"Early humans blamed for mass extinctions"

[Amused]

<< If you think my children will starve, you are ignorant of how much food the Earth can produce. There is no basis for fact there. There is plenty of food, it's just not distributed correctly.
Sadly, you're seriously mistaken. Not even 10% of the world population lives in (relative) wealth. If you would divide all wealth, food etc. over the whole world population, everybody would be poor and starving from hunger and thirst.

There just isn't enough for everybody. >>



More BS. Poverty exists because of ignorance, bad decisions, bad governments, and bad locations. There is more than enough to go around. Just some people are forced to live under tyrants, failed socialism, and unproductive areas of the world. Africa as a continent has MORE than enough natural resources to feed it's people. Yet we constantly have localized famines there. It has NOTHING to do with lack of resources, only lack of development, and freedom.

 

[littleprince]

The Earth will HOPEFULLY heal itself after all humans are dead.

the idea that we are not harming the earth is nuts,
sure we are at the top of the food chain.
but being at the top of the food chain doesnt mean we have the right to cause oil spills, chop down rain forests, nuclear accidents.

dont you ever feel bad for future generations? when we bury nuclear waste into metal containers that are only expected to last 1/10 the lifetime of the waste??

 

[miken]

Take everyone's favorite famine hot spots, I bet you most are located in Desert (duh) or use the money for food/sell food, for arms to fight wars.

 

[goshdarnindie]

&quot;used a complicated computer model to simulate what may have happened&quot;
Very interesting, but just another theory where the software was produced to prove it.

I find it hard to believe that we can kill everything in site. I wonder if instead our migration introduced foreign disease into the area. I know not all disease work between different species, but that would make more sense to me. Even if our diseases only knocked out one or two blocks from the food chain, that might attribute to the erradication of so many species.

I should probably create a computer model that proves my theory. Then I'll call it the &quot;Andromeda Strain Theory&quot;

[edit] oops, I just finished reading the article, some PhD already thought of it, I guess I'm as smart as a PhD then (doesn't say much for PhD's) [edit]

 

[Amused]

<< The Earth will HOPEFULLY heal itself after all humans are dead.

the idea that we are not harming the earth is nuts,
sure we are at the top of the food chain.
but being at the top of the food chain doesnt mean we have the right to cause oil spills, chop down rain forests, nuclear accidents.

dont you ever feel bad for future generations? when we bury nuclear waste into metal containers that are only expected to last 1/10 the lifetime of the waste?? >>



Hmmm, we found the nuclear material in the ground. Right? When we were finshed with it, we put it right back, in a place FAR less likely to be harmful than where we found it.

Oil spills clear up FAR faster than the tree huggers would have you think. If you go to Alaska to the site of the Exxon oil spill, you'd never know it happened. It looks pristine.

I agree that precautions should be taken to prevent oil spills, but to stop drilling for oil is stupidity.

Meanwhile, Elledan complains that people are starving, yet you are willing to tell those same people they can't clear land to farm??? No wonder people in third world nations are hungry. Coddled and spoiled first world enviro nuts wont even let them use the resources they have.

 

[miken]

OH MY GOD! THE SUN IS GOING TO NOVA IN A MILLION YEARS!! LETS ALL RUN AND GET UNDERGROUND!

To much thinking, we will have a solution to most problems by the time they get near being a problem.

I'm an ordinary joe, don't try to recruit me in your &quot;feel bad for the environment&quot; craze.

 

[bluemax]

<< The Earth will heal itself. >>


BULL****!! :|:|

This is a totally selfish, materialistic attitude. If you poison a lake, it will take time to regenerate. Poison it 10% it's 1-10 years or so. Poison it 50% with industrial and human waste (sewage) it could take close to a hundred years. Poison it completely, all life is destroyed in that lake and some of its surrounding area, and it will likely NEVER regenerate. Something can't regenerate if you KILL it completely!

There are laws that industries that dump wastes into rivers can only dump as much as the river will naturally clean. Great, except if the river can clean 5% waste, and there's a dozen industries each dumping that maximum allowable amount, you have 12 times more pollution than the river can handle! You think that's not happening???? You think that industries SPEND MONEY on cleaning their wastes instead of just dumping them wherever they can find a convenient spot? Even the US Government itself was dumping TONS of nuclear waste into the bay just past California! This world is getting polluted to the point of destruction HUNDREDS OF TIMES faster than it can ever regenerate itself, and it's because of greedy attitudes like this!!

