The End is Nigh (again)

[pctek]

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...cientists-warn

and

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/an...ass-extinction

" The No. 1 cause of modern wildlife declines is habitat loss ..... That includes deforestation for farming, logging and settlement, but also the less obvious threat of fragmentation by roads and other infrastructure.

And even where habitats aren't being razed or divided, they're increasingly altered by other human activities. Invasive species now threaten a variety of native plants and animals around the world..... Pollution is pervasive in many places,

[1101]

a mass extinction is where allmost everything dies . en mass . 90% of everything gone .

thats not happening . Cant just cherry pick some animals, birds & fish that are dying out , ignoring all the species that are doing just fine thanks.
Mass extinction, pfft : rats mice sheep, slime , grass, pine trees, insects , cows, dogs etc etc : no threats to those . How can it be a mass extinction when so
many species are doing so well.

Species died off all through earths history. Its been happening since day one of life on the earth. Its just what happens over time .

a banana for those articles

: is it mass extinction when one species of banana is dying off, but other varieties of banana doing OK ?

[wainuitech]

Been watching some series on Natgeo channel, more likely some natural disaster will happen. One was about mega earthquakes. Theres a few places that are long overdue, one predicted would make the largest so far (9.5) look average in comparison.

Another about storms - makes the current weather look like a tiny breeze.

[pctek]

a mass extinction is where allmost everything dies . en mass . 90% of everything gone .

thats not happening . Cant just cherry pick some animals, birds & fish that are dying out , ignoring all the species that are doing just fine thanks.
Mass extinction, pfft : rats mice sheep, slime , grass, pine trees, insects , cows, dogs etc etc : no threats to those . How can it be a mass extinction when so
many species are doing so well.

I think their point is more the numbers of species disappearing..not how many might be left.
The ones you mention are farmed or survive because they infest our settlements.

None of the previous extinctions killed 100% of everything....but it sure affected the then current populations....we think we're above it, but even the death of bees would have a large impact on our lives.

[dugimodo]

I don't think the end is nigh, but I do think it's coming. Ancient civilizations have collapsed after growing too big to sustain themselves and left us nothing but ruins. Now we are much smarter, better at farming, able to ship food around the globe, continuously getting better at supporting ourselves - all of which just means the damage we do before collapsing under our own numbers is much greater and any eventual catastrophe likely to be much bigger.

It doesn't have to happen of course, and it might not, but so many people act like it's totally impossible or that it just doesn't matter. Is that wise? Does it hurt to try and find a sustainable balance with our environment? is growth and economy more important than the health and well being of our decendants ? Do we really need to keep expanding when there are more than 7 billion people on the planet? Is it really so terrible to want the rest of nature to survive with us? Questions I contemplate as I get older. The answers largely elude me though. The only obvious thing seems to me that we should be reducing our numbers not growing them, but that goes against human nature so my prediction is eventual disaster on a massive scale as we don't just repeat the mistakes of those ancient civilizations but manage to improve on them greatly. A bit of doom and gloom for a sunny saturday

[pctek]

Now we are much smarter, better at farming, able to ship food around the globe, )

Smarter? I think not.

Many things were built and invented a long, long time ago that we have just copied and in some cases made worse (concrete as an example).
And done by hand without computers or power tools.

And smart? We make things. A lot. It's been a progression of making things, that we then use to make more things to make things. Is all...

Doesn't make us smart at all.
We have learned other animals are a lot less different to us than we originally thought...having thumbs is what makes us stand out in any way really.

Other animals have learnt some of our languages and ways of communicating, and we laugh at how dumb they are without realising we haven't learned any of theirs.

We are so stupid as to think we are above and apart from the ecosystem (our planet and lifeforms). We make up stories about our specialness and how some invisible being will fix everything and as a reason for justifying our sheer viciousness to other species and ourselves.

We can't see the forest for the trees half the time, and don't care the rest, it's someone elses fault, someone elses problem, we're so smart it will all go away as we make yet more things.

We **** in our own nest, so to speak. Something most other animals don't do.
We think the loss of other lifeforms has no effect on our lives, as we are so "smart" it won't matter.

Most of us believe a bunch of crap, all of us come loaded with a set of bias and prejudice about things, we all "know" we, right now, are the apex of the universe and are so clever we could burst and we have nothing new to learn.

We take a long time to admit mistakes and false ideas, and have to usually be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting proof of new ideas.


So...really? Smart?

[dugimodo]

Well maybe smart wasn't exactly the right word, I wasn't suggesting greater intelligence really. Just that we have learned how to do things we couldn't do back then, allowing us to grow to much larger numbers and do much greater damage.
I was meaning our techniques were smarter rather than us.

On the subject of other lifeforms - sort of - I like this Idea http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...-wolves-human/ that maybe wolves domesticated us The thought that canine influence helped us learn to be more social and cooperative makes me smile. Before dogs apparently we did not hunt large animals as much or cooperate to bring down prey very well, we possibly learnt that from them.

[Laggard]

Browsing around and came across this http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...or-humans.html. Seems to be realistic, and pretty scary at the same time.

[pctek]

Browsing around and came across this http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...or-humans.html. Seems to be realistic, and pretty scary at the same time.

Now this too:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news...ectid=11891321

""By the end of the century the population could drop from seven billion to one billion because what you're facing is a changing rainfall regimen that will wreak havoc with global food systems and see sea level rises which could inundate industrial areas.""

I'd say more likely, water becomes a problem, cooler places to live and food....then it will descend into our usual response of violence and slaughter....

[1101]

Its just scaremongering , calling all this a mass extinction. It clearly isnt
Mass extinction = 90% of all animal life gone. That clearly isnt going to happen .

Where are those sea level rises that were going to wipe out all those Pacific Islands . It didnt happen . Just more nonsense .
It just shows that predictions of future events never pan out .

When the megavolcano that is Yellowstone Park decides to blow, it'll then be game over anyway.