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| Are we boned? |
| We're boned |
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28% |
[ 2 ] |
| I believe we will find a way to make everything right |
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28% |
[ 2 ] |
| This is just environmentalist lies! Long live modern capitalism! |
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42% |
[ 3 ] |
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| Total Votes : 7 |
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| Author |
Message |
twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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 Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 7:27 pm Post subject: A Primeval Tide of Toxins |
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So this is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with blistered fingers...
| Quote: |
MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.
When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.
"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."
As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.
After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn't eat solid food for a week. Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats.
For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints � until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland's marine botany lab.
Samples placed in a drying oven gave off fumes so strong that professors and students ran out of the building and into the street, choking and coughing.
Scientist Judith O'Neil put a tiny sample under a microscope and peered at the long black filaments. Consulting a botanical reference, she identified the weed as a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.
O'Neil, a biological oceanographer, was familiar with these ancient life forms, but had never seen this particular kind before. What was it doing in Moreton Bay? Why was it so toxic? Why was it growing so fast? |
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,6670018,full.story
To sum up: We've created conditions for ancient lifeforms hazardous to us and what we eat, to be fruitful and multiply. |
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captain kirk
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:19 am Post subject: |
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Awesome article, like SF. That weed produces 100 (!) toxins. Like a
Stephen King story.
Is there any more information about this? |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:45 am Post subject: |
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They have a few links at the bottom, if I remember.
Personally, I think something is going to give at some point. It's just a race to see if it's disease, collapsing food stocks, lowered birth rates, war, climate change, altered environments, or the zombie apocalypse that's going to end the party. |
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