Slashdot Era of 'Biological Annihilation' Is Underway, Scientists Warn (theguardian.com) Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:30PM from the strong-language dept. Tatiana Schlossberg reports via The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled, alternate source): From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds. The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a "global epidemic" and part of the "ongoing sixth mass extinction" caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena. Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists, but are using scientific data to back up their assertions that significant population decline and possible mass extinction of species all over the world may be imminent, and that both have been underestimated by many other scientists. The study's authors looked at reductions in a species' range -- a result of factors like habitat degradation, pollution and climate change, among others -- and extrapolated from that how many populations have been lost or are in decline, a method that they said is used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They found that about 30 percent of all land vertebrates -- mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians -- are experiencing declines and local population losses. In most parts of the world, mammal populations are losing 70 percent of their members because of habitat loss. biology science animals The planet will survive (Score:3, Insightful) by courteaudotbiz ( 1191083 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:36PM (#54798283) Homepage Earth will survive. If we are dumb enough to destroy everything, then maybe a more intelligent lifeform will thrive. Or if we do not get entirely extinct, Darwinism will be the rule once again. Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. Re:The planet will survive (Score:3) by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:45PM (#54798317) Sort of... the carboniferous period isn't going to happen again now that there are enzymes to digest lignin, so any future life will be much worse off than us at developing the tech needed to leave Earth. "Well, we won't kill all the ants" is kind of a Pyrrhic victory. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by courteaudotbiz ( 1191083 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:52PM (#54798351) Homepage But if you think in the millions and billions of years (well not too many billions, or the sun will get too hot), anything could happen. We're not the most perfect thing that could exist. Maybe the most overall intelligent species right now, but certainly not perfect. I don't think mammals will be the dominant genus until Earth is engulfed into the Sun... Mammals have proven to have a hard time adapting to hot temps. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:38AM (#54799109) Journal The sun's getting hotter, it might not be billions of years, we may have just screwed the pooch by both increasing CO2 and killing enough life that was the balance to deal with that. We may well have just rocked the boat for the last time, the planet isn't going to last forever. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:11AM (#54799157) That's why it's a must for advanced civilizations to build a mega structure like Dyson Sphere so the heat of the sun can be reduced and the pollution caused by fossil fuels diminished. Astronomers are already suspecting a dyson sphere can be found at KIC 8462852. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:14PM (#54801663) Wat Re: The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:01AM (#54798391) Well, it may turn out a lot differently than that. Forget about biological intelligence beyond more than 100 years from now. If trends continue, machine intelligence will be the dominant form by far on this planet, and we may or may not have merged with it. Maximum a few hundred years... Millions.. don't even try to imagine what will be here. Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by courteaudotbiz ( 1191083 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:09AM (#54798427) Homepage You think the human race will survive long enough for a Matrix-like future? If we are dumb enough to NOT have a kill-switch on those things, I think we deserve this future. Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:31AM (#54798701) Are you talking about the blue pill future? That's an awesome future! Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:51AM (#54799027) I agree! I would much rather take the blue pill right now, than to go on living in the world we have today... My only condition is that I would need a guarantee that I forget everything about the current world we live in. Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:18PM (#54801695) And I wanna be rich. You know, someone important. Like a 3 digit UID /.er. Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:03AM (#54799049) What? The blue pill just left you in the matrix. You're already in blue pill world. Not everything was great inside the matrix you know? It just emulated the same world people were used to so people still die and crap jobs still exist and you have no idea you're eating digital food. Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:18AM (#54799289) The red pill was fine. They were just idiots to not use the "I'm eating steak" program while ingesting gruel. Re: The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:08AM (#54799795) Are you talking about the blue pill future? That's an awesome future! Well, not if the, ahem, "enhancement," lasts more than 4 hours. If it does, you need to see your doctor immediately. Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Paradise Pete ( 33184 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:46AM (#54798563) Journal Maybe the most overall intelligent species right now, but certainly not perfect. We're clearly just a stepping stone until the computers take over forever. In the overall time scale humans will be just a blip. Surely that's what has happened elsewhere, and we don't hear from them because they're just waiting for the evolution to occur. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:48AM (#54799123) if you think in the millions and billions of years Multi-cellular life has about 600-800 million years left until extinction, due to CO2 getting trapped and making C3/C4 photosynthesis physically impossible. Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:40PM (#54804409) In 600 million years, evolution will have developed C5... so there's nothing to worry about. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:41PM (#54803971) Last I checked, the Sun was going to get Earth well over boiling temperature in less than a billion years. No time to waste!Re:The planet will survive (Score:3, Interesting) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:39AM (#54798729) Since this is all about habitat loss, which is mainly caused by people clearing land to make way for farmland, we already have a well known proven effective solution to minimize the need for all of that: GMO. Unfortunately, groups like Greenpeace and pretty much every European government have dashed all hopes of that ever seeing global adoption, and the Democrats in the US figure it would be awesome if we made agriculture even less efficient and more wasteful than what we have now by pushing for everybody to go all organic under the (totally false) notion that it is healthier. But you know, because Monsanto exists, obviously we need to throw out GMO technology and never use it again.Re:The planet will survive (Score:5, Informative) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:46AM (#54798877) Homepage Journal Since this is all about habitat loss, which is mainly caused by people clearing land to make way for farmland, we already have a well known proven effective solution to minimize the need for all of that: GMO. There's another solution: Population control. Growth cannot be sustained indefinitely, and yield increases in food is only postponing an inevitable, and ensuring it is worse when it happens. Until we stop breeding as rabbits and depending on population growth to pay for our debts, GMO and similar "solutions" are like peeing your pants to keep warm. And if you had bothered to read TFA, you would have realized that GMOs kills biodiversity. We end up with fewer and fewer plant species, and fewer and fewer animals who can survive as other plant species have to give way. That's putting all your eggs in one basket. There's nothing to fall back on if the crops fail due to e.g. new diseases. Because all we have are a few GMOs, because it's the only thing profitable. Potato Famine 2.0 will happen one day. And it will be worse, because we have no biodiversity to fall back on.Re:The planet will survive (Score:5, Informative) by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:14AM (#54799579) Homepage Journal Until we stop breeding as rabbits We already did: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... [worldbank.org] The continued population growth is because people are living longer, but it's levelling off. We are on target for about 10-11bn by the end of the century, which is sustainable with modern farming methods. The main issues now are all to do with the politics of handling the increase.Re:The planet will survive (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:33AM (#54799927) The levelling off at about 10.5 billion, even if sustainable, is not desirable by the framers of the Agenda 21 agreement. That agreement caps the planet's population at 500 million (with suggestions that it be reduced to 100 million). The only way to achieve that by the end of this century, per the agreement, is to engineer a 95% effective plague to kill off 95% of the planet's population. (if someone doesn't come around in the next 20 years or so to give you a rather clandestine vaccination, you're not one of those selected to survive into the new age. :-) Actually, the one thing that everyone misses is that man is still part of the natural world. If there is an extinction event happening because of man's activities it's no different that the extinction event created when the cyanobacteria dumped all that oxygen into the atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago. That almost killed off all life then. The only way to avoid our eventual extinction is to spread our eggs over more baskets and move out into space. By technology, by magic, by aliens coming and saving a few specimens of an otherwise doomed species, we need to get some people off planet and into other ecologies if the species is to survive.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:52AM (#54800463) we cant even handle living on this planet. spreading ourselves into space is inviting utter disaster. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:47PM (#54804443) Homepage Journal If there is an extinction event happening because of man's activities it's no different that the extinction event created when the cyanobacteria dumped all that oxygen into the atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago. That almost killed off all life then. One big difference is that it took 2.4 billion years for life to evolve to its current state after the GOE. We don't have that time anymore - in a billion years or so, the energy output from the sun that hits us will be around 10% higher, and we'll likely head into Venus like conditions. So we better hope that any catastrophe is on a far smaller scale, like Yucatan level or less.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:56PM (#54801505) That population might be sustainable with modern farming methods, but are modern farming methods sustainable?Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:24PM (#54803331) Someone tell Africa to get with the program then. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/25/africa/africa-population-growth-un/index.htmlRe:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:00PM (#54809653) Go tell the evangelicals and LDS who have been preaching against birth control and disallowing US funding for condomsRe:The planet will survive (Score:2) by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:39AM (#54799659) Homepage The smarter move is GMO algae only. Fully genetically customised kelp, as the food source. Pretty much near anything is possible, with customised flavour, texture and trace elements, designed to grow in low light conditions. Large, multi story growing tanks, producing very high volumes of food, with hugely reduced land use and largely recycling water. Don't think stupid soylent green, think customised leaves large, plate sized, thick, with adjusted flavour and texture, peel and you have a steak. Storage pods, the size of your fist and filled with a high protein, low sugar banana custard substitute. Land use would be hugely reduced, allowing the planet to clean itself up. The GMO crap they produce now is crap, built in pesticides to kill pests and harm people, herbicide resistant to pass tolerance to closely related species, long life with poor digestibility, basically all the crap ideas. The environment is a real, problem a lot have been damaged well beyond the idea of restoring to the original state, which is really not the wisest idea anyhow. Something we need to look at is how to redo damaged environment, not to an original state, but to a more managed, healthy and productive environment, things like do you want the original river back or do you want a good clean productive river, filled with the best species the planet has to offer in a balanced state. (where productive is, cleaning up air and water, promoting quality managed bio-diversity, with low allergens and toxicity). Parenting licences are a grand idea, both for having and for looking after, but if you have them in your country, how do you look at other mismanaged countries without them, looking to breed and dump refugees on your country, an interesting problem to solve, prevention an extremely violent thought and of course exclusion, still violent but not as violent or just give up trying to manage your country and just let it go to rot. Refugees should always be a problem solved at it's source and not a problem allowed to spread.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:13PM (#54803225) The GMO crap they produce now is crap, built in pesticides to kill pests and harm people The only built in pesticide is Bt, which is a protein that was discovered a hundred years ago and is only known to be toxic to invertebrates. All farmers (including organic) use Bt liberally, and you eat it all the time. herbicide resistant to pass tolerance to closely related species Actually there's already a solution to that: https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org] It's also worth noting that the process of using herbicides greatly reduces the amount of water needed, in addition to reducing the landmass and increasing crop yields. long life with poor digestibility, basically all the crap ideas Where the fuck did you get this from? There isn't any evidence that they aren't digestible. People like you with your constant spewing of lies are why we can't have nice things: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harves... [pbs.org] The proteins that have been introduced into foods, to this point in time, have all been shown to be readily digestible and not similar to any known toxins or allergens. And don't use some crap source like Greenpeace or some conspiracy theory website if you're going to make a counterpoint.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2, Insightful) by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:57AM (#54799733) Since this is all about habitat loss, which is mainly caused by people clearing land to make way for farmland, we already have a well known proven effective solution to minimize the need for all of that: GMO. There's another solution: Population control. That solution is already in place and is being improved on every single day. One only has to look at our exiting laws to blatantly see that. Think governments care about preventing death? Fuck no. The legal status of a product like tobacco that kills over 400,000 Americans every year, ten times more than all other illegal products, paints a clear fucking picture as to its role in population control. Same goes for alcohol. Think we're really doing something about the obesity epidemic? Fuck no. We're merely treating it with perpetual revenue streams that won't actually cure obesity or prevent death. Yet another form of population control. Think governments won't legalize marijuana because it's dangerous and deadly? Fuck no. They won't legalize it because it's not deadly enough, and would compete against products that are actually deadly. Sorry, but weed doesn't support the agenda of population control. We ensure the largest killers in society remain legal. We don't cure anything deadly anymore. We create perpetual revenue streams from pointless treatments designed to keep you alive long enough to ensure every penny is medically extracted from your ass. Then you simply die, which is population control. Ultimately, it's about resource control. We've carved this planet up into countries, which governments have to manage a finite amount of resources within the lines drawn. Population control is merely a component of that responsibility. No one wants to acknowledge that death is ultimately being manufactured, but our laws make it very clear. And it's being improved on all the time.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:24AM (#54800269) Breath slowly. There are no helicopters outside the window. Remember to breeeath. Someone will be along to assist you shortly.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by nnet ( 20306 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:54AM (#54800491) Journal s/population control/short term greed/ FTFY. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by bluegutang ( 2814641 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:58AM (#54800097) Until we stop breeding as rabbits We've already stopped breeding like rabbits. Virtually all the developed world now has sub-replacement fertility. So do less-developed countries like China and Brazil and Indonesia and Bangladesh, while India is pretty close to replacement. About the only place left that currently breeds "like rabbits" is sub-Saharan African. Allow for a few more decades of development, and their birthrates will probably plummet as well.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:29AM (#54799197) Remember WHERE and WHO is reproducing at an alarming pace. Just a hint: Not first world countries. Another hint: If first world countries stopped sending food and meds there, the population growth would return to cabal limits. WHEN ? - Demographic Transition. (Score:2) by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:46AM (#54799243) Homepage Remember WHERE and WHO is reproducing at an alarming pace. Just a hint: Not first world countries. Depends if you add a "WHEN" question, then you hint gets completely wrong. When meds and industrial agriculture where developed in what you now consider "First world countries", those pesky westerner also had a huge demographic explosion (because they kept their old habits of reproducing like rabbits on the ground that most of their children won't even reach adulthood). But eventually we got wiser and adapted. And the same adaptation is currently happening in nearly most of these other countries you allude to. We'll never reach the initially predicted 25 billions. It's called DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION, and it's actually a thing, whether or not it surprise your bigoted xenophobic view of the world and all the people who happen to be different than you. Another hint: If first world countries stopped sending food and meds there, the population growth would return to cabal limits. Another hint: if we stopped selling food and meds to you, you'll probably turn into a raving survivalist cannibal savage in no time.Re: WHEN ? - Demographic Transition. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:21AM (#54799295) If your society threatens my existence, I don't turn into a raging loon. It is perfectly sane to turn into an arsonist in that situation, as your social order is a threat to me. Whether food is cheaper than sabotage proof sprinklers is another matter.Re:WHEN ? - Demographic Transition. (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:00PM (#54803613) Homepage Journal And the same adaptation is currently happening in nearly most of these other countries you allude to. We'll never reach the initially predicted 25 billions. A flattening out of the population isn't enough. We need to get it down to a pre-explosion level and let other "species" reclaim a majority of the areas that we have expanded into in order stop the decline in biodiversity. There's nothing that indicates that that will happen. Lower population. (Score:2) by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:51PM (#54804977) Homepage A flattening out of the population isn't enough. Well depending on what they eat, it could be enough (= if they dont all eat like westerner. otherwise you'll need 1-2 extra planets Earth just to feed everyone). We need to get it down to a pre-explosion level and let other "species" reclaim a majority of the areas that we have expanded into in order stop the decline in biodiversity. There's nothing that indicates that that will happen. ...soon. There nothing that indicates that that will happen soon. On the other hand, there are indicators that that will happen eventually : in the developped western world, natality rate is falling under 2, sometime even under 1 (= not every couple have a kid at all). The population of several european countries only growse due to immigration. Not to born babies. As they progress along their demographic transition, all the countries will eventually lower the number of babies each couple makes. And you'll eventually see negative population growth. At least if we are still around by then. If we've managed to wipe ourselves out by completely destroying the environment (and climate), then it's another story.