Dog lovers damage the planet - Page 13 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Pollution, global warming, urbanisation etc.
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#15063307
Pants-of-dog wrote:The previous posts are the ones that make the error that the planet is not being affected.

Do you have evidence that we are not damaging the planet?

We are not damaging the planet, but we are damaging the environment on which our industrial civilisation depends. That's important to us, and we should rightfully be concerned about it (assuming we want to sustain our industrial civilisation over the long term). The planet as a whole, however, has seen far worse than anything we can throw at it.
#15063308
Potemkin wrote:We are not damaging the planet, but we are damaging the environment on which our industrial civilisation depends. That's important to us, and we should rightfully be concerned about it (assuming we want to sustain our industrial civilisation over the long term). The planet as a whole, however, has seen far worse than anything we can throw at it.


The damage we are doing to the lithosphere is not as bad as the damage we are doing to the atmosphere and oceans, but it is still damage that has negative impacts for us.
#15063310
Pants-of-dog wrote:The damage we are doing to the lithosphere is not as bad as the damage we are doing to the atmosphere and oceans, but it is still damage that has negative impacts for us.

I agree, but the crucial part of that sentence is "for us". We should be concerned about that, obviously, but the planet as a whole has nothing to fear from us. Far, far, far worse has happened in the past and will happen again, as part of natural geological and other processes. When Gondwana rifted and the Atlantic Ocean opened up, for example, it caused utter mayhem to the Earth's biosphere which took millions of years to recover. What we are doing to the Earth's biosphere is trivial by comparison. But we are too self-obsessed and self-regarding to admit that to ourselves, however. The Earth has seen bigger fuckers than us come and go, and it'll see us off as well.
#15063312
No amount of "pollution" would persuade anyone sane to let commies rule again. You are wasting your time jumping on the hippy bandwagon and pretending you care about the "environment" all of a sudden. It is just another excuse to go another mass murder rampage. Give it up.
Last edited by SolarCross on 01 Feb 2020 18:03, edited 1 time in total.
#15063314
Potemkin wrote:I agree, but the crucial part of that sentence is "for us". We should be concerned about that, obviously, but the planet as a whole has nothing to fear from us.


No.

Most of the negative impacts we are creating also negatively impact other species and the planet at a level that is only comparable to the few mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

If we continue, we will not destroy the planet entirely, but we will have such an impact that we will not only destroy our civilisation but also create mass extinctions and loss of natural habitat.

Far, far, far worse has happened in the past and will happen again, as part of natural geological and other processes. When Gondwana rifted and the Atlantic Ocean opened up, for example, it caused utter mayhem to the Earth's biosphere which took millions of years to recover. What we are doing to the Earth's biosphere is trivial by comparison. But we are too self-obsessed and self-regarding to admit that to ourselves, however. The Earth has seen bigger fuckers than us come and go, and it'll see us off as well.


The rate of change for previous climate changes was far slower than today, giving organisms a chance to adapt. This is not the case today.
#15063319
Pants-of-dog wrote:No.

Most of the negative impacts we are creating also negatively impact other species and the planet at a level that is only comparable to the few mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Claims that we are already in a mass extinction event are alarmist. If that were the case, we would have to be concerned not just about obscure Amazonian tree frogs going extinct, but mice or rabbits going extinct. We are clearly not at that stage yet, and I would submit that we never will be. By that point, our industrial civilisation would have collapsed and the few human survivors would be eking out a pitiful existence among the rubble. No, the so-called 'Sixth Mass Extinction' is going to fizzle out.

If we continue, we will not destroy the planet entirely, but we will have such an impact that we will not only destroy our civilisation but also create mass extinctions and loss of natural habitat.

Which has always happened throughout the history of life on Earth and will always continue to happen. As far as the planet is concerned, this is just business as usual.

The rate of change for previous climate changes was far slower than today, giving organisms a chance to adapt. This is not the case today.

