaw.

Loss of permafrost, besides undermining buildings, can cause roads to sag and pipelines to crack. All structures built on the previously-stable permafrost are at risk. In addition, thawing permafrost can cause landslides as on Ellesmere Island in Canada. In high-altitude areas, rock slides become more common. One example occurred in 2003, when Alpine climbers were stranded on the mountain after a huge section of the Matterhorn broke free and fell.

Permafrost has been thawing, and will continue to thaw.




Exhibit C: Animal Migrations and Range Extensions

Let me begin with a personal story, anecdotal evidence if you will. I lived in northeast Florida from 1989 to 2010. In those 21 years, I saw several changes in animal and plant behavior. First of all, in 1989 I never saw a gecko. This makes sense, because all the geckos in Florida are exotics, brought accidentally or intentionally from warm climates such as the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

Geckos do not withstand freezing weather, and thus were barred from Florida north of Orlando. Yet by the early 2000's, I began seeing these "ghost lizards", as I called them, swiftly moving across outdoor walls in the night. By 2010, as I prepared to leave, the ghostly geckos were a common sight. It is good to have them, perhaps, as they prey on insects, but I cannot help wondering if they are competing with a native predator.

Then there were the bananas. Many people in northeast Florida keep banana plants (for they are not true trees) as exotic decorations. Like the geckos, bananas are not native to Florida, although they grow almost everywhere in the peninsula. However, when the first freezing weather hits, they turn brown and die back to their roots. Thus, they do not grow throughout the year. This is significant because bananas must grow steadily for two or three years, before they bear fruit.

When I arrived in Florida, fruiting bananas were exceedingly rare; usually they grew in very sheltered locations. Then as the 1990's became the new millenium, I noticed increasing numbers of bananas not turning entirely brown, but remaining green through the winter. The banana plants were growing year-long, and began increasingly to produce fruit.

Finally, there is the blue land crab, Cardisoma guanhumi. Standard references give its range as the Caribbean and no further north than Vero Beach, Florida. I remember large colonies of them in 1978, at the University of Miami, near the southern end of the peninsula.

Then, in 2009, while visiting St. Augustine, a friend pointed out to me some holes in the grass near the shore. These burrows were from 3 to about 10 centimeters in diameter. I became excited, remembering the crabs near U of M. But we waited quietly until one and then another crab began to appear.

They were indeed blue land crabs. There were males and females, small and large; evidently they had been breeding. I later found another colony nearby, which proved that the crabs had established themselves far northward of their previous range. In fact, St. Augustine is 255 kilometers up the coast from Vero Beach.

I realize that these are anecdotes and not reliable studies. Therefore, let us look at some of the evidence gained from scientific research on animal migrations.

In 2009, the National Audubon Society studied the 305 species of birds which winter in the United States. Based on analysis of 40 years of observations, 60% of the bird species had moved their winter ranges northward an average of 56.3 kilometers. The highly adaptable birds most likely to visit bird feeders had a northward movement of over 70% . Of grassland bird species, 38% had moved northward from their previous winter range.

A study reported in the journal Science, in 2011, showed that 2000 species of animals, including mammals, birds, insects, and many plants also, are moving northward from their previous ranges, at an average rate of 4.6 meters per day. Mountain-dwelling species are moving more slowly upward, at about 1.2 meters per year. All these animals and plants are moving to cooler climates, or to higher altitudes, but how far can they move?

Stanford University biologist, Terry Roots, notes that the American pika, Ochotona princeps, a small rabbit-like creature, has been studied in Yellowstone National Park for more than a century. In 1900, according to Roots, the pika's range extended only to 2377 meters in altitude, but in 2004 they were seen at 2895 meters, an increase of 18%. What happens when the pika, or any of the thousands of animals and plants which are moving northward or upward, run out of room? And what of species such as reptiles and amphibians, that cannot migrate at all?

One species that already cannot move further north, is the polar bear, Ursus maritimus. Due to the longer, ice-free summers, polar bears in Russia have been stranded on land. Since polar bears hunt for the most part on sea ice, the reduction in ice has resulted in a 22% drop in the population in Western Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Canada, since the early 1980's.

According to United States Geological Survey, reduction in Arctic sea ice may kill off 66% of the entire world population of polar bears within 50 years. The remaining bears will be widely distributed, making reproduction more difficult, and further reducing the population. Polar bears are rapidly running out of ice.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
approximately half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean have been shifting northward or into deeper water over the last 40 years. Some fish stocks are disappearing from American waters, while others are moving from more southerly waters, into the New England fishery areas.

