An Adventure in Sound - AudioBooks, ReadAlongs and Online Stories.

A yet to be published UN report says that the case for saving species is 'more powerful than climate change'

It goes on to say that goods and services from the natural world should be factored into the global economic system.

In relation to our audio story, Rockford's Rock Opera, this same message is  encapsulated in our video:

http://www.rockfordsrockopera.com/video/distant-generation.asp

So, as you see, this is what we've been saying and what, via Rockford's Rock Opera, 100,000s children all over the world now know!!

From the Guardian, here's more information about the story:

The economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer.

The Stern report on climate change [http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/30/economy.uk" title="], which was prepared for the UK Treasury and published in 2007, famously claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure.

The UN's biodiversity report ? dubbed the Stern for Nature ? is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher ? between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.

To mark the UN's International Day for Biological Diversity [http://www.cbd.int/idb/" title="] tomorrow, hundreds of British companies, charities and other organisations have backed an open letter from the Natural History Museum's director Michael Dixon warning that "the diversity of life, so crucial to our security, health, wealth and wellbeing is being eroded".

The UN report's authors go further with their warning on biodiversity, by saying if the goods and services provided by the natural world are not valued and factored into the global economic system, the environment will become more fragile and less resilient to shocks, risking human lives, livelihoods and the global economy.

"We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature: not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within," said the report's author, the economist Pavan Sukhdev.

The changes will involve a wholesale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives, Sukhdev, told The Guardian. He referred to the damage currently being inflicted on the natural world as "a landscape of market failures".

The report will advocate massive changes to the way the global economy is run so that it factors in the value of the natural world. In future, it says, communities should be paid for conserving nature rather than using it; companies given stricter limits on what they can take from the environment and fined or taxed more to limit over-exploitation; subsidies worth more than US$1tn (?696.5bn) a year for industries like agriculture, fisheries, energy and transport reformed; and businesses and national governments asked to publish accounts for their use of natural and human capital alongside their financial results.

And the potential economic benefits are huge. Setting up and running a comprehensive network of protected areas would cost $45bn a year globally, according to one estimate, but the benefits of preserving the species richness within these zones would be worth $4-5tn a year.

The report follows a series of recent studies showing that the world is in the grip of a mass extinction event as pollution, climate change, development and hunting destroys habitats of all types, from rainforests and wetlands to coastal mangroves and open heathland. However, only two of the world's 100 biggest companies believe reducing biodiversity is a strategic threat to their business, according to another report released tomorrow by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is advising the team compiling the UN report.

"Sometimes people describe Earth's economy as a spaceship economy because we are basically isolated, we do have limits to how much we can extract, and why and where," said Sukhdev, who visited the UK WHEN as a guest of science research and education charity, the Earthwatch Institute [http://www.earthwatch.org/europe/" title="]..

The TEEB report shows that on average one third of Earth's habitats have been damaged by humans ? but the problem ranges from zero percent of ice, rock and polar lands to 85% of seas and oceans and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland. It also warns that in spite of growing awareness of the dangers, destruction of nature will "still continue on a large scale". The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has previously estimated that species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be without humans.

Yet another species, sadly perhaps destined to appear in a future episode of Rockford's Rock Opera musical story for the iPod Touch, iPhone and now, the iPad.

A new survey has revealed that finless porpoises, a rare type of toothed whale living in the coastal waters of Asia, are more endangered than previously thought.

Scientists say there are two species of the creature in Asia and that they rarely intermingle, the BBC reported.

They have also warned that the ones living in the freshwater of China's Yangtze river are genetically unique and should be protected from extinction.

"The most surprising finding of this study is that the Yangtze finless porpoise represents a distinct genetic grouping, which is distinct from marine porpoises," Professor Guang Yang of China's Nanjing Normal University said.

According to the study published in the journal of Marine Biology, each population of finless porpoise is distinct with significant implications for their conservation and survival.