Usually, but not always. The very fact that mass extinctions happen at all is evidence that some natural climate changes happened so rapidly that organisms did not have time to adapt. And I don't think you understand just how apocalyptically catastrophic mass extinctions have been in the past. During the end-Permian mass extinction, for example, something like 95% of all species alive at the time went extinct. The Earth was a vast graveyard for millions of years. It took 30 million years for the Earth's biosphere to recover its former biodiversity. The human race simply isn't capable of such a scale of destruction, and likely never will be.
#15063325
Potemkin wrote:Claims that we are already in a mass extinction event are alarmist. If that were the case, we would have to be concerned not just about obscure Amazonian tree frogs going extinct, but mice or rabbits going extinct. We are clearly not at that stage yet, and I would submit that we never will be. By that point, our industrial civilisation would have collapsed and the few human survivors would be eking out a pitiful existence among the rubble. No, the so-called 'Sixth Mass Extinction' is going to fizzle out.


The current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times as fast as any other previous extinction event. Whether or not rabbits, mice, and other animals that have learnt to live among humans are affected does not change that. In fact, focusing on those few animals who can continue to survive in human habitats after their natural habitats are gone is misleading, since you are focusing solely on he survivors of existing and previous negative impacts.

Which has always happened throughout the history of life on Earth and will always continue to happen. As far as the planet is concerned, this is just business as usual.


This is an oversimplification.

You are basically arguing that climate always changes, and it is changing now, so it is normal.

But that incorrectly assumes that all changes in the climate are qualitatively identical. This is not the case.

Usually, but not always. The very fact that mass extinctions happen at all is evidence that some natural climate changes happened so rapidly that organisms did not have time to adapt. And I don't think you understand just how apocalyptically catastrophic mass extinctions have been in the past. During the end-Permian mass extinction, for example, something like 95% of all species alive at the time went extinct. The Earth was a vast graveyard for millions of years. It took 30 million years for the Earth's biosphere to recover its former biodiversity. The human race simply isn't capable of such a scale of destruction, and likely never will be.


If your argument is that the current extinction event is not as bad as the worst one ever, then yes.

But even if we accept that, it does not change the fact the current one is far faster than previous ones.
#15063329
Pants-of-dog wrote:The current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times as fast as any other previous extinction event. Whether or not rabbits, mice, and other animals that have learnt to live among humans are affected does not change that. In fact, focusing on those few animals who can continue to survive in human habitats after their natural habitats are gone is misleading, since you are focusing solely on he survivors of existing and previous negative impacts.

It means that there will be a turnover of species - some will go extinct while others will thrive in the new environment. Again, this is nothing new in evolutionary history.

This is an oversimplification.

You are basically arguing that climate always changes, and it is changing now, so it is normal.

But that incorrectly assumes that all changes in the climate are qualitatively identical. This is not the case.

Can you define what you mean by "qualitatively different"? A change in the climate is a change in the climate.

If your argument is that the current extinction event is not as bad as the worst one ever, then yes.

But even if we accept that, it does not change the fact the current one is far faster than previous ones.

It still isn't as fast as the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. In less than about a month, more than half of all species on Earth were extinct, including all the non-avian dinosaurs and anything larger than about 10kg in weight.
#15063340
Potemkin wrote:It means that there will be a turnover of species - some will go extinct while others will thrive in the new environment. Again, this is nothing new in evolutionary history.


True, but that does not contradict the fact that the current negative impacts for Earth are comparable or worse than previous extinction events, and this disproves the claim that we are not damaging the planet.

Can you define what you mean by "qualitatively different"? A change in the climate is a change in the climate.


By “qualitatively different”, I mean that the current climate change is different from ingoing climate change in that it is faster, not caused by natural causes, and does far more damage to the planet than the vast majority of climate change.

It still isn't as fast as the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. In less than about a month, more than half of all species on Earth were extinct, including all the non-avian dinosaurs and anything larger than about 10kg in weight.