Janet Nye, a researcher at the NOAA Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and lead author of the study, followed fish survey data from 1968 to 2007. According to Nye, fish as diverse as Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, winter flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus, and spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthius, have been moving to cooler waters. Not only are these species moving away from their historic ranges; southern species such as Atlantic croaker, Micropogonius undulatus, are now being caught in New England waters.

















On the European side of the Atlantic, species previously confined to the southern seas have also begun to appear. The sharpnose shark, Rhizoprionodon terraenovae, blue marlin, Makaira nigricans, and big-eyed tunny, Thunnus obesus, are a few of the fishes that have made their way north into waters off the British Isles.

















Plankton and invertebrates have also begun to migrate northward. The slipper lobster, Scyllarides latus, normally native to the Mediterranean, is being caught with increasing frequency in British waters.

















At the other end of the Earth, the king crab, Paralomis birsteini, has been found in large numbers, marching up the Antarctic slope. According to James McClintock, a professor of polar and marine biology at the University of Alabama, these crabs have not lived in the shallow regions of the Antarctic Ocean for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. Yet they are moving in like an occupying army.

Scientists are concerned that these migrating species may disrupt or destroy marine ecosystems. The king crab, for instance, preys on practically everything it can catch. Antarctic creatures such as clams and snails have never had to adapt to shell-crushing predators; their shells are soft and the crabs could decimated them.

All of these migrations and range extensions, if carried out over centuries, would allow other species in the areas to adapt. Yet because of the rapid rate of migration, collisions between predators and prey, or competitors for food and other resources, can be expected to cause ecological damage and the extinction of many species. Some creatures, like the polar bear, may have already reached their limit.








The ultimate question is: when will we reach our limit? Already, resources in .....nations are under stress, and .....people are suffering.

The availability of fresh water for drinking, agriculture, and other uses, is rapidly becoming a global problem. There are differing degrees of water shortage. "Water stress" means that there are 1500 cubic meters of water available per person, per year; "water scarcity" means less than 1000 cubic meters per year.

During the 20th century,according to the World Health Organization, the world's population increased from about 1.4 billion to over 6 billion, about 400%. However, our use of fresh water has increased 900%. Currently, 2.8 billion people live in areas of high water stress, and 1.2 billion are actually suffering water scarcity. By 2030 over 3.9 billion people, or about half the world population, may face water scarcity.


Already, in China for example, 60% of cities are water-stressed. The once-mighty Yellow River now has only 10% of its natural flow, and the demand for water still increases. In 2006, India used about 829 billion cubic meters per year. This is approximately the size of Lake Erie. By 2050, the demand will double to 1658 billion or 1.7 trillion cubic meters, far exceeding the 1.4 trillion cubic meter supply.

In Africa, lack of water will afflict over 25 nations by 2025; 13 nations already are suffering either stress or scarcity of water. The once-majestic Nile River now carries little water to the sea. By 2050, the three nations through which the Nile runs, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan, may come into conflict over the remaining water. There is also a potential water war in southern Africa, between Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. The Cuito River supplies all three nations, but these nations have already experienced conflict for other causes, and water stress would likely plunge the area into war.


In 2007, at least 11% of the population of Europe experienced some degree of water shortage. In the United States, water shortages exist also, primarily in the western and southwestern states. As population increases toward the 10 billion mark, water stress and scarcity will afflict large areas of the globe. This could result in mass migration toward relatively well-watered northern lands, such as Europe, Canada and the United States, which would greatly increase the existing immigrant pressures in those nations.

The House of War:

The current immigration to northern nations, especially in Europe, has been primarily from nations dominated by Islam. According to Islamic political theory, there are two worlds: the house of Islam, or dar al-Islam; and the rest of the world, dar al-Harb: the house of war. When someone says that Islam is a religion of peace, they speak the truth, because when a nation falls under Islam, it is at peace with the directives of shari'a, the code of Islamic law. It is pacified into dar al-Islam.

Historically, Islam has always extended over the world; rarely has it receded. In 1970, according to the Islamic Strategy Conference, Chicago, there were 100,000 Muslims in the US. In 2008, there were 9,000,000. This is an increase of 8900%. Where there was one Muslim, now there are nine. By 2040, there will be 50,000,000 Muslims in the US. This is an increase of 9000%. Where there are now nine Muslims, within 30 years there will be 89.

The population of the US in 2008 was 304.5 million. If the Muslim population was 9 million, the US was 3% Muslim. In 2040, the total US population will be 377.4 million. If the Muslim population increases to 50 million, the US will be 13% Muslim. This would present a very different America than we live in today.

Taking western Europe as an example, the approximate percentages of Muslims follow:

United Kingdom: 2.8
France: 10.0
Netherlands: 5.4
Belgium: 3.4
Germany: 3.7
Sweden: 3.1
Denmark: 3.0
Norway: 1.0
Spain: 1.2
Switzerland 3.1