A group of Chinese and British researchers found that freshwater porpoises should be especially managed and conserved separately.

"The freshwater nature of this population makes it unique," Yang explained.

Scientists, however, are not sure whether the Yangtze finless porpoise should be granted species status.

"The most recent field survey conducted in 2006 suggested that there were around 1,000 individuals in the Yangtze River," Yang said.

"This is much smaller than previous estimates, suggesting a significant population decline in the past two decades."

The Yangtze River is the site of the first recorded extinction of a cetacean (whale, dolphins and porpoises), including the Baiji, a species of river dolphin.

I noticed this recent report and, since we're now working on Part Two of Rockford's Rock Opera audio book, featuring some scaly characters, I thought I ought to mention it...

One-fifth of the world's lizard species, including iguanas, geckos, skinks and snakes, could disappear in a few decades unless steps are taken to curb global warming, an international team of scientists has warned.

The biologists, led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Ohio University, say they've already recorded alarming die-offs of lizards in Mexico, France and Madagascar.

The weather in these regions, including Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has become too hot for many lizards to handle, said Donald Miles, an OU evolutionary biologist.

Stressed by the heat, the lizards spend too much time seeking shelter instead of food. The heat also might affect their ability to reproduce, Miles said.

"What's surprising is how rapidly this can occur," Miles said. "In France, we've seen the decline of common lizard populations in the span of a decade."

The study puts lizards, including some in Ohio, on a growing list of animals and plants threatened by climate change. Biologists warn that each species plays a role, and that losing even one animal or plant carries unknown consequences.

Federal officials declared polar bears "threatened" in May 2008 because of the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice. Rising mountain temperatures also have made whitebark pines vulnerable to parasite beetles, which might wipe out the tree species, said Andrew Wetzler, director of wildlife programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"As the world warms and the temperature rises, many animals' habitat essentially shrinks," Wetzler said. "It also means that other animals are showing up in places where they've never been before, and that can be particularly alarming."

UC-Santa Cruz biologist Barry Sinervo developed a model that ties lizard die-offs to rising temperatures and predicts where extinctions are most likely to occur.

The study is based in part on a new survey of 48 species of spiny lizards at 200 sites in Mexico that other researchers studied and reported on from 1975 to 1995. Sinervo and Miles found that 12 percent of the species at those sites had gone extinct.

The team reports that 6 percent of lizard species will disappear by 2050 and, if nothing is done, 20 percent will die out by 2080.

Their research, published today in the journal Science, accurately predicted vanishing populations of lizards recorded by biologists in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australia.

"It is truly global and includes all the families of lizards," Sinervo wrote in an e-mail. "It is bad no matter where you look."

Miles said global warming could kill off the eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus, a 5-inch reptile found in southern Ohio forests. Timber rattlesnakes and northern copperhead snakes also could disappear.

Though people may not shed a tear over the loss of a lizard or venomous snake, each species is an integral part of Ohio's wildlife and ecology, said Peter Niewiarowski, a University of Akron evolutionary biologist.

Fence lizards, for example, prey on insects such as beetles, flies, grasshoppers and moths, many of which are considered pests. Snakes feed on mice and other rodents.

Lizards and snakes often are food for eagles, hawks and other predators. Their loss could create consequences that are impossible to predict, Niewiarowski said.

"You can't be concerned about lizards in isolation from other animals," he said. "They are critical to the overall functioning of the food web."

Extinction news from Rockford's Rock Opera audio book...

I spotted this on Discovery dot com and thought it was interesting - anything about extinct creatures living on an island catches my eye!              

Apologies for a shameless plug but, in some cases, this Blog has proved the best way to meet new fans for Rockford's Rock Opera, the amazing new audio visual adventure for children and adults.

