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Humans causing mass extinction is good news! (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter david2004
- Start date
Some of this post might have been covered else where but you want a variety of view points.
Firstly I presume your in some form of higher education (doing A-levels etc) so what subject was this comment made in?
I know for uni more so than HE that we are taught to think and argue a different point of view - if your teacher was trying to encourage this and make you think that he is wrong in what he is saying then he is doing a very good job!
Did you acctually challenge him in front of the class at all? if he is making such a bold statement then he should be prepared to defend it - and also as someone who cares about it you should be willing to defend your principals with a reasoned, frank (and polite) discussion.
Over all I have to say yes your right to be angry by this statement but use it to reason that he is wrong and change his view! (use it as a fuel to power your beliefs!)
Firstly I presume your in some form of higher education (doing A-levels etc) so what subject was this comment made in?
I know for uni more so than HE that we are taught to think and argue a different point of view - if your teacher was trying to encourage this and make you think that he is wrong in what he is saying then he is doing a very good job!
Did you acctually challenge him in front of the class at all? if he is making such a bold statement then he should be prepared to defend it - and also as someone who cares about it you should be willing to defend your principals with a reasoned, frank (and polite) discussion.
Over all I have to say yes your right to be angry by this statement but use it to reason that he is wrong and change his view! (use it as a fuel to power your beliefs!)
david2004
Well-known member
I wasn't actually in class, it was in an assembly so I didn't have a chance to respond. I'm glad one or two here agree with what I'm saying, but if the general consensus is truly with his opinion, what chance have we got?
Yes I'm thinking on an entirely selfish point of view, but I believe morally we have a role to play and think conservation is important. I can't believe some people (not necessarily here) don't care. I realise that we probably will not have a long lasting effect and the niches will be filled, but I care that we're creating niches that wouldn't be there otherwise, and I have a strong belief in protecting the natural world which I love so much.
I've been thinking for a while about how we need to wake up to what we're doing to the planet, and if some people think it doesn't matter, we'll be gone eventually, I think that's completely selfish. I want future generations to appreciate the natural world and animals etc as I see it, not with thousands of species extinct and the world completely changed by preventable, man-made disasters (such as climate change).
Yes I'm thinking on an entirely selfish point of view, but I believe morally we have a role to play and think conservation is important. I can't believe some people (not necessarily here) don't care. I realise that we probably will not have a long lasting effect and the niches will be filled, but I care that we're creating niches that wouldn't be there otherwise, and I have a strong belief in protecting the natural world which I love so much.
I've been thinking for a while about how we need to wake up to what we're doing to the planet, and if some people think it doesn't matter, we'll be gone eventually, I think that's completely selfish. I want future generations to appreciate the natural world and animals etc as I see it, not with thousands of species extinct and the world completely changed by preventable, man-made disasters (such as climate change).
Katy Penland
Well-known member
I'm with you, David. I've always felt that taking the "macro view" of any issue is a defeatist position, whether it's regarding the environment (it doesn't matter anyway) or social/cultural questions (why bother to put criminals in prison, they'll just be released).
From the way the original post read, I didn't at all get the feeling that the speaker was trying to challenge young minds. It sounded like he was taking a position, and a pretty irresponsible one at that. If he was throwing down a gauntlet, he should have said so rather than leave the impression that stewardship doesn't matter.
Even if "the earth doesn't care" (which was a novel concept to me, anthropomorphizing the planet!
), it's inhabitants should. In the near-term stewardship is extremely important. Just ask anyone who's lived next to mine tailings, toxic waste dumps, polluted waterways, or landfills.
From the way the original post read, I didn't at all get the feeling that the speaker was trying to challenge young minds. It sounded like he was taking a position, and a pretty irresponsible one at that. If he was throwing down a gauntlet, he should have said so rather than leave the impression that stewardship doesn't matter.
Even if "the earth doesn't care" (which was a novel concept to me, anthropomorphizing the planet!
