Well then, let me address each of your points one by one so you no longer are able to disingenuously accuse me of avoiding them.
The problem with man's activities when compared with nature is the Degree imo.
Agreed. Nature is far more devastating to its inhabitants as a result of volcanism, multiple yearly hurricanes, lightning strike induced forest fires, earthquakes, and multi thousand year long periods of glaciation, ALL OF WHICH HAVE OCCURRED THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND BEFORE THE WHITE MAN (and Woman) HIT THESE SHORES.
Hunting by predators takes place in both nature and humans.......
Absolutely. Many is a predator who currently stands at the top of the food chain. And like many other predators who have been pushed aside by more powerful competing species, man has pushed aside other predators as he as adapted and modified his environment. But man is so powerful a predator that he has the option of NOT causing the destruction of the competition. A grizzly bear could care less if he chased away every wolf in sight who might compete for the same prey. Mankind is different in that we can make a rational choice NOT to cause extinction and, in fact, assist in preserving competing predators.
In nature large numbers of species are not hunted to the point of extinction over short periods of time . This does not allow new species to evolve.
Maybe so, but nature is also a precarious balancing act. Too many predators born and not enough prey and both may become extinct. This could be the result of disease or a climate change such as a glaciation. Obviously many creatures had a tough time evolving to meet the Ice Age, hence the reason why so many became extinct at that time. Additionally, nature sometimes inflicts global disasters such as the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and there is no guarantee that this won't happen again.... Maybe next week, in fact... :0)
Most damaging of all human activities is causing loss of habitat.
Actually, that's quite incorrect. Animals adapt to whatever habitat that they can find food in. Mankind is not "paving the earth", but reconfiguring it and altering the existing habitat to accomodate his needs. Have the deer disappeared? NO!!.. Look at the DC area and especially New Jersey, where not only are they more deer than anyone can remember in recent history, but also more and more bear sightings, as well as coyotes attacks on sheep herds and some humans. The near extinction of the coyotes primary predator, the grey wolf, has led to the coyote extending its territory from the NW US to almost every corner of the country.
desertusa.com
And furthermore, there is no greater devastator of natural habitat than an encroaching mile high ice sheet, destroying anything that stands in its way, ripping up soil to the bedrock and pushing it ahead into massive terminal moraines, finger lakes, and drumlins.
And as a result of glaciations, wildlife was faced with floods such as Lake Bonneville some 15,000 years ago, which resulted in the carving out of the Snake River canyon as the water inundated the Snake River Valley plain:
raven.umnh.utah.edu
raven.umnh.utah.edu
wapi.isu.edu
wapi.isu.edu
Wild lands being put into production for farm land, homes or industry. Yes some lands are lost through natural disasters but it's the scale and speed that counts.
Nothing man has ever built has proven invulnerable to erosion or any other of nature's slow grinding destructive forces. In fact, the only thing that can defy erosion that I know of is a diamond. Nature is not constant. It is creating and destroying "wild lands" all the time itself. And since mankind has every reason to maintain an equilibrium that prevents inordinate climatic changes, we may yet see technology and science provide the answers that could prevent the onset of another ice-age. (Of course, this kind of terra-forming and climate control is some decades away and would be controversial in its own right).
World wide pollution such as oil spills have devastated local ecosystems again on a scale that is unprecedented nature.
Ever been to the La Brea Tarpits? Ever seen the Athabasca Tar sands in Alberta? Every heard of massive releases of frozen methane from the ocean floor? Have you ever heard of double hulled tankers? Ever heard of bacteria that scientists naturally discovered who THRIVE on crude oil?
As nasty and destructive as they may seem over the short term (several years), few oil spills have resulted in permanent extinction of entire major species. And the light ends vaporize into the air, while the heavy crude forms tar balls and sinks to the ocean floors where it is eventually covered with sediments. And NO oil company wishes to 1.) lose a ship and/or crew, 2.) face the fury of the environmentalists 3.) or bare the expense of a clean-up (wiping rocks with rags for $17 buck an hour).
And furthermore, oil companies spend HUGE QUANTITIES OF MONEY caring for and protecting wildlife. Look at the North Slope of Alaska where there has been no major oil spill and the arctic caribou are protected in a way that may not have occurred without the oil companies. It's a nice quid pro quo that has EMMENSE BENEFITS for wildlife as well.
Over fishing our oceans have driven many species of fish to the brink of if not actual extinction.
Large areas around Japan have such reduced fish stocks that the Japanese must come to our shores to satisfy their huge appetite for fish.
