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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.
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?
But what IS the point they're making? "Don't build anything, ever, and don't eat any animals, ever" ?
Stop fragmenting wildlife habitat?
Crack down on superstitious morons who think that tiger bones will do more to cure their insomnia than over the counter sleeping pills?
Don't buy a 500 hp pickup for one person to drive to work when you can use mass transit?
Stop packaging absolutely everything in Plastic which causes the oceans to clog up with plastic waste?
Replace old fossil fueled power plants?
Slap massive import duty on products from countries who are major polluters to pay for the damage their total lack of regard for the rest of the planet causes?
Buy more electric cars and put some effort into making them affordable?
Expand Economic Exclusion Zones, set up an international naval task-force and crack down on pirate fishing fleets?
Try to situate food production facilities as close to the consumer as possible to cut down on carbon emissions?
Promote energy efficiency?
Provide incentives for people to upgrade old buildings to reduce their energy consumption?
Try to plan cities and infrastructure to create continuous habitat for wildlife and modify existing infrastructure similarly?
Stop listing to ignorant and corrupt politicians who label common sense stuff like this as communism?
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.
Nothing is obvious to the uninformed.
Quite to the contrary - a lot of things are obvious to The Uninformed, though a lot of those things are wrong...
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/...