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:38AM (#54799323) > GMOs kills biodiversity. We've been doing GMOs for _millennia_. This was the foundation of of our transition from hunter/gatherers into an agrarian society. > Growth cannot be sustained indefinitely, and yield increases in food is only postponing an inevitable... With modern farming techniques and fertilizers we can more or less fucking turn electricity into food. Let that sink in for a minute. The _only_ thing causing human starvation these days is the cruelty and short-sightedness of human politics.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by hord ( 5016115 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:01AM (#54799551) We haven't been doing GMOs in the same way or at the same rate. The results are different depending on which method of "GMO" you use. Personally I can't seen why people want to eat chemicals from a tube when a cow is easy to make and tastes great.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:31PM (#54802821) > We haven't been doing GMOs in the same way or at the same rate. You're right. Modern methods are more precise, more reliable, and take less time. The result is the same as historical methods. Every major historical crop-failure-related blight and famine has been due to a lack of biodiversity caused by poor stewardship. You don't need modern farming techniques to create a monoculture, traditional or even historical techniques work just fine. They work _better_, in fact. Notice how we haven't had a blight or famine in the First World in a _dreadfully_ long time? Funny that. Wonder why that is, what with all the modern farming techniques being employed and all...Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:43PM (#54803977) Homepage Journal You're right. Modern methods are more precise, more reliable, and take less time. The result is the same as historical methods. No, the result is not the same. Traditional breeding programs create regional varieties by selecting for what works best one place, not what works best all places. GMO does the opposite, aiming for The One Seed that everyone will grow, at the expense of local diversity. You don't have to go farther than the supermarket to see the results. In a US supermarket, the varieties of produce within the same species is now at an all time low. Go to a few European supermarkets, and you find far more variety, with multiple regional varieties that actually differ. Potatoes, apples or grain grown in one valley being different from those in the next.Re:The planet will survive (Score:3) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:51PM (#54805695) Aside from my earlier post about GMO actually being able to increase biodiversity, Greenpeace, who is behind every talking point you've ever made on this topic, has blatantly lied to you, multiple times. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] Greenpeace also likes to hold two opposing arguments at the same time about GMO Bt, depending on which side best fits their pre-conceived narrative (without doing any actual research) on that particular day: http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com] Further reading where Greenpeace holds double standards: https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org] https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org] Drop the anti-GMO crusade. It's pure post-truth populism and anti-science bullshit. To date there is not a single good argument against GMO. And if that's not enough, the most of the anti-GMO scientific papers about health impact were authored by a guy who has an established history of manipulating his data in order to fit his activist narrative: http://retractionwatch.com/201... [retractionwatch.com] He's currently under investigation by the Italian senate for scientific fraud. And by the way, GMO has been saving the lives of diabetics allergic to cow and pig insulin since 1982.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @02:29AM (#54806549) Homepage Journal Aside from my earlier post about GMO actually being able to increase biodiversity, Greenpeace, who is behind every talking point you've ever made on this topic, has blatantly lied to you, multiple times. I'm sorry if it thwarts your strawman argumentation, but I got none of my "talking points" from Greenpeace. I happen to despise Greenpeace. That kind of voids most of your post. Sorry. And by the way, GMO has been saving the lives of diabetics allergic to cow and pig insulin since 1982. You're saying that as if it were a good thing? Saving lives is not inherently good. Death is part of life, and a certain amount of deaths before old age is necessary for evolutionary selection to work. Save fewer people across the board. It's not like there's a shortage.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @08:12PM (#54811967) I'm sorry if it thwarts your strawman argumentation, but I got none of my "talking points" from Greenpeace. That's not what I said. What I said is that the talking points you are making all have their roots in Greenpeace's disinformation campaign. They lied to other people, who then lied to you. Vicariously, they lied to you. You're saying that as if it were a good thing? Uhh...yeah. While I'm not diabetic myself, I do have a chronic disease that would otherwise result in death, and I very much appreciate treatment available for it. Eventually everybody does, and when you do, I'll just offer you a cyanide tablet. For what it's worth, the ideology you are putting across is a central tenet of Nazism.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:58PM (#54804079) yes, that makes a lot of sense. those damn scientists and their fucking banana splicing... oh wait.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:18PM (#54804741) > GMO does the opposite, aiming for The One Seed that everyone will grow, at the expense of local diversity. Yeah, that damn Gros Michel and that dirty, dirty modern genetic manipulation techniques that created it! And its successor that replaced it after the monoculture was severely diminished by a fungal blight, the Cavendish! Man, the folks back in the 1830's were _really_ good at modern genetic modification techniques! What fools they were to tinker with nature in their labs and create vulnerable monocultures! Oh... wait... As I mentioned in my opening comment, blights and famines happen because of poor stewardship, not because of modern genetic modification techniques. Modern genetic modification techniques give us the ability to create _better_ food stock, faster than before. The danger of monocultures is not a new one. It is one that has been with us for millenia. Frankly, it is a problem that we're better able to tackle now than we _ever_ have been. There have been _no_ famines or blights in the First World in a _dreadfully_ long time. Modern farming techniques and sensible stewardship are to thank for that. A coal miner wouldn't choose a wooden pickaxe over a steel one just because the wooden axe gets the job done slower and requires more effort. Similarly, we should not shun significant improvements to our millenia-old genetic modification programs just because they're superior in every way to the tools we used to use. Get a fucking grip and come to your senses. Take a couple of years and really educate yourself about the facts of the matter, rather than cowering in fear and doomsaying.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:59PM (#54805427) Not only that, but if the Gros Michel's Panama disease was around today, GMO could have saved those bananas. And it still can, as a matter of fact, because the Gros Michel still exists in isolated areas that weren't exposed to that. But Greenpeace and other anti-science groups would throw a fit, like they always do, so we can't have nice things.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Highdude702 ( 4456913 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:48AM (#54800933) On one hand, I would love for the price of good steaks to come down. On the other, I completely see your point.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:33PM (#54803903) Homepage Journal We've been doing GMOs for _millennia_. This was the foundation of of our transition from hunter/gatherers into an agrarian society. No, we haven't. We have done breeding programs, which is not the same at all. If farmers A, B and C live in three valleys with slightly different conditions, and start growing the same seed, and each of them save the best seeds for next year's crops, within a few a few generations the crops of A, B and C will differ. They diverge, based on what is best for the local conditions. That's creating diversity. Then comes Monsanto with a GMO seed that's more profitable than either A, B or Cs local crops. Those crops will then disappear in favor of the one GMO crop. It's not profitable for Monsanto to generate a GMO variety for each customer. That's destroying diversity.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Triklyn ( 2455072 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:00PM (#54804099) and if farmer A were to luck into a crop that had twice the yield of B and C and could survive in their climates through breeding what would happen again? dwarf wheat.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:55PM (#54806017) > We have done breeding programs, which is not the same at all. It's _exactly_ the same in every way but the efficacy and efficiency of the tool used for the task. Surgery can be done with a cudgel, a stone knife, a steel scalpel, or a computer-controlled laser. All methods are _truly_ surgery, but as the precision of the tool increases, so does the ability to perform ever more complex surgeries with less work and ever better outcomes. Traditional breeding programs are analogous to surgery with a cudgel. Modern genetic modification techniques are analogous to surgery with a stone knife.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:58AM (#54799353) GMOs are an answer looking for a problem. There is nothing they solve that couldn't be solved with better logistics, and without the inherent risk to the ecosystem.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:26AM (#54799417) How does GMO reduce genetic diversity? We are already modifying the genetics of crops through selective breeding. Typically this increases the genetic diversity. More species are created that would not form from natural selection. If the argument is that through competition, some breeds of crops will become dominant due to their higher yield, then how is this unique to GMO crops? It seems to me that as long as farmers care how much food they produce on their land, this will always be the case. Non-GMO crops result in smaller yield by area, which require more area to feed the same population, which further encroaches on animal habitats.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:28AM (#54799423) Typo. Sorry... :( Non-GMO crops result in HIGHER yield by area, which require more area to feed the same population, which further encroaches on animal habitats.Re:The planet will survive (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:40AM (#54799965) GMOs reduce diversity by becoming the preferential crop and by having the owner of the patent stop nearby crops from being replanted once the GMA marker spreads to that other variety. Such has happened when a farmer tried to replant from his own saved seed then finding that the neighbour's crop had contaminated it by cross pollination. He was ordered not to replant from his old seed.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:20PM (#54803801) Homepage Journal GMO crops are chiefly made to be resistant to strong weed killers. It means that non-GMO crops aren't resistant. It means that spraying kills other crops. If your neigbors spray, you either have to go GMO too, or your crops will suffer. It means killing other plant species (anything not your preferred crop is "weed" to an industrial farmer). It means that other life depending on those plants will die too. The biodiversity around farm land has already dropped way down in countries that allow GMO compared to those that don't. We go down towards a route of monoculture. Even for other GMO modifications, the reason why it's done is because it gives the GMO an unfair advantage over other species. If it didn't, no one would farm GMO. That in itself leads to only going with the highest profit crop/animals. Not diverse crops that developed in different directions based on regional varieties. Those are inconsequential compared to the major boosts that GMO gives. So instead of varieties of grain or cattle that cope with poor soil, rich soil, mountains, sunlight, shade or frost, we go for a single species that does better (gives more profit) than the traditional species for all of those. A farmer who saves his best seeds for next year's crops encourages diversity because the best seeds on his hilly clay soil is going to be different from the best seeds in the next valley with loam and early frost. With GMOs, local conditions are ignored in favour of one seed to rule them all, and the local varieties disappear.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:40AM (#54799667) Birth rates are already below replacement is most advanced first-world countries. It is the global South were population continues to increase and that is who must be convinced.Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:14AM (#54799829) that is who must be convinced. That's one solution. It's not the traditional solution, however.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by citylivin ( 1250770 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:27AM (#54800289) "There's another solution: Population control. Growth cannot be sustained indefinitely," To such thinly veiled racists/classists I always say the same thing; You First.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:01PM (#54801023) It isn't clear which race you think GP is and why you think they are racist. If you think they are white then you should know, white people did go first, and most countries where they are the majority are decreasing in population (when you exclude immigration).Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:56PM (#54804555) Homepage Journal To such thinly veiled racists/classists I always say the same thing; You First. I have indeed followed my own advice, and have used contraceptives all my life to reduce the risk of propagating the human disease. That has nothing to do with racism or classism. It has to do with thinking farther than your own pitiful lifespan.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:43AM (#54800393) Wow a genocidal maniac folks that wants population control.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:37AM (#54800821) Journal There's another solution: Population control. And the enviornmentalists and others have been pushing that since at least the 1960s. Much of the boomer generation (especially those who felt more personal responsibility) had few children or held off on starting families - many until they were no longer able. Result: The current government cries of a "labor shortage" and the current iteration of the same left-wing segment of "leaders" uses it as an excuse to import large numbers of people - mainly from cultures where large families are desired and encouraged. For the politicians: More votes, possibly swamping their political opposition. For the imported, the opportunity to have more children than they could support in their country of origin, and for them to have more resources to consume. But for the environment it's back on the Malthusian treadmill - with more people burning more fuel and destroying more habitat. These "pro-natalist" policies are how you know that, for all of their cries of global warming and ecological disaster, the politicians don't actually believe in it themselves, but are just using it as a tool to increase their own power and wealth.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:08PM (#54801083) Journal Good luck trying to tell people they can't make more babies. Remember you're talking about one item on a very, very short list of hardwired insticts that all living things have. Trying to institute population control in humans is the stuff that wars are started over. No one would abide by it, especially when you have religious types that insist on their wives being perpetually pregnant, even if they can't afford to take care of the litter of kids they already have. If this doesn't turn out to be junk science, here's what I think will happen: as things get more and more desperate, humans will do more and more desperate things to survive, as a race, regardless of how pointless it increasingly becomes obvious it is. This will accelerate the destruction of the Earths biosphere. By the time humans can do nothing more to try to survive, the planet will have sustained so much damage and runaway greenhouse effect that even long after humans are dead and gone as a species, the Earth won't recover. In a million years it'll look like Venus. I'm not even going to worry about it, much. I'll be dead in less than 50 years, things likely won't be too desperate by then, and quite frankly there's nothing I, as an individual, can do about it. If there's any chance at all of reversing the trend, it'll defiinitely have to be a top-down solution; those of us here at the bottom can't do enough to make any sort of difference, other than maybe start civil wars over the subject to force our governments to change -- and I don't even see enough popular support to even get people to complain, let alone be willing to fight over it. Not yet, anyway. The common citizen is 'concerned' on an intellectual level, passingly at least, but not enough. They'll have to be in panic mode before any real drastic changes are acceptable, and it'll probably be way too late by then. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:07PM (#54802595) YOU sound anti-profit. Are you anti-profit?? Captcha: profitsRe:The planet will survive (Score:1) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:01PM (#54803081) There's another solution: Population control. Actually, GMO will help with that, and it won't involve any draconian population control methods, rather the population will, of its own accord, just stop reproducing in large enough numbers to continue growing. Until the past 150 years, less than 10% of the population had any career other than farming. The best way to keep your farm operational was to have as many kids as you could have in order to have additional farm-hands. Thus, having kids was an asset. However, nowadays, having kids is no longer an asset, instead they are a liability as they cost you money without bringing any ROI other than "yay, I had kids!" Thus, the number of children per female is decreasing in developed countries. If we can make farming more efficient, we can reduce the need for farmland everywhere in the world, reduce the price of food so you need fewer children to sustain yourself, which in turn reduces the amount of natural habitat destroyed, and reduces the population growth. And if you had bothered to read TFA, you would have realized that GMOs kills biodiversity. /facepalm This statement is stupid on so many levels and has been debunked time and time again. It's not going to decrease biodiversity any more than existing agriculture already does and MUST do, and in fact can help increase biodiversity: https://gmo.geneticliteracypro... [geneticlit...roject.org] Biodiversity of untouched nature will almost always far surpass that of farmland, and it’s important to keep as much of that nature intact as possible. That’s the primary argument for modern agriculture: efficiently farmed land helps reduce the area of farmland needed. The use of GMOs also significantly increases yields, which reduces deforestation and other destructive practices used to create farmland, particularly in the developing world. So your entire counter-argument is moot.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @08:15PM (#54811981) Wow, so I got modded troll while the guy who talks about draconian methods of killing off the population didn't? Typical slashdot.