🚀 go-pugleaf

You said it - "Extinction generally results from a species' inability to
adapt to rapidly (that is, geologically rapidly) changing environmental
pressures" - and this is the difference between then and now.  It is a case
now of - can our environment adapt to OUR pressures on it, and still retain
its viability?  We have the ability to alter the environment, for which we
had little capacity in the past; but do we have enough wisdom to do this in
a moderate and sensible fashion?  I'd say no, especially when our prime
motivation is crass economics.  But, as King Midas found out, you can't eat
money.  How often nowadays do we hear of villagers being buried in
mud-slides, caused by deforestation in the hillside above?  Just one small
example. Of course, as with nuclear war, some persons might create an
underground shelter (see movie "Blast from the Past") and emerge years later
when the danger is over. But, with total environmental destruction, this
could be millions of years.  Yes, our extinction might be avoided, and some
few cavepeople survive, to scavenge through the garbage heaps; all relics of
an extinct civilization.
There are many examples in the natural world where a species proliferates,
its population grows, only to be decimated by some odd turn of events.  Why
should Homo Sapiens be an exception?  But, provided the environment still
exists, a rise again is possible.  Where the environment, which enabled a
rise in the first place, has gone - then what?
Our anthropocentric viewpoint inhibits objectivity.
=========================
"EarlCox" <earlcox@earlcoxreports.com> wrote in message
news:UGylc.443$zq4.15030@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> Actually I agree with just everything you say. It's simply that there is a
> really big difference between the destruction of a worldwide industrial
> civilization and extinction. We can cut down the rain forests, deplete ore
> deposits, over-fish the oceans, raise the ambient world temperature by six
> degrees (and flood all our coastal cities), detonate tactical fission and
> fusion weapons, release chemical and biological agents, and continue to
> plunge forward through habitat destruction into another Great Extinction
of
> many, many species, but this doesn't necessarily mean that homo sapiens as
a
> species will become extinct. Extinction generally results from a species'
> inability to adapt to rapidly (that is, geologically rapidly) changing
> environmental pressures (and early humans, in the case of the Pleistocene
> magafauna may have been one of those pressures). Our intelligence and our
> self-awareness gives us a tremendous advantage in adaptability.
>
> But I will give you this -- if we make the environment so hostile that
large
> mammals (say above 120 Kg) cannot hang on for a few tens of millennia
(until
> the Earth's natural processes renew the biosphere) then extinction may be
> the final result. Even Sagan's nuclear winter scenario and Kahn's
> speculations on thermonuclear war did not posit the ultimate extinction of
> mankind as a species. I don't want to go too far into this, I have a
follow
> up book to Beyond Humanity coming out, and pat of the book addresses these
> very issues (as well as issues about re-terraforming the earth itself!)
>
> Earl
>
>
> --
>
>
> Earl Cox
> Founder and President
> Scianta Intelligence, LLC
> Turn Knowledge Into Intelligence
> www.scianta.com
>
> AUTHOR:
> "The Fuzzy Systems Handbook" (1994)
> "Fuzzy Logic for Business and Industry" (1995)
>
> "Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds"
> (1996, with Greg Paul, Paleontologist/Artist)
>
> "The Fuzzy Systems Handbook, 2nd Ed." (1998)
> "Machine Intelligence Tools for Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery"
> (due Early Summer 2004)
> ...........