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So that's the climate f****d then

P.S. And as for some yet-to-be created species resurrection technology... I can see that we will have the potential to bring back extinct species and might even give it a serious go — it's certainly not unimaginable that a female African elephant could be a surrogate mother impregnated with cell that had mammoth DNA inserted — but that's a huge step away from recreating a functional community of mammoths that interact, breed, flourish in today's environment.

(The mammoth resurrection is just as example. Feel free to substitute dodo or Tasmanian tiger DNA if you'd like a more recent example -- or Siberian tiger DNA if we wipe out that species in 50 years.)

Joe
 
Joe P said:
We're heading towards a biologically impoverished world. Maybe we'll avoid the worst of it, but I doubt that. Tiny bits of progress are offset by giant steps backwards.
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The Biodiversity in the Biosphere in the current age is arguably the most diverse it's ever been.

From a very quick google (as people here demand corroboration)

"it's usually said that biodiversity has come back stronger after every extinction. It's not a bad guess to say that biodiversity is at its highest in modern times, though probably before the industrial revolution"

https://www.quora.com/When-has-biodiversity-peaked

We are heading towards an explosion of life in the Solar system thanks to humans.
 
Tim,

The Biodiversity in the Biosphere in the current age is arguably the most diverse it's ever been.
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And we're also in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, this one of our own doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/270.full

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/world/wild-animals-disappear-report-wwf/index.html

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/biodiversity/

Posted only for corroboration.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Tim,


And we're also in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, this one of our own doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/270.full

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/world/wild-animals-disappear-report-wwf/index.html

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/biodiversity/

Posted only for corroboration.

Joe
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm well aware of that. It's supposed to be the fastest and deepest too. But everything has an upside and the Biosphere will come back stronger than ever.
 
timola said:
The Biodiversity in the Biosphere in the current age is arguably the most diverse it's ever been.

From a very quick google (as people here demand corroboration)

"it's usually said that biodiversity has come back stronger after every extinction. It's not a bad guess to say that biodiversity is at its highest in modern times, though probably before the industrial revolution"
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Just highlighting a bit that maybe Timola overlooked.

That's 250-odd years ago. The great extinction that Joe refers to is a very 20th century phenomenon, ongoing into the 21st.

So when Timola argues about biodiversity 'in the current age' he isn't talking about the here and now (although he may think he is) because I suspect whoever coined that phrase meant the current age to refer to a somewhat broader timescale, ie a geological age.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Just highlighting a bit that maybe Timola overlooked.

That's 250-odd years ago. The great extinction that Joe refers to is a very 20th century phenomenon, ongoing into the 21st.

So when Timola argues about biodiversity 'in the current age' he isn't talking about the here and now (although he may think he is) because I suspect whoever coined that phrase meant the current age to refer to a somewhat broader timescale, ie a geological age.
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250 years doesn't even make sense in evolutionary time scales (or extinction). You'll be arguing for a young Earth next.

That's just a caveat for the worriers. The first 200 years of the Industrial age are negligible in terms of any human damage.
 
Steve,

Listen, if you're going to get all picky and logical and consider facts and put them into context, where would we be? We might as well delete the off-topic room right now.

Joe
 
timola said:
250 years doesn't even make sense in evolutionary time scales (or extinction). You'll be arguing for a young Earth next.

That's just a caveat for the worriers. The first 200 years of the Industrial age are negligible in terms of any human damage.
Click to expand...
See, here's the thing. It takes a lot less time to render a species extinct, than it does to let it evolve. Especially when you go at it on an industrial scale, as we have so often done.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
See, here's the thing. It takes a lot less time to render a species extinct, than it does to let it evolve. Especially when you go at it on an industrial scale, as we have so often done.
Click to expand...

99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct without any help from Humans.
 
Tim,

99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct without any help from Humans.
Click to expand...
If I had a nickel every time someone wrote this without understanding what it means I'd be a zillionaire by now.

Joe
 
Tim,

Here's a good answer from Graeme Lloyd, from London's Natural History Museum.

I realise this seems like a paradox in some ways as the history of life in a general sense has been about ever increasing numbers of species. It might be better to think about this in terms of building a family tree. As you keep on adding extra generations back in time then the number of living members gets increasingly less and less. Of course our great-great grandparents didn't go extinct as such, but the analogy holds for species in that some of them were ancestors of living species, whereas others never had children and so have no living descendants.

So in truth, when we say that 99.9999% of species that have ever existed went extinct we really mean two things. Firstly, most 'types' of organism (animal, plant, fungi, whatever) only last a few million years at most before their way of life becomes outmoded as environments shift or competitors appear. However, 'extinction' can also mean evolution into a totally new form. As the old form (species) disappears this is still an extinction as a particular way of life is lost, although there is still a carry over of genetic material.

Zooming out to look at the bigger picture this means that everything living today is the result of an unbroken sequence of ancestors that goes back at least two billion years. You, me and everyone else on this forum are part of a lucky chain of survivors going back countless generations. Many others didn't make it (even very large groups that are abundant in the fossil record such as the dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites, graptolites etc.) and most scientists agree this is more to do with luck than some inherent superiority of modern forms.​

The important figure is the current rate of extinction relative to the natural background rate. It's difficult to put an exact number on it, but the estimates I've come across from various studies of biodiversity put the current extinction rate somewhere between 100 times to more than 1,000 times that of the natural background rate.

Joe
 
The tree of life analogy, yes I think I understand that and have seen a very fine Attenborough program about it. I have no qualm with the claim that the Biosphere is changing more rapidly than ever before. But if the Earth/life can recover after Millions of years as an ice ball, I don't fear the current change. I'm confident that humans will eventually (sooner than most expect) put things right and seed the solar system with much life (old and new).
 
"All signs point to an Arctic in collapse. Cold air is flooding out of the Arctic, pushing the jet stream far south, putting North America in a highly variable deep freeze that will be seen in a few years as a “last gasp” Arctic “death rattle”. Unfortunately, our climate is highly nonlinear, and we have already crossed thresholds. The Arctic is the Achilles Heel or lynchpin of the entire system, and it is undergoing convulsions."

 
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