With songs, music videos and a great audio story Rockford's Rock Opera is like nothing else. And, in the true spirit of free children's online adventure stories, Part One of the story (a whole hour long) is absolutely free. Just click on Rockford's Rock Opera and you can see and hear for yourself. Whether you're a teacher (we have lots of free nature teaching and educational resources - lesson plans, ICT materials etc) or a parent, Rockford's Rock Opera provides a thought provoking and safe site full of useful information about nature, extinction and ecology.

SInce 2009 Rockford's Rock Opera has been streamed or downloaded by over 1,000,000 people around the world so, please, click on any of the links above and find out for yourself.

Hope you enjoy it! (Normal Blogging service will be resumed shortly!)

I know, I know. It's February and this is my first Rockford's Rock Opera Children's Audio Book Blog of the year!

Still, we've been busy and I hope you'll forgive us. Last week we had another sell out live show at the fantastic Bull Theatre in Barnet. It really was a great night - thanks to everyone, especially the children from Foulds School and the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School - who made it such a special occasion.

We've also been witnessing the rise and rise in popularity of our free children's audio book app - Rockford's Rock Opera on the iPhone! We really haven't publicised it at all (other than on the website) but we're now doing 100s of downloads a day from all over the world.

Everyone seems to love the format, although we have had some comments that it 'doesn't employ all the functionality of the iPhone'. That's true of course but then again, it wasn't conceived as an APP. It's really an enhanced audio book story with videos, music and pictures and, as such, its wonderful. It is also quite large - 200meg - so it does need to be downloaded via WiFi.

Still it's a FREE enhanced audio book! And it's Rockford's Rock Opera! So what more do you want?!

There will be more - more interesting - news soon. But for the time being, I have blogged in 2010 and that's an achievement in itself!

Great Apps for children for the Apple iPhone and iPhone Touch becoming immensely popular.

So here's our round up of the very best children's Apps for Christmas and the whole year around - the top kids apps for entertainment and education. Great for keeping the kids quiet while traveling and recommended by parents who know. The first one you may have heard of!

1. Rockford's Rock Opera
Ages 4+  FREE FREE

This is an amazing kid's app (great for all ages in fact) and its FREE. There's over an hour of audio story with pictures, animated music videos for children and it's a great story. It's quite a large app so you'll need wifi to download it but it's well worth the wait. Great fun and educational content for children on the iPhone and iPhone Touch.

2. Wurdle
Ages 5+ $1.99

A very fun word finding game that's a bit like Boggle, with sound effects.  This app is even good for kids who are relatively new to the reading and spelling game.

3. FaceMelter
Ages 2 + $1.99

We thought this was a bit scary but it's very popular! You take or download pictures, then manipulate and weird them up by using your finger.

4. Smacktalk
Ages 2 + $.99

We really like this one. Speak into the microphone, and a cute creature speaks your words back at you in a high pitched voice. Great fun..

5. Pocket God
Ages 7 + $.99

A great kids game where you can play God and sacrifice the locals  to sharks, lightning, and vampire bats.

All these apps are great fun and widely recommended. The iPhone and iPhone Touch really are leading the way when it comes to downloadable entertainment for all ages and with nearly 100,000 apps already available there's plenty of choice this Xmas. If you're starting out, give these recommendations a go and you won't go wrong. Have fun!

We're getting close to the last posting dates for Xmas. This year's been brilliant with hundreds of Rockford's Rock Opera audio books being dispatched for Christmas presents all over the world.

There's still time to order the audio books on CD (visit our audio book shop) but, don't worry, if you've left it all too late you can simply download our story for Christmas or get a site membership so you can enjoy the story with the whole family over the holidays - as an audio book stream, read along story or an on line picture book

We've got lots of exciting plans and news for 2010 but, for the moment, have a great Christmas and thanks for listening!!

Hi

A quick reminder!

We've given in to the 21st Century and Rockford's Rock Opera audio book is now on FaceBook. Actually, of course, it's a great place to get in touch with people, to preview songs and to share our news.

If you're on FaceBook, please do say 'hello' and be our special friend, we'd love to hear from you!

