Posted on 09/15/2010 6:47:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- Cover story: "The Earth Doesn't Care If You Drive a Hybrid!" Or recycle. Or eat organic food. Or live in a green house powered by solar energy. Or squander commodities. The Earth just doesn't care how much you waste.
Was that a cover story in Mother Earth News? Or The Onion? No folks, it was the cover story in the elite American Scholar Journal by Nobel physicist Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University. I bring it to your attention because in today's resurgence of Know-Nothing party politics few care what scholars say about anything.
But you better care. Laughlin pinpoints the key reason a global crisis is coming soon: What he says has everything to do with America's global warming policies, our deficits, hot commodities, investment strategies and how to live in an age of increasing warfare.
The Scholar's editor hammers home Laughlin's warning that "humans have already triggered the sixth great period of species extinction in Earth's history." The what? Yes, we are in an age of species extinction. And it's happening fast. The last extinction was 65 million years ago, at the end of the 250 million year Mesozoic era. But this one is very different. Ask yourself: Will the human species be the new dinosaurs, which vanished long before we arrived?
Your brain needs to shift into a new mindset to think like Laughlin, a physicist who thinks in geologic time, in hundreds of millions of years, about a planet that's been around over five billion years. Yes, geologic time is very long. But get this: The end may catch us by surprise. A sudden accelerating geologic quickie, like the asteroids that wiped out the dinosaurs. Or like the Earth's beginning, a sudden Big Bang.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Species have been going extinct with new species replacing them for hundreds of millions of years. Why should that change.
sarc/
Another angry prophet for the Cult of Gaia.
May be of interest.
I read the article. If I understand the argument correctly, Laughlin is saying that he believes that a human population explosion has doomed the human species to sure extinction, and that no “green” response is going to make any appreciable difference. Therefore, “Live it up,” he says. “The end is near.”
Usually I like Market Watch but this guy is overpaid academic twit. The argument is not even clear. He says it’s all over & nothing we can do about it & there is great species extinction but he doesn’t come out for AGW theory. So what’s causing the extinction?
As a matter of fact is there species extinction?
Nice article from Watt’s Up With (link included) I posted on FR:
Here is some of the conclusion:
“What can we conclude from this record of extinctions?
1) When European species met isolated local species, a number of the local species died. The Australian and island species were extremely vulnerable to pressure from imported humans, mammals, birds, plants, and diseases. 95% of all recorded bird and mammal extinctions are island or Australian species.
2) When the European species arrived, Australia and most islands had been separated from the continents for forty million years or so. The initial introduction of European species into island habitats was a one-time event. While alien species will always a problem for islands, this massive onslaught of the first coming of the European species will never be repeated — there are no places left with forty million years of isolation.
3) Total habitat destruction drove one bird to extinction.
4) While habitat reduction has been claimed as contributing (in an unknown degree) to three continental bird extinctions, to date no continental mammal or bird has been seen to go extinct due to habitat reduction alone.
Three continental mammals have gone extinct — one antelope hunted to extinction, and a rare rabbit and a rarer antelope gone from unknown causes.
Six continental birds have gone extinct — 3 prolific terrestrial bird species hunted to extinction, and 3 single-habitat freshwater bird species hunted, drained dry, eaten by fish, and polluted to extinction.
This historical record of 9 continental extinctions in 500 years contrasts starkly with Wilson’s predictions of over thirty continental bird and mammal extinctions per year, each and every year. Even if his numbers were off by an order of magnitude, we should be seeing more than 3 continental extinctions per year from habitat reduction since at least 1900, which totals around 300 continental extinctions. We simply have not seen those extinctions, in fact there’s only 9 continental extinctions in the 500 year record.
Finally, let us examine Wilson’s claim that due to forest habitat reduction, “The number of species doomed each year is 27,000.” (Wilson 1992)”
And here is the link to the article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/where-are-the-corpses/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421153/posts
it was the cover story in the elite American Scholar Journal by Nobel physicist Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University. I bring it to your attention because in today's resurgence of Know-Nothing party politics few care what scholars say about anything.
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