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Earth In the Midst of Sixth Mass Extinction: the 'Anthropocene Defaunation'
mspohr writes: A special issue of Science magazine devoted to 'Vanishing Fauna' publishes a series of articles about the man-caused extinction of species and the implications for ecosystems and the climate. Quoting: "During the Pleistocene epoch, only tens of thousands of years ago, our planet supported large, spectacular animals. Mammoths, terror birds, giant tortoises, and saber-toothed cats, as well as many less familiar species such as giant ground sloths (some of which reached 7 meters in height) and glyptodonts (which resembled car-sized armadillos), roamed freely. Since then, however, the number and diversity of animal species on Earth have consistently and steadily declined. Today we are left with a relatively depauperate fauna, and we continue to lose animal species to extinction rapidly. Although some debate persists, most of the evidence suggests that humans were responsible for extinction of this Pleistocene fauna, and we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors." Unfortunately, most of the detail is behind a paywall, but the summary should be enough to get the point across.
I had no intention of reading past the summary anyway. If that....
"Don't build anything, ever, and don't eat any animals, ever" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...then it's not considered important enough for the masses.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
You guys sure about that? I'm pretty sure there's one sleeping a few cubes down from mine. At least, I hope that's a giant ground sloth...
...and ask if this is "not science", too.
Relevant: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/congress-tells-scientists-ipcc-climate-report-not-science
I know I kill over a billion sperm every 3-4 hours or so. Need an amazon to grow enough trees to produce that paper, incidentally, amazon is where I also order it.
If the problem is caused by people, then the solution is less people.
So which people do we stop from reproducing?
What methods are we willing to use to enforce the reproduction bans?
What will be the punishment for violators of the reproduction bans?
Or maybe we let Global Climate Change take care of the people population problem.
You may not agree with this statement. But shockingly there is a strain of political thought in America that applies exactly this principle to the human society and the poor people. And ironically those who profess these "maker vs taker" are shocked when they are told they are practicing social Darwinism.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
like I really want a 7 meter ground sloth in my back yard...
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
...that were just as red on the inside as contemporary watermelons.
To this day, 95% of our earth’s oceans remain undiscovered. Erm I kinda hoped that we still have not discovered a lot of species but if they are like jelly fish or amoebas it wouldn't be of any significant matter...
Personally, I take a very darwinian approach to my lawn. That is, so long as it grows, and can put up with the lawn mower, it can stay. I don't water. I don't spread chemicals. The result is that I have all kinds of fauna in my yard, some of which I am not sure are even native to this solar system.
Proverbs 21:19
Old news. Frankly, the extinction has been going on since the beginning of the Holocene. Hallam said it best: there has never been a time when humanity has successfully and peacefully coexisted with nature.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
There is no need for me to take sides. You may think that in the large scheme of things, Eric Garners passing is insignificant. That is the real debate. ...
Now I want you to get out of your chairs...
One thing is certain. Eric was important enough to me to log in and improve the odds of a flame war. You see, I may not have the wherewithall to alter the outcome of a society hell bent on its own destruction but, You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!
Sooner or later my mom was going to get on slashdot.
I come here for the love
Without RTFA, have they surveyed our dumps and sewers? I'm sure there are a huge number of new species that are arising out of our garbage just waiting to take over. I just hope they don't have a hanker'n for BBQ humans.
Because animals are TASTY! In fact I'm going to go have some chicken and cow for lunch... If I choose hotdogs, Then I get Chicken,Cow, Pig, Rat, Squirrel, and Mystery animal all on one!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's the part which is most abiotic.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Doesn't that mean we are winning the race for species domination just as every other species on Earth attempts and has attempted to do until resources cause the decline?
The reality is Earth's clock is ticking. All resources need to be exhausted to find a way off of this rock or sustain life in the harsher confines of deep space. Otherwise, what are we really doing with our advantage over all the other species past and present? You want a long term goal for humanity? There it is. Survival of the species beyond the scope of the planet for wence it came.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Wow; This is an amazing thread. Does it pay very well?
I can blow smoke rings outta my ass as well as any of you.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Who says that the authors are trying to make a point, versus simply drawing conclusions based on observations? The derision in this thread and dismissal of the (ludicrous!) idea that any change in modern society's behaviors may be a good idea strike me as a defensive lashing-out by people who don't take climate change seriously and won't modify their behavior, humanity be damned.
