There now, it's extinct! The white possum of the Daintree Rainforest, Queensland, Australia. Aren't you ashamed? Gone, gone, gone forever. Never to return. Because you drove a car, you heated a house, you breathed, you bastard.
December 3, 2008
The first victim of global warming.
There now, it's extinct! The white possum of the Daintree Rainforest, Queensland, Australia. Aren't you ashamed? Gone, gone, gone forever. Never to return. Because you drove a car, you heated a house, you breathed, you bastard.
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48 comments:
Aww. Rats.
Yeah, fuck animals! Who needs 'em!
Fuck plants, too! Goddammned hippy shit is all that is.
Reminds me of Talking Heads hilariously ironic (Nothing But) Flowers.
Anyway, like our middle class and our way of life, it will be good to finally be rid of all those damned plants and animals. Maybe once they're all extinct and America is a 3rd world hell hole, the stupid libs will shut their mouths! (Not likely!)
* hangs self *
Damn. I shouldn't have used a bungee.
An oversimplification of environmentalism, isn't it?
Having learned a bit about how this stuff gets put out there - I would LOVE to know the ORIGINS of this story - funny how it just HAPPENS to be SUCH a CUTE little critter... one we would love to have as pets! What a great image for a campaign!
State of fear, Man. PR firms, Graphics Depts and Think Tanks.
And since the article says it thrives in the COOLER regions, if the recent reports of global COOLING continue, how does THAT figure in?
No matter. I'm sure the White Possum will bring in megamillions to offset the declining grant revenues for the activist crowd.
:) What I wouldn't give for a breeding pair! Surely there's a zoo somewhere. :)
But, what would the AlGore say?
Because of global warming? Heh, sure.
ook at the DATE of this report...
☛ Is this possum the first furry victim of climate change? 3/12/2008
3/12/2008
Then look at the recent viral spread of reports -
☛ link Dec 2, Dec 3, 2008, spreading like wildfire...
Who will get the checks? 10 points for the first person who gets solicited for donations over this
Rose: Possums aren't particularly friendly, so they wouldn't make good pets. Or, I should say, the ones who live on my street wouldn't.
Gone? Damn!
I bet that would have made a bitchin' coat.
Or at least a hat.
We'll make great pets!
My guess is these "researchers" will never find a one white possum (wink, wink) on their jungle trek.
Nothing like an adorable little possum to make us return to our self-loathing enviro ways.
I'm sorry I didn't get to eat one.
In honor of its passing, a short tribute...
P.S. Please blog more recipes!
A good start.
White possums is probably racists, anyway. Good riddance.
If you go to the Fox article then Google the actual name - "lemuroid ringtail possum" you find that the SPECIES is in a near-threatened category (meaning not anywhere near endangered). The white variety is not a separate species, just a different variety with a with coat genetically passed on. Sort of like saying the German cockroaches found in China with spots on them may die off, but the trillion other cockroaches of the same species go on. Neither humans nor cockroaches would ever miss a subpopulation of the species.
No doubt that the article prompted thousands of emotionally disturbed women and male environmentalists in touch with their feminine side into hours of bitter weeping and lamentations for "poor little gone for ever, adorable, cuddly Snowcups".
For that wailing alone, the article is worth it.
Meanwhile, in further evidence of global warming, my neighbor noted he had more algea scum in his pool this year...
One of the very serious fundamental problems in the study of extinction is that our ability to identify new species and thus our ability to detect extinction has grown at a geometric rate up to the present day. This makes it difficult to generate data on extinction that isn't skewed or biased.
"If they have died out it would be first example of something that has gone extinct purely because of global warming."
Except all the species that disappeared the last time the ice retreated and the climate changed radically.
Australia also has a problem with the indigenous species getting waxed from well intentioned but stupid imports. See also the rabbit, the cane toad, .....
-XC
How many species have died out in the last 6 billion years?
What percentage of those since man made our appearance? Since the dawn of the industrial age? Since 'Global Warming' became popular?
When the number that forms the last answer approaches the first answer I might get worried.
Until then... so what?
Are we really sure that they're dead? They might just be pretending. They've been known to do that.
C4 has it right. That cute little light-colored guy is an example of Hemibelideus lemuroids f. typica. There are still many dark-colored ones in Australia known as Hemibelideus lemuroids f. carbonaria.
Both light and dark possums used to flourish in England but then along came the Industrial Revolution with its soot and pollution. The trees became darkened and members of the light colored variety were easily spotted by Ignancious J. Featherbottom, Esquire, the inventor of the cat toy. The furry thing on a string on a stick made him rich.
The dark variety still lives on and many have found employment in London’s financial district as bootblacks, affecting a hokey Cockney accent because it’s more fun that way.
