Posts Tagged ‘species’
The Sixth Great Extinction: Massive wiping out of species?
Note: Re-edit of “Sixth Great Extinction? And the human? Could he survive?”
Species are disappearing at an alarming rate, a new study finds. Author Elizabeth Kolbert says that raises questions about our survival.
Apparently, in the last half a billion years, earth witnessed 5 extinctions of its species due to natural calamities.
This current extinction process is mainly due to the human species.
There are very few extinctions that we know about in the last 100 years that would have taken place without human activity.
I have never heard anyone argue, “oh extinction rates, that’s just a natural thing that would have happened with or without humans.” It’s just pretty much impossible to argue that.
The current extinction rate could be more than 100 times higher than normal—and that’s only taking into account the kinds of animals we know the most about.
Earth’s oceans and forests host an untold number of species, many of which will probably disappear before we even get to know them
The new study that’s generated so much conversation estimates that as many as three-quarters of animal species could be extinct within several human lifetimes, which sounds incredibly alarming
What is clear, and what is beyond dispute, is that we are living in a time of very elevated extinction rates, on the order that you would see in a mass extinction, though a mass extinction might take many thousands of years to play out.
Island species are very vulnerable to extinctions for a couple of reasons.
1. They tend to have been isolated.Humans have been removing the barriers that used to keep island species isolated. New Zealand had no terrestrial mammals. Species that had evolved in the absence of such predators were incredibly vulnerable. A staggering number of bird species have already been lost on New Zealand, and a lot of those that remain are in deep trouble.
2. We brought in invasive species. So, places that have been isolated for a long time are very vulnerable. Species that have a very restricted range, that exist only in one spot in the world, those tend to be extremely vulnerable. They have nowhere to go and if their habitat is destroyed, say, then they’re gone.
We are now changing the climate, very rapidly, by geological standards.
We are changing the chemistry of all the oceans.
We are changing the surface of the planet.
We cut down forests and burn entire forests
we plant monoculture agriculture, which is not good for a lot of species.
We’re overfishing. The list goes on and on.
We dump nitrogen on fields in the Midwest and the fertilizer runs down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico, and that causes these dead zones.
The sort of fundamental question is: Can 9 billion people be able to live on this polluted planet with all of the species that are now still around?
Or are we on a collision course, in part because we consume a lot of resources that other creatures also would like to consume? That’s a question I can’t answer.
If you give vertebrate species (and we are another vertebrate species) an average lifetime of a million years, and you say humans are 200,000 years into their million years, and you precipitate a mass extinction—even laying aside the question of whether humans will be the victim of their own mass extinction—you can’t expect that same species to be around by the time the planet has recovered.
There are two questions that arise:
One, just because we’ve survived the loss of X number of species, can we keep going down the same trajectory, or do we eventually imperil the systems that keep people alive?
That’s a very big and incredibly serious question.
Second, even if we can survive, is that the world you want to live in? Is that the world you want all future generations of humans to live in?
That’s a different question. But they’re both extremely serious. I would say they really couldn’t be more serious.
Not only the quality of potable water is highly polluted, but even water used for agriculture is generating degraded food. Heck, water is being appropriated by multinational companies from States and costing all citizens the price of drinking.
The quality of air is deteriorating quickly due to traffic transportation and oil burning to generate energy.
It is striking that the advent of this Covid-19 pandemics that spread lockdown of major traffic and industries has cleaned the skies and improved water quality.
The more humans desist from meddling with nature, the better our quality of life will improve.
The main difficulty is how to change this mentality of constant “economic growth” that forces the depletion of earth resources at a gigantic rate?
Nadia Drake, published a conversation with Elizabeth Kolbert in National Geographic , June 23, 2015. news.nationalgeographic.com
Note: I believe that, unless the atmosphere is Not highly toxic, beside the insects and rodents, two species could survive:
1. The owl who can hear a pregnant mice one meter under the snow and 300 meters away and has incredible eyesight at night (100 times that of human) and can sneak on victims listlessly .
2. The hyena who can crush and eat bones and is an excellent hunter individually and as a team.
The precarious existence of human species and our recklessness in wiping ourselves
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 24, 2019
The precarious existence of human species
A few conditions for the emergence of our species.
Observers have identified two dozen fortunate breaks we have had on Earth to create just the living organism. Not to mention the hundreds of conditions for the formation of human species that is Not within this scope.
If the Sun was larger, it would have exhausted its fuel before Earth could be formed because the larger the star the more rapidly it burns.
If we were two light minutes closer to the Sun we would be like planet Venus that cannot sustain life; Venus surface temperature is 470 degrees Celsius and all its water has evaporated driving hydrogen away into space.
If we were 1% further from the Sun we would be like frozen Mars.
If our core didn’t contain molten liquid we would not have magnetism to protect us from cosmic rays.
