Shifting Baselines
The Cure for Planetary Amnesia
The Shifting Baselines Blog
Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.
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New Projects & Publications
August 2008: Josh Donlan is co-author on a new paper titled Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles published in Biological Invasions.
August 2008: Jennifer Jacquet is co-author on a new paper titled Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries published in Conservation Biology.
August 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Journal of Applied Ecology titled Diversity, invasive species, and extinctions in insular ecosystems.
July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.
July 24, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a talk on biodiversity offsets to The Alcoa Foundation and the Alcao Intalco Aluminum Plant in Bellingham, Washington.
July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.
July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.
July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.
July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.
May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.
May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.
April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.
April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.
Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.
Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card
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Shifting Baselines, Climate Change, And War
Category: What the...?
Posted on: March 16, 2008 5:00 AM, by Josh Donlan
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Comments
Actually, American media coverage of the �Northwest Passage� issue has been pretty abysmal.
Since 1905, according to the BBC, about 110 boats have been through the Northwest Passage (four of them in 2007). Thirty of the 110 were recreational boats.
The Northwest Passage was successfully navigated in 1906, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1988, and 2000 (and probably in other years as well).
Posted by: Tom Nelson | March 15, 2008 7:46 PM
"...if the US does not take a leadership role in the Arctic melt, armed conflict is on the horizon."
That comment can be read in so many ways. Judging by carbon dioxide releases, the US has had the leadership role for a long time. And US presence would decrease the risk of an armed conflict? Yes, definitely. See Iraq.
Europe will get more active, but the main interest isn't natural resources. The NW passage is a shortcut to Japan and China. It even avoids the tolls at Panama Canal, because there are no locks. Both EU and US have already claimed that the passage is international, not Canadian. Expect China and Japan to chime in.
Posted by: Lassi Hippeläinen | March 16, 2008 1:29 AM
I agree with you Lassi: Given Iraq and history, it is questionable to think that the US would automatically decrease the risk of armed conflict. Nonetheless, I found the article in Foreign Affairs an interesting one. Sounds like the Arctic will be an interesting place politically over the next decade - no doubt about that one.
Posted by: Josh Donlan | March 16, 2008 7:07 AM
I agree with the seriousness of what you've written here, Josh, however, in the interest of precise use of language, would it be possible when using the term "arctic ice cap" to specify either the permanent sea ice of the Arctic Ocean or the Greenland Ice Sheet? In this case I think you are referring to the permanent sea ice. The Greenland Ice Sheet is more in keeping with the definition of an Ice Cap as a dome or sheet of geologic scale, covering extensive areas of land as we also find covering continental Antarctica and as we have had for the majority of the last almost 2 million years covering northern North America. These land-covering formations average well over a 2 kilometers in thickness. The permanent sea ice is not insignificant but is measured in meters. This doesn't lessens the importance of its recent decline in coverage and I don't wish to make it seem trivial but the arguments for taking action to counter human impacts on the envirionment need to be precise in order to be unassailable as well as persuasive in overcoming resistance to accepting scientific fact. Thanks.
Posted by: Doug l | March 16, 2008 9:18 PM