The Political Thread

[Spikes]

....if you want to find out more about the precise nature of extinction and the ethical responsibilities of humanity in relation to it wikipedia covers it in a great deal more detail than we could possibly go into here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

Nice to see Dredd and his Cursed Earth battles with tyrannosaurs getting a mention in the cloning section!

[Ancient Otter]

Here's a thought, just for argument's sake: Why bother trying to prevent extinctions at all?

If you want a short simple answer: cash, as argued by this book: What Has Nature Ever Done For Us?

[TordelBack]

It's the rate of extinctions, much as it is with climate change, that is the real matter of note: there have of course been many examples of both, and both are essential for this world we live in to exist in the first place, but precious few came on with the speed and extent we're managing.  Ask a putative individual living at the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian or the Cretaceous whether they would stop what was happening if they could, and I think you'd get a consensus.

Anyway, some amusement at the expense of the floppy-of-dick and hard-of-thinking: I dunno if you heard about the Rhino horns that were stolen from Dublin's National Museum storage facility last year, but the smart money says they were heading for the imaginary viagra market.  Happily they dated from the 19th C end of the collection, and thus were prepared with the choicest preservative of the day: arsenic. Put that in your pipe etc.

 

[Ancient Otter]

It's the rate of extinctions, much as it is with climate change, that is the real matter of note: there have of course been many examples of both, and both are essential for this world we live in to exist in the first place, but precious few came on with the speed and extent we're managing.  Ask a putative individual living at the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian or the Cretaceous whether they would stop what was happening if they could, and I think you'd get a consensus.

Indeed, it's not just about one or two species just dying out, we are currently living through the six greatest mass extinction of life on Earth: Quick summary

Anyway, some amusement at expense of the floppy of dick and hard of thinking: I dunno if you heard about the Rhino horns that were stolen from Dublin's National Museum store last year, but the smart money says they were heading for the imaginary viagra market.  Happily they dated from the 19th C end of the collection, and thus were prepared with the choicest preservative of the day: arsenic. Put that in your pipe etc.

A couple of lads from Rathkeale (home of the best antiques thieves in Europe according to Interpol) were up for stealing and handling stolen antique rhino horns, would they need or have the Triad connections for a Chinese black market?

[Theblazeuk]

Extinctions are natural. However building great sodding lumps of rock everywhere, poisoning the Earth and slaughtering species at an industrial pace is not.

Animals make other animals go extinct generally by being to good at the competition in question. We're not even in the game, we just drive a bulldozer across the pitch.

[The Legendary Shark]

By that rationale, one might equate human activity to a very slow natural disaster on a par with a super volcano or asteroid impact - the only real difference being the time-scale. Where the Chicxulub Impact did most of its damage in the first few hours, days and weeks, human activity is stretching the process out.

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This leads me on an intriguing line of thought...

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If it wasn't for the Chicxulub Impact (eg.) humanity probably wouldn't even exist. From our point of view, then, Chicxulub was a Good Thing. Impacts, however, are a very hit and miss (no pun intended) driver of extinctions - too big a hit and the planet could have remained lifeless forever. An impact is also indiscriminate, eradicating all species - the successful and unsuccessful alike.

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Given the above, are not the extinctions man is causing and allegedly causing a much gentler and less dangerous cause than asteroids? We all know how robust life is - if all the tigers disappear (God forbid) then eventually something else will move in to take its place - something with a better understanding of how to co-exist with the human animal.

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It could be argued, then, that as a driver to extinctions human activity is preferable to impacts or super volcanoes and, at the extreme end of the argument, actually a Good Thing.

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Are there any "good" extinctions? What if we could make the Ebola virus extinct? Or some species of harmful bacteria? How about making mosquitoes extinct? They've killed more people than all the lions and tigers and crocodiles and sharks in all of history combined, probably. And what about rats? Horrid, filthy, disease-ridden vermin with those nasty teeth, cold dead eyes and those disgusting nuts they have sticking out the back. If rats were moved onto the 'Endangered List" tomorrow would you think "shame" or would you think "it's about bloody time"?

[NapalmKev]

By that rationale, one might equate human activity to a very slow natural disaster on a par with a super volcano or asteroid impact - the only real difference being the time-scale. Where the Chicxulub Impact did most of its damage in the first few hours, days and weeks, human activity is stretching the process out.

.

This leads me on an intriguing line of thought...

.

If it wasn't for the Chicxulub Impact (eg.) humanity probably wouldn't even exist. From our point of view, then, Chicxulub was a Good Thing. Impacts, however, are a very hit and miss (no pun intended) driver of extinctions - too big a hit and the planet could have remained lifeless forever. An impact is also indiscriminate, eradicating all species - the successful and unsuccessful alike.

.

Given the above, are not the extinctions man is causing and allegedly causing a much gentler and less dangerous cause than asteroids? We all know how robust life is - if all the tigers disappear (God forbid) then eventually something else will move in to take its place - something with a better understanding of how to co-exist with the human animal.

.

It could be argued, then, that as a driver to extinctions human activity is preferable to impacts or super volcanoes and, at the extreme end of the argument, actually a Good Thing.

.

Are there any "good" extinctions? What if we could make the Ebola virus extinct? Or some species of harmful bacteria? How about making mosquitoes extinct? They've killed more people than all the lions and tigers and crocodiles and sharks in all of history combined, probably. And what about rats? Horrid, filthy, disease-ridden vermin with those nasty teeth, cold dead eyes and those disgusting nuts they have sticking out the back. If rats were moved onto the 'Endangered List" tomorrow would you think "shame" or would you think "it's about bloody time"?

