Slashdot Mirror
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....
...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...
Nope. Go ahead and build anything and eat everything. Nature will take care of the human population eventually.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Humans are bad and you should feel bad.
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...
Humans are bad and you should feel bad.
Humans are bad. You should feel bad. And give me money so you can feel less bad. I promise I'll use whatever is left over after the upkeep of my seven mansions to save the earth. Mostly by preventing your employer from doing business.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Can I get a fiber node installed in a mud hut?
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
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?
> If the problem is caused by people, then the solution is less people.
I agree. You first.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
your'e comment reminds me of an experience when i was a freshman in high school taking shop class. A friend on the schoolbus asked to see the boxcutter we had to bring in for class (im guessing they dont allow that in high schools anymore these days). anyway, when i took it out and commented on how sharp it was, the idiot next to us, trying to look for someone to make fun of said 'aww.. thats bullshit! its not sharp at all!' and proceeded to pull it out of my hand, and swipe it against his arm. after about a second, blood began the gush, and his expression changed to an 'OH.'
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?
You most certainly can, and satellite and everything. I remember the old days, when we had to go out and crank the old four meter C band dish that was standing on the only piece of concrete on the whole property by hand to find another bird.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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
It's not an open sewer, it's a mutli-household composting stream and cholera species sanctuary.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
2 out of 5 people are lower IQ than 95. an IQ of 80 is considered barely functional.
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.
There's going to be a lot of posts from people who don't believe in processes that take longer than their lifetimes. Congratulations on being one of them.
Play Command HQ online
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.
interesting way to look at it. makes sense and explains a lot - to borrow from your example then (and use some broad brush strokes), on widely impactful issues, only 3 of 5 have the perceptual tools to make an informed decision. Of these three, if 2/3 have not only the intellectual capacity, but also the moral compass to act in a responsible and wholistic way, then that leaves us with 1 guy... who has the intellect but lacks the moral compass.... who then proceeds to manipulate the 2 sub-95'ers with propoganda to win the vote 3-2. huzzah!
... which is why we don't allow something as innocuous as a box cutter in schools anymore. I tend to believe conspiracy theories, and actually favor the inevitable constitutional debates that follow. Invariably, an idiot shows up and slices and dices himself because he doesn't have the tool handling ability of a bronze age neanderthal. Society then intervenes to preserve the gene pool. It's perplexing.
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.
People who lived in mud huts or worse were responsible for most of the megafauna extinctions, not technology. Humans who can't see or don't consider the consequences of their actions are destructive with or without advanced tech.
This space intentionally left blank
Ever notice it is always the prole who has to cut down and move into the hut with the open jubes?
I'm reminded me of a place where I visited... there was a city park that had a lot of mountain biking, and as this was the start of the sport, IMBA was barely being formed, so trails ended up starting to get worn by people skidding. There were petitions to have this park closed for a few years to all traffic (pedestrian, cycles, equestrian) to let the area "heal".
Well, it finally worked. The park was closed. Six months later, a 50-75 year lease was finalized, and about 1-2 years later, it became an exclusive golf course.
Same thing with water. The neighbors around the park actually let the area get so dry, their foundations started cracking. All their water savings were for naught, as the golf course described above had an exemption, and used far more water than all their saving tried to answer for.
"Eco" stuff has to start at the top... and I don't mean more EPA laws (like the ones which have made all new diesel engines made in the past 2-3 years notoriously unreliable due to the insane emissions standards.)
agreed.. and the funniest/oddest thing of all? said high school? bronx high school of science... even smart people can be morons.
new homes are built from Cross Laminated Timber, which is itself made from the leftover parts of wood and trees
no one cuts trees down anymore just to build a house
I have gone first. My wife and have produced no offspring, and we will not produce any offspring. Your turn.
Rhapsody in Numbers
While I agree that the change we witness in the climate is most likely to be blamed on industrialization, I think it's overzealous to instantly draw conclusions as to what exactly this change will do on the planet. And ecologists are the people we should blame for that. They've been claiming for decades that if we don't do anything the sea will rise by 25m in two decades.... But it's been two decades already and nothing visible has happened. In the eyes of many, they've lost most of their credibility. Especially since they advocate extreme measures that would really drain our economies and (most of them) don't even follow the first of their advice.
If you want people to believe you, you must be credible. Even more so if you want them to change. And ecologists are anything but credible. It's been the third political party over here in Europe and all politicians that were kicked out of the regular parties ended up there. Saying bullshit all day long.