), it's inhabitants should. In the near-term stewardship is extremely important. Just ask anyone who's lived next to mine tailings, toxic waste dumps, polluted waterways, or landfills.Farnboro John said:
I would hopethat by 16-18 years old a kid would have enough ofa handle on the current enviornmental situationsand theories to be able to see this lecture for what it is. Simplified truth. The same tactic is used with children as young as preschool (though a bit more obviously) At what age should we consider kids able to think for themselves?
david2004 said:
Well if you want to take a MORAL view then of course the answer is to act in a manor to save the planet. BUT strictly enviornmentally speaking, and taking the view of science.... well we are but a virus here for a momkent in time. When you look at the billion or so years ofa planets existence against man's, well how much DO we matter? If we do not destroy ourselves, then some natural accurance will and life on earth will be born anew.
So are we asking to save the planet for the earth and all living things sake or for our own... be honest now (making a note here that I am in fact a bit of an enviornmentalist, yes I recycle and yes I drive my 33MPG Saturn etc... but that is for the good of my daughter and her children and so on. I figure the earth will shrug us all off eventually, when we getto be too much)
Ilya Maclean
charlatan
Andrew Whitehouse said:
Kind of getting a bit deep and philosophical here, and you've obviously thought about / studied this and as it is also a pet topic of mine so I'll continue. You say that in Nature there are no values. How do you tie this in with e.g. Arne Naess's idea of Intrinsic value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology) that life (Nature?), provided it has sentience has a right to exist, irrespective of human values? I'm presuming your thesis is based on some distinction between Nature per se and sensations sentient experience, such as pain.
Andrew Whitehouse said:
Again, I think the crux of this argument boils down to semantics. Whilst 'Nature' may not incorporate the concept of interactions with the environment, Ecology (presumably part of biological sciences) certainly does. Whilst Odum's views in the 50s and 60s may have viewed Nature as static, the advent of theories such as Connel's Intermediate Disturbance hypothesis in the late 1970s has ensured that most ecologists view and study Nature as a dynamic process in which interactions with surrounding environments form an integral part of their attempts to understand patterns of species behaviour, abundance and richness etc.
I agree with you that what matters is what we should value and I also agree that many biologists do not give enough consideration to this subject, but ecological-eocomists and the growing body of interdisciplinary conservationists certainly do. A range of ecologic evaluation techniques (hedonic pricing, contingent valuation, travel cost method etc etc) have been developed in recent years to address just that question
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Ilya Maclean
charlatan
david2004 said:
Hi David
I don’t know your teacher, but like others I think he may have been deliberately provocative, to get you thinking. However, for what it’s worth you may wish to consider the following when responding to him.
Firstly, I think you need to break down his ideas into two parts. Firstly, that causing extinction doesn’t matter, secondly, that mass extinctions have occurred in the past and that life will therefore go on (and even flourish) if we cause the mass destruction of the planet.
To answer the first point, it is my view that there are a number of reasons that it does matter. These reasons can roughly be divided into two. (1) Because the present species and nature that is there benefit humans immensely and (2) because many would argue that species have a right to exist irrespective of their value to humans. Benefits to humans include the happiness one derives from seeing species or knowing they exists, but also includes the role nature plays in providing our food, cleaning our air and water and producing the oxygen we breathe. Without nature we couldn’t live after all.
To answer the second point, yes, mass extinctions have occurred in the past and life will maybe (even probably) go on and new species will evolve and take the place of others that we've destroyed (this will take a very long time though). The main problem is we don’t definately know that life will continue. Although nobody is quite sure, scientists think that the evolution of life on this planet has occurred firstly because conditions were roughly suitable and secondly because the species themselves fortuitously have the ability to regulate the earths temperature and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The ability species have to regulate their environment is really important as it would suggest that there is a real danger that if we destroy too much nature, it may become irreparable - the atmosphere and temperature will change such that no species can survive or ever evolve again.
colonelboris
Right way up again
I pretty much agree, Ilya, except on one point - nothing has the right to exist. Everything has to struggle to survive and it's that struggle that leads to evolution. If it was all that easy, we'd never have had the need to get past one cell.
