Online Indexing of All Life on Earth Begins
BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 27 (IPS) - Free, authoritative and online: 1.8 million species.
From sharks to mushrooms to bacteria, the Encyclopedia of Life will provide scientifically verified information that will satisfy both a grade school child's curiosity or enable a university researcher -- or amateur naturalist -- to make a scientific breakthrough, says James Edward, new executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) project headquartered in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Institution. Each species page has a built in content slider that allows you to select how much information you want to see on the page. And there is plenty of detail, including links to at least 1 million pages of digitized scientific information that is normally only available in the big 10 natural history museums located in the developed world. "Anyone can access this for free no matter where they are," Edward told IPS. Anyone who can read English, that is. "We're hoping to get translations into other languages," he added. In the near future, there will be regional editions of the EOL: EOL Colombia or EOL Netherlands, with all information in Spanish and Dutch and provided by local experts.
Around the world, species' habitats are altering dramatically, forcing birds to migrate sooner, or becoming too dry or too hot to support certain plants. There is no chance the scientific community can keep pace with the speed and breadth of these changes. The only possible way is through observations by non-scientists who can check the EOL to see if that frog they saw this morning is in its normal habitat or has shifted its range. "If someone in Ecuador sees a frog they've never seen before, they can quickly check the EOL to see if it's endemic or from neighboring countries. If not, then it may be a new species," said James Hanken, director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and chair of the EOL Steering Committee. So many species are going extinct before they can even be identified, but the EOL will make it much easier to identify them, Hanken told IPS. "We can't protect things (species/habitat) without knowing what is there," he said. In a few months' time, species experts will be happy to receive information -- pictures, videos, text -- from the public about their observations. The EOL will have a form to complete which will be reviewed, checked, and if warranted, incorporated into the EOL. Right now Edward, Hanken and others would like people to tell them what they think about the EOL as it currently stands. Suggestions and ideas are welcome about anything from the page structure to the font colors, says Edwards.
It could map the distribution of human disease vectors, such as crows, mosquitoes, and the West Nile virus. Life spans of related species could be compared to understand what truly governs longevity. With the mysterious, ongoing loss of honey bee populations, the EOL could point the way to alternative pollinators. It will hopefully revolutionize teaching and learning of the life sciences. And such a revolution is urgently needed. Better understanding of biodiversity -- the sum total of living, interacting species -- is critical to the survival of humans, who too often ignore the vital services that other species provide. There is no oxygen for us to breathe without plants. No plants also means no food. Trees clean water and air, regulate temperature, and prevent flooding and much more. However, the world is in the midst of an extinction crisis with one species vanishing every three hours. And the rate is accelerating. It will take a decade to complete the EOL and perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 existing species will have gone extinct before it's complete. Up to 30 percent of all species on Earth are likely to vanish by 2050 due to unsustainable human activities, according to the 2006 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
It's a sobering finding: some species are irreplaceable, but we don't know what they are. "We hope the EOL will spark a new generation of budding biologists and will help people develop a better appreciation of the natural world," says Hanken. OneWorld TV: The First Species to be Wiped Out by Climate Change?
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"Scientific knowledge"Time: 02/29/2008 08:35
Comment: I read here with more trepidation than most. I know everyone's intentions here are for a better world. Take my word for it when I tell you every human on the planet that exists, or, ever existed wanted for a better world. I simply am unimpressed with so many common and false assertions of competence as these many short-lived individuals attempt to affect their desire without knowing even the basic underpinnings of the reality that constrains us.
Let me give you my perspective of this in a nutshell. The truth is exquisitely rare. Knowledge, as it must be based upon truth, is then, almost non-existent. And competence being a higher order of unlikelihood involving knowledge, is unfathomably impossible for our species. Our guarantee that we will never succeed in proactively making a better world in encompassed in the truth that there can be no better world than this one. And, if we really want to make it better, then we must stop screwing with it. I recently went round and round and round with an uninspiring environmental scientist as lackluster as his name, John Feeney, Ph.D. etc., etc. I questioned his wisdom reflected by the knowledge set he and those similarly trained were constructing for humanity. His science, environmentalism, is about the destruction of the planet, or so I would surmise. He and his peers would have us all believe they are the moral monks of the scientific world, all intent upon saving the planet. Every scientist who ever walked the face of the planet thought they were moral monks who would make the world better. And these who would save the world are no less mistaken about their abilities. Envornmentalists build a knowledge set that describes exactly how to destroy the world. They build it with funds from universities, government, private benefactors, and from their own ill-gotten wealth made teaching others exactly how to destroy the planet, environmentally. They would claim they are amoral for their sure negative effects, and the most moral people on the planet for their poorly thought out intentions. I read here about the construction and assembly of yet another scientific knowledge set, this one detailing better than ever before a list of the world's species. I know it is foolhearty to create such a knowledge set. It will surely place every species on the planet, at a greater risk. Due to our human nature humanity simply cannot properly use science. Science is not truth. Even though that is what we have all been taught, science is not truth nor anywhere near truth. Science, even well intended science, is but a religion, a religion that is most akin to some sort of highly effective witchcraft. The knowledge sets scientists build, to the very last one, are all tools humanity will surely abuse. History amply proves this assertion. That is our human nature seeping back into our reality again and again. Some of the young who read here have taken pride in themselves thinking they have risen above superstition with science. You are vastly mistaken. And it is this common mistake that most threatens our world today. Science is but another superstition. And, if you question such an assertion, your education is lacking. The truth is, nothing is perfectly defined by science. The truth is ruled out by the scientific method of trial and error, approximation, and mathematics further confounds the basic problems science has with truth. There are many examples of this. I will provide you with just one today. The Greek philosophers who gave us the basis for our modern sciences asserted "Nothing can come from nothing." This assertion has been held as true since the time of the Greeks. The assertion, like every other scientific assertion, that Nothing can come from nothing, is false. It is false and you can see that it is false, if you merely rephrase the assertion thus: Something cannot come from nothing. We can know what something is. But I defy anyone to tell me what is "nothing." Stop screwing with the world by making these scientific knowledge set-tools that only aid humanity in making its humanly ignorant mistakes. Then and only then will we have a better world. And, it will be the world we had all along too, the one we had before anyone tried to make it better. Don Robertson, The American Philosopher |
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