There is no win in the short term unless some common voice can emerge from the brouhaha. I'm not holding my breath.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
new homes are built from Cross Laminated Timber, which is itself made from the leftover parts of wood and trees
no one cuts trees down anymore just to build a house
But then, where do the "leftover parts of wood and trees" come from, if not construction material production?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As someone who does carpentry and has helped build a couple houses over the past few years, this is patently false. You've been lied to by whatever environmentalist rag you subscribe to.
Most homes in the US are framed out of 2x4's cut from pine, floorboards are made of pine plywood, hardwood oak, cherry, and others are used for flooring. All of this comes from the timber industry, mostly from Canadian timber, but some more exotic stuff still comes from Brazil and Africa. My brother's floor is Brazilian cherry.
Some of that lumber is sourced from tree farms, but those tree farms are problematic as well - it takes years to grow them, and habitats establish themselves within those farms as they grow. The longer it takes to grow them, the longer it takes to offset losses in virgin forest. Hardwoods typically take over 30 years to be ready for harvest, longer if you want wider wood as you would need for 2x6 or 2x8 joists and furniture.
No doubt. How many saber toothed tigers landed on the moon?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Paper production?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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.
I have gone first. My wife and have produced no offspring, and we will not produce any offspring. Your turn.
The flaw in this reasoning is contained in the answer "cool. More for us."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
New apartment buildings are built with concrete. New houses are built with wood and the expensive ones are clad with brick, at least, in my area.
Also, concrete production is responsible for a massive amount of greenhouse gasses - as lime is heated to produce cement, it gives off a lot of CO2, which is dumped into the atmosphere.
I would think that to be a better use of wood scraps, as opposed to the good heartwood typically used for lumber production.
Of course, if we are using less actual timber and more manufactured wood products in home construction, I sure can't tell from visiting my local Lowe's or Home Depot - they still carry just as many pieces of 2x4 timber as they always have.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's the sound of you missing the point. TFS goes into great detail about facts of whats happened, then says "which makes the point" - but it never MAKES the point. It's just a groupthink argument that everyone must somehow naturally arrive at the same conclusion.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Here's a snapshot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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 greatest irony of all is that those with children are usually the ones screaming the loudest that nothing is wrong and we shouldn't have to change our behaviors or even slightly take responsibility for the destruction of the ecosystem that allows us, the Human Race, to live and flourish on this planet.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Yea, you don't need to be a carpenter to know what stick homes are framed with...
The biggest threat to forests is the cattle and palm industries in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Sustainable forestry is better than non-sustainable.
Actually, there is a faint hope that the Chestnut and other American Hardwoods will make a comeback in the eastern US.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Well, if you look at Africa, which probably has the largest population living in rough conditions, and there's a lot of habitat destruction for firewood for cooking fires and generally any animal that can be caught goes into the pot. Sure, there's poaching for precious material like ivory, but there's also poaching simply to not starve.
This is something to consider with the widespread ranching of cattle- we want our meat, so it's either a matter of raising it ourselves with a few sets of monolithic species where we manage to use the bulk of the carcass for something, or catching wild animals where we don't fully utilize the animal and leave a lot of waste. Right now, by mass, Beef if the dominant life form on the planet.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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 hate "survival of the fittest". It's not actually all that accurate for describing evolution, and it's used to excuse being a jerk so often.
It should have been "survival of the breediest". Anyway...
The Chestnut was wiped out due to a fungal plague. Ash and Elm species are currently being devastated by the Ash Borer and Dutch Elm Disease, respectively. Walnut is being killed off by Thousand Cankers disease. I'm waiting for Oak and Maple to be wiped out due to some other exotic pest - perhaps Oak Wilt or some such.
Can't eat the plants either! Everything on this planet has an impact on everything else on the planet (and beyond). Extinctions happened prior to mankind's arrival and will continue long after we, ourselves, are extinct. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to be responsible in using resources, but we should live our lives.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
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/...
Only for *some* parts, like engineered trusses.
But, if you've ever seen a 2x4, you'd realize what you're saying is wrong.
While few people cut down a tree just to build a single house, the trees are harvested, and go into many many things. Included in them, building materials for houses.
Do you have any facts you'd like to offer, or are you content with unsubstantiated claims? Because you're 0 for 2.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"It has taken care of us very well."
Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Nature also took quite good care of the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, etc.