I think the idea of rights is a funny one and pretty much illusory. What right do I have not to drown in the North Sea if I end up in there. I can hardly ask the waves not to do it.
But then, that's a highly personal view, and I wouldn't imagine many others agree with me.
However, we should do what we can to help other wildlife and the environment, if even for our own selfish pleasure.
I think the idea of rights is a funny one and pretty much illusory. What right do I have not to drown in the North Sea if I end up in there. I can hardly ask the waves not to do it.
But then, that's a highly personal view, and I wouldn't imagine many others agree with me.
However, we should do what we can to help other wildlife and the environment, if even for our own selfish pleasure.
Ilya Maclean said:
Hi Ilya,
Thanks for your comments. First of all, I should perhaps make clear that many points that I'm putting forward are premised on the rejection of the essentialist concept of nature - that is the idea that nature is essentially that which is separate from the human world, which we might refer to as culture or society. So a lot of the ways that the idea of nature is used as a concept are problematic to me. I think there might be better ways of thinking about relations between humans and non-humans than the conventional view that we are in culture or society and that they are in nature (except we're also 'half' in nature, but I'm not sure that helps either). A certain amount of the current thinking in the social sciences and probably elsewhere tries to get past the 'ontological dualism' of nature-society/culture and I'm trying to do that in the sort of questions and comments I'm putting forward.
When I said that 'in nature there are no values' I was putting this forward as an assumption that is often made that contributes to some of the problems with the concept of nature. In other words, I'm not advocating this position at all! Naess's idea seems to propose that there are 'intrinsic values' in nature, but some have criticised this by saying that all values (i.e. all morality) is essentially anthropogenic. One of the effects that our separating of the world into nature and culture has is that we also separate the world into a realm of 'facts' (nature) and a realm of 'values' (culture). See Bruno Latour's recent book 'The politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy' for more on this. But perhaps if we don't make the natural-culture disinction, or we make it different, we might change the way we understand the relationship between facts and values. The idea that there are no values in nature leads people to think that 'the Earth doesn't care' or 'Nature doesn't care' so it doesn't really matter what we do. I don't think this is a helpful way of thinking.
I wasn't particularly getting at anything like an argument about 'nature feeling pain' (I suppose akin to an animal rights argument). It's worth noting that Peter Singer, in his arguments for animal rights, makes a connection between animals and humans on the basis of nature (i.e. on the basis of material similarities) but still distinguishes humans from animals on the ability of most humans to make moral judgements. He is saying that we can value animals but they can't make ethical decisions. Humans therefore have to 'stand in for nature'. It's worth contrasting this view with the understanding that many hunter-gatherers have of personhood in animals in which animals are explicitly understood to be able to make values and to judge the behaviour of humans. I suppose this doesn't generally sit with our 'rational-scientific' understanding of animal nature but it's an interesting contrast to make.
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I don't think this is really about semantics but about how understand ecological relations (including those involving humans) to operate. It could be argued that a truly ecological view understands relations as being pre-eminent rather than the product of pre-existing 'things'. Instead of taking as our unit of study 'the organism' as set against a purely material 'environment', we could take as our unit 'organism-enviroment' as a developmental system. That means that we focus on the life and development of organism and environment together, without separation. We would then be able to get beyond thinking about environment as a set of material constraints and organism as a form generated through a pre-existing genetic design (plus cultural design in humans) that works within these constraints. In this model, organism and environment are understood to be 'already' complete before their entry into the world. The two then 'interact with' each other. Instead, we might better understand ecology if we saw the two as mutually constitutive of each other. Possibly there are ecologists taking this view - if so I'd be interested in hearing about them!
