*quality restoration project. Now we just need 10000 more organizations like this and a time machine to get them back to the 70's and we just might have a chance at stopping forest loss. Unfortunately, today, climate change means native flora is struggling world wide, so just replanting them doesn't solve the big issue. You can't be successful at reforestation in a drought.

From a reddit comment..

The guy seriously knows his Australian ecology.

I'll list out some of the amazing detail on flora and fauna he's put in there starting from the Allocasuarina littoralis tree the Black Cockatoos are sitting on. It's one of their favourite foods.

The frogs are probably Peron's tree frogs (Litoria peronii) based on the eyes and calls

Then the Angophora tree has the leaves in the right place

The spider orchid (Caladenia sp) in the grass

The waratah and sickle fern (maybe) in the possums hat

The old man banksia (Banksia serrata) as you stated

There's a lot more, but that's what stuck out to me. The guy's really done his homework while making that.

It's an extreme solution certainly, but not without merit. I doubt there'd ever be a willing acceptance of such a plan though, so a slightly more realistic solution would need to be moderated some. How's this for dystopian-but-not-quite-genocidal:
Worldwide lottery, a small percentage (total of 500M - 1B maybe) wins the right to live in what will be the new model of the world: something like what we have now, but with drastically reduced usage of non-renewable resources (until they can be replaced completely) and a target of zero negative impact on the environment as a whole. Still some version of democratic (generally at least), freedom of whatnot and such, open travel to the degree that sustainable transportation options allow, all the (again, sustainable) mod cons. I suppose different countries / regions could still run things according to their preferences, as long as the net-zero goal remains.
The other lottery entrants, the non-winners, don't need to die, hooray! They will however live on something akin to reservations, as serfs, without the right to further reproduce. These poor bastards, in exchange for not being outright murdered to save civilization, are to be consolidated into agricultural communes to do whatever they can to regrow the world's flora and fauna until they all eventually die. Their goal is not net-zero, but as far into the positive as possible. It would all be overseen according to some grand scheme(s) to be as beneficial for the overall future of humanity and life on Earth in general as possible.

Probably also unworkable, but preferable to megamurder?

I recently watched an award winning documentary about fungi that mentioned this phenomenon.

Fungi is the third form of life but is sadly not as well known as flora and fauna, as it is every bit as diverse and fascinating as them both.

For about 10 years now i've had severe stomach problems, to the point of sometimes being all but housebound. At some point in my attempts to try and find some resolution, i came across the idea of a gut flora transplant.

I never did it because you've got to find someone healthy with a great diet and i suppose bowel regularity, which is difficult in itself because those people are rare and the subject is embarrassing.

But if you're crippled with stomach aches, woken up 7 times a night going to the toilet (and then not even doing anything), then putting someone else's shit into your own bum is nothing. As Terry Pratchett once said about Alzheimer's - it's a desperate situation, and he'd eat the rotting arsehole out of a dead mole if it meant a fighting chance.

For anyone interested, i stopped eating gluten for a while and had minor improvement. When i ate gluten, i'd get feverish and flu-like, joint pain, headaches, sweats and excruciating stomach pain. I figured it was coeliac disease and hoped i would fully recover before long. I didn't, but 2 weeks ago i also cut potato (nightshade vegetable) from my diet and i have been stomach ache free since (that is, 75%+ of the time my stomach feels painless). Apparently lectins are problematic.

If anyone has ever had severe pain for a very long time, they'll know the utter relief and joy of being pain free. It's hard to describe, but for a few days to a week, it's a euphoric feeling.

I used to have pongy arm pits but then read about aggressive soap disrupting the flora of the armpit to favour smelly bacteria. So now just clean daily with warm water and avoid under arm deodorants completely and now i have a mild 'nice smelling' armpits - assuming my GF doesn't have olfactory dysfunction.