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:56PM (#54804073) hrmm.. population control.. i see. we'll follow your lead on that one.Re:The planet will survive (Score:4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:48AM (#54799019) Again this idiocy. There is no shortage of food. There is an excess of population growth and rampant capitalism. GMOs only solve the cash problems of some corporations. Food shortage : complex. (Score:2) by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:58AM (#54799263) Homepage There is no shortage of food. Depends on how you consider the details : - Indeed, there's no shortage of food, if your target is just to feed the population and keep it alive. The planet can more or less roughly procude enough food to keep everyone alive. We *currently* are not at risk of becoming Soylent Green movie. - BUT if every single human being decided to eat as much (both in terms of volume, caloric intake, composition (meat vs. veggies), etc.) as the typical westerner, and use as much resource for everything else, you'd need about 3 planets earth worth of production to sustain the current population at that train of life. GMOs only solve the cash problems of some corporations. Which is exactly the topmost reason why I'm against GMO. I'm not fundamentally against genetic tweaking (common, I'm working in lifescience research. I should pretty well know that we've been doing tweaking since the beginning of agriculture - just with way more lower tech tools. But one can see the difference between modern crops and their closest wild relatives). I'm fundamentally against what is essentially a lock-in business by companies that managed to bring out the worst of IP rights. (Patents on life ? Common. That's a much against the fundamental idea of patents as you can be). (Not to mention that over relying on the few commercially available GMO crops would increase the risks of monoculture). In short : I'm not against GMO per se, I am against all the shit that current GMO companies are doing.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:28AM (#54800299) Again this idiocy. There is no shortage of food. There is an excess of population growth and rampant capitalism. GMOs only solve the cash problems of some corporations. And the cure for that is GMO'd Socialism and Communism. Maybe this time 3 billion could be killed. Now that would make population control Progressive types very happy.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:03PM (#54805445) Again this idiocy. There is no shortage of food. There is an excess of population growth and rampant capitalism. GMOs only solve the cash problems of some corporations. Did you even read my post? GMO can keep the same food production but with LESS landmass. Furthermore, it's mostly undeveloped nations that have a population problem, which is also something GMO can solve by virtue of the fact that people in these countries will need to have fewer kids in order to feed themselves. And capitalism has nothing to do with this, moron.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by azrael29a ( 1349629 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:23AM (#54799071) Buying new seeds with a patent license every season instead of having them from your crops is a solution? Only for Monsanto's revenue growth. Ordinary crops can be grown without having to sign any license. Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by KozmoStevnNaut ( 630146 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:53AM (#54799341) The vast majority of farmers already buy seeds every season, Monsanto or no Monsanto. It's simply the most efficient way to do it.Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:21AM (#54799599) Homepage Journal It's simply the most efficient way to do it. The most effective way to produce seed is to grow seed crops, not to try to save some percentage of seed from normal crops. But the corollary is that the cheapest seed crop ain't one that you've paid someone else to grow.Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by KozmoStevnNaut ( 630146 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:37AM (#54799649) No farmer has unlimited land available. You also need to rotate crops for maximum yield, and it gets exponentially harder the more different crops you need to grow. Can you grow seed crops slightly cheaper yourself? Probably, but that is also one field that doesn't create any profit for you. It is cheaper to grow crops for consumption on every field, and buy seeds from someone who specializes in growing seed crops.Re: The planet will survive (Score:4, Informative) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:59AM (#54799745) Homepage Journal Can you grow seed crops slightly cheaper yourself? Probably, but that is also one field that doesn't create any profit for you. It is cheaper to grow crops for consumption on every field, and buy seeds from someone who specializes in growing seed crops. That someone else is making a profit on the same activity in which they would engage. It doesn't use any more or less land when someone else does it. Maybe their farm is so small they don't have room for that activity, in which case if they're not already making a value-added product from their crop, they might as well bend over and kiss their own ass goodbye because their days as a farmer are numbered, and the number is small.Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by KozmoStevnNaut ( 630146 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:02AM (#54800561) You're forgetting to account for specialization. It is less efficient overall to go 50/50 food/seed crops, than it is to go all-in on either.Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:21PM (#54801187) I run an allotment. The amount of seed that most plants put out means you only have to let a couple go to seed. Pick one or two of the healthiest looking plants and let them go to seed. Store for next year, the year after (some seed keeps for a long tim) Or for things like beans etc. you just don't eat them all. or for tomatoes etc. just eat a few early on (i.e. before you can/freeze them) and save a few seeds etc. etc. I've been doing this for decades. I still buy seed every year but only to try new stuff. My staples have been self sustaining for longer than I can actually remember !. Captcha: nourish !Re: The planet will survive (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:59PM (#54802041) No farmer has unlimited land available. You also need to rotate crops for maximum yield, and it gets exponentially harder the more different crops you need to grow. Can you grow seed crops slightly cheaper yourself? Probably, but that is also one field that doesn't create any profit for you. It is cheaper to grow crops for consumption on every field, and buy seeds from someone who specializes in growing seed crops. Indeed the principle here is comparative advantage. It is possible for situations to arise where even tough one entity is objectively more efficient at a given task than another it is still better for them to outsource it to the less efficient entity and focus on what they're even better at. As an example, If person 1 can make a prop sonic screwdriver in 2 hours and a knitted scarf in 12, and person 2 can make a sonic screwdriver in 10 hours and a knitted scarf in 13 it's still more efficient for person 1 to make 2 screwdrivers and trade one for one of person 2's scarfs than to knit it themself, as that way they both get their Dr. Who costume with less labor invested than if they'd make the whole thing themselves.Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:17AM (#54799399) They're farmers, how smart can they be? These city slickers can learn them how to farm the right way.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:08PM (#54805467) Buying new seeds with a patent license every season instead of having them from your crops is a solution? Only for Monsanto's revenue growth. Ordinary crops can be grown without having to sign any license. Actually the reason GMO seeds are so popular is because they are much more profitable for the farmer. If it wasn't, then they'd just buy conventional seed rather than pay extra.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:17AM (#54799173) which is mainly caused by people clearing land to make way for farmland Not all were transormed into farmland. Most were also converted into a mining area to search for rare metals for production of our shiny new gadgets.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:34AM (#54798861) Homepage Journal Sort of... the carboniferous period isn't going to happen again now that there are enzymes to digest lignin, so any future life will be much worse off than us at developing the tech needed to leave Earth. Also, if we wipe out too many higher organisms, the lower ones won't have as much time to evolve as the first time around. The sun is getting older, and is past its prime. In terms of a human lifespan, Sol is now in early retirement age. Life on Earth has been around for longer than the time until it bloats and starts eating up the inner planets.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:10AM (#54798619) Homepage Where the hell did you learn "developing the tech needed to leave Earth" is some sort of goal of life? WTF? I feel like you're part of some bizarre context nobody but you and a small group understand. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:22AM (#54799601) Parent said 'the planet will survive', which is true in the same sense that you'd survive being castrated, but less so in a 'life will go on' way. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:34AM (#54798859) It may not be a goal to retards like yourself, but to those who want to escape destruction and conform to the basic instinct of survival, they will make it their own goal. If for nothing else then to mine asteroids and transition exploitation from Earth to other areas so it can enter a rehabilitation cycle.Re:The planet will survive (Score:4, Insightful) by SeattleLawGuy ( 4561077 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:53AM (#54798577) The planet is a rock, I don't care if it survives unless it turns out that it is an intelligent rock. I care that we survive, or failing that that our successors survive. And I care that some of our art survives: some of the beauty we have brought into the universe should be remembered, for a time.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:23PM (#54801201) The whole point of beauty is that it's epehemeral. Nothing lasts forever. Not even the universe itself. Enjoy it in the moment then let go grasshopper !Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:09AM (#54798613) Homepage May you be the first to off yourself for the greater good of the species... Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by houghi ( 78078 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:22AM (#54799069) Please define "best". And I see no reason that humans could not be counted as the best in the future. We might be able to kill everything off and make food from the sun directly, cutting out the middle man. Not now, but perhaps in a few hundred or thousand years we might be able to survive without any other life forms.Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:58AM (#54799137) Yeah, nothing like eating helium plasma, man. It never goes to your hips.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:30AM (#54799085) Earth will survive. If we are dumb enough to destroy everything, then maybe a more intelligent lifeform will thrive. Or if we do not get entirely extinct, Darwinism will be the rule once again. Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. True - well, up to a point. I think it is a misunderstanding to think that "Darwinism" (ie. evolution by natural selection) doesn't rule human evolution just because we are better at controlling diseases etc. Humans and their civilisation are part of nature, just like ants and termites with their complex societies are. Natural selection doesn't care by which means we survive - we have found ways that include technology, that's all; we are still under natural selection. And "the fittest" are not necessarily "the best" in any sense, it is only a label we put on the group that survives a selection event; it could in each case be down to dumb luck, but of course, if you are consistently lucky, then you probably have some trait that makes you better able to survive the sort of crises that the current environment throws at you - thus you may talk about being "fit" for survival. Life will probably survive - the question is more how much will be lost this time? In particular, how much of the larger biota will disappear - keeping in mind that humans very much belong to the larger end of the fauna? And if we do survive, but most of the animals bigger than, say, rats go extinct, will we evolve to fill the niches left free: human birds, whales, ..., (like in Ringworld, by Larry Niven)? Sorry, that took us well into science fiction, but you get the idea.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:37AM (#54799219) Homepage It's not the "best" per se, as "the best" is defined by the current circumstances. Whatever works now good enough to survive, will survive now. If that's enough to survive tomorrow too, then it has a chance to survive tomorrow too. Survival in ecological terms is mainly about chance. Your personal traits influence the chances, but they don't warrant anything. And traits that are advantageous in one situation might reduce your chances in other situations. Being flashy might help you find a mate, but it doesn't help you if you have to hide. I like the subplot of the people of Golgafrincham in The Hitchhiker's Guide as an example. From a Darwinist point of view, the phone desinfectors, key accountants, interior designers and all the other seemingly useless people who were banned from Golgafrincham and sent away with the second space ship were the ones being well adapted. Despite their dozens of victims of the circumstances, the group as a whole managed to get hold on Earth and found a new civilization. The Golgafrincham elite and the Golgafrincham work drones, who died because they got infected by a phone, weren't.Re:The planet will survive (Score:4, Funny) by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:32AM (#54799315) No shit. I particularly appreciated this though: "Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists" Ahahah. Nice joke.Re: The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:02AM (#54799555) Came here to post this. Amazed no one picked up on the irony.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:27PM (#54801777) For those not familiar with it Paul R. Ehrlich [wikipedia.org] wrote the book The Population Bomb [wikipedia.org].Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:38AM (#54799327) Silent Spring, and other ecological works have posited that the destruction wrought will cascade. The Earth will continue to spin, but we could do something like kill off all large mammals, or something like that. It'd be nearly impossible to kill all the fish or insects, but we could give it a try. Maybe if we make grey goo, then we could wipe out everything and prevent anything from living ever again. Re:The planet will survive (Score:0, Redundant) by Mashiki ( 184564 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:43AM (#54799475) Homepage Using silent spring as proof of anything is like claiming that the earth is 5000 years old because the bible says so. Both have been proven to be bullshit.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:06AM (#54799783) The proofs against it proved most of the opinions stated as fact to be true. And there were others that found similar things. When bees die, they take with them many plants, and with them, the food for many animals. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Mashiki ( 184564 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @06:19AM (#54807133) Homepage The proofs against it proved most of the opinions stated as fact to be true. The proofs against it were long term studies, not opinions. And there were others that found similar things. When bees die, they take with them many plants, and with them, the food for many animals. You mean the thing that they're still trying to blame on pesticides, and not a variety of other factors like the current honey bee is nearly a monoculture genus and is very susceptible to mites and fungus? Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that. I'll trust my cousin who owns a bee farm that they lease out for pollinating, and started to have that problem...until they introduced new strains into their hives and it suddenly stopped. Wasn't funny even when George Carlin Said it (Score:3) by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:17AM (#54799859) Homepage Journal I’ve found this reasoning specious ever since it was part of a George Carlin skit. The Earth is essentially a large rock that happens to have a thin coat of delicate living goo on it. The rock of course will go on. Now if that thin goo is reduced to just some kind of primitive microbial mat, well then yes the Earth and life has gone on, and evolution will kick in to start the climb again. But the whole “Earth will go on” statement seems to imply Earth and its ecosystem are just too big to fail or that it doesn’t matter that it is no longer habitable by humans, all that matters is somehow, some form of life be here and start evolving again. How about we care about the all the life that is here now, both animal and human?Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:46AM (#54800013) Oh how profound of you. A man made mass extinction is underway and we should just sit back and enjoy the show cause "Darwinism"? That's not even of coherent thought.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:51AM (#54798571) Earth will survive. If we are dumb enough to destroy everything, then maybe a more intelligent lifeform will thrive. Or if we do not get entirely extinct, Darwinism will be the rule once again. Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. Darwin (and anyone who studies evolution) doesn't claim that the best will survive, nor that random mutations beneficial to survival will necessarily bring improvements. It's only about breeding and surviving. In a calories-deprived future, people will probably evolve to be stupid (brain is metabolically expensive) and small. For example, our distant ancestors had 4-color vision. We don't, and that is a downgrade. Don't know why; perhaps 3-color vision helps save fuel. Homo Sapiens are far weaker than Neanderthals, and have smaller brains. It questionable in what way Homo is superior to Neanderthals. The Homo may only have the advantage of being able to survive on a lower-calorie diet. Maybe it was only rapid breeding. Maybe it was just that Homo has a greater tendency to murder. Other examples are dwarfism on isolated islands, and cave-blindness in cave animals.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:56AM (#54798897) Homepage Journal It questionable in what way Homo is superior to Neanderthals. The Homo may only have the advantage of being able to survive on a lower-calorie diet. Homo is a genus, to which both modern man (Homo Sapiens) and neanderthals (Homo Neandertalensis) belong. Homo Neandertalensis could even interbreed with Homo Sapiens, so some even classify the two as subspecies: Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis.Re: The planet will survive (Score:2) by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:23AM (#54799411) Homepage Genus names are capitalized, species names are not. "Homo sapiens", not "Homo Sapiens". For extra pedantry, use the initial letter for the genus after introducing it, except that would be ambiguous. "On our time travels, we saw Homo sapiens, H. habilis, Hadrosaurus foulkii, and Homo neandertalensis. H. neandertalensis was particularly interesting."Re:The planet will survive (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:24AM (#54799415) Nothing new, humans can interbreed with nlggers as well, and some even do.Re:The planet will survive (Score:5, Interesting) by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:56AM (#54799529) Homepage Any ancestors we had with 4-color vision were probably before we became mammals. Most mammals have 2-color vision; only some primates (including humans) have 3-color vision, due to duplication and later mutation of one of the genes that support 2-color vision. While we can't say for sure why mammals went down to 2-color vision, the standard explanation is that nocturnal animals do not need the extra color channel, and may be helped if they lose it (e.g. by having more space for rod cells). This explanation is supported by studies of modern mammals, and how one of the two common mammalian cone cells are absent or non-functional in strongly nocturnal mammals. If mammals did not have such a long small-nocturnal-animal phase, we would probably have retained more capacity for color vision.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:49AM (#54800037) Homo was able to survive by outbreeding all the other hominids they ran into. Sometimes with those hominids as well. We all carry some Neanderthal DNA in us. Only way that got there was if some modern human bred with a Neanderthal. But then, it's pretty much given that modern man will have sex with just about anything, any time.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:37AM (#54798725) But since we are doing it currently fully aware and have been doing it in smaller scales multiple times before over completely different cultures, it tells something about our species. Maybe those post apocalyptic Sci-Fi movies and books are actually mental attempts for us to find new ways to live and organize as a society, a method of preparation for a brave, new world where there are no insects, birds, land animals or sea life as we know it today.Re:The planet will survive (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:02AM (#54798919) You're a fucking moron.Re:The planet will survive (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:08AM (#54799059) Darwinism? Have you seen American Politics? Darwinism doesn't exist, it truly is fake news.