http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?...11/November/Monday14


Doomed in 50 Years

Monkagedi Gaotlhobogwe
Staff Writer


Anthropologist, Dr Richard Leakey has warned Botswana it faces harsh climatic conditions in 50 years due to the effects of global warming.


Leakey warned that in 50 years time climate change will decimate the country's wildlife and water resources and displace many Batswana who will be forced to flee drying up areas in search of places with better water resources.

The renowned Kenya-based anthropologist was the guest speaker at the annual Kalahari Conservation Society (KCS) gala dinner, which was attended by President Ian Khama, who is the chairman of Conservation International and KCS vice-president.

Leakey also warned that the concept of national parks would not save the wildlife, and would rather make matters worse for them in the next five decades as the effects of global warming will be felt. He urged governments to rethink the concept of national parks in order to guarantee the continued sustainability of wildlife.

Leakey warned that when national parks' biodiversity is disturbed due to the effects of global warming, wildlife will need to move out of the parks to fend for themselves but human habitations surrounding the parks would make the wildlife movements impossible, resulting in deaths.

Botswana is famed for its rich wildlife resources and the Chobe National Park boasts of diversity of game viewing including over 60,000 elephants, lions, buffaloes, zebras, antelopes, birds species, to name but a few. Leakey also predicted that as global warming takes its toll, wildlife will be concentrated in only one area of the country that can sustain them.

He did not predict doom only for wildlife. The anthropologist predicted that Botswana as a semi-arid country would also get drier and drier, resulting in depletion of ground water resources, a phenomenon that Leakey warned would also force people to flee to areas that would sustain their water needs.

Leakey also warned that crop production would be severely hit in the next 50 years as plant species die out due to the effects of climate change.

He also said that some scientific work has estimated that sea-levels could rise by three metres, a phenomenon which Leakey predicts will prove disastrous to cities and countries around the sea.

Remind me not to have him over for dinner...

leakey is basing his predictions on assumptions of global warming. I on the other hand am basing my assumptions on global cooling and therefore predict that we will be hunting polar bears in botswana in the next 50 years

So exactly what qualifies him to be an expert on global warming?

Not sure how his work in anthropology relates.


But I did find this on his wikipedia entry

quote:

When Richard was 11, he fell from his horse, and fractured his skull

I predict "researchers" like Leakey will still be trying to scare us 50 years from now while simultaneously applying for more research grants.

Sounds like he is a good friend of Al Gore ,

Iran has a plan to counter-act the effects of global warming.......Nuclear Winter!!

That's a given the minute the Union Jack was lowered and Botswana became independent.

quote:

Staff Writer

Thirty years ago our schools were teaching our students that we were headed into the next ice age....

Thank God for better research.

Also thirty years ago, Jacques Cousteau was predicting there would be no fish left in the seas by now.

Bill Quimby

Leakey=PETA.

Leakey = Douchebag

Is this the same Leakey responsible for the hunting ban in Kenya?
Cheers! Hans

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!

The only thing that will doom botswana is the same thing that has doom'd all of Africa - MISMANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES!!!

quote:

Originally posted by HJ wild:
Is this the same Leakey responsible for the hunting ban in Kenya?
Cheers! Hans

Yep.

He is also the grand idiot who has them burn tons of valuable ivory.

quote:

He is also the grand idiot who has them burn tons of valuable ivory.

The burning of ivory has never made sense to me...it sends no signal to poachers except "Here, up in flames, are tons of ivory with which your poached ivory will not have to compete, the lost revenue of the sales will not help to defeat you and we will show the world that the country from which this ivory was born cares no more for the long-term viability of its natural resources than to simply turn a material of value on several levels to ash. Carry on men..."

Leakey is a loose cannon and has been all his life. He damned near got killed during his foray into Kenyan politics. He's just looking for more funding from the Chicken Little crowd.

ROTFLMAO!!! Some of your comments in this thread are priceless! THANKS!

BTW, I've been to the Oldupai Gorge and Leakey's footprints are not there. And the correct African (Massai) spelling is Oldupai, not Olduvai.

The population of sub-saharan Africa is now 1 billion and is estimated to increase to 3.6 billion by the end of this century. That's a far greater threat than global warming.

In a strange sort of way...