It's All Over But The Crying
Yes. It’s true....but it is not NOW....but from the late Pleistocene till now.
Call it what you will, ....but we are doing more for species NOW, then in the past 10000 years....we’ve turned a corner. Species like gators were hunted almost to extinction. White tail deer were rare in many areas. Now both of the species are numerous and becoming pests, and through conservation can be maintained through careful hunting programs.
Did they ever consider it was because of modern classifications of animals we have 1,000s more “species” then we did in the past and most of these species have only superficial differences that cannot be determined by fossils.
Scientists and enviros have been saying this for decades.
I just finished a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist, published back in 2001. The author analyzed these claims, using their own data, and showed them to be utter hogwash. Highly recommended.
Haven’t read this particular paper. It’s possible they have startling new data to prove their point, but I doubt it.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State/dp/0521010683
When they first came up with this “Earth Day” crap (which by just a random chance coincides with Lenin’s birthday) in the early 70s, they were teaching us that by the year 2000 the world would be so polluted and over populated that people would be cannibals, you wouldn’t live past 40 and we’d be in a new Ice Age.
These people are FOS eugenicists then and they are now.
I seem to recall Ehrlich in his 1970 book “Population Bomb” assured us that by 2000 we would all be dead from global famine. I doubt his prediction will be right this time either. Given his ludicrous false predictions in 1970 you might think people wouldn’t give much credence to these predictions.
Mass extinctions, ice ages and climate change are natural phenomena. Are they saying that humans are causing the sixth but didn’t cause the other five?
And the sunspot cycle? Did those SUVs cause that?
:: Earth is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction ::
And, of course, the previous 5 were caused by humanity burning fossil fuels to prop up their capitalistic lifestyle.
A large number of these extinctions are simply due to species transported with humans as we expand, whether deliberate introductions of snakes on Pacific Islands to kill rats (and killing native birds via egg consumption) or unknown transfers via ship ballast (invading mussels in the Great Lakes) or unchecked cargo bringing in pests (Asian beetles killing trees in the West, fire ants via cargo / ships).
That said, we are seeing a large scale of extinctions because competitors from plants to animals to pests and diseases are spread world wide via the human transportation network. It is rarely directly people’s fault, such as hunting the passenger pigeon to extinction for dinner.
When I was very young, my mother told me the story of Chicken Little who ran around the barnyard every time it rained squawking, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
The pigs, wallowing in mud puddles, ignored her.
The cow chewed her cud, refreshed by the chill rain.
The goats played games in the rain.
Each of the other barnyard animals were too busy with their own interests to pay attention to Chicken Little. Besides, they had heard it all before.
All the other chickens ran after her clucking and squawking until the rain stopped and the sun came out. For a while all was quiet until Chicken Little noticed the sun falling in the sky. Off she went again, clucking and squawking, “The sky is falling.”
Chickens are like that, my mother told me. They run around squawking about nothing at all until the sun goes down, then they fly to their roost and sleep until morning.
Paul Erlich is one such chicken, always squawking and clucking about something as normal as rain, trying to instill fear into the other chickens.
animals are going extinct at a rate 100 times faster than normal - what is the normal extinction rate and how was it found?
humans are polluting the ecosystem, destroying habitat - but many areas of the world are less polluted today (Hudson River, for example), so if animals are still becoming extinct in the less polluted areas, then pollution isn't the only cause.
Paul Ehrlich - can Ehrlich explain why all of the things he predicted in his earlier book, The Population Bomb, didn't happen? If he was wrong in 1968, what makes him right now?
Reminds me of a doomsday preacher who said the world will end on such-and-such a date. Then when that date comes and nothing happens, he has to come up with a new scheme to keeps his believers on the line.
Isn't evolution supposed to be a cruel test of fitness for survival?
Don't various species exist only because a certain set of temporarily favorable conditions exist? Are we humans obliged to ensure those favorable conditions last forever?
Who gets to make all of these judgments?
Why do I get the feeling this whole issue is akin to welfare and food stamps for the weakest species?
If it is written or endorsed by Paul Erlich, it can be safely ignored. We are still waiting for his “Population Bomb” predictions to happen! Not.