’Owdee doo theh Gov’nah. Shine ya shooes?
They feed on cane toads.
Even if this conveniently cute and furry little animal is extinct it is most unlikely that climate change was to blame. Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun has made a career of debunking this sort of nonsense. He does so again here: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/possums_not_fried/
The ANZAC's seem to have more than their fair share of extinctions. Their animals must not be very tasty or they'd have found a way to keep more of them around.
Oh, please. They've got DNA from the little buggers. They can bring them back if they really want to.
I suspect that the REAL reason they went extinct was that the aborigines found out that they tasted just like chicken.
"Gone, gone, gone forever. "
Endings are usually difficult for all of us. In my case, beginnings and middles aint easy either.
It's a tiny polar bear! The BIG POLAR BEARZ ARE NEXT!!!1
Such an interesting illustration of the Althouse commentariat. Thanks for baiting it, Ann.
Possums are nasty animals.
Any reason to think this animal went extinct because of global warming other than pure speculation from researcher Steve Williams?
Why would a warm-blooded mammal go extinct because the temperature went up by 1.5 degrees farenheit? Seriously, the proposed cause and effect here doesn't make any sense.
95% percent of all species which have ever lived on the earth are extinct.
We didn't kill them all...
(George Carlin)
I thought the first victums of global warming were the climate team at the Weather Channel and Miles O'Brien at CNN. Oh wait, they are victims of the lack of global warming.
Rose,
You realize that most other countries puts the days at the start of a numeric date.
3/12/2008 in Australia is December 3rd, 2008.
When I see this my first thought is to shout "Adapt or Die - Darwin does work". My second is to wonder how much of a carbon footprint these had. Who gets those credits? I'm sure the government will fund research to study this. Millions to be spent on something to be published and then promptly ignored.
kynefski said...
Such an interesting illustration of the Althouse commentariat. Thanks for baiting it, Ann.
Well, I'm intrigued. Please elaborate?
Dead due to Global Warming and Global Warming alone....
Prove It!!!!
I'm sorry. But how on Gaia can you possibly rule everything else out - invading species, disease, etc. Most of these type scare-mongering stories that declare something disappearing due to GW, inevitably turn out to be a virus or loss of habitat. Best example, FROGS!
"It is not looking good," researcher Steve Williams said. "If they have died out it would be first example of something that has gone extinct purely because of global warming."
Killed by an unhinged conjecture. Those can be dangerous.
* * *
Darcy, first comment, perfect.
Fuck plants, too!
Plants like C02 and global warming. Why do you think the Dinosaurs were able to grow so large and be so numerous?
Global warming and global cooling is part of the natural cycle of the earth. Personally.....I'll take the warming over cooling. Plants will grow better, larger and more productively in a global warming scenario, instead of being shriveled by cold.
Rose: You think it's cute and you might want it as a pet, but it's still a possum.
It's ugly vermin, even if they managed a flattering photo.
Looks like dinner to me. Possum, the other white meat!
Steve Williams is forgetting the Irish Elk, and several cold-adapted species (possibly including the cold-adapted subspecies of Homo Sapiens we call Neanderthal Man) that died out at the end of the last ice age.
Also, of course, the Viking colonies on Greenland went extinct due to global cooling when Greenland could no longer support farming by medieval technology.
3000 feet surely isn't high enough for year-round snow cover. Could it be that they died out when some predator that could distinguish white from dark climbed up that high?
OOPS!!!
My 6:20 joke about darker possums shining shoes was not intended to be a racial slur and I hope no one took it that way.
I was thinking it would be funny for darker possums to polish and buff black shoes because they could rub up against them (or vortex around them) with their black fur.
I thought the hokey Cockney thing was funny because . . . well . . . just because I think hokey Cockney accents are funny. Think of Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins” crossed with the Artful Dodger in a high school production of “Oliver” and Bob’s your Uncle.
Seriously though, I didn’t mean for that 6:20 to have any racial overtones (or undertones for that matter).
And now I'm all discombobulated in my gasplingitty.
Was my clarification/apology, itself, racist?
Gee, I sure hope not.
I wonder what Mort thinks.
Well, I'm intrigued. Please elaborate?
Just meant that the folks on this bus seem to display a strong libertarian bent, and the way the owner presented the story seemed intended to provoke that.
Any creature much less a rodent that can't tolerate a 1.5 degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperature shouldn't have the privilege of living to become extinct to begin with. Problem solved.
Maguro said...
Why would a warm-blooded mammal go extinct because the temperature went up by 1.5 degrees farenheit? Seriously, the proposed cause and effect here doesn't make any sense.
Because in the irrational mind of an envirokook correlation is causation.
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