I think it's fair to say that the biosphere is dying. Polar bears are not increasing from what I hear. They are drowning. There's a piece on MSN today about the dramatic decline of the African penguin. One island which counted 70,000 at one time now has 5000. A combination of competition for food with humans (trawlers), oil pollution and global warming is killing them off.

Honeybees are dying off and we won't have many fruits or vegetables without them. I used to get big red rose blossoms in my backyard every summer. This past summer, there was not a single one--none.

Frogs and toads are dying off. A coworker lives by a marsh and he said he used to go out in the summertime and see turtles and garter snakes all over the place. He said he didn't see a one this past summer but the pond scum is much thicker than he's ever seen it. He saw a few frogs but their numbers have been way down for years.

I was out in the boonies Saturday and saw a single dying honeybee and it struck me just how long it has been since I've seen one in person. Years. Over a decade.

Forest fires are increasing and are far, far more devastating due to a dry season now extended by about 78 days from normal which turns the forest floor into a tinderbox--something that never used to happen. A 60 Minutes report said that a huge forest fire 30 years ago was 500,000 acres but the ones we had out west last year and this year took 8 million acres each. None of it will grow back in our lifetimes.

We all know about the dying barrier reef, I trust. And the arctic and antarctic regions are melting even faster than we predicted. The salinity levels of the ocean are what regulates the planet's temperatures and even a 1% dilution is serious. Already the currents are changing and the storms are getting worse. The drought in the Piedmont region has never been seen before and I'm afraid it's because the desert of the Southwest is expanding eastward.

The ocean levels are rising and will inundate large coastal areas resulting in unimaginable property losses and hundreds of millions in China alone will have to move inland. Where are we to put them? Yet our population is expanding but there is less land to live on. This will result in increased devastation of natural habitats and an increase in diseases. This is exacerbated by our foolish use of antibacterial soaps, antibiotics and what not that have already produced germs that cannot be killed by standard means. Now we have people dying of staph and super forms or polio and TB making a comeback.

Destroying over half the world's rainforests which supply the planet with 1/5 of its oxygen is not helping and it is inconceivable that it is not adversely impacting the environment.

We're in trouble. The earth looks to be preparing for a mass die-off of life. The biosphere is withering. I swear you can feel it withering around you.