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:33AM (#54799317) Earth will survive. If we are dumb enough to destroy everything, then maybe a more intelligent lifeform will thrive. Or if we do not get entirely extinct, Darwinism will be the rule once again. Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. And the surviving species will be: cockroaches.Re:The planet will survive (Score:1) by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:30AM (#54799627) Earth will survive. If we are dumb enough to destroy everything, then maybe a more intelligent lifeform will thrive. Or if we do not get entirely extinct, Darwinism will be the rule once again. Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. If mankind is stupid enough to incite World War III, we may remove the planets ability to heal itself for a long damn time. Only in science fiction movies do we find a post-nuclear holocaust that includes life beyond a cockroach.Re:The planet will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:51AM (#54800049) The current state of the world already tells you that isn't true about humans. Human's have undergone a paradigm shift where neither the strongest nor the most intelligent survive, but the loudest and most charismatic people that are cutthroat enough to take what they want at the cost of others are the ones that thrive.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by nnet ( 20306 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:47AM (#54800415) Journal like all viruses, once the host has been consumed, theres nothing left to feed on, the virus dies. thats the fate of humanity the virus on earth. Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:11PM (#54802625) Only the best will survive. Only those who can adapt. 0% of actual organisms survive. Set abstractions (e.g. "species") aren't organisms. Long term, not even their DNA molecules survive. Only the information survives. Information is not, incidentally, materially reducible. Just injecting some scientific fact into your mystical (if extremely common) feel-good version of evolution.Re:The planet will survive (Score:2) by strikethree ( 811449 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @11:08AM (#54808629) Journal Earth is not alive. It is life itself that matters, ultimately ending up in sentient life being what matters (what is beyond sentient life?). We are not likely to survive this as species and it is arguable that sentient life will not have enough time to evolve again. It took roughly 2 billion years to get to where we are now from basic chemicals. In 2 billion years from now, the extent of the sun will be growing as it approaches its red giant phase. Furthermore, we have harvested all of the easily found energy resources except for wood. All of this culminates in this: We are the last shot at sentience and beyond in this little corner of the Cosmos. Wasting it seems such a shame; however, life is arbitrary and ultimately, wasting it is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. There are likely countless other areas in the Cosmos where life is blossoming. Evolution does not care about the individual or the species or the location of that species. ;) And it won't stop (Score:2, Insightful) by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:54PM (#54798357) Journal until we extinct ourselves. Re:And it won't stop (Score:2, Offtopic) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:17AM (#54798465) until we extinct ourselves. No, Mr. Little, the extinction of species will continue as long as there are species and change. We don't need to be here for it to happen. At least that's what Rexamundo, the T-Rex I keep in my basement, tells me. He speaks quite fondly of his boyhood chums Dippy the diplodocious and Pterry (who was a star on Pee Wee's Playhouse.) Naming suggestion (Score:5, Funny) by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:05AM (#54798407) Journal They haven't decided whether to call it the "Holocene extinction" or "Anthropocene extinction". How about the Covfefecene extinction?Re:Naming suggestion (Score:2) by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:02AM (#54798593) The paper defines the period as 1900-2015. TFA lists the causes as "habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption." Attributing it to climate change denial exclusively is a gross mischaracterization. Re: Naming suggestion (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:29AM (#54799915) Because it's all Trump's fault! It's funny because it's true!Re: Naming suggestion (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:09PM (#54802111) Thin skinned trumptard found. the beauty of science ... (Score:2) by swell ( 195815 ) <[jabberwock] [at] [poetic.com]> on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:18AM (#54798469) ... is that what we destroy, we can replace. We are at the beginning of a revolution in bioscience, the likes of which will dwarf the digital age. Plants and animals that can't adapt to the new world will be replaced with organisms that are ideal. Perhaps more importantly, we will adapt. Humans 100 years hence will little resemble ourselves. Our bodies will be much smaller and more efficient, our brains will be enhanced in several ways, our metabolism will be optimized and our lifespan will be vastly improved. We will have holo museums to show our children how primitive humans lived in the past of today. Assuming we don't destroy the planet and ourselves first.Re:the beauty of science ... (Score:2) by Boronx ( 228853 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:23AM (#54798669) Homepage Journal I don't think we have the imagination to come up with the dog, for example.Re:the beauty of science ... (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:02AM (#54798917) Homepage Journal I don't think we have the imagination to come up with the dog, for example. Sony AIBO. Or even more ideal, the pet rock.Re:the beauty of science ... (Score:3) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:23AM (#54799605) Homepage Journal the beauty of science ... (Score:2) by swell ( 195815 ) Alter Relationship on 07-12-17 21:18 (#54798469) ... is that what we destroy, we can replace. The beauty of not beginning a comment in the subject line is that repliers don't have to hack all that shit out to quote you. Asshole. Anyway, what you said is as stupid as how you said it. It's always easier to destroy a thing than to create a thing because entropy is on your side when you break things, but you have to fight it every step of the way when you create things.Re:the beauty of science ... (Score:1) by helpfulcorn ( 668048 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:59AM (#54798587) Homepage Journal Pfft no way! That's playing god! No GMOs! No science! Don't you dare ever bring back something from extension even if it was humanity's fault! Let the next asteroid, super volcano, ice age, or the ultimate death of the sun be how all animals die! I refuse to allow anyone to commit dangerous and repelling acts of science against nature, even it means countless of species will die out that could otherwise be saved -- especially if they're fellow humans, they should especially suffer! My delusions of the purity of nature and masturbatory views of ecology matter more than any sort of "species," and maybe I have enough time to throw in some anti-technology rhetoric while responding to you on the Internet. After all, there are natural forests of granola trees and organic farming during the Middle Ages provided abundance for all! Re:the beauty of science ... (Score:1) by helpfulcorn ( 668048 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:01AM (#54798591) Homepage Journal Plus also, let me pretend that wasn't a typo and I'm calling for the extinction of all extensions, end modular programming too! this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:49AM (#54798569) What I wish to know is what they propose to do to stop this from proceeding. I hear a lot about, Oh My God, but not what to do? My 2 cents ;) Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:12AM (#54798943) Homepage Journal What I wish to know is what they propose to do to stop this from proceeding. I hear a lot about, Oh My God, but not what to do? My 2 cents ;) It's a little more than 2 cents, but putting a rubber on your schlong is a good start. Human population growth is the main cause of habitat loss and reduced biodiversity for other species.Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:21AM (#54799067) I did not have children, did you or do you intend to? So your for schlong control, lol right like that works. Elites (No I am no way in that club) don't have many kids. others do. What do YOU propose we do about that, since your so concerned? Your subject not mine ;) Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:20AM (#54799181) Homepage Journal Instead of like now, taxes from everyone going towards children (schools are often the biggest expense for towns), do the opposite - a parental tax. Subsidize sterilization, birth control and abortion. Stop giving tax breaks to religions that oppose either. In other words, hit people where it really hurts - their wallet.Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:44AM (#54799479) So, encourage reproduction among the upper classes, then? Only the "Right People" should have kids? How very Nineteenth Century British of you.... Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:07AM (#54799787) Why should people who don't have the means to take care of children be producing them?Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:1) by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:23AM (#54799885) Well there is something to be said about strongly discouraging people who cannot personally arrange to feed and educate their children from having half a dozen of them. Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:48AM (#54799697) Homepage Journal It's a little more than 2 cents, but putting a rubber on your schlong is a good start. Human population growth is the main cause of habitat loss and reduced biodiversity for other species. The problem is that the people who are actually listening to you could have twice as many kids and nobody would notice, compared to all the people who don't give a shit.Re:this is not nonsense! (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:50PM (#54804021) Human population growth is stopping worldwide. Give women education, access to birth control, and cut infant mortality and population levels off or declines slightly. Natural phenomena (Score:2) by Khyber ( 864651 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:12AM (#54798627) Homepage Journal So, what, humanity isn't a natural phenomena?Re:Natural phenomena (Score:2) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:02AM (#54798915) You must be new to the english language so I'll help you. Humanity is typically seperated from the natural world in contexts like this due to the conscience nature of our actions. An asteroid or a volcano are considered natural as they are events that literally just happen "naturally" where as humans choose to do or not do things.Re:Natural phenomena (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:08PM (#54801085) More likely GP was commenting on how irrational that is. We are animals, we are natural. the highest on the food chain lose first. (Score:2) by chromaexcursion ( 2047080 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:27AM (#54798689) I wonder if those have considered have noted how the highest fall first and hardest. even within a species. not quite the same, but 1789. come to mind. Prophecy (Score:2) by XSportSeeker ( 4641865 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:34AM (#54798707) As foretold by Methus- I mean, George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Many will die, some will survive (Score:3, Insightful) by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:34AM (#54798713) Some species will take advantage of this new world, some won't. Opportunistic species will take over, whether it be slime in the ocean, or mosquitoes on land. Viruses are primed to hit hard with all of the meat on the planet. We are just in a period of massive flux. What shakes out may very well be less people, with a lot of technology. Re:Many will die, some will survive (Score:5, Insightful) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:55AM (#54798895) This isnt a mass extinction event, it's "just a period of massive flux"? That's exactly what a mass extinction is, you're just rewording things to make them sound more pleasent. "It's not a tax cut for the wealthy, we're just reducing their taxes". How in keeping with the the times you are.Re:Many will die, some will survive (Score:2) by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:22AM (#54800257) Tech would be the first thing to go if there's a human population crash. Best case you get a 'book of the new sun' style medieval level of tech with small amounts of high tech floating around amongst the elite. Re:Many will die, some will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:34AM (#54800807) What shakes out may very well be less people, with a lot of technology. The same statement pops up in threads about the lower classes being automated out of jobs. In neither context does such a statement seem comforting...Re:Many will die, some will survive (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:37AM (#54806451) Difference between this current ongoing events and the previous extinctions is, there was thousands or millions of years for the "new" surviving animals to evolve to handle the changes. This time, I doubt there will be time to evolve any new critters larger then a bug, unless us humans wipe themselves out. Want the truth (Score:3) by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:30AM (#54799087) If the human race does not move in to space WE will go extinct. Re:Want the truth (Score:3) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:25AM (#54799617) Homepage Journal If the human race does not move in to space WE will go extinct. While that's true on a long timescale, on the immediate timescale, there is not enough time to get enough of humanity off the planet in order for it to survive. The only way to make enough time is to address the environmental damage that we're not only ignoring, but actually increasing.Re:Want the truth (Score:2, Insightful) by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:02AM (#54799759) >there is not enough time to get enough of humanity off the planet Sure there is. If we discovered the Earth was doomed (say, a Mars-sized rock was headed our way but we had a few decades), we could (in theory) put a massive concrete cylinder in orbit, spin it for artificial gravity, build a city inside, have a few hundred years' worth of spares and replacement volatiles, and put a big-ass nuclear Orion drive on the back end and ship off a sustainable breeding population to an extra-solar planet. > in order for it to survive. Oh. Well, if you're going to be THAT picky... we probably need a couple of hundred years' worth of medical and environmental technology advancements if we expect to have great odds of surviving the trip, and non-zero odds of surviving at the destination.Re:Want the truth (Score:2) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:17AM (#54799857) Homepage Journal Oh. Well, if you're going to be THAT picky... I really must insist on survival, and not merely shipping a container of bacteria into space with human sludge to feed upon. I mean, I still think that would be an interesting experiment, but I'm not going to pay for it.Re:Want the truth (Score:2) by The123king ( 2395060 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:27AM (#54799899) I really must insist on survival, and not merely shipping a container of bacteria into space with human sludge to feed upon. I mean, I still think that would be an interesting experiment, but I'm not going to pay for it. I'll happily pay for it. After all, something similar is my explanation as to how life appeared on earth in the first place (transported from Mars on asteroids)Re:Want the truth (Score:3) by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:17AM (#54800219) >After all, something similar is my explanation as to how life appeared on earth in the first place (transported from Mars on asteroids) Panspermia just moves the problem of how biogenesis happened one step further back. I also find the idea of Mars as a better warm wet rock on which life could form than Earth to be very iffy. After all, it may not even have been potentially habitable for as long as we believe it took life to appear on Earth, a few billion years ago the Sun was a bit cooler, and we don't know what kind of magnetic field Mars had back in the day. It's an interesting theory, but (IMHO) not worth seriously working on until we've managed to reasonably exclude the possibility of local biogenesis... and we don't understand enough to do anything like that just yet.Re: Want the truth (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:31AM (#54799205) This. SIEG ZEON!Re:Want the truth (Score:1) by The123king ( 2395060 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:41AM (#54799983) WE will go extinct. FTFY Re:Want the truth (Score:2) by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:49PM (#54802985) Homepage Journal Heck, I'll probably go extinct in a few decades! We're not natural? (Score:3) by SCVonSteroids ( 2816091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:58AM (#54800525) From TFS : "The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena." Why are we acting like human's aren't natural? Yes it might be our fault that this is happening, but we as a species are a "natural phenomena". We're not some extra-dimensional beings or anything special. We're as much a part of nature as nature is a part of us. We just choose to abuse and ruin it for our own means. Not to say any other species that reached our level of intellect wouldn't naturally end up doing the same.Re:We're not natural? (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:55PM (#54804059) A long time, an efficient form of life appeared that suffused the atmosphere with a deadly gas, now making up about 20% of it, causing mass extinction. That's about as natural as what we're doing.Re:We're not natural? (Score:2) by SCVonSteroids ( 2816091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:17PM (#54804233) Sure. You still haven't explained to me how that isn't natural. Just because we're doing it, doesn't mean it's not natural, because we're part of nature. Let me guess, it wasn't "natural" for this to happen either? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] If we're not filling the atmosphere with "a deadly gas", something else will, eventually. We're not special, just stupid. Maybe they mean "Extinctions caused by reasons outside our control." sure, but we weren't even around back then, so that's just plain obvious.Re:We're not natural? (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @11:48AM (#54809003) For some things, a natural vs. artificial distinction makes sense. I'm not at all convinced it's different for extinction-level events, so I'm largely agreeing with you. Spy vs Spy (Score:3) by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:53AM (#54800971) "mammal populations are losing 70 percent of their members because of habitat loss" except I'll bet that there are more mammals today than last year. humans count too. so it's really just that there is less mammal diversity. that's something else altogether. and what of all of the animal species that prefer the new world climate? lowering the temperature, the pollution, and the acidity would set back the jellyfish population by decades. So really, this is just an argument of preferring giraffes over jellyfish. So which ones do we eat, which ones clean our dirty oceans, and which ones look prettier? Personally, I prefer it a little warmer. My country benefits immensely from global warming -- agriculture, tourism, and land. You in Florida have had your time in the sun. Now it's your turn to have the hostile seasons. And what of solar power? Isn't hotter better? Sorry, that's the hole-in-the-ozone thing. I meant greenhouse effect. Isn't that good for plants? And therefore for agriculture? I like food. And hurricanes? Wind power, soon lightning power. This planet has many deserts. Between arid-north, snowy south, and sandy middles, plenty of earth is hostile to humans. So isn't this just a shift? If you live at the equator, plan to move north in a generation or two. Florida will become as hot as jamaica. But virginia will become the new florida. And the arctic circle will become the new new york. For a group of scientists looking to colonize the moon, and mars, global warming ought not seem so hostile by comparison. Natural Phenomena (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:48PM (#54798335) The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena. Humans are a natural phenomenon.Re:Natural Phenomena (Score:2) by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:55PM (#54798365) Journal You are a fucking genius.Re:Natural Phenomena (Score:2) by courteaudotbiz ( 1191083 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:07AM (#54798419) Homepage What you don't agree? I think AC is 100% correct. Humans are part of the ecosystem, have developed in a way that they are conscious of what they are doing (or not...), and know that they can have an impact (tiny or global) on the planet. Now if we REALLY cause a mass extinction because of our actions, it will still be a "natural" cause. If this extinction was caused by another species on our planet, would it be more natural? Absolutely not. it would be the exact same shit. Now let's say it would be caused by an extraterrestrial species coming to annihilate us. Would it be natural? Absolutely. They have evolved in a way that they can rule the galaxy, and we haven't. Nature is not just trees, flowers and other animals. We are also part of it. Re:Natural Phenomena (Score:2) by Riceballsan ( 816702 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:22AM (#54798487) I agree, what I think we really need is a term that actually points out what is somewhat unique with regards to humans. What is somewhat unique of humans in earths present and future, is the knowledge and intent, IE the fact that we have actual scientists yelling at people to warn of the consiquences. If say theories that dinosaurs caused some climate change events by excessive methane, or certain plants caused excessive cooling due to taking carbon out of the air, to meteor crashes. Not one of those causes, had the capacity to know what it was doing to life on the planet. Yet certain humans may very well cause an extinction event, of which the last survivors will be thinking, why didn't we/they listen to the warnings that were being given 50 years in advance. Re:Natural Phenomena (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:06AM (#54800601) Yes! We can come up with a new word for this natural ability. This ability to understand the past, present, and future. A way to demonstrate that we have the capability of being more aware of our surroundings than most organisms. A way to demonstrate that we have the ability to better mold the environment to our needs and potentially destroy it. I propose we call this trait sapience. This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:42PM (#54798305) Meanwhile, 99% of the human race isn't even thinking about it. Humans = the ultimate form of pollution.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:5, Insightful) by alexo ( 9335 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:12AM (#54798435) Journal Humans = the ultimate form of pollution. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:4, Insightful) by swell ( 195815 ) <[jabberwock] [at] [poetic.com]> on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:34AM (#54798521) Yes. The human presence has been destructive ... like a virus ... Now note that viruses (virii?) adapt. A big problem in the medical field. And people adapt. You may have heard that we are becoming aware of our environmental impact. You may have heard that it is a matter of great concern in some circles. You may know that many people in many diverse fields of science and government and the private sector are taking vigorous action to correct our ignorant mistakes of the past.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:3) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:32AM (#54798973) Homepage Journal Now note that viruses (virii?) adapt. If being pedantic, the plural of virus is virus. It's a group noun like "slime" (it actually means slime in Latin), "money" and "people", which all lack a singular. You should only say "viruses" for the same reasons you'd say "slimes", "monies" and "peoples", i.e. only to refer to multiples of separate groups. Which is rarely needed. In common parlor, "viruses" is what's used as the plural. But if you otherwise use plurals like "fora", "octopodes" and "aquaria", by all means use "virus" as a plural too. I'll applaud your effort, futile as it may be.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by danbert8 ( 1024253 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:40AM (#54799457) In what language is "person" not a singular form of "people?" Not only that, there also exists proper usages for "peoples" and "persons."Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:12AM (#54800649) Spanish: persona (singular "la persona es") personas (multiple singular "las personas son") gente (group singular "la gente es", NOT "la gente son") gentes (group plural "las gentes son") "person" and "people" mean very different ideas in Spanish, (though at times they overlap due to incomplete education of the speaker). Imagine it like "multiple individuals in the street" vs. "the people of Australia". They are two different ideas. Question: Is it the same in French/Italian/Romanian/Portuguese/Castellano?Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:24AM (#54800737) Another way to conceptualize the difference: "various persons" is correct in Spanish whereas "various people" is kind of weird sounding. It may be correct in some circumstances but it's an odd thing to say.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by Whibla ( 210729 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:46AM (#54799489) Now note that viruses (virii?) adapt. If being pedantic, the plural of virus is virus. It's a group noun like "slime" (it actually means slime in Latin), "money" and "people", which all lack a singular. You should only say "viruses" for the same reasons you'd say "slimes", "monies" and "peoples", i.e. only to refer to multiples of separate groups. Which is rarely needed. In common parlor, "viruses" is what's used as the plural. But if you otherwise use plurals like "fora", "octopodes" and "aquaria", by all means use "virus" as a plural too. I'll applaud your effort, futile as it may be. Good post, succinct and informative, but I can't help but wonder if you're completely correct in all your assertions and word usage: (1) If people lacks a singular then what is the plural of person? Sure, you can use persons but I'm going to suggest there's an alternative... (2) Are you sure you intended to use parlor, and not parlance? /pedantryRe:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:20PM (#54804259) Homepage Journal (1) If people lacks a singular then what is the plural of person? Sure, you can use persons but I'm going to suggest there's an alternative... They are two different words, where one fulfils the lack of a singular for the other. Much like there is no singular for money, and we substitute words that may make sense in the context, like "coin" or "note". That doesn't make one a plural of the other. Persons has a different meaning from people, much like coins has a different meaning from money. John and Paul may be persons of interest. Marxists and cobblers may be people of interest. Inuits and Sami may be peoples of interest. As for #2, you're right; I erroneously used a boutique word. :)Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:15AM (#54799395) If being pedantic, Oh, yes... You should only say "viruses" for the same reasons you'd say "slimes", "monies" and "peoples", i.e. only to refer to multiples of separate groups. Which is rarely needed. What? Rarely needed? In common parlor, "viruses" is what's used as the plural. "I study viruses." "I caught some virus." Does some slang (which, where?) truly use: "I caught some viruses?" Off-hand, I can't recall ever hearing that.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:53PM (#54804049) Homepage Journal "I study viruses." "I caught some virus." Does some slang (which, where?) truly use: "I caught some viruses?" Off-hand, I can't recall ever hearing that. Possibly because there's little chance of anyone saying "I caught some virus" unless they mean "some virus" as singular? But if someone looks at a microscope image, will they say "look at all the virus" or "look at all the viruses"? I fear that most would say the latter these days.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:17PM (#54801687) Virii was the proper plural of viruses for generations. It died out with the rise of the term "computer-virsuses" and massive misuse in the early 90's. That's language, always changing and nothing exact. With most changes, the previous version is often considered acceptable for a hundred years or more (he, one, they, someone, them, they again for pronouns), so goes virii.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by Tenebrousedge ( 1226584 ) <`tenebrousedge' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:30PM (#54803877) Virii has never been correct.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:05PM (#54804635) Homepage Journal Virii was the proper plural of viruses for generations. No, it wasn't. Viri (singlie i) exists, but means "men", "Virii" (double i) doesn't exist as a word, and never has. The first incorrect "virii" can be traced back to the 1970s. The plural of virus is virus, or viruses/vira is you refer to multiple groups (like "peoples").Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:03AM (#54799765) Yes. The human presence has been destructive ... like a virus ... Now note that viruses (virii?) adapt. A big problem in the medical field. And people adapt. You may have heard that we are becoming aware of our environmental impact. You may have heard that it is a matter of great concern in some circles. You may know that many people in many diverse fields of science and government and the private sector are taking vigorous action to correct our ignorant mistakes of the past. Knowing about something, and fucking doing something about it, are worlds apart. Greed doesn't give a fuck about anything but Greed. Those "circles" will not be heard no matter what. The continued poisoning of our planet, and governments who would rather support Greed above everything else, prove this. The human species will ultimately learn. Unfortunately, it will be the hard way.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:05AM (#54799363) Don't fool yourself, we are still accelerating. "Many people" think we should change, but they don't have the power to make us change. The world is driven by short term and short range economic factors, not by wisdom and awareness of the global consequences. Anyway, the most urgent problem is population growth, and it's hard to change that. It is estimated that it will stop by itself soon, we're still in a transition phase. I hope it's true, but I'm not convinced. I'm afraid many species will still die before we stabilize.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:39PM (#54805951) (virii?) Nope. viruses Yep. actually ani al do NOT reach equilibrium (Score:3) by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:15AM (#54798641) If there are no predator, herbivore multiply and will eat every greenerie available for example. Nature do not care for equilibrium, it cares only fir fitness to reproduction, and overwhelming an environment with offspring work well. It is only because prey are paired with predator that an equilibrium SEEM to be reached on small time scale. But look again on bigger time scale and you see the same, that species can go out of equilibrium, change environment sonetime for the worst, and there are period of extinction. That is why this is the sixth and not the first. Re:actually ani al do NOT reach equilibrium (Score:2) by danbert8 ( 1024253 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:47AM (#54799495) Yep, that's why the summary is completely misleading bullshit... The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena. If by natural phenomena you mean a single species reproducing to cover the entire planet and emitting a gas that made the planet change in climate entirely, then sure. It's easy to blame humans as not being a natural occurrence, but we are. And we are not the first natural phenomena to do so. It's so misleading to claim that we are not natural by defining natural to be everything but us.Re:actually ani al do NOT reach equilibrium (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:52AM (#54800469) We are arrogant and liberal are so arrogant/ignorant they don't even realize we are animals. They like to think of humans as some sort of "separate thing" in order to justify the double-think and cognitive dissonance that runs rampant in those circles. I guess if you only have lived an urban life you could truly believe we are somehow different but that doesn't make you right.Re:actually ani al do NOT reach equilibrium (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:16PM (#54801141) "If by natural phenomena you mean a single species reproducing to cover the entire planet and emitting a gas that made the planet change in climate entirely, then sure." We aren't the first. Blue-green algae beat us to the punch. Their poisonous oxygen killed off most of the existing life forms at the time.Re:actually ani al do NOT reach equilibrium (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:18AM (#54798823) > If there are no predator, herbivore multiply and will eat every greenerie available for example. Nature do not care for equilibrium... Grammar issues aside, this is _exactly_ true. The _only_ species on the planet that we're aware of that acts to conserve its food (and other resource) supplies are Homo Sapiens. How do all other species perform resource conservation? By consuming resources and continually growing their populations until there are insufficient resources to support those populations. The "conservation" mechanism here is starvation of members of the oversized population. The astute will note that this will likely fail to prevent critical depletion of the consumed resource. So, like... this "conservation" "strategy" is... suboptimal.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:3, Insightful) by Presence Eternal ( 56763 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:19AM (#54798653) It's a fun quote delivered by a good actor, but I hope you don't take it as something intelligent. With the exception of some species of island birds (Watch "Parrots, The Universe, and Everything"), humans are actually one of the only species that avoids explosive population growth. Incidentally, that video is good viewing for anyone who thinks high mortality rates are the only way to control reproduction in safe environments. It's the nonhuman mammals that become invasive. Try googling "mouse plague" for starters. Now THAT'S a mammalian virus! You can argue that humans cause species invasions, but that's still just transportation; everything thereafter is natural behavior in a temporarily favorable environment. Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by alexo ( 9335 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:23AM (#54798673) Journal It's a fun quote delivered by a good actor Which was the sole reason for its inclusion.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:1) by Presence Eternal ( 56763 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:47AM (#54798747) That's cool, that's cool. I just worry about the influence of such things sometimes. I think there must have been cases of kids growing up with The Prime Directive and going on to make policy decisions that allowed entire peoples to be erased. Like maybe they took the very well meaning anti-colonial message and turned it into something that isolates indigenous peoples from potential help while doing nothing to protect them from those who are more rapacious. Or even worse if they accepted the later interpretations, which discard the fear of colonialism and literally argue it's better for a people to "die pure". As if a culture's 'purity' were somehow more precious than the combined lives of every single person within it. I dunno, maybe I overthink or underthink this stuff. Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:5, Funny) by sheramil ( 921315 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:14AM (#54798817) Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague. (Agent Smith then proceeds to make billions of copies of himself)Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:37AM (#54798983) Journal Actually the correct term is "Invasive Species" Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:5, Informative) by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:13AM (#54799571) > Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Y "Instinctively develops" such a relationship? I'd say "no". Many mammals, introduced to new environment, have no means to make such accommodation and devastate ecosystems. A very classic example is the introduction of rabbits to Australia's ecosystem: others include the introduction of goats almost anywhere, since goats are notorious for cropping plants much closer to the root and destroying the plant parts of ecosystems. The idea that all mammals "develop a natural equilibrium" ignores the cycles of population growth and decline of simple predator/prey relationships, like the well analyzed one between wolves and rabbits described at https://stanford.edu/~ajspakow... [stanford.edu] . These equilibria don't require instinct, nor does there seem to be "insinct" involved. They only require negative feedback from the environment.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:23PM (#54803321) whoosh. you're arguing with a joke. A virus is not an organism. (Score:0) by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:56AM (#54798585) Homepage Journal A virus is really not an organism and it doesn't have higher consciousness to understand the consequences of its activities, we do, we choose to do what we do, we are quite different creatures than viruses in that regard. I watched the Matrix seven times in a theater in the 3 weeks following the premier. That idea though, I thought about it enough to realize it is a nonsensical non starter. Humans do spread to an environment on the one hand, however on the other they do not leave, they modify the environment and make it liveable for very long periods of time. Any environment is constrained by the availability of resources but being in balance with all other systems and resources means not to progress forward at all, it means stagnation and stagnation kills just as well as consuming all of the resources does in the first place. Dinosaurs were supposedly 'in balance' and yet where are they? (don't say chickens, please.) What is the virtue of being 'one' with the environment, what is the virtue of being 'in balance' with the 'natural order' of things? The natural order of things is being born and then dying, well I think that the natural order is crap, it is bullshit and the sooner we end this natural order crap the better. Being in balance with the surrounding environment? I think not. I don't like balance and entropy, I say we must spice things up.Re:A virus is not an organism. (Score:2) by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:05AM (#54798605) Homepage Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Randian enviromentalist.... Re: A virus is not an organism. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:23AM (#54798675) Does he cheer when Nature throws a disaster our way and shout "Now there is some competition!"Re: A virus is not an organism. (Score:2) by I'm New Around Here ( 1154723 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:54AM (#54798769) Well, I'll bet he never gets killed by a whale he just freed from fishing line.Re: A virus is not an organism. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:02AM (#54799141) When Nature throws a disaster we should detonate some nukes over forested areas or in the ocean to retaliate.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:00AM (#54798589) Homepage Yaknow, when you're quoting a genocidal slavemaster to support your argument, you're not really making a good point for your side. Just sayin'. Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by alexo ( 9335 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:18AM (#54798647) Journal Yaknow, when you're quoting a genocidal slavemaster to support your argument, you're not really making a good point for your side. Just sayin'. I had an argument? Pray tell me what would it be. The AC post above me reminded me of that quote, so I posted it. Oh, and that would be a *fictional* genocidal slavemaster, from a movie meant to entertain.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:1) by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:24AM (#54798677) Homepage The whole point of this story is that humans are evil exterminating monsters. Quoting a genocidal slavemaster really doesn't help. Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:04PM (#54803117) Funny how you posted a "quote", but didn't put it in quotes or attribute a source or anything. To avoid confusion in the future, you should try using quotation marks around your quotes, or at least attribute the speaker/source.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by alexo ( 9335 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:14PM (#54805129) Journal That would have killed the joke.