The western overidulgent desires for meat at every meal is also resulting in poisoning our regular food and water supply because of the beef and pork industries raising thousands of animals in a confined space with no sewage treatment whatsoever. A pig farm will cause as much sewage as a city of 100,000 people with NO SEWAGE TREATMENT. That waste just gets dumped around the surrounding area. No - it's not fertilizer. It's so concentrated it poisons the ground as well as the groundwater it seeps into.
We haven't even touched on the big industries like oil, paper, plastics, drugs.... each one producing thousands of TONS of waste each year, and not disposing of it properly because it eats into their profits.

Profits...... the only thing that matters.

We are the only ones with enough intelligence to keep this place in balance. Pity we don't do it. :|

 

[bluemax]

More stupidity:
Meanwhile, Elledan complains that people are starving, yet you are willing to tell those same people they can't clear land to farm???

That's just what people are doing to the rainforests. Slashburning them to provide grazing land for cattle (instead of farming - go figure. Farming produces 50-100x more food than meat.) After less than 5-10 years, this land becomes unstable because there's not much topsoil in the rainforest, and the ecological balance is completely destroyed. This land then becomes DESERT. As in devoid of life, unable to support life.... useless. Many of these third-world countries are desert regions. You propose farming a desert? You go right ahead and see how many cactii you can grow.

 

[miken]

So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to argue on a forum or take action? Obviously you have some feelings about this, why don't you do something constructive about it instead of whining in a Computer Hardware review website forum? Maybe you're trying to get me active and hugging a tree? I like the environment, and I do my part, but I am not going to get active in any kind of political sense. Take your anger somewhere else.

 

[Optimus]

<< the presence of human hunters triggered mass extinctions. >>



As those early hunters did not pollute, drive cars, use volitile chemicals, etc - but rather hunted with only thier natural abilitties (intelligence, the ability to use tools, etc) then that was completely normal.

But, in the modern world we have the ability to ABUSE our tool-making abilities to harm the planet unecessarily. I believe that yes, we are at the top of the food chain, but we need to use common sense and govern the world wisely.

 

[Amused]

<< More stupidity:
Meanwhile, Elledan complains that people are starving, yet you are willing to tell those same people they can't clear land to farm???

That's just what people are doing to the rainforests. Slashburning them to provide grazing land for cattle (instead of farming - go figure. Farming produces 50-100x more food than meat.) After less than 5-10 years, this land becomes unstable because there's not much topsoil in the rainforest, and the ecological balance is completely destroyed. This land then becomes DESERT. As in devoid of life, unable to support life.... useless. Many of these third-world countries are desert regions. You propose farming a desert? You go right ahead and see how many cactii you can grow. >>



Really? Show me a human produced desert where there was a rainforest in the recent past. And no, not all the land is cleared for cattle. They DO produce crops in South America.

Meanwhile, we farm in areas that were previously desert. It's a neat little trick called irrigation.

 

[Czar]

We are to busy worrying about tomorrow that we forget about next year.

 

[Raspewtin]

farming in a desert takes a lot more than just pouring water. most desert land is not farmable without adding a lot more than water. Our family owns a desert farm in India.




<< The Earth is ours. >>



Na, we belong to the Earth, not vice versa.



<< I don't care about anything except my family, which will go on. >>



for anyone who has this extremely shortsighted viewpoint read the quote below:



<< In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up. - Martin Niemoller >>

 

[Amused]

This all amounts to environmental elitism. The peoples of North America and Europe have used and reused their natural resources for hundreds, even thousands of years. In the case of Europe, every forest there has been harvested many times over throughout history. (And I'd hardly call northern Europe and North America environmental wastelands. Quite the contrary)

Yet, when it comes time for the peoples of Africa and South America to do the same, we seek to throw up an iron gate and deny them the right to use their resources as we've used ours.

Yep, we are elitists attempting to tell other cultures how they may go about advancing their societies by denying them the right to take advantage of the natural resources we take for granted.

