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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....
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?
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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/...
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.