Latest comments posted about A wake-up call on global warming on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/179-A-wake-up-call-on-global-warming http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/179-A-wake-up-call-on-global-warming This Law has been promulgated, but how is its effectiveness? There is still a long road ahead. Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:19:35 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-166 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-166 Teddy, I am not sure why it is only in pine monoculture that grey squirrels don't drive out the red - do you know. Yes, if we get rid of pine monoculture (usually thought "good") we also get rid of the last habitat the red squirrel survives in ("bad"). My point was to emphasise the difficulty of measuring and chosing bio-diversity levels once we have started to become aware of our meddling with ecosystems. Years ago, I worked on trying to develop an index of biodiversity for CITES. I applied some of the concepts from financial portfolio theory to measure "spread". But the red squirrel example ket coming up: an environment with very low "measurable" spread of biological diversity, but one which might be better from the point of view of species survival. Tony Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:54:30 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-162 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-162 Tony,do you mean that it is because the red squirrels just can keep a low rate of body fat than grey squirrels, some place in UK need to keep pine monoculture? In order to provide more food to squirrels? Teddy Wu Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:26:53 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-159 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-159 Yongfeng Feng writes: "Most manmade forests have a catastrophic effect on biodiversity" I just want to point out an exception. Pine monocultures are the only ways that the native red squirrel dominates the American-imported grey squirrel in the british isles. Unimportant? Maybe, but it points to the endless difficulty of measuring biodiversity. How many squirrel species should be traded for insect species? Nature does not constrain our choices in clear-cut ways. Tony This comment has been revised by chinadialogue. (此条信息已经由中外对话修改) Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:55:27 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-156 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-156 We all believe that planting trees can improve the environment, just like taking drugs to cure illness. However, just like all the drugs have their side effects, we may destroy our environment by planting trees wrongly. We shall believe in the nature’s immune ability, not to disturb it and let it cure by itself, this way can be economical and save labour. Wed, 12 Jul 2006 05:51:33 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-157 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/179#comment-157