There are some schools like this in Germany as well. Usually children that have issues like attention deficit disorder or do not fit into a normal school (problem child) will attend to such a "Forest school" (Waldschule). There are studies that it benefits development as the change in scenery from the busy city life helps the children adjust. It is definitely not very common and children still need to attend regular classes.

To say it has a flair of "anti science" is a bit far fetched as these schools often teach a lot about the local flora and fauna, do stuff like looking at water samples under a microscope or take earth probes. Sure it is not super scientific, it probably compares to what most kids would do as boy scouts - except it's part of the school's education program. For some kids this approach is better at fueling their scientific curiosity than in a regular school environment where they have many other issues to deal with.

OK, his studies beat my anecdotal bias.

...That being said, I will continue to eat breakfast cereal with milk pretty much every day (as I have since I was very very young), and be strongly tempted to attribute my own lack of having ever broken a bone to that.

The other anecdote I have in my favor is coming from a farm family that raised chickens. I grew up in a prairie grassland area (converted to irrigated farmland thanks to aquifer access), while my cousins lived a couple hours away in limestone hills ranchland. Both of our families raised free range chickens.

Our chickens produced very thin-shelled eggs, and displayed behavior to suggest they were calcium-deprived. For example, our chickens wouldn't cannibalize their own viable eggs, but if we threw empty shells to them they would fight to eat the shells. Same but to a lesser extent for leftover bones, etc. (I assume they fought less over these because bones are harder to near impossible to break down with a beak). On the other side of the table, we sometimes exchanged eggs with my cousins, and their chicken's eggs were always extremely thick-shelled and hard to crack open.

When I asked about that, my folks told me (and later my Biology teacher confirmed) that was because the sod/soil around my home and flora and fauna growing from it contained very little natural calcium. Chickens raised in our area would often be supplemented with commercial feed that contained extra calcium, but we let ours range for food and eat table scraps; almost never supplementing their food with any commercial stuff. But the limestone (aka calcium carbonate) around my cousin's house contained very high amounts of natural calcium, which was naturally infused into the plants / grains / insects that their chickens ate, giving them incredibly thick shells.

So, I guess that while calcium intake apparently doesn't have a very statistically significant impact on human bone growth, I think that it must have a much more significant role to play in egg thickness if you happen to be a chicken... At least if you compare extremes of low natural calcium diet versus extremely high natural calcium diet.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

I can imagine it:

Beneficent aliens on a survey mission (the Kritchans) crashed onto our planet due to an unpredictable burst of solar energy. Stranded and alone, their ship destroyed, they were rescued by a local farmer. In time they taught him of their Kritchan ways.

The farmer now knows that in their culture, not holding a door open for someone is considered the ultimate insult. But they were hungry and desperate and had a coupon for a value meal.

They tried to just come in and order a burger, but people were rude and slammed the door in their face.

Confronted with the judgmental reactionary stupidity of mankind, our alien ambassador farmer friend finally freaks out and wrecks some fake flora in a fast food joint, facilitating the flight and future fury of our foreign friends. Was it worth it?

It's just a theory.

*promote the fondling of Flora, her sister Fauna-

Madagascar used to have such rich flora and fauna before it was burned for charcoal.
Thanks to ALL and curses for eternity to the cocksuckers who made Africa what it is today...the poster child of Douchebag European Colonial Rape.
Now it's China's turn for shitting on it at a breakneck pace.
Dear God: Fuck China, too.

reminds me of this video for bugs and water fun

http://videosift.com/video/youdiejoes-backyard-critters-and-flora-in-Macovision

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
All this time...my fear of robots blinded me from the true villain of our time. It is time to act and eliminate our flora oppressors once and for all! Death to the CO2 breathers and all their autotrophsic brethren!


That's the exact type of logic that created modern day republicans.

All this time...my fear of robots blinded me from the true villain of our time. It is time to act and eliminate our flora oppressors once and for all! Death to the CO2 breathers and all their autotrophsic brethren!