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:01AM (#54799755) Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area Oh yes, the unoriginal comparison of humans to a virus. If by natural equilibrium you mean having predators keep population under control, then I guess you have a point. However, if you introduce an animal, mammal or not, into an area that contains no natural predators, then they will multiply and multiply until their food source is exhausted and they either all die off or enough die off that the rest can manage to survive. As humans, we don't really have many natural predators left but we have intelligence, some more than others, and we are adapting. Adaptation takes time.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @04:02AM (#54806785) We have predators? Pray tell, what exactly searches for humans to eat? Most act to protect territory or their violence is a direct result of human stupidity. We probably taste like shit anyway. Our worst enemy is other humans.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:56AM (#54800081) I wonder if they will use that line in the remake...?Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by SCVonSteroids ( 2816091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:05AM (#54800583) Just stop it. When people act like humans are so much different than other animals, it blows my mind. Yes we're poisoned from birth with all this "want want want" bullshit. But naturally we are no different than other animals, and instinctively try to do the same. Those who don't, we know would die off within a week of "shit hitting the fan", but to flat out dump on the entire species as you are is just fucking stupid.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:01PM (#54804115) If what you say were true, places that have been inhabited by humans would be depopulated wastelands. They aren't. Humans move into an area and stay in some form of dynamic equilibrium.Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:2) by elistan ( 578864 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:40AM (#54799973) Humans = the ultimate form of pollution In the sense of ultimate meaning final or last or most recent, sure. But not in the sense of best or greatest - in my opinion that honor should go to the photosynthesizing plants, starting with cyanobacteria, that pumped tremendous amounts of oxygen into the air, fundamentally changing the preferred biological processes for living on Earth. (Of course this also depends on what one defines as 'pollution.') Humans are altering climate and geologic features, and thereby changing coastlines and what plants and animals live where, but at the moment at least it doesn't appear that we're changing the molecular composition of the air, water and land enough force life to adopt fundamentally new chemical processes to survive. (Although it'd be ironic if our actions were to, say, alter the acidity of the oceans enough to kill off a significant portion of the oxygen-producing life in it that the atmosphere over time becomes difficult to breathe by humans...)Re:This is a genuine tragedy. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:25AM (#54799187) Humans = the ultimate form of pollution. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. -- Agent Smith I was just discussing this ... (Score:1) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:43PM (#54798307) with my pet Tyrannosaurus Rex. He's pretty unique, and I think his species is about extinct. I almost wallopped him one when he ate my pet dodo bird, because those really are hard to come by. But I was too busy scaling the coelacanth I had caught for lunch to notice when he made DeeDee his lunch. What a horrible era we live in, when some species go extinct. It's such a rare thing we should take pictures so we can remember it longer. I was pretty sure that Darwin talked about this already, but he's dead and I can't ask him.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by I'm New Around Here ( 1154723 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:08AM (#54798611) I call bullshit. Everyone knows you don't scale a coelacanth. You skin them, and then separate the drumsticks.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:57AM (#54798781) Dinosaurs went extinct in a mass extinction that had 70% of species dies off that almost ended all life on earth. ELEs are scary. And that happened, what, once in the history of earth. The dodo was massacred by humans. But, yeah, say how non-plused you are. It definitely makes you sound mature/intelligent, and not like a idiot.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by buchner.johannes ( 1139593 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:07AM (#54799277) Homepage Journal Dinosaurs went extinct in a mass extinction that had 70% of species dies off that almost ended all life on earth. ELEs are scary. And that happened, what, once in the history of earth. Five major extinctions happened, only one of them had an external cause (asteroid). For the others, climate change was one of the main reasons.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:11AM (#54799805) Homepage Journal How many of those climate changes were caused by humans?Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by buchner.johannes ( 1139593 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:10AM (#54800161) Homepage Journal The climate change in this one is much, much faster than that of any previous extinctions.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:14PM (#54803237) The climate change in this one is much, much faster than that of any previous extinctions. I saw one of the most asinine bumper stickers this morning on the way to work: "The climate is changing faster than we are." Now, I don't know about you, but I can change on a time scale on the order of "weather". Hey, it's hot out, let's go inside where the AC is on. Hey, it's cold out, put on a sweater. I think most people can do that. So if we can change faster than the weather, and the climate is changing faster than we can, then climate change has to be happening faster than the weather. But weather is the day-to-day stuff and "climate" is the long term stuff. So weather changes much faster than the climate. We change faster than the weather. The car owner clearly doesn't understand the rules of math. But then, I'm positive of that because of the vehicle they drive: a Subaru Forester. It has the label "pzev" on it. I couldn't figure out by looking at it what that meant, but I saw it at the Subaru dealer. "Partial zero emissions vehicle". How can a vehicle be "partial zero"? Either it is zero or it is not. Unless you're saying "the only thing that emits on this car is the engine, and the engine is only a part of the car...", so only a part of the car emits ... but that's just dumb. Every car qualifies for that.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:23AM (#54799607) Not according to Larson. https://humormedication.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/gary-larson-dinosaurs/Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:1) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:57PM (#54798367) Homepage Journal What a horrible era we live in, when some species go extinct. It's such a rare thing we should take pictures so we can remember it longer. I was pretty sure that Darwin talked about this already, but he's dead and I can't ask him. Species are made up of individuals. Darwin is dead because he was born a long time ago, but people die every day because of what humans have done to their own habitat, and if enough of them die, so will the species.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:1) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:13AM (#54798443) Species are made up of individuals. Really? Wow. Darwin is dead because he was born a long time ago Wow again. Did not know that. and if enough of them die, so will the species. The discussion isn't about the human species going extinct. It is about the awful situation where other species are going extinct, which apparently has never happened before and thus is a huge issue. If you think about Darwin and the evolution of species, it's based on adaptation and natural selection, which implies that those species that are not well adapted -- go EXTINCT because they all die. That's why I mentioned Darwin along with all the other extinct things. Not only is the extinction of species not a new thing, it is inherent in the current theory of evolution. Of course, Paul Ehrlich is known for doomsday predictions that don't come true, so this prediction now is also not anything new.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:18AM (#54798473) Homepage Journal If you think about Darwin and the evolution of species, it's based on adaptation and natural selection, which implies that those species that are not well adapted -- go EXTINCT because they all die. That's irrelevant when cataclysm or just the rate of change messes up the spreadsheets.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:1) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:28AM (#54798507) That's irrelevant The fact that the extinction of species has been happening for as long as there have been species and is part of the natural process of evolution is pretty relevant when the topic is gloom and doom about how species are going extinct. Life is not a "spreadsheet", and we're not in a "cataclysm", no matter how much hoopla Paul Ehrlich wants to spread.Re: I was just discussing this ... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:31AM (#54798703) If the human race is apathetic to pushing multiple species off the planet, we deserve the fate that the universe has for relentless apex predators.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:32AM (#54799095) This isn't about *animals*. We all are aware of the previous 5 or 6 mass extinction events, one of which wiped out 99.9% of life on the planet. That's how we can compare the past exctinctions with the current event. What do you know, after dinosaurs we had abundant life again. Life....finds a way. But humans....won't. And that's the point. And if humans *do* find a way, there's a good chance no other life will, and we'll have some sort of shitty dirt rock for a planet where people say 'I remember when my grandparents told me about seeing a bird, no they were real!!'Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:02PM (#54803097) Life....finds a way. But humans....won't. And that's the point. The most adaptable species on the planet, the toolmakers and builders, won't find a way to survive. What absolute malarky. Is this Paul posting as an AC?Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:33AM (#54798519) Just because mass extinctions happen doesn't mean they are a good idea.Re:I was just discussing this ... (Score:2) by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:05PM (#54803131) doesn't mean they are a good idea. Do you see me saying they are a good idea? And I see my stalker got mod points again. You missed a few other postings I made in other threads, or did you run out of points before you could get them all? He emphasized (Score:1, Troll) by ChrisMaple ( 607946 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:45PM (#54798315) Paul Ehrlich ... not alarmist Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:5, Insightful) by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:10AM (#54798621) Ah, thank you. Amongst Ehrlich's funny predictions "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people." " I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate ..." in 1970, he warned that "[i]n ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." In 1968 he wrote "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980." Well, you can argue about that one, since the population hadn't grown by 200 million in that timeframe, but now the populationis 800 million greater and don't look worse off than back then.. So great, in the opinion of his co-author Ehrlich isn't an alarmist. I'd call; him a hysterical headline grabber with a predictiveusefulness of zero.Re:Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:2, Insightful) by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:45AM (#54798739) ..and yet he still gets government grants for research. This guy has been wrong again and again for 50 years, and he is still getting government funding, and his papers still pass peer review. Meanwhile the press is calling him "not an alarmist" Open your eyes people. Words are cheap. Re:Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:2) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:46AM (#54799011) Well none of that rediculousness changes the fact that the population counts of most large mammals are crashing globally.Re:Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:20AM (#54799293) I'm more worried about "mammal populations are losing 70 percent of their members" That will take me down to 9 inches!Re:Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:48AM (#54799695) Yeah I'd check your premises there. Erlich is not a good resource for that information. I suspect once better scientists examine his research they'll find plenty of flaws. He's mostly about the hyperbole. Anyway making claims of large percentages of extinctions is not credible. 98% of all species are now extinct. How far back do you want to extend your timeline.Re:Ehrlich the big mouth (Score:1) by schleimkeim ( 4962311 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:58AM (#54798905) And he really doesn't seem to like the United Kingdom. What's up with that? Re:He emphasized (Score:5, Informative) by Troed ( 102527 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:46AM (#54799117) Homepage Journal Quotes from Paul Ehrlich: *** “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollutionis certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” *** He's awesome. Please give him more grant money for the comical art value alone.Re:He emphasized (Score:5, Insightful) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:50AM (#54800045) I'll just cut and paste my responce from a post just like yours posted above. Well none of that rediculousness changes the fact that the population counts of most large mammals are crashing globally.Re:He emphasized (Score:1) by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:56PM (#54801503) Journal Which large mammals would that be? Whale populations are rebounding all over the world. Bison as well. Kodiak, polar, and grizzly bear populations are increasing. Elephants and rhinos are down, primarily due to poaching, but hippos are up. But most other large mammals (those weighing over 1000 pounds) seem to be rebounding. So which mammals are you discussing? Re:He emphasized (Score:2) by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:09PM (#54805103) This isnt exactly niche knowledge here unless you're being willfully ignorant. In the interest of saving myself time here's this for you http://bfy.tw/CpUB [bfy.tw]Re:He emphasized (Score:1) by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:15PM (#54805839) Journal I see, so I should have searched for "mammal population decline" not "large mammal population decline" as originally claimed... Goalpost shifts and all! Re:He emphasized (Score:1, Insightful) by Whibla ( 210729 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:52AM (#54799717) Quotes from Paul Ehrlich: *** Yup, he is virtually the dictionary definition of alarmist, and yet... “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” An estimated 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient. An estimated 250,000 to 500 000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight. (WHO Vitamin A Deficiencies) [worldhunger.org] Well, he may have been a few years out, but, as unbelievable as it might seem, his numbers are in the right ball park. (I'm not really interested in any "rationale" for these figures, I'm just pointing them out) Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollutionis certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. Again, maybe a few years out, (I say maybe because historical figures are both hard to find and considerably less reliable), but: "In new estimates released today, WHO reports [who.int] that in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). Hmm, it almost feels like you're quoting this because you disagree with the premise. Are you suggesting that DDT (and many other chemicals, manufactured in large quantities during the last century, such as CFC's, tetra-ethyl lead, etc.) are not harmful to human health and do not reduce life expectancy? Granted, his maths on life expectancy contained a rather basic mistake, but I'd say the principles he was warning about were, and are, valid. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” Yup, blatant exaggeration (scare-mongering, alarmism, call it what you will)! In reality rates of deforestation at the start of this century were around 5.4 million ha/yr with estimates giving around 1803 million ha of tropical forest globally in 2000. Assuming a constant rate of deforestation (a BIG assumption) this means we've only removed about 8% of global rainforest over 30 years. I'm a little more hesitant to pooh-pooh the 50% species loss figure because, while it sounds inconceivable, some species are not numerous, have very small ranges, and are very very 'fragile'. 50% biomass loss, not a chance, 50% of number of species ... unlikely but we have to admit the possibility, and that in itself should be cause enough for us to do something to prevent it (in fairness I think we, as a species, are getting much better at caring for our habitat, but we've still got a long way to go). *** He's awesome. Please give him more grant money for the comical art value alone. He may be an alarmist, but he's actually almost been as right as he's been wrong. I'm not sure I see the comedy in this!Re:He emphasized (Score:5, Insightful) by Troed ( 102527 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:08AM (#54799797) Homepage Journal I'm unsure whether you meant to claim that the numbers you gave supported him, but no, they really don't. Saying he's right on "principles" while being horribly wrong on the actual facts is the whole point. He claims the number X will happen REALLY SOON NOW - BE SCARED!, and X doesn't happen. ... and that's been the case throughout his whole career. 1) He did not mean soot from wood burning stoves in India/Africa with "smog" btw, that's where the millions of deaths due to pollution comes from. Electrify now! Doesn't matter if it's coal plants or solar for this. 2) Food supply has outstripped demand. Vitamin A deficiency is a real threat though, so make sure to hit the nearest anti-GMO protestor on his/her head since they're blocking golden rice. 3) DDT hadn't reduced life expectancy to 42 years. Neither has anything else. You can't be right "on principles" when you're so horribly wrong on the facts.Re:He emphasized (Score:2) by scatbomb ( 1099255 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:00PM (#54801541) >100-200 million people dying per year >250,000 people with vitamin A deficiency >right ball park You're an idiot. 250,000 is in the same ballpark as 100-200 million in the same manner that $1 is about the same as $1000. In other words, you're an idiot.Re:He emphasized (Score:3) by Sporkinum ( 655143 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:19AM (#54800235) HA HA HA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb [wikipedia.org] Extinction is a natural occurrence (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:00AM (#54798385) I bet 99.99% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct. It is perfectly normal for species to go extinct, that is how we get to the fittest species.Re:Extinction is a natural occurrence (Score:2) by Boronx ( 228853 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:21AM (#54798663) Homepage Journal So...mass extinctions don't happen? What is your point?Re:Extinction is a natural occurrence (Score:2) by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:38AM (#54798727) This guy also previously predicted that England would be gone by the year 2000. Re:Extinction is a natural occurrence (Score:2) by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:21PM (#54805217) It's going to be a large figure but probably not 99.99% [wikimedia.org] - there's been more species around recently than in any previous historical period. More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:37PM (#54798285) Can we stop posting the exaggerated climate change and mass extinction crap that causes scientists to lose credibility with the public because of a few irresponsible people? Remember that the uncertainty in the effects of aerosols is so large that we don't even know if the overall effect of human activity on temperatures is positive or negative. Even the IPCC admits this, with the huge error bars around aerosol forcings. Yet the alarmist crap keeps getting trotted out. Please stop so the scientists can maintain their credibility and continue to do actual.l research instead of this alarmist rubbish.Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:4, Informative) by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:51AM (#54798757) Can we stop posting the exaggerated climate change and mass extinction crap that causes scientists to lose credibility with the public because of a few irresponsible people? TFS lost all credibility with me when it described Paul Ehrlich as "not an alarmist". This is the guy who famously predicted [wikipedia.org] that human civilization would collapse in the 1980s, and that was the "best case" scenario.