Tragedy of the Breeding War Commons: Ocean heading for mass extinction, scientists warn

Ocean heading for mass extinction, scientists warn

By Sarah Dingle, ABC News
Updated Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:23pm AEST

Impending doom: the report says without swift action the fight to save species could be lost. (Supplied : Linda Cash)

Scientists are warning of a potential marine massacre with a mass extinction of sea life akin to the death of the dinosaurs.

A new report says the seas are battling pollutants, overfishing and warming, and warns that without swift action the fight to save species could be lost.

The International Program on the State of the Oceans report brought together coral reef ecologists, toxicologists and fisheries scientists.

And when they compared notes, the result was grim.

Co-author Professor Ove Hoegh Guldberg, who specialises in reef ecosystems, says scientists found "unprecedented warming".

"We're seeing acidification in the ocean and now we're starting to see a drop in oxygen concentration throughout the major part of the ocean," he said.

"Now it's impacting directly on sea life, but the other is that it is a potential early step towards conditions which are associated with so-called mass extinction events."

Professor Guldberg does not want to be alarmist, but says a growing human population is to blame for many of the changes.

He warns the pressure will only increase, with the world's population set to grow by another 3 billion people in the next 30 to 50 years.

[Д♠][Population Security] Nobel winner supported biological warfare as form of population control

Nobel winner supported biological warfare as form of population control

Third World de-population has been U.S. strategic policy since '74

Top-secret files recently declassified from the National Archives of Australia, despite government opposition, has revealed that one of the fathers of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering advocated using biological weapons against Indonesia and other "overpopulated" countries of South-East Asia. Australia's The Age reports that world-famous microbiologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet recommended in a secret report for the Australian Defence Department in 1947 that biological and chemical weapons should be developed to target food crops and spread infectious diseases.

Macfarlane, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1960 and died in 1985, said, "Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical, but not under Australian, conditions."

Before a government committee in 1948, Macfarlane said, "In a country of low sanitation the introduction of an exotic intestinal pathogen, e.g. by water contamination, might initiate widespread dissemination." He advised that, "Introduction of yellow fever into a country with appropriate mosquito vectors might build up into a disabling epidemic before control measures were established." The committee recommended that "the possibilities of an attack on the food supplies of S-E Asia and Indonesia using biowarfare agents should be considered by a small study group".