If you are arguing that the current climate problem is comparable to an asteroid hitting the Earth and making the climate inhospitable, then I agree.
#15063345
Potemkin wrote:I agree, but the crucial part of that sentence is "for us". We should be concerned about that, obviously, but the planet as a whole has nothing to fear from us. Far, far, far worse has happened in the past and will happen again, as part of natural geological and other processes. When Gondwana rifted and the Atlantic Ocean opened up, for example, it caused utter mayhem to the Earth's biosphere which took millions of years to recover. What we are doing to the Earth's biosphere is trivial by comparison. But we are too self-obsessed and self-regarding to admit that to ourselves, however. The Earth has seen bigger fuckers than us come and go, and it'll see us off as well.


That might be true Bellisimo, but still the ones causing the most damage are the ones who suffer the most from hubris. Not the vast majority of the working people trying to make it within their small social circles. Compassion for the species is what I think is important.

;)
#15063347
Hippy: "hey man, like, you know, the trees man, they.. uh, like we should hug the trees, you know."

POD: "Finally, someone has dreamed up a great excuse for me to round up all the (((white people))) and the (((capitalists))) and make lampshades from their skin while picking the gold out of their teeth. Thanks hippy man!"
#15063350
Pants-of-dog wrote:True, but that does not contradict the fact that the current negative impacts for Earth are comparable or worse than previous extinction events, and this disproves the claim that we are not damaging the planet.

The current anthropogenic negative impacts for Earth are not comparable to or worse than previous extinction events. A cursory glance at the fossil record should tell you that.

By “qualitatively different”, I mean that the current climate change is different from ingoing climate change in that it is faster, not caused by natural causes, and does far more damage to the planet than the vast majority of climate change.

It does not cause far more damage to the planet than the vast majority of climate change. It doesn't even cause as much damage as an Ice Age.

If you are arguing that the current climate problem is comparable to an asteroid hitting the Earth and making the climate inhospitable, then I agree.

Lol. I am arguing that it is not comparable to an asteroid hitting the Earth. It is you who are implicitly making that comparison, by claiming that we are entering, or have already entered, a 'sixth' global mass extinction.
#15063351
Tainari88 wrote:That might be true Bellisimo, but still the ones causing the most damage are the ones who suffer the most from hubris. Not the vast majority of the working people trying to make it within their small social circles. Compassion for the species is what I think is important.

;)

Good point, querida. It is always the ordinary people who are just trying to get on with their lives who suffer the brunt of things, while the elite benefit.
#15063625
Potemkin wrote:The current anthropogenic negative impacts for Earth are not comparable to or worse than previous extinction events. A cursory glance at the fossil record should tell you that.


The science says otherwise.

It does not cause far more damage to the planet than the vast majority of climate change. It doesn't even cause as much damage as an Ice Age.


The rate of change before an ice age is slow enough to allow organisms to adapt, causing minimal damage in comparison to the current debacle.

Lol. I am arguing that it is not comparable to an asteroid hitting the Earth. It is you who are implicitly making that comparison, by claiming that we are entering, or have already entered, a 'sixth' global mass extinction.


You just compared them in terms of rate of extinction.

It is probably the only previous extinction event that occurred faster, and this is due t9 the fact that it was caused by a single event instead of a long series of events like the current one and others.
#15063704
Pants-of-dog wrote:The science says otherwise.

Then you won't mind providing some evidence, will you...? :)

The rate of change before an ice age is slow enough to allow organisms to adapt, causing minimal damage in comparison to the current debacle.

I would hardly call it "minimal damage". After all, where is the "mammoth steppe" now? Where are all the mammoths, come to that? I'm not denying that the current climate change is a debacle, but it's only a debacle for the human race, not for the planet as a whole, which has seen far worse before.

You just compared them in terms of rate of extinction.

It is probably the only previous extinction event that occurred faster, and this is due t9 the fact that it was caused by a single event instead of a long series of events like the current one and others.

It's not how fast it's currently occurring which matters, but how long it will last and how profound it will be. And it probably won't last long and it probably won't be very profound. This will be the only 'extinction event' with its own built-in negative feedback loop - the further it progresses, the more likely it is that the cause of the event - human industrial civilisation - will collapse, ending the extinction event.
#15063719
Potemkin wrote:Then you won't mind providing some evidence, will you...? :)


That the current extinction event is comparable to previous ones?

