I what regions? Developed or developing and underdeveloped regions?
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Mass Extinction ... Once again
- Thread starter lowplaces
- Start date
Here's the thing. Nobody who's spent more than a couple hours studying astrophysics would make this claim.
It makes you look more lazy than skeptical.
This anyway barely has any link with the current mass extinction that's beeen going on for about 30 000 years, closely following the development of human kind continent by continent.
Attempting to steer this thread away from taboo comments . . .
There is a book by the SF & F author Larry Niven called The Flight of the Horse that is a collection of 7 shorter fantasy stories which exist in the same narrative world.
The common background of each story is a future Earth that has become so polluted that that all native life has become extinct except for the dystopian remnants of human civilization and the vats of mutant yeast slurry that they cultivate and eat.
They invent a time machine which they use to travel to the past and collect extinct animals for their zoo. At first, they find animals that we'd expect to see in a zoo, including an elephant, but then they start collecting mythical animals, such as a unicorn, a roc, a werewolf, and the Biblical Leviathan. Since animals have been extinct for so long, they don't realize that these animals aren't supposed to exist.
It turned out that when they traveled back in time they would slip sideways into a nearby alternate reality. But each time they traveled, they slipped farther away from their original universe. Eventually, they found themselves in a reality where the Earth wasn't polluted and all life on Earth still existed. Except their human civilization was gone and had died out a long tine earlier.
There is a book by the SF & F author Larry Niven called The Flight of the Horse that is a collection of 7 shorter fantasy stories which exist in the same narrative world.
The common background of each story is a future Earth that has become so polluted that that all native life has become extinct except for the dystopian remnants of human civilization and the vats of mutant yeast slurry that they cultivate and eat.
They invent a time machine which they use to travel to the past and collect extinct animals for their zoo. At first, they find animals that we'd expect to see in a zoo, including an elephant, but then they start collecting mythical animals, such as a unicorn, a roc, a werewolf, and the Biblical Leviathan. Since animals have been extinct for so long, they don't realize that these animals aren't supposed to exist.
It turned out that when they traveled back in time they would slip sideways into a nearby alternate reality. But each time they traveled, they slipped farther away from their original universe. Eventually, they found themselves in a reality where the Earth wasn't polluted and all life on Earth still existed. Except their human civilization was gone and had died out a long tine earlier.
At the current rate, most terrestrial megafauna will have vanished from Earth within a millenium or so. A good 80% of these species have been eliminated already following our development.
Species don't live for ever though and there is no good reason to think humanity will be eternal.
Species don't live for ever though and there is no good reason to think humanity will be eternal.
It's time to take an objective look at what we're discussing and properly define and describe some terms.
1) Species. It's important to understand that when biologists define a species, they tend to do so with what a non scientist would consider trivial reasons. Take hawks, for example.
There are at least seventeen types of hawks in North America and all but six of these species can be found in Canada and the USA. The Broad-winged Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Goshawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk and the Swainson's Hawk live throughout areas of North America. The Common Black-Hawk, Harris's Hawk, Gray Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk, White-tailed Hawk and the Zone-tailed Hawk can be found in the southern States and Mexico
Furthermore, most of these species are further divided into localized "subspecies". There are at least 7 commonly recognized subspecies of red tailed hawk in North America.
This pattern of diverse speciation based on one common biological platform is repeated around the world. While Hawks are mostly confined to the Americas, other, similar bird's of prey are distributed on every continent except Antarctica.
2) Extinction. When biologists declare an animal (or plant, fungus, or other life form) is extinct, it is always in the context of species. In the example above, regarding hawks, suppose there was an epidemic of avian virus that targeted only hawks, but specifically Goshawks. It's possible, though unlikely, that every Goshawk would be wiped out, but if it did happen, then the Goshawk would be declared extinct.
This seems obvious and not worthy of explanation, but there is a complication, here. Several "subspecies" of Goshawks exist and it's more likely that a local variation of Goshawk would become extinct, although the main species would survive.
So, what's the point of this and what does it have to do with this article on mass extinction?
The point is, when a story like this states, "X number of species are going extinct every decade" defining "X" is an ambiguous exercise. If you heard that hawks were in danger of becoming extinct, that would be truly frightening. But what if that same statement only applied to the Harlan's Red Tailed Hawk, a relatively rare variant found in the American Midwest? Hawks would still be plentiful, including Red Tailed Hawks, but just this one, specific, almost trivial variation would be gone.
This represents a point of strong debate among, not just biologists, but also conservationists. On the one hand, it seems a disgrace if a species becomes extinct, especially if it's because of human activity, but on the other hand, it could be argued that it's absurd to care about the loss of a virtually insignificant subspecies, especially if it's immediately replaced by something else tha'ts nearly identical.
For the record, I'm not taking any position on this issue. The entire point of this rather lengthy post is to provide a bit of background and context to this complicated topic.
1) Species. It's important to understand that when biologists define a species, they tend to do so with what a non scientist would consider trivial reasons. Take hawks, for example.
There are at least seventeen types of hawks in North America and all but six of these species can be found in Canada and the USA. The Broad-winged Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Goshawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk and the Swainson's Hawk live throughout areas of North America. The Common Black-Hawk, Harris's Hawk, Gray Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk, White-tailed Hawk and the Zone-tailed Hawk can be found in the southern States and Mexico
Furthermore, most of these species are further divided into localized "subspecies". There are at least 7 commonly recognized subspecies of red tailed hawk in North America.
This pattern of diverse speciation based on one common biological platform is repeated around the world. While Hawks are mostly confined to the Americas, other, similar bird's of prey are distributed on every continent except Antarctica.
2) Extinction. When biologists declare an animal (or plant, fungus, or other life form) is extinct, it is always in the context of species. In the example above, regarding hawks, suppose there was an epidemic of avian virus that targeted only hawks, but specifically Goshawks. It's possible, though unlikely, that every Goshawk would be wiped out, but if it did happen, then the Goshawk would be declared extinct.
This seems obvious and not worthy of explanation, but there is a complication, here. Several "subspecies" of Goshawks exist and it's more likely that a local variation of Goshawk would become extinct, although the main species would survive.
So, what's the point of this and what does it have to do with this article on mass extinction?
The point is, when a story like this states, "X number of species are going extinct every decade" defining "X" is an ambiguous exercise. If you heard that hawks were in danger of becoming extinct, that would be truly frightening. But what if that same statement only applied to the Harlan's Red Tailed Hawk, a relatively rare variant found in the American Midwest? Hawks would still be plentiful, including Red Tailed Hawks, but just this one, specific, almost trivial variation would be gone.
This represents a point of strong debate among, not just biologists, but also conservationists. On the one hand, it seems a disgrace if a species becomes extinct, especially if it's because of human activity, but on the other hand, it could be argued that it's absurd to care about the loss of a virtually insignificant subspecies, especially if it's immediately replaced by something else tha'ts nearly identical.
For the record, I'm not taking any position on this issue. The entire point of this rather lengthy post is to provide a bit of background and context to this complicated topic.