The Japan tsunami killed a whole bunch of people. Damn tsunami. It's a part of Mother Nature that just doesn't care about the consequences. It's just a matter of physics having top priority.
Humans have top priority over the planet (excluding tsunamis ... for now). We are unthinking and determined to do what comes "natural," to us.
Are we any worse than a tsunami? Aren't both we and the tsunami doing what we are designed to do?
Perhaps humanity made a mistake somewhere way back in the long ago and we are supposed to be tending sheep. Perhaps we are supposed to kill off a bunch of flora and fauna. Maybe we are supposed to shit in our mess kit until we are all gone because we are an impediment to the next apex. I don't know..
No one knows the end game.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yeah - slashdot is supposed to be about Current news... and this is like... thousands of years old. I'm indignant.
If the dinosaur, cockroach, or the tortoise was smarter, it's instinct for survival would have killed of all known predators as well. There are animals in the wild now that fight and kill other animals for reasons other than a direct food source. They do it for protection and competition. Humans are not alone.
Plants do it to each other too. Many vines take over surrounding vegetation, blocking the sun and and killing off native tree. Some vegetation root systems blocks out others to gain space on the ground and blocks their root systems causing others to die off.
Living things compete. Do you have a better idea where everything can coexist and not hinder anything else? Nope.
Again, this is not limited to just humans.
We are all guilty. Repent.
{give me a break already}
I imagine it's closer to "Invasive species are a danger to the entire ecosystem, including, eventually, themselves." When dealing with such the usual solutions are extermination (generally ineffective), or introducing a predator capable of keeping them in check without further destabilizing the ecosystem. Assuming we wish to do neither, nor suffer global ecosystem collapse, it would behoove us to start learning to co-exist with our ecosystem rather than strip-mining it.
And it's not like that is some sort of knee-jerk hippie "let's all live in mud huts" bullshit. As one example consider the gradually increasing numbers of oceanic "wildlife preserves" where all fishing and other destructive exploitation is banned - Not only does the protected area begin returning to pre-exploitation lushness, but so do the surrounding waters. Fishing yields around the protected zone reverse the global trend and begin to increase dramatically, greatly benefiting even the fishermen who were initially opposed to banning fishing in the richest waters. Given half a chance nature can be extremely bountiful, we just need to give the ecosystems a chance to stay healthy rather than maximizing short-term profits at the expense of long-term desertification.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Let's see, Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, Arctic. You mean there are 76 more oceans out there. And if you count the southern there is another 95 of those suckers.
Holy cow, wait till Exxon finds out!
I guess that's better than the "Anthropocene Defloration".
Identifying the drivers of these extinctions is straightforward, but stemming the loss is a daunting challenge. Animal species continue to decline in, and disappear from, even large, long-protected reserves, due both to direct impacts, such as poaching, and indirect ecological feedbacks, such as habitat fragmentation. Though hunting and poaching might seem obvious candidates for targeted policy and management interventions, there are complex social issues underlying these activities that will require coordinated and cooperative actions by nations (see Brashares et al., p. 376).
While stemming this loss remains a challenging goal, attempts to reverse the extinction trend are increasing. Such “refaunation” efforts involve a variety of approaches, including breeding animals in captivity, with the hope of reintroducing them to the wild, and assisting recolonization of areas where species have become locally extinct (see Seddon et al., p. 406). Active reversal of animal extinctions is proving just as challenging as preventing extinctions in the first place, but a few success stories provide some hope. Many note and mourn the loss of animals but have not recognized that the impacts of this loss go beyond an aesthetic and emotional need to maintain animals as a part of nature. Current research reveals startling rates of animal declines and extinctions and confirms the importance of these species to ecosystems (see Stokstad, p. 396). Further, and more broadly, it suggests that if we are unable to end or reverse the rate of their loss, it will mean more for our own future than a broken heart or an empty forest.
The animals described in the summary sound pretty frightening. I am glad they are gone.
If the selective pressure humans impose eventually results in a planet full of non-scary wild animals, I think that would be a win all around. Especially if all or at least most of them are cute.
Now, I hope we can devote some resources to driving these giant aggressive flying insects with stingers into extension. They have got to go.
Am I the only one that is not upset that terror birds are extinct?
With a name like "terror bird" my only regret is humanity's horrid existence did not kill them fast enough.