In my use of 'value' I was thinking less in economic terms and more in terms of 'finding something important'. I think we should value what's really going on rather than an essentialist idea of 'nature', which is just an idea.
By the way, for those reading this thinking 'this all just philosophy' then I'd argue that there's much more to it than that and that if we are to address the pressing ecological concerns of the world we need to rethink a lot of the ideas with which we understand our world. I think the idea of an essential nature, separate from human life, is an unhelpful idea. We can't keep the world at arms length.
Some suggested reading:
Tim Ingold 'The perception of the environment' and 'An anthropologist looks at biology' (the latter a journal article from 'Man').
Gregory Bateson 'Mind and Nature: a necessary unity' and 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind'
Bruno Latour 'The politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy'
Ilya Maclean said:
I would be very interested to know the source of your assertion that "species can regulate their environment" Ilya.
With regard to your statement in bold -this does not accord with my reading of the current understanding of the development life on earth.
Richard Fortey in "Life-an unauthorised biography" explains that life is not simply a matter of convenient chemistry-but a co-operation between molecules to create the replicating cell. He explains that the first cells were bacteria,( including Archaea) which are today ubiquitous on earth in every habitat. Many of them are anaerobes for whom oxygen is toxic & they first appeared long before free oxygen existed on earth ( a period of over 2bn years) .They lived in conditions of extreme temperature & pressure , consuming sulphur, Hydrogen, CO2 etc..
All life on earth has evolved from these organisms.
Paul Davies in " The Origin of Life" provides a more up to date account of hyperextremophile bacteria being discovered today. Thermophiles living under the sea bed at 169 degrees C.-or found in boreholes 3km below the crust-some in concentrations of 10 million per cu centimeter.Chemotrophs which do not need light or photosynthesis & which can turn inorganic substances to organic materials.Halophiles which live on salt. Methanogens which get their energy by making methane directly from hydrogen & carbon dioxide.Thiobacillus which can only exist in concentrations of acid which would kill all other creatures & which is strong enough to dissolve metal. These organisms probably represent the descendants of their precursors from 3.5bn years ago who began their existence in conditions of temperature , pressure & chemistry which are today present mainly deep beneath the sea where tectonic plates collide & the mantle spews out the conditions they like.
Paul Davies makes a credible case for the ability of bacteria to survive a journey through space-for example in meteors from Mars.
The mass extinctions-to which you referred have also responded to the most extreme changes in temperature, sea level etc.In the Permian extinction the attrition rate was as follows-53% of marine families/84% of marine genera / 96% of marine species / 70% of land species.
95% of the species which have ever existed on earth are now extinct.
I suggest to you that the overwhelming evidence is that life on earth will exist in any conditions which pertain on earth-certainly conditions which would be fatally toxic for humans.And the replicating cell will be there to evolve a panoply of life suited to the conditions in which it has to exist.
Colin
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motacilla oenenthe
Well-known member
"its rather egocentric to think we humans could destroy the planet"
well just wait 50 years when most of the present coastline is underwater and millions of people are dying of famine all because of global warming and then get back to me on that.
or we could press the button and launch all the ICBMs we have and destroy it now.......
well just wait 50 years when most of the present coastline is underwater and millions of people are dying of famine all because of global warming and then get back to me on that.
or we could press the button and launch all the ICBMs we have and destroy it now.......
motacilla oenenthe said:
Even full global nuclear war would not do it, unless every weapon went off at exactly the same time. As for in 50 years, hell just 25 years ago it was said california would be atlantis by now. Millions of people HAVE died form famine. I would bemore worried about natural global shift and it's effect than humans. It is more likey to have an effect within just a few generations. face it. Nature is cyclical and what is happening IS completey natural and part of something that takes hundred of thousands of years to happen
I agree we should be concerned about it and if the teacher actuall belives what he has said (which I dont think he does) and has made people who dont care sit up and think about what he is saying he will have helped as some will have gone (unfortunatly) yeah sirs right but the vast majority would have gone your wrong!