If our tectonic plates didn’t collide to produce more gases and continually renew and rumple the surface with mountains then we would be under 4,000 meters of water.
If our moon was not large enough, one fourth the size of Earth, then Earth would be wobbling like a dying top with unstable climate and weather. It is to be noted that the Moon is slipping away at a rate of 4 centimeters a year, relinquishing its gravitational hold.
If comets didn’t strike Earth to produce the Moon or asteroid to wipe out the Dinosaurs, or
If we didn’t enjoy enough stability for a long time, human would not be what they are.
By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 7, 2015
By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb
In a previous article From “Bind man by chains of Constitution” to “Bind man by chains of Cryptography”
Thomas Jefferson and Ed Snowden demonstrated that they had No confidence or faith in man behaviors from not using power to circumvent human rights.
Equal Internet to all? Any why science must outpace laws on restricting collective data gathering and national security?
And I’m wondering:
1. By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb?
2. By what chains can we bind our fickle and instant gratifying species from poisoning our environment to an irreversible state of no return?
If history is a guide, the few occasional decades of enlightenment and culture do Not match the consistent trend of our species for self-immolation
In the last 2 million years of a variety of mankind species, separated in tiny colonies around earth, we were very close to total disappearance. But we didn’t know it.
During all these species existence, we came to admit that the individual is to die sooner or later, and will be survived by offspring, the clan, the tribe…
By August 6, 1945, as the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it dawned on us that our hopes to be survived by anyone of our species has dwindled dramatically.
In our deep psychic, we are living a pseudo normal existence, in waiting of the ultimate calamity.
How can we recover the hope that our species might live another million years?
In Janus (this two-faced God), Arthur Koestler considered Aug. 6, 1945 as the new calendar: It is the date we are counting the days of our total extermination, a new way of living, on borrowed time, in excruciating apprehension of tomorrow. Probably, there will be No Tomorrow.
By what trusted and inviolable chains can we bind this inconsistent and not so rational species, of 7.5 billion and increasing, regardless of technological stopping activation and multi-layered decision -process that any one of those existing hydrogen bombs will not go off?
Can you imagine a world of a bunch of delinquents being trapped in a room filled with inflammable materials and allowing them to carry lighters and combustible match boxes?
What universal Constitution or universal laws can withstand an institution holding the power to trample transparent decisions and actions, and acting in total darkness of secrecy, and deciding what is good and what is evil?
After Aug. 6, 1945, the world was on the verge of using again the atomic bomb on Berlin 1950 and on Cuba 1962.
After Aug. 6, 1945 we experienced more wars, preemptive wars, civil wars supported by external powers… that humanity could have witnessed in all its existence.
After Aug. 6, 1945 many states owns nuclear weapons and the potential countries are increasing rapidly.
After Aug. 6, 1945 the web of satellites (for military, communication purposes) is clogging the outer space and all intelligence agencies are engaged in mass collection of information, intercepting emails, online and telephone communications and eavesdropping on everyone. There is No Place to Hide from the Big Brothers.
After Aug. 6, 1945 most States accumulated stockpile of toxic and deadly biochemical agents that have been used frequently.
After Aug. 6, 1945 our species has acquired this diabolic knowledge of annihilating the living and the plants.
As Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) wrote
“Man has no choice but to live a fiction. We have to accommodate as if:
1. the illusions of our senses represent the ultimate reality
2. we have to convince our selves that we have free wills and are mostly responsible for our acts
3. We had to admit that a God must exist in order to recompense our virtues and good deeds
4. As if the individual is not condemned to die, until much later
5. And prepare his future as if his days are not counted
6. As if the potential calamities are mere probabilities, probabilities at the far end of the tails of the graph that will never happens
After Aug. 6, 1945, we must be listening to the tic tac of the bomb attached on our neck. If this bomb failed to be activated, one of our neighbor’s bomb will not fail.
So far, we live in the fallacy that we can reverse what we were capable of doing, and that we have enough time to counter the imminent danger of total annihilation.
What we have come to term to realize is that the rational thinking portion in our species is never sustainable to give us a convincing reprieve: We act on instant gratifications, fallacies, myths and illusions.
Can we blame those extremist, one directional movements and dogmas, claiming to abide by a God orders and laws, who are acting up from shear fear and desperation in understanding the current conditions and holding on to an exterminating Allah. Bakunin would have characterized these movements as Believing without a God and Heroes without any Phrases. no matter how insistent they are in shouting their mantra Takbir.
These movements are claiming to revert to outdated “going to the Roots” periods that they feel suit their temperament, period of simple predictable and conformist societies.
These youth committing suicide bombing and “killing death” so that they avoid doomsday at Day Zero. As is the case of all religions claiming that doomsday is very close to fall on our head.
Adonis Diaries 