🚀 go-pugleaf

    Thumper! said on 20 Oct 94  10:34:29 
      about: Re: Disaster! (was Cal Desert Bill passes!)....
 
 Th> From: thumper@netcom.com (Thumper!)
 Th> What is the enviornmental impact of people using beaches and pleases
 Th> like  Marina del Rey?

 Th> I bet it's very substantial.

 Th> And here's a real good question for you.  Why is converting the desert
 Th> to  something else so wrong?

  That is a good philosophical question.  The answer is one of values.
  To correctly make the proper judgment however, one must be dealing
  first with factual information.  Factual information is not a matter
  of opinion.  Or, at least it is derived from the best knowledge that
  human civilization has to offer.  We must remember that scientific
  method yielded the absolute truth one billion times in a row in order
  to get men walking on the moon.

  It is also important to remember that life itself first "rusted" the
  entire planet making it possible for terrestrial life to exist.  Life
  itself is responsible for the air we breath, the ozone layer in the 
  stratosphere, even a large chunk of the Earth's crust.  We do not
  exist independent on a barren stone, but are utterly dependant on
  the biosphere we live in and the critters who make it.

  It is obvious to see how if all the insects were extinguished,
  civilization, life as we know it, and perhaps even the human species 
  would not last a decade.
  But a big question is; what if there is something or some system 
  not so obvious that we are dependant on???   And what if we 
  accidentally kill it?

 Th> Hell, think about it.  The dinosaurs didn't ruin their enviornment,
 Th> and they  are still dead.  Man had nothing to do with it.

  Quite true!
  
  What do you think of the opinion of many biologists that Man may have 
  triggered, or is triggering the worst mass extinction ever?  This, the
  facts seem to bear out.  (_World of Biology_, fourth edition)  Once
  triggered, mass extinctions are like the snowball effect, unstoppable,
  unpredictable and species indiscriminate as interdependent species go
  extinct like ripples from a single stone tossed in a pool, bouncing
  back and fourth off the edges, in some areas the reflected waves 
  combining into waves taller than the original wave. 

 Th> 25 species become extinct every day no what what.

  That estimate is close enough to be quite usable.

  Actually, the best estimates are in the range of 74 species a day.
  But we must put this in perspective if we are to draw valid conclusions 
  from it.   This is 27,000 species a year.  This is 2,700,000 per hundred 
  years or 27 million per thousand years.  The dinosaur etc,etc,etc 
  mass extinction of 65 million years ago lasted for tens of thousands 
  of years, perhaps a million.  (Harvard's E.O. Wilson and wide consensus)

  27 million is in the ballpark estimate of all species currently in
  existence.  Normal background extinction (and evolution) rates 
  according to the fossil record are estimated at 12 to 30 species 
  per year.

  I hope a careful analysis of these facts will help answer your question.
  --Doug


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