Just follow this link:

Rockford's Rock Opera on FaceBook

See you soon : )

There's been great excitement in the publishing world this week as a new book called ' The Sixth Extinction', tackling the unfortunate fact that man is causing the world's sixth mass species extinction, has just received a 6 figure publishing advance.

The Sixth Extinction is of course what our audiobook, Rockford's Rock Opera is all about.

So, to us, this is already a familiar story.

Here, from The Observer newspaper, is more information regarding the story.

Is man on course to cause the sixth extinction?

Forthcoming book examines the role of humans in the eradication of species, and its findings are not likely to be pleasant

At first sight it seems an unlikely topic for a landmark publishing deal: a fee of about half a million dollars for a book about dead animals - or, to be more precise, extinct animals.

Nevertheless the subject of eradicated species has become publishing hot property after a bidding battle in the US saw Henry Holt, a publisher, beat its rivals to buy The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert last week. According to the New York Times, a "mid-six-figure advance" has now been agreed between writer and publisher.

"The idea of mass extinctions as the next step after talking about the perils of global warming is the most crucial subject," said Gillian Blake of Holt, after completing the deal with Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker on environmental issues. Her last book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, outlined evidence collated from sites across the planet showing how global warming is changing the world. The book was well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Observer praising it as "a superbly crafted, diligently compressed vision of a world spiralling towards destruction".

Now, Kolbert is to focus on humanity's impact on the animal world, and in particular will look at the species that are today being rendered extinct by men and women. Scientists say the number of species being lost is approaching levels reached during five pivotal extinction events that have swept the planet over the past 600 million years. Among these catastrophes was the event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Kolbert's task will to be show whether or not humanity - with its spiralling population, widespread habitat destruction, over-fishing and global warming - is rivalling these.

The theme is intriguing but not new. Nor is the title. In 1996 the distinguished palaeontologist Richard Leakey, with journalist Roger Lewin, produced his version of The Sixth Extinction, in which he argued that the five previous mass extinction events were now being matched by a sixth. "Homo sapiens is poised to become the greatest catastrophic agent since a giant asteroid collided with the Earth 65 million years ago, wiping out half the world's species in a geological instant," he says.

Other distinguished scientists, including EO Wilson and Norman Myers, have also produced works on this theme. None received advances like the one agreed between Holt and Kolbert, however. So what has changed? Why have extinctions become the subject of such attention and finance?

Answers have much to do with timing. Over the past decade, there has been a revolution in concerns about the environment - on both sides of the Atlantic. A succession of reports from United Nations wildlife experts and climate scientists have shown that our planet is in peril and that thousands of species are now hovering on the brink of extinction. For a decade, the public has been deluged with stories about the vulnerability of the tiger, coral reefs, amphibians and a host of other creatures. Hence the interest in Kolbert's new book.

In publishing terms, the move is also a significant one because it represents a shift from big-money outlays on works of fiction which have dominated the market in recent years. Huge sums, for example, have been paid to novelists such as Audrey Niffenegger for works - such as her latest, Her Fearful Symmetry - that have had disappointing sales. A dose of eco-horror might prove rewarding, it is thought.

Certainly, extinctions make a riveting and disconcerting subject. As Professor Norman MacLeod, keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London, told the Observer: "We now know that 99.9% of all lifeforms that have ever existed on Earth have gone extinct. That means, to a first order approximation, that all life is extinct."

Obviously this latter, rather disturbing, scenario has not quite arrived. Nevertheless it does indicate that the constant eradication of lifeforms has been the norm throughout the history of life on Earth. It is the fate of all species to become extinct, a notion that should concentrate the minds of Kolbert's readers. The question is: what forces are responsible for the loss of vast numbers of species in such a short period?

Answers depend on individual cases, it transpires. For example, a huge asteroid crashing on Earth 65 million years ago is generally thought to have done for the dinosaurs. The vast plume thrown up by the impact coated the planet in dust and triggered a devastating climate change. As a result, 47% of marine genera (groups of related species) and 18% of land vertebrate families, including the dinosaurs, were wiped out.