Absolutely agree with you. And this is why the US has had so many battles with Japanese and Russian fishing trawlers poaching inside the 200 mile commercial fishing limits.
There needs to be more emphasis placed on aquaculture or having the fishing industry fund the creation of hatcheries who nurse commercially fished species through their initial stages of life and then release them into nature. This has worked well with trout farming/fishing in the pacific northwest where many lakes are stocked with hatchery fish.
For this purpose the Federal Govt has created any number of various laws to govern commercial fishing:
nationalfisherman.com
So it ain't like we're being negligent in passing laws against fishing abuses or promoting conservation.
And here's a link that discusses how aquaculture now contributes 16% of total harvest, a percentage that I would have expected to be FAR lower:
wri.org
When in nature do you see the equivalent of multiple damns built on large numbers of rivers thus preventing species form their spawning grounds on any of these rivers.
I dunno... I'd have to ask all of those beavers we trapped and skinned several hundred years ago. But then again, maybe that's how river trout became lake trout... :0)
Besides, haven't you ever heard of fish ladders? Or maybe artificially spawning salmon in accessible rivers so that their "memory" is implanted with their new birthplace?
Btw, in the Lake Bonneville article they mentioned how the now extinct "giant beaver" once flourished around that lake. What happened to it? That was before a White Mountainman ever saddled up to a "roudezvous" or bothered to name the Grand Teton mountains after a woman's mammary glands.
There of course have been extinctions in nature but again the scale and speed resulting from human activities which is not allowing new species to adapt and come into being replacing what has been lost.
Saying "there of course have been extinctions in nature" sounds like your trying to downplay the devastation and constant stress that nature places on its creatures, while emphasizing those of mankind as being far more grievous. That is simply not true. In fact, nature does very little to protect it's endangered species (that's why they are endagered in the first place.. :0) But mankind will protect tiny little fish called Snail Darters, which may very well have been on the path to natural extinction in the first place, so now man has interrupted the natural course of events once again).
Before the white man came to America a squirrel could have traveled from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi without ever touching the ground.
That simply makes no sense at all. For one thing, squirrels spend endless amounts of time on the ground looking for nuts and seeds. They have no interest in spending all of their time in the trees, and can easily move from one grove to another. I know, I see squirrels EVERYWHERE, including all of the little foraging buggers that were mooching off of me in Lafayette park this afternoon (in front of the White House). Squirrels are incredibly adaptable.
And as I stated in a previous post, there is MORE forested land in the US today than existed 100 years ago, certainly on the east coast. A lot of farmland has been reconverted into forest.. with lots of very tall trees for the squirrles to frolick in (as well as the deer ticks, and spiders, and snakes.. :0)
Yes I know the ice ages resulted in similar conditions. But these took place over long periods of time allowing wild life to adapt
See above
......And they were eventually reversed ....
They were??!! I guess that means that the Great Lakes have drained, the drumlins have flattened and all of those massive valleys that were carved out from the living rock have been rebuilt.
MAJOR AND IRREVERSIBLE habitat alterations were created by the Ice Age. Major species that once existed in great quantities now are only found in natural history museums as fossil displays.
There was no reversal of environmental damage, but rather merely a recovery that required thousands of years, erasing some species from the land, while bringing others to the forefront, one of those being mankind.
The Amazonian rain forests that lasted over one hundred million years are being destroyed faster than evolution can replace them with more adaptive species
I certainly won't disagree that devastation is taking place in the Amazon. But then again, you can't say that the rain forest is 100 million years old, especially after we saw the meteor that devastated the planet 65 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs and covered the planet in what can only be called a massive "nuclear winter", and essentially reorganized the entire ecological system in a way that brought mammals to the top of the food chain. So get your facts straight and stop the hyperbole.
The only way you will stop the burning and cutting of the Amazon is to provide those people with the means of making a living other than slash and burn agriculture (which btw, the indians also practiced before the white man every stepped in this continent). It is statistically proven that industrialized societies have a lower birth rate than non-industrialized societies. In fact, in Europe and the US, we're close to a zero population growth.
Bottom line is that because of multiple human related causes at the same time we are seeing extinctions on a scale not seen since the demise of the Dinosaurs.
So you're equating the current rate of extinctions to that of a massive meteor strike that sent a 1,000 foot tidal wave hundreds of miles in every direction, and left a fine layer of Iridium over the entire planet's surface (the KT boundary)
Bottom line... we, as industrialized humans are not responsible for nearly the amount of ecological devastation as the poorer nations. So unless you would like the 1st world economies to undertake a massive genocide of the developing world population, you'd better figure out a way to educate them to take care of their natural resouces.
Regards,
Ron |