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:30AM (#54800313) Ehrlich bungled some predictions but with the general message he was not wrong and - this is key - he called for action on population when it could have the most effect back in the 70s. At this point the damage is already done.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:0) by lquam ( 250506 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:53PM (#54801475) Oh, give me a break, this guy has been wrong for the last 50 years. He's always predicting the next catastrophe that does not come because he has no respect for technology and the ability of humanity to solve problems. Instead, he started back in 1968 with idiotic statements like this: "We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail. We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control." There's caring about the ecology of the planet and then there's eco-fascists. He's the latter.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @11:04AM (#54808593) We Anthropocene Enthusiasts know truth when we fabricate it.Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:2) by nnet ( 20306 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:46AM (#54800911) Journal much the same way orwell predicted? or asimov? Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:31PM (#54801267) Those fiction books aren't necessarily predictions of what will happen (though they can be if that was the author's intent).Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:2) by Mike Van Pelt ( 32582 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:04PM (#54802565) Paul Ehrlich is also the person who, when it looked like Pons and Fleishmann were really on to something, and clean, nearly free fusion power was going to be running everything on the planet, wrote an article for the newspapers about how this was a complete disaster. In his words "Like giving a machine gun to a retarded child." I have no use for completely anti-human "philosophers" like Ehrlich. He may know a lot about butterflies, but outside his narrow area of expertise, he's a moron.Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:07AM (#54798415) No kidding. All this global warming crap has been cooked up by George "the puppetmaster" Soros and his lackeys (like Al Gore) to enslave us under a one world government where everyone is forced to live in urban termite mounds, and most of your income goes to taxes. Soros, the CFR, Bilderberg, Skull an Bones--they are all in it together.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:14AM (#54798451) Snowflake.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:04AM (#54798601) Cultural appropriator.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:21AM (#54798659) Denialist SJW.Re: More alarmist nonsense (Score:2) by nnet ( 20306 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:43AM (#54800889) Journal yes, its a tv show. Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:1) by Hylandr ( 813770 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:51AM (#54798761) This. So much this. But if we could stop using pesticides that would be great too.Re:More alarmist nonsense (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:13AM (#54799577) No friggin kidding. All of this global warming crap has been cooked up by George "the puppetmaster" Soros and his lackeys (like Al Gore) to enslave us under a one world government where everyone is forced to live in urban termite mounds, and most of your income goes to taxes. Soros, the CFR, Bilderberg Group, Skull an Bones--they are all in it together. Giraffe are great (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:35PM (#54798277) Giraffe are great I once saw one at the zoo. To respond to popular demand cock eggs are going to go on sale soon use affiliate amazon link to preorder on my site. https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org] https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] -- -cremier Visit my website and buy cock eggs with amazon affiliate link! : https://www.cdreimer.com/slash... [cdreimer.com]Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:45PM (#54798319) Looks like this piece of shit troll is still infatuated with creimer. I'm convinced that you're incredibly jealous of him and that's why you continue your obsession. Unfortunately for you, he's successful while you're a failed attempt at being a human being. I just wonder if you tell your family and friends about your harassment of creimer and if they know what a loser you are. Your parents must be awful people to raise a child like you.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:42AM (#54798551) He's successful? Please elaborate AC, that is definitely not cremier.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:18AM (#54798649) Not the same AC but I'd say "success" in this instance means he has not stopped posting here and has shown composure in the face of attack. Pride is a worthy thing to hold on to. Are you proud of your actions against him?Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:34AM (#54798715) Thank you thank you you seem like a nice guy would you mind meeting with me at the YMCA? -cremier Fresh of the press buy my new ebook! https://www.bol.com/nl/p/the-g... [bol.com]Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:26AM (#54798837) It is not pride but delusional narcissism which compels creimer to believe he is a winner at life, while he spends all of his days desperately seeking the attention of online bullies who taunt and harass him.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:1) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:18AM (#54800227) Homepage It is not pride but delusional narcissism which compels creimer to believe he is a winner at life [...] I am a winner in life. Your unwillingness to accept that is inconsequential. [...] he spends all of his days desperately seeking the attention of online bullies who taunt and harass him. I find the 14-year-old wankers on Slashdot to be amusing.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:21AM (#54800699) I am a winner in life. I am a winner in life. I am a winner in life. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL Who told you this? Tony Robbins? Are you listening to 'Eye of the Tiger' between pudding cupsRe: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:26AM (#54800751) Homepage LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL Who told you this? Tony Robbins? Are you listening to 'Eye of the Tiger' between pudding cups Not from the 14-year-old wankers on Slashdot.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:47AM (#54800923) do you really enjoy the phrase '14yo wankers' or do you suffer from some kind of obesity-induced autism that compels you to say it as many times as possibleRe: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:53AM (#54800969) Homepage do you really enjoy the phrase '14yo wankers' or do you suffer from some kind of obesity-induced autism that compels you to say it as many times as possible I was previously using "asshat" as a general description of my critics. But Eli the Computer Guy summed up in a recent video who my real critics are on Slashdot: the 14-year-old wankers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUcFStmtr7k [youtube.com]Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:56AM (#54800993) Excuse me? 15 year-old. Got that? 15 year-old.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:14AM (#54800201) Homepage He's successful? Please elaborate AC, that is definitely not cremier. Success is getting up at 4:30AM to be at work at 7:00AM. Success is getting through three meetings and two training sessions while fighting off a horde of 14-year-old wankers on Slashdot. Success is coming home to build a side business while fighting off a horde of 14-year-old wankers on Slashdot. Success is going to bed at 10:30PM to get a good night sleep. Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:26AM (#54800753) Yeah, that is not the definition of success at all. Doesn't even sound a tiny bit desirable. It does seem like a "convenient reinterpretation of a failed existence" though. Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:33AM (#54800793) Homepage It does seem like a "convenient reinterpretation of a failed existence" though. Only on Slashdot would having a job that pays the bills and a side business that brings in cash flow be considered a failure.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:45AM (#54800907) Take away the slashdot and maybe you're not a failure. But there is definitely something wrong that you keep frequenting this place. Given how long you've been working, you're darn right you are a failure. Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:55AM (#54800989) Homepage Take away the slashdot and maybe you're not a failure. But there is definitely something wrong that you keep frequenting this place. Given how long you've been working, you're darn right you are a failure. Slashdot exists to keep me amuse while I'm waiting for scripts to finish. Thank you for your participation!Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:24PM (#54804785) Homepage You forgot to write who or what you are amusing,,, example: Slashdot exists to keep me amuse the crowd while I'm waiting for scripts to finish running.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:42AM (#54806455) Amusement for you is getting constantly shit on. Sad life.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:24AM (#54806419) correct. this is not a place for janitors and white trash, so your measures of success are absolute failure compared to this group of people. and we are absolute failure to the big-corp ceos - which is why we are not invited to their forums, like your idiot thoughts are unwelcome with us. and the only 14 year olds here were in 1997. we're old and have surpassed your entire life's accomplishments 20 years ago.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by Highdude702 ( 4456913 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:40AM (#54800847) You really should sleep more, and not worry about the slashdot trolls as much as you do, granted I sometimes talk shit to you. but I at least let you know its me talking shit. However talking shit is one of my hobby's and I thoroughly enjoy doing it.. I guess you can say that was one of the poor kid activities that kept our brains busy. Either way 6 hours of sleep is not enough sleep if you have to be cognitive during the work day and produce. even if you can squeeze 45-60 extra minutes into that you should try it. And if you feel you cant sleep, try taking hit or two of weed, or an edible an hour before you want to go to sleep. will help a lot. And its legal where you're at fortunately for you.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:02PM (#54801043) Homepage not worry about the slashdot trolls as much as you do I find the 14-year-old wankers to be amusing. That some of them call themselves men and have children is more worrisome. Either way 6 hours of sleep is not enough sleep if you have to be cognitive during the work day and produce. I've always gotten six hours of sleep. My late father who got up at 5:30AM to go to work for 50 years always slept six hours.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by Highdude702 ( 4456913 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:49PM (#54801981) Im not saying I don't do the same, but its still not healthy. You and your father may be 100% different though because your mother also had a part in it.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:16PM (#54802167) Homepage You and your father may be 100% different though because your mother also had a part in it. The older I get the more I become my father. Fortunately, I watched my father get old so I know what to prepare for. As for my late mother, she was an alcoholic, slept all the time and a mean drunk when awake.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:14PM (#54801127) Gonna be honest, creimer - this sounds like a barely-getting-by existence. Let's look at the same set of facts through a different filter: - You have to get up ridiculously early to get to your shitty job; - You get up 2.5 hours before you're expected to arrive at work, because you have to take shitty public transit in the Bay Area, which is expensive and crowded; - You spend your "work" days dicking around on Slashdot; - You spend your "free" time dicking around on Slashdot, and burn hours and days and weeks of your free time for a few dollars; - You have to be in bed by 10:30 pm because you have to wake up again to do it all over again the next day. That existence sounds enervating, and dispiriting. Here's how I'd frame success: Wake up at 7 am next to beautiful wife, in peaceful, quiet suburban home surrounded by greenery. Spend the next hour and a half having breakfast with the wife, playing with the baby. Arrive at work in home office by 8:45, spend day solving complex engineering problems for great salary. Work until about 5:30 pm, with a few short breaks for lunch, coffee, playtime with baby. Spend a few hours with wife & baby, then put baby to bed. Spend another hour checking emails & doing a bit of work, then workout, then make dinner with the wife and spend time watching a movie, talking, reading, or engaging in other activities that enrich the body, mind, and spirit. Go to bed around 11:30, make love, fall asleep next to the woman I love, contented, happy, and loved. Now, those specific elements may not be for everyone - some people like living in the city, some people aren't interested in children, and some people won't want to get married - but slaving away during all your waking hours for crummy pay while staving off trolling imbeciles on Slashdot seems like a curious definition of success.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:34PM (#54801307) Homepage You have to get up ridiculously early to get to your shitty job; My father got up at 5:30AM to go to work for 50 years. He stopped working six weeks before he died at 75 from terminal throat cancer. You get up 2.5 hours before you're expected to arrive at work, because you have to take shitty public transit in the Bay Area, which is expensive and crowded; The alternative is to spend 3+ hours driving in traffic. I spend an hour each way taking the express bus, reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook on the way home. If you don't arrive at my job by 7:30AM, you won't get a parking spot and street parking sucks. You spend your "work" days dicking around on Slashdot; While attending three meetings and two training sessions that didn't apply to me at my regular job yesterday, and responding to email notifications from Slashdot while redoing YouTube thumbnails for a client last night. and burn hours and days and weeks of your free time for a few dollars; I love how everyone lowball the numbers that they know nothing about. We went from half-cents to pennies to dollars over the last three months You have to be in bed by 10:30 pm because you have to wake up again to do it all over again the next day. I look forward to every new day because that's life.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:07PM (#54802095) My father got up at 5:30AM to go to work for 50 years. He stopped working six weeks before he died at 75 from terminal throat cancer. And you got up an hour earlier, to go to a shittier job, and you'll work right up until you die from that massive coronary you're brewing up. Congratulations, that's real success right there! The alternative is to spend 3+ hours driving in traffic. I spend an hour each way taking the express bus, reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook on the way home. If you don't arrive at my job by 7:30AM, you won't get a parking spot and street parking sucks. Or, you could leave the ridiculously overpriced area you currently live in, and go somewhere where your pay rate would allow you to have a decent lifestyle that doesn't require you to spend hours every day commuting to a shitty job. Also - if you take the bus, why is parking at your workplace relevant? You could just as easily take the bus and show up at 9 am, since presumably you're not parking the bus, and while large, I find it difficult to believe that you require an entire parking space to park your ass. While attending three meetings and two training sessions that didn't apply to me at my regular job yesterday, and responding to email notifications from Slashdot while redoing YouTube thumbnails for a client last night. So you let people waste your time with pointless meetings and training sessions at your work, instead of doing productive things. And then you think that responding to trolls on Slashdot is somehow a mark of success and productivity. Gotcha. I love how everyone lowball the numbers that they know nothing about. We went from half-cents to pennies to dollars over the last three months These are your own claims: - Averaging ~ $27 a month in advertising revenues. - Selling ~ $60 worth of ebooks per year. - Working on your "side business" every day, from when you get home, until you go to bed at 10:30 pm. That means you're pouring vast amounts of time and energy into this work, and you're getting a few dollars in return. Again - these are YOUR numbers that you've claimed, not my estimates. I look forward to every new day because that's life. Being stuck on a shitty, dead-end treadmill is what you think of as life? That's a pretty weak definition of success, creimer.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:29PM (#54802267) Homepage - Averaging ~ $27 a month in advertising revenues. Made $150 in advertising revenues from Slashdot last month. The average for the past quarter was $66.66. Selling ~ $60 worth of ebooks per year. That's interesting number I don't recognize. Citation, please? Working on your "side business" every day, from when you get home, until you go to bed at 10:30 pm. Correct. Being stuck on a shitty, dead-end treadmill is what you think of as life? I'm not the type that comes home, watches TV and drink beers after work. I haven't watched TV in 25 years and it takes me six months to drank a six-pack. I prefer the entrepreneur lifestyle instead.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:08PM (#54802615) The average for the past quarter was $66.66. So in 3 months, you made $66. An average of $22 per month. Assuming you spend ONLY 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, on your "side business," you're making about 50 cents an hour from your side business. If you spend more than 2 hours a night, your rate goes down from there. Even if you're making equivalent rates from all of your claimed 30 revenue streams (and we all know you're not), that's an average of $15 an hour... at that rate, you might as well go work at McDonald's - it's easier, and the pay is comparable. I'm not the type that comes home, watches TV and drink beers after work. I haven't watched TV in 25 years and it takes me six months to drank a six-pack. I prefer the entrepreneur lifestyle instead. Nor am I. That doesn't mean I feel the need to fritter away 10% of my life for a few dollars a day. I leave work, spend time with my wife & kid, do creative projects (woodworking, music, and open source programming), do useful household upkeep, and a hundred other gratifying, rewarding things. I prefer the entrepreneur lifestyle instead. No, it's quite clear that you prefer being able to claim you're an entrepreneur without having to actually deliver on the actual successful business ventures of BEING an entrepreneur. Apparently, claims of being successful are as rewarding to you as actually being successful. What a curious little man.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:32PM (#54802833) Homepage So in 3 months, you made $66. An average of $22 per month. Wrong, dumbass. The average was $66.66 per month. Multiply by three months in a quarter that's $200. An extra $200 that requires little effort on my part than posting a few dozen comments on Slashdot every day. Even if you're making equivalent rates from all of your claimed 30 revenue streams (and we all know you're not) [...] Where I don't provide information, you make up shit to fill in gaps and then lowball the results. I leave work, spend time with my wife & kid, do creative projects (woodworking, music, and open source programming), do useful household upkeep, and a hundred other gratifying, rewarding things. A lifestyle that I will probably never have. I don't dwell on what I don't have. I deal with what I do have. When God hands out lemons, I make lemonade and people get upset because I don't suck my lemons with salt and tequila like everyone else. No, it's quite clear that you prefer being able to claim you're an entrepreneur without having to actually deliver on the actual successful business ventures of BEING an entrepreneur. I've been in business for ten years now. People who don't believe they're successful TODAY won't be successful TOMORROW. I don't let doubters and naysayers dictate how I run my business.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:07PM (#54803149) It's just that someone as successful as you... shouldn't be spending most of his day replying to 14 year olds. Do you see any other successful people generating the amount of replies you are? "I don't let doubters and naysayers dictate how I run my business." Instead, you let all those ghosts and injuries from your past blind you to your reality.