We are part of an ecosystem. I guess we're going to find out how much of that system we can destroy until we ourselves go extinct, or figure out a way to exist outside of the food web. Remember, just because you don't care about some little tree frog somewhere doesn't mean that the symbiotic and inter-connected nature of the system doesn't care.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
That makes perfect sense. You have to be oblivious of what's going on to have children these days. I always feel bad for any kids I see today. Living to the end of this century? Holy crap.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
They've been claiming for decades that if we don't do anything the sea will rise by 25m in two decades
You may want to check your sources. Likely you are being lied to, but not by scientists. More likely you've been reading denier blogs. Here is what the IPCC predicted 25 years ago: "For the 'Business-as-Usual' scenario at year 2030 global-mean sea level is 8-29cm higher than today with a best estimate of 18cm." - https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreport...
Since 1990 we've already had about 8cm of sea level rise so we have already already within the projected range and we still have 15 years to go. The rate of rise is accelerating. Even at the current rate we will see about 13 cm rise by 2030. More if acceleration continues. Not far off from the predictions of 1990. - http://climate.nasa.gov/key_in...
You are off by a few orders of magnitude whereas the scientists have already been proven correct.
i've looked at new construction and every new house i see, the frame is built from CLT, not you 2x4's. of course this is national builders, not your local contractor who knows how to build a whole house.
That is exactly how congress works. Except the average IQ of congress is around 85.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
However, several saber-toothed cats did land on the moon.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
I agree. But to be honest Darwin's theory of evolution pretty much proves that biggest jerk wins. Society is seems to be humans way of saying that we are going to choose what fittest means. AKA it is the anti jerk force.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Large cookie cutter subdivision homes developed by a single builder do have some of that stuff because it's more economical at scale - and they can create massive hollow boxes for pennies that blow over at the slightest breeze. There are subdivisions near my house that have some of this stuff - they have a lot of trouble selling because the houses just 'feel cheap'. Engineered trusses instead of joists, laminated or metal studs, etc. just give the house the feel that it's not entirely stable, even if it is all valid according to code.
" I guess we're going to find out how much of that system we can destroy until we ourselves go extinct, or figure out a way to exist outside of the food web. Remember, just because you don't care about some little tree frog somewhere doesn't mean that the symbiotic and inter-connected nature of the system doesn't care.
"
Wow you see this is what makes me crazy.
1. humans are not destroying the system. Changing yes but not destroying. The ecosystem of earth seems very resistant to destruction and no Place on earth is completely lifeless.
2. No the interconnected system doesn't "care". If you are not religious you need to live in a reality that nothing outside of humans and a few other higher animals care about anything.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I hate "survival of the fittest". It's not actually all that accurate for describing evolution, and it's used to excuse being a jerk so often.
It should have been "survival of the breediest". Anyway...
Many people misconstrue what Darwin meant by "fittest"; he didn't mean the most athletic or strongest, he meant the species that best fits it's habitat, or the most adaptable.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I wonder if PETA had anything to do with this article.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
In historic times humans hunted e.g. for horses. ... ... 4?
They drove them over cliffs with fire and shouting and hunting.
A band of perhaps 40 adults, 20 or 25 of them male/hunters drove 100ds of horses, a whole herd over a cliff
Because panicked horses follow the ones in front of them.
How many of those 100 horses did they eat? 1? 2?
Europe is full with stone age slaughterhouses where Horses, Mamoth or what ever kind of huntable animal you want to name where killed in absurd numbers.
I saw a documentory about a certain place somewhere in modern Poland where humans met (many tribes, like a jambouree) over a period of roughly 40,000 years, likely each year in local 'summer'. There is a site where the layer of bones of hunted animals, eaten, not only killed somewhere, only those they actually butchered and ate, the layer is over ten meter thick.
The layer is over ten meter thick after 15,000 years of decomposting. And that is only the junk yard of the bones of the animals that actually got butchered and eaten.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Don't build anything, ever, and don't eat any animals, ever" ?
I think the conclusion is pretty obvious. We're heading toward major ecological issues which will kill people. We need to manage our population growth.
People who lived in mud huts or worse were responsible for most of the megafauna extinctions, not technology. Humans who can't see or don't consider the consequences of their actions are destructive with or without advanced tech.