 

[Czar]

The reason the forests in northern Europe are still there, partialy, is because for each tree that is cut two more are planted. That is in Sweeden, not sure about other countries.

Third world countries dont afford to plant those trees.

Go to germany, its all falt and all farming land, same is with Denmark. You are one of those people who wont notice if I steal one of your cookies each week, not untill you had none left.

 

[bluemax]

There's just a certain amount of distance between a renewable resource such as forests, and non-renewable resources like minerals and petroleum.

Pollution is a factor you don't seem to even want to touch.... why is that?

 

[Amused]

<< The reason the forests in northern Europe are still there, partialy, is because for each tree that is cut two more are planted. That is in Sweeden, not sure about other countries.

Third world countries dont afford to plant those trees.

Go to germany, its all falt and all farming land, same is with Denmark. You are one of those people who wont notice if I steal one of your cookies each week, not untill you had none left. >>



You're trying to tell me that Europe replanted trees 1000 years ago? 500 years ago?

Replanting forests in Europe only began a couple of hundred years ago. For hundreds of years, they didn't. They were allowed to learn this on their own. 300-500 years ago the forests in France, England and Spain were nearly wiped out completely to build ships. England had such a shortage of wood, decommissioned ships were recycled to use as construction timber.

Why are third world countries not allowed to advance the same way Europe did?

Meanwhile, realistic estimates have --at the present rate of deforestation-- 500 to 1000 years until the rain forests are depleted. I think they'll be on their feet long before then (if we get out and let them) don't you?

 

[Amused]

<< There's just a certain amount of distance between a renewable resource such as forests, and non-renewable resources like minerals and petroleum.

Pollution is a factor you don't seem to even want to touch.... why is that? >>



Because the debate had switched to natural resources and the causes of starvation in today's world.

Besides, I hardly think Ancient man polluted much when he supposedly caused these extinctions... which, BTW, most scientists chalk up to climate changes, like the end of the ice age (MUCH more feasible than a few hundred thousand cave men causing mass extinctions with spears and rocks).

 

[Czar]

AmusedOne

When northen men came first to iceland over a thousand years ago there were forests everywhere. Now we have 2 or 3 very very small forests left and wasteland is growing.



<< Meanwhile, realistic estimates have --at the present rate of deforestation-- 500 to 1000 years until the rain forests are depleted. I think they'll be on their feet long before then (if we get out and let them) don't you? >>


So you think we just have problem when the rainforests are gone?

 

[miken]

2 or 3 small forests? Are you daft? Most of the US is forest!

 

[StormRider]

Think about it this way. Even before humans first appeared on Earth -- there has always been mass extinctions. What happened to the dinosaurs? Humans weren't around back then.

Edit: hehe, I'm golden now!

 

[iamthesystem]

wow...talk about a fkdup statement:



<< We are definately the earth's cancer - nothing else causes as much wanton destruction. Being at the top of the food chain does NOT give us the right to destroy everything in sight!! Rather, it makes us RESPONSIBLE for its CARE! >>



top of the food chain implies responsibility??? give me a f'ing break! ! ! !

take humans out of it...reduce the top of the food chain to...i dunno...whatever you want. tigers, lions or bears (oh my) and do these creatures become responsible for the well-being of the planet??? (they are, after all, the new top of the foodchain)...

the planet is a great big, living organism. even if we nuked ourselves into the oblivion of history, wait around a century, millenium, eon....the earth will repair herself and remove all traces that man was ever here.

fools! just as the earth is one big living creature, the force of man is one large moving event that can barely scratch the surface...

-i

 

[Czar]

miken



<< 2 or 3 small forests? Are you daft? Most of the US is forest! >>



Are you stupid or something, read my post again, I´m talking about Iceland and not the US.

 

[miken]

Silly rabbit, trix are for kids!

 

[Clinotus]

Milken,

Thoughts like those you express are why we are in this mess in the first place. The views you express are selfish and ignorant. What about your childrens children? If you lived in a trailer park next to a muddy river, wouldn't you curse the great-uncle who years ago squandered the family fortune on a black jack table? Think about it. Even if you don't want to take responsibilty and do your part you still have to acknowlege what's going on.