I'm not convinced people in mud huts were numerous enough or destructive enough to manage the megafauna extinctions. A lot of this hysterical screaming about how we're destroying the planet seems a lot like hubris.
On certain level, the idea that we have that much power pleases the egos of some people.
It may seem like hubris, but the fact is, it's not. Look at this: http://xkcd.com/1338/
The preponderant majority of land mammals in the world, by weight, are either humans or food for humans. For vegetation, the picture is not much more encouraging: all of the world's wild forests weight less and cover way less land than our agriculture does.
There was a whole special report in the economist about the idea that we are now in a different, man-made geological era, the "anthropocene": http://www.economist.com/node/...
"Don't build anything, ever, and don't eat any animals, ever" ?
I don't eat animals.
so what agenda is on the menu today?
Thankfully, we have people like the Arabs and the Russians helping us keep the human population under control. All in the name of saving the animals, I'm sure.
...how many species there OUGHT to be?
Earth, otherwise known as the HMS Titanic.
We should consult with the folks on Easter Island.
You me and the cockroaches can raise a glass of champagne.
The 2010 fantasy novel Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory claims the second law of thermodynamics disproves the greenhouse effect. At first this seemed like a parody of creationists who claim the second law disproves evolution, but the Slayers seem very serious. They claim warm surfaces can't absorb back-radiation (*) from cold atmospheres because they mistakenly think heat can't be transferred from cold to warm objects at all. In fact, this is only true for net heat transfer. Cold objects can slow the rate at which warm objects lose heat without transferring more heat to warm objects than vice versa. That's how the greenhouse effect works.
(*) Also called downwelling longwave irradiance.
Again, Dr. Latour's Slayer fan fiction is fractally wrong:
Our solar system has a foot in the grave anyway. Why should we care about anything?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There is room for all of gods creatures... right next to the mash potatoes.
No fucking way did any sloth reach 7 meters in height. 7 feet, ok.
Building roads all over a continent is one of the fastest ways to decimate species.
Good point. Going even further, from something I wrote in 1992: https://groups.google.com/foru...
---
A letter from Gaia to humanity on the joy of expectation
Don't cry for me. When I let you evolve I knew it might cost the
rhino and the tiger. I knew the rain forests would be cut down. I
knew the rivers would be poisoned. I knew the ocean would turn to
filth. I knew it would cost most of the species that are me.
What is the death of most of my species to me? It is only sleep.
In ten million years I will have it all back again and more. This
has happened many times already. Complex and fragile species will
break along with the webs they are in. Robust and widespread
species will persist along with simpler webs. In time these
survivors will radiate to cover the globe in diversity again. Each
time I come back in beauty like a bush pruned and regrown.
Be happy for me. Over and over again I have tried to give birth to
more Gaias. Time and time again I have failed. With you I have
hope. I cannot tell you how happy I am.
Your minds, spacecraft, biospheres, and computers give me new realms
to evolve into. With your minds I evolve as ideas in inner space.
With your technology I can evolve into self replicating habitats in
outer space. Your computers and minds contain model Gaias I can
talk to; they are my first children. Your space craft and
biospheres are a step to spreading Gaias throughout the stars.
Cry, yes. Cry for yourselves. I am sorry those alive now will not
live to see the splendor to come from what you have started. I am
sorry for all the suffering your species and others will endure.
You who live now will remember the tiger and the rain forest and
mourn for them and yourselves. You will know what was lost without
ever knowing what will be gained. I too mourn for them and you.
There is so much joy that awaits us. We must look up and forward.
We must go on to a future - my future, our future. After eons of
barrenness I am finally giving birth. Help me lest it all fall away
and take eons more before I get this close again to having the
children I always wanted.
(Paul D. Fernhout, Lindenhurst, NY 6/92)
===========
The preceeding is something I just scanned in from 1992, written while I was
in the SUNY Stony Brook Ecology and Evolution PhD program (where I had gone
to learn more towards simulating gardens and space habitats). I had learned
there that it took about 10 million years to regenerate lots of biodiversity
from a large asteroid impact event, and this had happened several times in
Earth's history.
The following is a related statement also just scanned in of what inspired
it written at the same time.
--Paul Fernhout (NY Adirondack Park, Oct 2008)
=================
If one accepted that modern industrial civilization has initiated
a great die-off of species comparable to the one sixty-five
million years ago, how should one feel about this?