I think you do need to talk to him about it and if he is willing to stand up in front of an assemberly and say that he should be willing to defend his point of view. Also ask if you can do an assemberly and put your views across or have a debate with him in assemberly about it. MAKE HIM PROVE HIS POINT.
I think you do need to talk to him about it and if he is willing to stand up in front of an assemberly and say that he should be willing to defend his point of view. Also ask if you can do an assemberly and put your views across or have a debate with him in assemberly about it. MAKE HIM PROVE HIS POINT.
John o'Sullivan
Well-known member
I've been thinking similar things for some time now. I'm not sure I believe in conservation as a valid concept at all these days. How do you "conserve" in an ever changing world. The bits you do "conserve" how long does it have to be "conserved for" for this count as a worthwhile achievement. If for example we keep black grouse alive in Wales for another 50 years and then climate change changes the habitat so the population is no longer sustainable was there any point in the time effort and money spent maintaining this relict population for this time.
Is it just a part of human nature to resist change. So by advocating "conservation" do we feel better that something is being done. When in reality nothing is being achieved that matters.
I know I've said this before (in one of the Ruddy duck threads) but I have a suspicion that conservation is the Opium of the green masses (and a human industry with blind drives of its own).
The easy acceptance of the concept of conservation has a tendency to make people feel better but may be blinding us to more unsettling real truth. It may be akin to the old adage relating to trying to hold sand in your hand or the actions of canute attempting to hold back the tide.
So in response to the original post I think the teacher may actually be correct in what is being put forward. The "Earth" does not care whether fish stocks are wiped out or not.
It is possible the teacher read the same article that I did recently which asserted that fish stocks once reduced below a certain level would never be able to recover as the absence of fish means more "jelly fish" are surviving than before. The increased "jelly fish" eat the remaining fish spawn and fry so that the niche is now exploited by them and not fish. This is an opportunity for a whole new avenue of evolution. Maybe this is the "job" of human kind to open the way for the next dominant species JELLY FISH ERECTUS. Maybe god (if there is a god or gods) is a giant jelly fish like creature and is amused by the conceit that we humans are made in Gods image. Who knows the answer to this I don't.
At the very least the orthodoxy that conservation is good is being challenged and people are being encouraged to think.
Is it just a part of human nature to resist change. So by advocating "conservation" do we feel better that something is being done. When in reality nothing is being achieved that matters.
I know I've said this before (in one of the Ruddy duck threads) but I have a suspicion that conservation is the Opium of the green masses (and a human industry with blind drives of its own).
The easy acceptance of the concept of conservation has a tendency to make people feel better but may be blinding us to more unsettling real truth. It may be akin to the old adage relating to trying to hold sand in your hand or the actions of canute attempting to hold back the tide.
So in response to the original post I think the teacher may actually be correct in what is being put forward. The "Earth" does not care whether fish stocks are wiped out or not.
It is possible the teacher read the same article that I did recently which asserted that fish stocks once reduced below a certain level would never be able to recover as the absence of fish means more "jelly fish" are surviving than before. The increased "jelly fish" eat the remaining fish spawn and fry so that the niche is now exploited by them and not fish. This is an opportunity for a whole new avenue of evolution. Maybe this is the "job" of human kind to open the way for the next dominant species JELLY FISH ERECTUS. Maybe god (if there is a god or gods) is a giant jelly fish like creature and is amused by the conceit that we humans are made in Gods image. Who knows the answer to this I don't.
At the very least the orthodoxy that conservation is good is being challenged and people are being encouraged to think.