I'm pretty sure that in the Amazon, it's not the tribal people there bulldozing down acre after acre of rain forest. As society can only sustain so many people living in huts. It takes technology, of some sort, to allow the population to expand beyond what the ecosystem can support. Left to nature, things tend to balance out. It is technology that allows the scales to be tipped.
People without Refrigeration or Jerky-ing technology don't really finish the megafauna they hunt.
You've gotten less that half-way through your last mammoth before it's no longer safe to eat, so now you gotta kill another.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Too much fiber, and you'll help keep the open sewer running.
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.
i didnt say morals.. i said moral compass. granted, i didn't define it here - but by that, i mean felt perception - which is (partially) an awareness of ones connectedness with one's environment. if you perceive yourself as part of a whole, then you cannot callously do harm to that system any more than you could callously cut off your own hand. morals are rules written by men. if one's moral compass is functioning intact (and call it whatever you want), you dont need someone or something to tell you whats right or wrong. you feel it implicity.
I'm pretty sure the tree farms are what supply the pulp needed to make paper, rather than actual construction materials (because as you said, the amount of time needed for trees to grow to the proper size.)
35 million cattle are eaten per year. 9 billion chickens are eaten per year. I'd say chickens win the dominant domestic animal contest and they're tasty as well.
Those numbers are for the US.
1. Actually, we ARE destroying the system. What used to be a prairie, with multiple species of grass, grazing fauna, birds, bugs, etc, is now a corn field. What was a thousand different critters is now ... 100? 10? Take that example, and put it all over the world. Yes, there are microbes living in volcanic vents in the ocean, that doesn't mean it's a robust ecosystem.
2. So, they anthropomorphized the ecosystem. The principle matters though. The more diversity, the more the system as a whole can deal with shocks. Less diverse systems don't deal well with problems. It's a basic tenet of ecology..... See number 1.
Logical fallacy: Black or White
I believe there are slightly more options than Do Nothing or Live In Mud Huts. I kind of like option 3: Give a shit and try to fix things.
This is incorrect. Some primitive people do live in balance with their environments, but that is only because the environment has become adapted to them over a long period of time. The environment that was there before their ancestors arrived was different, and possibly included a variety of megafauna that was hunted or pressured into extinction before the current "balance" was established. Primitive people often burn large areas of vegetation, and kill large predators that they perceive as threats or competition. The entire Australian ecosystem went through a massive change when the ancestors of the Aboriginal tribes arrived and burned the continent to the ground. A different "balance" was established over thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, but it was not any more "natural" than the balance that now exists with the Europeans living there.
As someone who studied forestry at the agricultural university in the Netherlands (yes, there is forest in the Netherlands...) I claim there is no need to forego on wood as a construction material. The only thing that needs to go is the clearcut method of forestry with its accompanying monoculture and age-based rotation. Something like the German 'Dauerwald' (http://forestry.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/4/375.full.pdf) can be used instead. These forestry methods don't destroy the habitat while still giving a steady stream of timber. They are suitable for small-scale as well as large-scale forestry. As an added bonus the forest becomes less sensitive to storm damage (always a bonus with the increasing amount of energy in the atmosphere), insect damage (due to the larger variety of trees as well as the richer habitat) and diseases.
--frank[at]unternet.org
No, that's kinda the point of evolution. The species that adapted best to it's habitat - or even was already best equipped for that niche- out-survived those that didn't. Random mutations create variety in a species, those mutations which "fit" the local environment better somehow gave that particular lineage an advantage over those lineages whose mutations (or lack thereof) didn't do them as much good there.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I'm not talking about killing people. I'm talking about managing growth...child birth...China style. Jesus, are IQs plummeting or something? What on earth made you think I was talking about killing people when I said "manage our population growth".
We should consult with the folks on Easter Island.
Reminds me of a reporter having a conversation with a 99%er at Occupy Wall Street. She was pushing for everyone to abandon technology (apparently this didn't include ipods) and go back to a strictly agrarian society. The reporter commented something to the effect that this would probably lead to mass urban starvation. Her retort was "well, people die".
I guess that's true. Personally I wondered whether she and her friends even knew anything about proper crop rotation, but then I realized that it really wouldn't matter, because someone better armed would come along and take everything from her little commune anyway. Well, you know, people die.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Right. The EPA laws are, after all, the golf course members telling the lower classes that they will need to lower their expectations again.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
But when concrete sets, it does so via reabsorbing the CO2, right? So it should be a net neutral (minus CO2 from the fuel to cook the limestone in the first place).