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:22PM (#54803315) Homepage Do you see any other successful people generating the amount of replies you are? Slashdot exists to keep me amuse while I'm waiting for scripts to finish. That I get paid to make two dozen comments per day is a bonus. Instead, you let all those ghosts and injuries from your past blind you to your reality. Nothing stands in my way. The future is very bright.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:25PM (#54803343) "Slashdot exists to keep me amuse while I'm waiting for scripts to finish." It's cute that you think Slashdot matters in the real world. Oh, and it's amuseD you illiterate choirboy. At least fix the text file from which you copy/paste. "Nothing stands in my way. The future is very bright." Which is why the last ten years .... have been exactly the same every day. Creimhog Day.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:58PM (#54804085) "Nothing stands in my way." Indeed. Sadly, that's because there is nothing in front of you. "The future is very bright." The medication is kicking in.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:02PM (#54804127) So much for the "secret and confidential" sales figures... You useless derelict.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by creimer ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:11PM (#54804193) Homepage So much for the "secret and confidential" sales figures... I brandied about the Slashdot advertising revenue for months, as I previously told you when you ;ast complained about my "secret and confidential" sales figures.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:19PM (#54804247) brandied about ??? You fucking witless clown. You stupid, ignorant, blundering chunk of rancid lard. "when you ;ast" Uh oh, your fat stumpy fingers are getting in each other's way again! Temper temper, fat boy! There might not be TWO defibrillators within reach of your cage, err "cubicle"! So, did they have to sling an industrial canvas hammock between structural beams for you to sit at your computer?Re: Giraffe are great (Score:2) by clovis ( 4684 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:14PM (#54805139) I look forward to every new day because that's life That statement alone defines a successful life.Re: Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:17AM (#54798467) Some things really should die. Like your internet connection. Please drop this. Things get old.Re:Giraffe are great (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:28AM (#54798693) I got Amazon Dot [amazon.com]. Where are my cock eggs? Game over. (Score:1) by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:45PM (#54798323) Homepage Somehow I always knew it would end like this. Some hope ahead (Score:1) by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:52PM (#54798349) While the main efforts need to be made to conserve habitats, lower pollution, and stop over harvesting of animals, one thing is different this time around that provides some hope. De-extinction. More of an effort needs to be made to preserve as much tissue and DNA from existing threatened species and save them in a bank similar to how we already do with seeds. We are close to bringing back animals like the passenger pigeon but with proper samples and possibly living cell cultures this job is made much much easier. With advancements over the coming decades de-extinction will become a reality and a last hope for many species. Not just giving elephants a few mammoth genes, but nearly complete genomes will become possible. The specific information stored in DNA and the creatures it brings forth are a unique treasure of this planet within the visible universe, we have learned so much we never would have otherwise by reverse engineering them it boggles the mind, and in my opinion our most valuable resource. Why are you ignoring the global genocide of Aryan (Score:-1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:59PM (#54798377) humans? Why do you post stories about "global warming", dying insects and ANYTHING as long as it's *not* what everyone should be talking about non-stop? We are being genocided. Aryans. "Whites".Re: Why are you ignoring the global genocide of Ar (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:14AM (#54798455) Then go out and make some babies and quit bitching. Its not genocide when it's self inflicted by low birth rates. Not that i even care. The Age of Machines (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:19AM (#54798475) The Age of Animals is ending. The machines will replace them. We all know this, and are in fact working as fast as we can to make it happen. Why pretend otherwise? We're being stupid (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:29AM (#54798511) In most parts of the world, mammal populations are losing 70 percent of their members because of habitat loss. By losing 70% of their members, do they mean mammals are losing three legs out of four? Anyway, going extinct due to habitat loss totally stupid. If those animals are going to die anyway due to "habitat loss", why don't we get in there, kill them first, and have a big BBQ? Yeah? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:41AM (#54798549) Well I annihilate your mothers gash every night annihilation (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:05AM (#54798603) thanks, trump! Paul R. Ehrlich (Score:0) by zapadnik ( 2965889 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:30AM (#54798695) Is this the same Paul Ehrlich who predicted humans would be reduced to cannibalism by the 1990's ? http://reason.com/blog/2015/06... [reason.com] https://www.masterresource.org... [masterresource.org] These guys are pseudo-religious nutters with their repeated doomsday predictions. Life has never been as good as it is today, but their myopic perspective and toxic personalities prevents them from seeing how good life is today compared to any other time in the past. Smart Slashdotters can also see how good things are compared to the past, and how bright the future can be if we work towards making greater scientific and technological progress. Leave the quasi-religious eschatons to their 'sky is falling' narratives.Re: Paul R. Ehrlich (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:12AM (#54799159) "Smart Slashdotters" is a contradiction in terms. Nerds are pedantic, autistic and mediocre. They like to pretend they're geniuses and that one day they will "show the world their worth", but it never happens. Their skills are laughable and usually are in limited fields and mostly obsoleted. It's high time the smart nerd myth to be debunked. Paul R. Ehrlich, you can thank him (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @02:41AM (#54798871) The population bomb author https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb Even though his predictions overshot, he was predicting 20 years into the future- as we all know a risky thing to do. In some ways, HE WAS NOT WRONG. Global warming is exacerbated by overpopulation, animal habitat loss, pollution, traffic congestion, all exacerbated by overpopulation. So why should you thank him? Because of his alarms, some people took action to control population, most significantly China. Without that action back then things would be even worse than they are now. Gods cool with it (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:13AM (#54798947) He told me so. MAGA! zoned (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:37AM (#54798985) And the heroes of the political correctness revolution like Naomi Klein can't spit the word "overpopulation" out of their mouth. It dilutes the dogma of totalitarian communism, their only solution. The lost world (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @04:46AM (#54799119) Wow! Someone finally finished the jurassic park the lost world. Good. For. Them. RIP Michael Crichton "Human beings are so destructive," Malcolm said. "I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase." Endless Sprawl (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @07:55AM (#54799523) You need a PhD to understand how dozens of strip malls and endless home plans and urban sprawl slaughter everything ? Um, kinda obvious humans are exterminating all life on Earth to everyone with eyes and a brain... Squirrels (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:00AM (#54799549) I just moved from Houston, and the squirrels there seem to be thriving just fine. Not to be that Congressman who brings a snowball.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:49AM (#54799707) "From the common barn swallow to.." Stop right there, here's a shovel, start cleaning the poop up in my barn from the 4-5 families of swallows living on the light fixtures.Re:Not to be that Congressman who brings a snowbal (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:42AM (#54799985) Yes, because the fact that 4 or 5 families of swallows have had to make your barn their home because you destroyed their normal habitat to build it, certainly means that swallows aren't under any stress at all. In Other News: Cancer Rates are SKYROCKETING (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:40AM (#54799969) Cancer rates are also SKYROCKETING!!! Not because more people are getting cancer, but because of better diagnostic coverage, better discipline in people getting checkups due to the ACA, and overall people paying closer attention to their health. Species are going extinct, for sure. We are just more aware of it because we are paying closer attention than we ever have before. I imagine extinction rates are not actually going up that much, if at all, but because we have done so much more exploration for new species, implemented many many more monitoring programs, and in general have cared more about it, we are more aware of extinction when it does happen instead of simply not noticing it.Re:In Other News: Cancer Rates are SKYROCKETING (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:53PM (#54804051) You're making that up. We really are losing species at a very rapid rate. More alarmism (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:50AM (#54800047) Better than another US politics or letter agency article where 150 Putinbots come out of the woodworks to spout their talking points, er, opinions. Solution: Population 1 Billion (Score:0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:53AM (#54800061) I have read numerous anthropological and sociopolitical papers that suggest quite convincingly that the Earth with its natural level of resources can comfortably support, at most, 1 billion people or so. Beyond that, competition for resources leads to what we are seeing today: the mass slaughter of all life on Earth by Human Greed. Fixing this problem requires hard choices. But, the choice that we have to make is the voluntary cessation of reproductive maintenance of the population. It will be an economic disaster, as 6/7ths of all of the production capital currently deployed will become useless. However, it must be done. There have been many suggestions, but the one that makes the most sense and is the most fair is simple: mandatory sterilization of any human being that has produced one offspring. No allowances for race, class, creed, wealth, intelligence, or anything like that - just a blanket, uniform, universally enforced program. The population needs to be halved three times, so the goal of 1 billion could be accomplished in three generations. and the Earth will be far better off. The problem here is that the ruling elite will never go along with it, as they would endeavor to exempt themselves and their wealthy brethren from the rules, as they always, invariably do. One day, however, massive reductions in Human population are GOING to happen. We can choose to control it, or we can allow it to happen in an uncontrolled way. Either way, though, the Earth is already at the brink of resource starvation, and when we hit the wall, there is going to be immediate global conflict that results in massive, uncontrolled casualty. Excelsior, true believers! (Score:1) by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @09:55AM (#54800079) Journal "As it turned out," some guy wrote in 2128, "none of any of this mattered as computerized DNA analysis was soon to let children construct their own life forms while growing up in preparation for their unlimited lifespans, watching as robots cleaned up the environment and harvested untold archaeological data from the time from landfills." "What if those scientists and their politicians had succeeded?" asked a child, nearly in tears. "They'd have slowed technological advancement needlessly by applying well-meaning but burdensome regulations that had the net effect of being similar to the burden corrupt governments and mafia organizations have on business, where few people invest because of the up front bribery burden and, if they manage to succeed, end up having to continue massive kickbacks on the success." "How could they get away with this?" "They had a number of true believers, who tried their best to suppress oppositional speech, for example, by downmodding posts on various BBS systems in an attempt to hide opinions."Re:Excelsior, true believers! (Score:2) by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:19AM (#54800241) Eh, it is hard enough to get the politicians to see that there's a problem, solutions need to be worked out next. New meme (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:00AM (#54800109) *Using Giorgio Tsoukalos hair style* "I'm not an alarmist but this is alarming" Extinct the mosquito please (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:12AM (#54800185) First make the all the mosquito species extinct please...I have no words to describe their disaster value apart from their whining nuisance value. We're not natural? (Score:2) by LoLobey ( 1932986 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:17AM (#54800223) "The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena." Why are humans not considered a natural phenomena? Re:We're not natural? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:34PM (#54802857) By definition humans are not natural phenomena. Definition: Nature: the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. Someone wanted a word to describe phenomena outside of humans so they invented one and called it nature. I have no idea why people keep trying to redefine it to include humans and even human creations. If you do that then the word "nature" becomes meaningless. irreversible era of mass extinction (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:03AM (#54800563) That's way worse than all the reversible ones. I Applaud NASA's Determined Effort (Score:2) by Slicker ( 102588 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:05AM (#54800587) The money isn't there currently but the fact that they did not let them stop working in that direction is worthy of praise. Be strong and hang in there, NASA. Stay the course and I will certainly write my congressmen about funding. On the other hand, why not try open sourcing design work.. I am absolutely sure you will find an extraordinary wealth of interested people offering ideas and assistance exploring them. Most will be unqualified but it will be an excellent learning experience inspiring a new generation of aerospace engineers. Some will be qualified and will do exceptional work at peer review, engineering calculations, secondary materials research, etc. And the enthusiasm at this site will illustrate the support the American people have for this project. Embrace it. Matthew We are a natural phenomenon (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:49AM (#54800937) So, ALL of the mass extinction events are caused by natural phenomena. Even if you are a creationist, you believe that we were created by the same force that created everything else in nature. Sad fucking state of affairs (Score:2) by omfglearntoplay ( 1163771 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:01PM (#54801027) While it is human to worry about things that affect us in the present like net neutrality (I am very very concerned about it myself) and the like, it is too easy to miss the big picture. If the planet loses half its species in the next few decades, we are what you call "completely fucked". I send my donations to anything that will help preserve nature because, well, it eventually affects every other thing with a very long term effect. What the Dominionists have to say about this: (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:10PM (#54801095) Good, good, all is going according to His Plan; the Apocalypse is not far off, now. 'He' will return to us soon, and shortly thereafter the Faithful will be taken Home, and we can leave this terrible Earth behind. Assholes. SJW (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:32PM (#54801283) The reporter, Tatiana Schossberg, is Caroline Kennedy's daughter, possibly having some relationship to why she has a job at the NY Times. Her NY Times reports have generally been extremely biased and cherry-picked in reporting on environmental issues. Although she reports on "science," her degrees are in history. She is 27 years old. If the Anmials dont survive neither will we. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:39PM (#54801347) Were are doomed. Headline and article alignment? (Score:2) by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:40PM (#54801357) Journal Era of 'Biological Annihilation' Is Underway possible mass extinction of species all over the world may be imminent So let me get this straight. It is possible that mass extinction may be imminent (meaning: it is not happening now, and we're not sure it will). Thus we have biological annihilation already underway. Somehow those two don't quite align... Methinks the headline isn't just clickbait, but outright #FakeNews?Re:Headline and article alignment? (Score:2) by courteaudotbiz ( 1191083 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @03:53PM (#54803019) Homepage It's not fake news. It's called giving too much air time to a guy that has predicted completely cranky, scatty theories about the end of the world as we know it, yet nothing he has said has come any close to his predictions. This story completely discredits the New York Times as a mainstream, supposedly serious media. Aren't these journalists supposed to do some very basic facts checking before publishing such a rubbish paper? Arrogant anti-humans (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:43PM (#54801387) The planet is in flux, whenever things change there are winners and there are losers, that is part of the concept called natural selection. "The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena." So that implies that the human species isn't natural to this planet? Everything humans do is 'natural' since we are children of this planet like all the other living things on this planet. Species that modify the environment around them are not new and humans are not unique in doing that. The scale might be bigger than other species, but there is no proof that we are the only species in the history of the planet that has been able to change it on the scale you see today. To say that other species don't destroy the environment isn't true. An example is Locus plagues, they kill everything in their path, literally. And the forests, the savanna's the oceans are modified drastically by the species that live there. Hell, even the plant's change the environment around them. I refuse to take any responsibility for species that don't survive, can't cope and die off due to their lack of ability to adapt. It is THEIR responsibility to change with the times, to progress and evolve, not my responsibility to make them change. Re:Arrogant anti-humans (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:34PM (#54803909) With other species, suicide cult isn't an option. Grow up (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @12:51PM (#54801449) This extinction is a natural phenomenon too. How are we special? Because we're God's chosen ones? HAHAHAHAHAHA! More BS (Score:2) by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @01:56PM (#54802023) If it is caused by man, then explain why BEFORE man, many species have come and gone. And even if man were NOT here, many species will go. More crap to stir up the government educated lDIOTS that can't think for themselves, but continue to spout 30 second sound bites...because that is all they know. Re:More BS (Score:2) by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @05:58PM (#54804089) Of course there's species coming and going all the time. The problem we've got now is a lot of species going very rapidly. Lots of things are fine at normal levels but not when vastly accelerated. Errr: wrecking the food chain via insecticides? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13, 2017 @06:44PM (#54804427) When I was young, not 40 years ago, an evening drive would involve endless bugs smashing into the windscreen, and a walk in the country would involve endless insect-eating birds singing from the hedgetops. Nowadays, our farmers use insecticides. It is quiet out there. The Food Chain is as strong as its weakest link. Not? (Score:2) by UsuallyReasonable ( 2715457 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @08:00PM (#54805035) You lost me at "Paul Ehrlich is not an alarmist."