    A key measure of humanity's global impact is by how much it has increased species extinction rates. Familiar statements are that these are 100–1000 times pre‐human or background extinction levels. Estimating recent rates is straightforward, but establishing a background rate for comparison is not. Previous researchers chose an approximate benchmark of 1 extinction per million species per year (E/MSY). We explored disparate lines of evidence that suggest a substantially lower estimate. Fossil data yield direct estimates of extinction rates, but they are temporally coarse, mostly limited to marine hard‐bodied taxa, and generally involve genera not species. Based on these data, typical background loss is 0.01 genera per million genera per year. Molecular phylogenies are available for more taxa and ecosystems, but it is debated whether they can be used to estimate separately speciation and extinction rates. We selected data to address known concerns and used them to determine median extinction estimates from statistical distributions of probable values for terrestrial plants and animals. We then created simulations to explore effects of violating model assumptions. Finally, we compiled estimates of diversification—the difference between speciation and extinction rates for different taxa. Median estimates of extinction rates ranged from 0.023 to 0.135 E/MSY. Simulation results suggested over‐ and under‐estimation of extinction from individual phylogenies partially canceled each other out when large sets of phylogenies were analyzed. There was no evidence for recent and widespread pre‐human overall declines in diversity. This implies that average extinction rates are less than average diversification rates. Median diversification rates were 0.05–0.2 new species per million species per year. On the basis of these results, we concluded that typical rates of background extinction may be closer to 0.1 E/MSY. Thus, current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than natural background rates of extinction and future rates are likely to be 10,000 times higher.

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ... cobi.12380

Potemkin wrote:I would hardly call it "minimal damage". After all, where is the "mammoth steppe" now? Where are all the mammoths, come to that? I'm not denying that the current climate change is a debacle, but it's only a debacle for the human race, not for the planet as a whole, which has seen far worse before.


There is a normal background extinction rate, which means that the mere fact that mammoths became extinct does not contradict the fact that the current rate if extinction is almost unprecedented and only happened five times before. Each of those times has been called an extinction event.

It's not how fast it's currently occurring which matters, but how long it will last and how profound it will be. And it probably won't last long and it probably won't be very profound. This will be the only 'extinction event' with its own built-in negative feedback loop - the further it progresses, the more likely it is that the cause of the event - human industrial civilisation - will collapse, ending the extinction event.


You seem to be assuming that humans will be one of the earlier species to succumb, and not one of the latter species.

Why do you believe this?
#15063726
Pants-of-dog wrote:That the current extinction event is comparable to previous ones?

[...]

There is a normal background extinction rate, which means that the mere fact that mammoths became extinct does not contradict the fact that the current rate if extinction is almost unprecedented and only happened five times before. Each of those times has been called an extinction event.

Actually, there have been far more than five extinction events; those are just the biggest ones. The current 'extinction event' isn't even a blip on the radar screen yet. And the rapid rate of extinctions isn't even unprecedented; as I pointed out, the end-Cretaceous event was far faster.

You seem to be assuming that humans will be one of the earlier species to succumb, and not one of the latter species.

Why do you believe this?

Because we're a bunch of fuckups, that's why. :lol:

No, seriously. Human civilisation is doomed. It is unsustainable because of the resource depletion and climate change which it inevitably triggers. The good news is that the collapse of our civilisation will likely save the rest of the planet from the worst of our fuckery. We can't even cause a proper extinction event. Lol.
#15063728
Potemkin wrote:
No, seriously. Human civilisation is doomed. It is unsustainable because of the resource depletion and climate change which it inevitably triggers. The good news is that the collapse of our civilisation will likely save the rest of the planet from the worst of our fuckery. We can't even cause a proper extinction event. Lol.

No, it isn't. Well, we are still evolving and now we have all this technology we will evolve even faster so we will get more different faster. Some may say genetically engineered cyborgs with thousand year life spans are not particularly human anymore. In that sense "human" civilisation is doomed, but trans-human civilisation will conqour at least the galaxy and probably still be living it up like norse gods long after all the stars go out. Just saying.
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