CaCO3 + heat -> CaO + CO2 (in air)
Add water, get Ca(OH)2, which reacts with CO2 from air to set... back as CaCO3 and water..
Or did I miss something?
Sent from my PDP-11
I've heard of that hunting method for buffalo, but never for horses. I am not sure horses will follow over a cliff. A burro might, I've nearly seen one do that........
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Building roads all over a continent is one of the fastest ways to decimate species.
Ants are the dominant form of life on the planet. Individually they are dumb, but the knowledge lies in the network, not the individual. That is why humans are are achieving more despite being smaller and dumber than our ancestors.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Wonder when jerking and similar technology started? Seems that every primitive peoples that I can think of that lived in favourable climate dried meat as well as fruits and sometimes fish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"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."
Holy god, these "argument by hubris and ego" debates are so fucking stupid. Look, they can always be flipped around the other way: "People believing they can exponentially expand in population without suffering the same limits as any other species sounds like hubris. The idea that we can do whatever we want without consequences pleases the ego of people."
See? It always cuts both ways, Such a stupid thing to hang an argument on. Scientific data or GTFO.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you look closely a lot of those 2x4s have finger joints where they've built an 8 ft 2x4 from a couple of pieces of tree. Around here it used to be that they didn't bother with any wood that was smaller then 16 inches at the small end. Now I see trees leaving the bush that are barely bigger then my pecker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Species that have a population explosion and use up all their resources usually eventually crash. Seems like they're the fittest for a while until they outstrip the food or other resources and then it becomes obvious that limitless expansion is not a long term survival strategy.
So far humans have only been around for a blip of time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Actually in many cases it is the best cooperator that wins, humans are an example where long term the tribes that work together survive the longest. The biggest jerk might do good for a while but once he drives away everyone else and finds himself alone, that's it for long term survival, at least with a social species such as Homo sapiens.
Even in other primates often it looks like the biggest jerk is winning but meanwhile all his females are screwing the other males and it is their genes that mostly continue the species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
All those are good uses for genetic engineering, which I think the poster was talking about with chestnuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Depends what you call a tree farm. Some intensely grow popular or other fast growing wood for pulp, others replant, do a bit of silviculture and wait 80 years to re-harvest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
ummmm.... Isn't that what I said? That society is a way to change what fittest means?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well, we are talking about prehistoric horses, relatively small one, about 60cm hight to the shoulders if I'm not mistaken. No idea how smart or individual modern horses are.
Nevertheless there are plenty of findings of sites where all kinds of herd animals, including horses where hunted over cliffs.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
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?
Um. no. No. These are all terrible ideas and they must be banned from all forms of publication and transmission immediately. Don't let anyone hear about how to do any of these things or that they exist at all. Ever.
Thanks, signed, the capitalist regime.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Yes, I read too quick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Think of where that lime came from. Some parts of the CO2 cycle involve natural sequestration of the gas into the earth. This is where limestone, marble, stalactites, stalagmites, etc. come from. By the way, "lime" is Ca(OH)2 which reacts with CO2 to form a bicarbonate (soluble) and then the carbonate (spots on your car after washing). Thank the volcanoes for liberating this life giving gas into the atmosphere; otherwise the life forms on earth would be way different.
This is why I regard the basic principle of natural selection as almost a logical tautology. It is so essentially true that it can't even be described as a scientific theory, almost a logical law like 1 + 1 = 2 (strictly speaking that is a definition, but I'm sure you understand).
Bitter and proud of it.
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
Actually, you do have a point. So people don't do that.
Mammoths (and bison, and caribou/elk, and horses - to name some of the other usual suspects) are quite dangerous animals when they're full grown. And they are very protective of their young, until they get to a certain age.
So, going from the actual skeletal evidence, what it seems happened, repeatedly, was that hunting would target the yearling (or two-year) youngsters, separate them from the adults, kill and eat them. Getting to the infants through the adults is too dangerous, and getting the adults is too dangerous too. So you take out the middling ones.
Take out 50% of the yearlings (two-yearlings) every year for one generation, and you have halved the population. After five generations, the herds become small enough that they can't protect their infants so effectively ... and you get a populations crash.
Quoth the hunter : "But we never took out too many. We were hunting sustainably!"
Fishermen say the same. And they believe it's true. Population dynamics are not intuitive.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
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?
I have no idea where you live that you think you have the freedom to kill endangered animals. 'Round here we have laws.
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.
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.