Did you know that mass extinctions and radical environmental change have been massive catalysts for evolution? The dinosaur extinction allowed mammals to dominate and led to the evolution of human. Humans evolved because the Eastern African forests began drying up into Savannah and apes had to figure out how to live without trees. Extinction isn't necessarily a bad thing.
So you are saying that the International Database is not able to at least make an approximation of natural disasters from the 1900's? "In 1988, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) launched the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Belgian Government. The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. The initiative aims to rationalise decision making for disaster preparedness, as well as provide an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting. EM-DAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of over 22,000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to the present day. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies." https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters#multiple-types-of-disasters Do you think there were NO records of natural disasters before 2000? What about the significant increase from the 50's onward? Where all the researchers watching Leave it to Beaver and not able to keep records?
You really want me to spend time explaining to you the greenhouse effect when you could just as easily google it for yourself. If you were asking me an honest question I may have obliged but I'm not going to waste time explaining something you should already know.
I am glad you do not dispute there have been some extreme weather events in the last decade or so. That's a start I suppose.
If the word population, population density, information collection, reporting and record-keeping were consistent from 1900 to 2014, you'd have a point. They weren't, however.
Yes, I knew that. Mass species extinction is not a good thing. Not if you have to live through it. Thanks for trying to get the thread back to the subject of the op, btw.
The replication crisis is now well documented. Fake Science denial is misinformed. "In fact, the week before the New York Times put the replication crisis on A1, science journalist Christie Aschwanden laid out these facts in great detail in a wonderful article and interactive for FiveThirtyEight. Her piece runs through the many biases, errors, and inefficiencies of modern scientific practice that allow false findings to infiltrate the literature. Researchers can hack their way to spurious conclusions, and they’re incentivized to hide negative results. Journal editors ignore replication failures, and they’re often slow to fix mistakes." SLATE: SCIENCE, Is Science Broken? Or is it self-correcting? By Daniel Engber, Lisa Larson-Walker, AUG. 21 2017. http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...is_not_self_correcting_science_is_broken.html
A pretty good post. In my opinion we have made some progress in some areas but we are regressing and the decline is getting worse as the UN report in the op detailed. So we are losing the battle and losing it badly. I also agree that population pressure and the mismanagement of resources is a good point to start but the reason I keep harping on transforming our economic and political system is because under the current system we are losing the ability to regulate our activity as any regulation is now seen as big government and tyranny and all the other BS that keeps getting thrown out. Just look at what is happening to the EPA under Trump. So, unless you have any other institution but good governance overseen by an informed and educated populace, what other mechanism is there to effect change? The good-will of capitalists? The GND was a good place for a discussion and a mechanism to get more scientific and economic opinions into the debate on how to move forward. I agree about you quote about people who are driven by power, ideology and politics. I think we just see those people from different sides of the spectrum. Do you think the right-wing deregulators and free market fundamentalists are free from these things. (Long weekend up here so I'm going to leave it here for now but I do appreciate you trying to get the thread back to what I was getting at in the op
Ah, the greenhouse effect. No, your answer is sufficient. Please explain to me how we have problems with the greenhouse effect when we are at levels of CO2 that are lower than any time in the planet's history. I'll wait.
As I mentioned before mass extinction can be very good for evolution and a very necessary evil. We won't be here today without it. Species disappear and die all the time. The real problem is that the sun is going to annihilate all life on this planet in several hundred millions years and all the evolution and extinction that happened will all be in vain.
I agree that the scientific community is subject to all the human foibles that any one else is and that the peer review process can be overtaken by cronyism and appeals to authority. It does happen that researchers are subject to bias error and some of them even to promoting false finding through self-interest. But, these are vanishingly few in my opinion. Most scientists understand that they must work as hard as they can to keep their own biases and opinions out of their work which is why studies use controls, double blind tests and statistical analysis in trying to weed out false conclusions and results. That being said it is not a perfect science - but what is the alternative? We believe breathlessly the politically motivated arguments that come from fossil fuel industry think-tanks and blogs? Still, I will give your cite a read because it seems one of those ones that are interesting.
Agree sort of but I don't think we need to worry about hundreds of millions of years from now. I think it is worth trying to protect what we have left now - and we have enough on our plate to do that. So you think that what humans activity is doing to biodiversity should not be of concern because it is inevitable and we are all going to be toasted anyway?
The earth has had ten (counting the current one) warming and cooling cycles since the end of the last ice age. The last three are the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods. IMO there are no species which have gone extinct due to any of these warming cycles. Certainly the have been extinctions but due to warming??
Now what are you blubbering about ? Evidence was given in the OP ..and you were talking some nonsense about - Give me evidence. All I did was point out that evidence had been given. Why are you now rambling on about paying money on the basis of this evidence when this was never stated or inferred.
I think we should only be worrying about how that biodiversity impacts humans. We humans are the only chance life on earth has to survive the next billion years and the route to survival is narrow. Nuclear war, bio-engineered viruses, runaway warming, AI gone wrong, and human-caused environmental disasters all have the potential to wipe is out and possibly doom the planet.
Huh? last time CO2 levels were this high humans Homo Sapiens didn't exist. You keep trying to compare to a time when their wasn't 7 billion people on the planet dependent on a stable climate for their existence. Greenhouse effect is high school science. Even Exxon-Mobile scientists knew we were headed for problems back in the eighties but the disinformation campaign still has some fooled. None of this is even controversial except in the world of right-wing politics.
The most immediate danger is loss of biodiversity, nuclear conflict and climate change in my humble opinion. Yes, we are at a watershed moment in the history of human civilization.. So much potential but so much potential for human growth but so much evidence of human hubris..... We will see what happens.
The claim was that the event was driven by humans. Highly unlikely because the current event began 20,000 years ago. You have any evidence that humans started it?
All of the Algorean answers are never about science, they're always about taxes and wealth distribution. You want to buy some carbon credits? If you do, you'll be given a license to pollute all you want. See how that works?