And as evidence geologists point to the Chicxulub crater near the Yucatán peninsula, beneath the Gulf of Mexico, as the impact point of the asteroid.

Similarly the Triassic extinction, which occurred between 199 million and 214 million years ago, was most likely caused by massive floods of lava erupting from the Atlantic Ocean. These created a wave of global warming. In this case, around 22% of marine families and 52% of marine genera were eradicated.

Then there was the Permian-Triassic extinction, about 250 million years ago, which has been linked to both asteroid impacts and volcanism. This was Earth's worst mass extinction, killing 95% of all species, including an estimated 70% of land species such as plants, insects and vertebrate animals. Before that, the Late Devonian extinction, about 360 million years ago, killed 57% of marine genera. Its cause remains unknown. And finally, there was the Ordovician-Silurian extinction, about 440 million years ago, which has been linked with changes in sea levels and which led to the eradication of 60% of marine genera.

Life on Earth has, on some occasions, become remarkably unpleasant in a short space of time, to say the least - though this has not always been the prevailing view among scientists. In fact, Darwin thought extinction was a slow, painful business. "The complete extinction of the species of a group is generally a slower process than their production," he once remarked, a view that held sway for more than a century. Indeed it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that scientists uncovered evidence - the Chicxulub crater - that an asteroid crash must have been involved in the demise of dinosaurs. Extinctions could be sudden, they realised.

However, MacLeod urged caution in interpreting such discoveries. "Most palaeontologists dislike the idea that any single cause was responsible for one of the main extinctions," he said.

"Life is very robust and it takes a sequence of events to produce large-scale extinctions."

Thus the dinosaurs were wiped out at a time of considerable volcanic activity on Earth. Plumes of material were already sweeping the planet, plunging it into a period of global cooling. The crashing asteroid then administered a planetary coup de grace.

On top of volcanoes and errant astronomical objects, other factors involved in these mass extinctions include extreme ice ages which coated the planet in ice from pole to equator, and eruptions of deep-sea methane deposits that set off massive global warming. The resulting death toll is measured in millions of species.

What remains unclear is the degree to which humans are now repeating this bloodletting, to the extent that we are about to set off a sixth extinction wave. If so, we will be the first single, biological cause of this kind of catastrophe. "If you add up the numbers of species that have been wiped out over the past few hundred years, then you find the figures fall well short of a mass extinction," said MacLeod. "It is only when you look at the numbers of creatures that are poised at the brink of eradication does the picture become alarming."

Tigers, coral reefs and all the marine life they support, amphibians such as the golden frog of Panama, orang-utans, sharks, mountain gorillas, the marine iguanas of the Galápagos, albatrosses, chimpanzees and thousands of other creatures now face obliteration: hunted, rendered homeless, and poisoned by humans.

More to the point, this predation has been going on, not for hundreds of years, but for tens of thousands of years.

Whenever Homo sapiens has moved into new territory, this has been followed quickly by the disappearance of most large land mammals, palaeontologists have found. For example, the Clovis people, ancient hunters armed with fearsome stone-tipped spears, arrived in North America 12,000 years ago.

A total of 75 species, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, four-horned antelopes and lumbering sloths the size of giraffes were killed off almost immediately. A thousand years later, the slaughter continued in South America when humans arrived there.

The glyptodon (a giant armadillo-like animal), several species of rodent and various llama-like animals were wiped out. And a similar bloodbath occurred in Australia with the arrival of the first members of Homosapiens.

In short, humanity has a great deal of blood on its hands, spears and guns. Whether we maintain this kind of eradication of our fellow Earthlings remains to be seen. Most experts predict grim times, an outcome that will provide Kolbert with the core of her ambitious look at the fate of our planet - and at the fate of the animals who are trying, unsuccessfully, to share it with human beings.

Scary stuff.