Is overwhelming sadness and anger the best emotional response? On
the surface it may seem so. Apparently modern civilization and
the accompanying pollution and deforestation are pulling apart a
tapestry woven over billions of years. Anger at the short sighted
and narrow values driving industry may seem well placed.
Certainly feelings of joy and excitement would seem out of place.
Here are a few thoughts that may affect one's feelings. High
levels of biodiversity can be generated from very low ones in
about ten million years. On the time scales of the earth this may
not be a blink of an eye, but it is a short nap. To humans this
may mean a great loss, but Gaia might barely notice. It has after
all been only sixty-five million years since the last die off.
Not all species will be affected equally. A simplification will
occur where the more specialized creatures wi
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Copy and pasted straight from the article without a single citation.
You're a dick.
MTSIA.
...was my first thought reading the headline. Here's what I think happened:
Sheldon develops a raging allergy to a yucca that's been hanging around in the corner of the apartment for ages, he goes on a mission to remove every plant he sees from existence. Hilarity ensues.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Any time a tree hugger wants to reduce the human population, he or she is free to off themselves. Jonathan Swift would approve.
nature doesn't care if cute animals survive, or if large animals survive, or if *any* animals survive.
But we do... which is why we should tread lightly.
Jane responds.
Some fungus is getting a few of the Lithocarpus and Quercus around here.
It seems to be hitting like a new/exotic thing.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
There are efforts to bring back the Passenger Pigeon from extinction. Even if successful, don't expect too much from this strategy.
When we do not tread lightly, we are deciding. I agree that we do not have the wisdom to decide. That is why we should tread lightly.
A libertarian would disagree with you. Nature is a bitch, and may smash down your house without regard. But I am not, and may not do so in a lawful society. As a hunter, I understand the importance of managing our resources. You may not understand, but you are still not permitted to squander my resource.
That's great if you are into hunting titmice. I'd prefer that we preserve larger game as I'm a fan of steak.
Luckily for humanity it doesn't work that way. You don't have exclusivity over any of the species.
That is only true if you live in a third world country. Possibly you do. In first world countries we have a good track record of managing our resources.
Are you really unaware that there are laws in a lawful society?
You didn't answer any of my questions - and I don't understand where this new question is coming from.
Would you care to clarify how your question answered any of my three questions, or has this simply become a conversation you're having with something in your imagination? :)
I have no idea where you live that you think you have the freedom to kill endangered animals. 'Round here we have laws.
Ah, you're under the impression that I'm arguing a *legal* point, rather than a *moral* one.
Yes, we have immoral laws that violate private property rights in order to "protect" some tit-mouse. Yes, they are legal. Yes, they are immoral.
We should eliminate laws that violate private property rights in order to impose some special interest group's point of view regarding selective pressures. They're a violation of basic human freedoms, and fly in the face of the very process of evolution that led to higher life forms in the first place.
You haven't made the case for that and I am certain you are incapable of doing so. I'm not interested in hearing what you wish were so. Nature doesn't care, you don't care, but society does and you're going to have to live with that.
Certainly a small, powerful, and vocal special interest minority cares, and I have to live with that, but I don't have to like it, nor do I have to condone it :)
You told me to "make these same arguments to Latour and his friends" in his "little group" but I'd rather not, because his "friends" include pedophiles and a child rapist. That seems even more unpleasant and unproductive than talking with Jane/Lonny Eachus.
Looks like Jane believes John O'Sullivan's disgusting blame the victim act. If Jane knew about the acquittal, it is only reasonable to believe he knew that John O'Sullivan later wrote "Vanilla Girl: A fact-based crime story of a teacher's struggle to control his erotic obsession with a schoolgirl."
John O'Sullivan even illustrated "Vanilla Girl" but think twice before clicking that link. Not just because it depicts child nudity, but also because you'll have to wash your eyes with bleach to banish the image of a nude John O'Sullivan leering at a topless girl. That leer doesn't seem too different from O'Sullivan's "serious" expression.
"Vanilla Girl" is much more fact-based than "Slaying the Sky Dragon" so Jane might want to read John O'Sullivan's fact-based book before defending him any further. Keep a barf bag handy, though. It's a disturbing glimpse into the mind of a psychopathic pedophile.
John O'Sullivan is CEO of the PSI Slayers, and his behavior makes his smears against Michael Mann an unbelievably ironic example of psychological projection. Even for a climate contrarian.