One creature that drives me to absolute rage; Flies!
Detestable dirty things, yes; but I still would not wish for their complete eradication from existence.

It's the same with harmful viruses - yes they kill some people, but not all (evolution in action right there).

And as for Tigers, if they were wiped out what could possibly take their place? Evolution doesn't happen overnight.

Cheers

[TordelBack]

It could be argued, then, that as a driver to extinctions human activity is preferable to impacts or super volcanoes and, at the extreme end of the argument, actually a Good Thing.

It's not an either/or proposition.  There will be super-volcanoes and cometary impacts as well, and by the same token our sun will eventually leave the main sequence and terrestrial life will have a very hard time of it.

The concept of 'good' has no place in extinctions or natural selection as a whole.  'Good' is something bothersome humans bring to the equation.  As we, as humans, claim to value the utility, educational potential and aesthetic qualities of the existing diversity of life on earth, then its maintenance is in aggregate 'good', as far as humans are concerned. If an antiseptic life in synthetic worlds is what humans actually value, then extinctions may indeed be 'good'.  It is of necessity relative to the species that created and sustain the concept of good/bad.

Extinctions of the fluffy and overlegged alike threaten the stability of the existing spread of life, with ultimate consequences that cannot be easily predicted.  The usual succession of forms that provides the medium of evolution is probably no more bloody or unfair than the everyday interaction of predator and prey, but the rates of extinction now being brought about by ours truly has one significant difference over the earlier mass-extinctions: there is no void left to fill with successor species.  We have used up the space that a devastated biome would normally inherit, and its survivors radiate throughout.  We aren't opening a door for the usual business of post-catastrophe change and succession, we're barring the gates and knocking down the building. 

[The Legendary Shark]

The niche vacated by tigers would be initially filled by a range of other animals as the ecosystem slowly adapts. The predation once meted out by tigers might be filled by a variety of other carnivores. If the decline in tiger predation results instead in an explosion of herbivores then other factors come into play - perhaps over-grazing and starvation allowing for a scavenger to reach the "top spot". As you say, evolution does not happen overnight but then again it actually does - evolution happens every night. Nature is very, very good at plugging gaps.

[The Legendary Shark]

The first priority of the human race is to survive - when I invoked the "G" word, I was referring to events that assist that priority. Perhaps instead of 'good thing' I should have said 'convenient thing'.

I wonder if anthroprogenic extinctions are similar to the notion of anthroprogenic climate change? We know that climate change is happening and has always happened and, even though human activity does have an effect the hands-down main driver of CT is the sun (imo).  Maybe human activity is the driver behind some extinctions - but all of them? What level of extinctions is the normal 'background level'?

[Richmond Clements]

the hands-down main driver of CT is the sun (imo).

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm

Science would disagree with you.

[TordelBack]

Nature is very, very good at plugging gaps.

We don't leave gaps to plug.  You make it sound like we're just going after the rhinos or what-not: we're not, we're removing entire eco-systems. What has refilled the 'gaps' left by our urban sprawls and pesticide monocultures: foxes and seagulls?  And we want rid of those too.

Yes, in the short term some species will benefit from the conditions caused by the loss of the elephants and the tigers and all the less photogenic candidates, but in no time at all we'll come for them too.  A planet of just hermetically-sealed humans and extremophile species doesn't sound like anywhere I want to live.

As to climatic forcing, seeing as the science hasn't convinced you, nothing anyone can say here is likely to do much.  However, accepting the basic principle of not knocking holes in a sinking ship might do even the most ardent deniers some credit.  Or even looking at who stands on either side of the debate.

[The Legendary Shark]

There was once scientific consensus that God created humans out of lumps of clay, that bad smells caused disease and that the sun orbited the Earth.

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The true complexity and interweaving factors driving climate change have yet to be fathomed, I think, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that the hottest thing within a light year has *something* to do with it.

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Whatever - carbon taxes aren't the answer. The climate change debate has been effectively stifled in order to impose these taxes. I bet I could find 1,000 "scientists" willing to support my claim that the sun drives climate change if I paid them enough.

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The answer is not carbon taxes - the answer is human ingenuity - as it always has been. We need to be 'future-proofing" our at-risk areas with sea defences, resevoirs and better land management - not farting around with the fraud of carbon taxes.

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[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

What exactly is the sun doing differently now compared to a few hundred years ago? I wouldn't deny that that great big nuclear reactor affects the planet, but it has been doing so for the past 3 odd billion years.  What's different now?

[TordelBack]

There was once scientific consensus that God created humans out of lumps of clay, that bad smells caused disease and that the sun orbited the Earth.

Ah now.  Those are traditional explanations, some enshrined in religion, and overturned by science.  Indeed, we often date the beginnings of early modern science precisely from Copernicus' work on heliocentrism.

The true complexity and interweaving factors driving climate change have yet to be fathomed, I think, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that the hottest thing within a light year has *something* to do with it.

No one, absolutely no-one, is doubting the massive influence of solar variability, or milankovitch cycles, or any of that stuff, as factors in climate change -  indeed this is specifically what were taught, as orthodoxy, in climatology. As a baseline.  The issue with anthropogenic climate change is that current change appears to depart wildly from this baseline, in precise sync with the the massive increase with human activity that demonstrates a plausible mechanism for affecting climate. 

You know all this Sharky, you're a very bright, very well-informed man.  There's little point me going over it again. You just don't trust the innumerable people telling you, for understandable reasons.  What's still incomprehensible to me is why you prefer 'facts' spontaneously generated from the ignorance of a self-serving minority.

The carbon tax issue is one of policy, and response.  I'm quite happy to see alternatives proposed to that one.  Doesn't change the science.