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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....
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/
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
"The world is coming to an end! Pay me money to find out how!"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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?
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!”
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.
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.
Fun fact earthworms are not native to America.
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
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!
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.
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I have gone first. My wife and have produced no offspring, and we will not produce any offspring. Your turn.
Rhapsody in Numbers
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.
[citation please]
There are earthworm species that are native to North America (see, for instance, Hendrix's Earthworm Ecology and Biogeography in North America). There are also exotic / invasive species. These species (as well as one or two native species with expanding ranges) are definitely a problem, but that is a different statement from "earthworms are not native to America."
Rhapsody in Numbers
World's gonna end whether I pay or not, right? Then fuck it, I'm going to do the smart thing and give my money to that Asian guy who comes on my TV at about 2 AM every morning, and tells me that if I give him my money, he'll teach me to get as rich as he is.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
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.
Here's a snapshot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
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.
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.
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/...
"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/
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 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.
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.
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.
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