Ilya Maclean
charlatan
Tyke said:
You do seem to take grave exception to almost everything I post Colin
I think James Lovelock was the first to propose the theory. He rather unfortunately added that they have evolved to regulate their environment and was consequently much criticised by evolutionary biologists such as Ford Dolittle. There is nevertheless a lot of empirical evidence to support the idea that they do (coincidentally?) regulate their environment. Some of the more famous examples include Keith Downing & Peter Zvirinsky work on the Redfield ratio of Nitrogen to Phosphorus, showing that local biotic processes can regulate global systems, or Andrew Watson’s work on oceanic phytoplankton and climate regulation. There are lots of other examples as a quick search on Google scholar should reveal. It is also well known that oxygen, essential to many organisms, is produced and maintained in a free state by biological processes.
Tyke said:
I'm well aware if the existance of hyperextremophile bacteria. However, I also maintain that whilst there is evidence that some bacteria etc. can survive a range of temperature conditions, a lot of species can't and thus harsh conditions may result in a vastly reduced diversity. Also remember that if the temperature were to alter substantially (as it would do without the presence of biotic influences) it is possible that there would be no liquid water on this planet, essential to most life forms. One could argue that new species may evolve from the few bacteria etc. able to survive, but we're not sure. Even if there once was life on Mars, it seems unlikely that there is anymore and if there is, it certainly hasn't got past the stage of early bacteria, which I personally think has much to do with the lack of water. Also, note that earlier in my post I do say: "mass extinctions have occurred in the past and life will maybe (even probably) go on and new species will evolve and take the place of others that we've destroyed".
Above all else, the point is we don't know and therefore a precuationary approach is needed. To the best of our knowledge life has only evolved once, and we do not fully understand how it came about. However, we can't reverse extinctions once they've happened (yet?) and once broken the environment is difficult to fix.
p.s. Andrew - I intend to respond to your post by pm when I've got a bit of spare time. Probably straying a bit beyond the scope of this thread.
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Thanks for your response Ilya
Disagreeing with someone isn't the same as taking exception-and I didn't :h?:
Thanks for the references in your first part.
RE-Life on earth etc-I probably have a somewhat different view to your own.The recent discoveries in the Archaea/Bacteria Domains in particular show what a truly astounding & varied thing "life" can be.-like this for example :-
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1022-princeton.html
I think there is a tad too much anthropocentric thinking when the question of life on earth is considered.A debate for another time though!
Colin
Disagreeing with someone isn't the same as taking exception-and I didn't :h?:
Thanks for the references in your first part.
RE-Life on earth etc-I probably have a somewhat different view to your own.The recent discoveries in the Archaea/Bacteria Domains in particular show what a truly astounding & varied thing "life" can be.-like this for example :-
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1022-princeton.html
I think there is a tad too much anthropocentric thinking when the question of life on earth is considered.A debate for another time though!
Colin
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bitterntwisted
Graham Howard Shortt
Ilya Maclean said:
Ilya (and Andrew and Tyke),
Please keep this discussion going on a public forum and not a PM if possible, although perhaps a new thread should be kicked off.
I am very interested in all the areas you are touching on - I am just starting to put together a Ph.D proposal with the working title / central concept "Homo Sapiens Domesticus" It will probably be done in a Philosophy department but I am very interested in the interfaces with Environmental Science and Biological Science as well as with Politics, Anthropology and Psychology.
Still very early days in my plans but the reading suggestions you are posting are very useful. As are your arguments, of course!
Thanks,
Graham
colonelboris
Right way up again
bitterntwisted said:
Did you read the somewhat contreversial paper that suggested the reason that women have physically smaller brains than men is that ancient men tended to pick more easy-going women over more agressive ones, which with successive generations effectively 'domesticated' them? They found in studies in animals that the process of domestication, even in a short number of generations, causes the reduction of a hormone that causes stress, but also causes brain size to be reduced. I can't remember the author, but I read a piece on it in The Times several months ago.
Might be of some use, especially given the title of your thesis. No idea where to find the article, though.
I should hasten to add that it didn't make any difference in mental ability, before I'm physically torn apart by every woman on here...
