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This doesn't really explain human extinction. Our food supply doesn't come from a natural ecosystem. - Commercial bee populations aren't declining. (There has

This doesn't really explain human extinction. Our food supply doesn't come from a natural ecosystem. - Commercial bee populations aren't declining. (There has been an increase in Colony Collapse Disorder, but lost colonies are replaced and total bee population hasn't declined.) - The vast majority of the world's food supply does not depend on pollination from insects. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...: > The most essential staple food crops on the planet, like corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind-pollinated or self-pollinating. Other staple food crops, like bananas and plantains, are sterile and propagated from cuttings, requiring no pollination of any form, ever. - None of the crops that require pollination from insects are essential to human survival. It's hard to see how their loss could lead to our extinction. - Crops can be pollinated by hand or machine. - Crops can be propagated without seeds. - Crops can be grown in all kinds of unbelievable conditions. Crops can be grown without soil. They can be grown in space stations, completely isolated from Earth's ecosystems. - Extinction is a very strong claim. To support it, it wouldn't be enough, for example, to show that 90% of the population would die off, leaving 750 million people. They need to propose a mechanism by which all humans would die.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Extinction will come from Climate change. And the surge of climate change refugees and subsequent migrations will impact food supply and density.
esarbe 8y ago
If you think that the human food supply will not be affected by a planet-wide ecosystem collapse, you might want to think again. Fertile soil is not just dirt. Talk to a soil expert and you'll find out very quickly how difficult it is to keep soil healthy, especially if you punish it every day with pesticides and herbicides. See you long you can maintain production if you don't have a support system of insects, arachnids, worms, fungi and so on. You'll end up with just dirt. Nothing grows in just dirt. You can try to keep up production by downing it in fertilizer, but in the end you'll just prolong the inevitable; loss of crop and collaps of production. See how many humans you can feed by growing crops in space stations. See how long you can maintain a closed ecosystem in space. To your last point; if you lose more than 30% to 30% of the productive workforce, you can kiss human civilization goodbye; our manufacturing is highly de-centralized, but heavily interdependent and without safety buffer.. Our infrastructure is wide-spread and needs tons of maintenance. Lose enough people and it all comes crashing down, leaving the survivors with broken machinery for which they don't have energy, don't have the knowledge to operate let alone repair if (not when) they stop working. They will also have to deal with all the poison and radioactive fallout from all the fission reactors that experience core-meltdown because nobody's around anymore to power them down over the period of ten years. Don't kid yourself; saving what's left of this earth's ecosystem is the only shot we have. There's not techo-utopia down the road to carry us to eternity and the heat-death of the universe. Its you and me and the rest of us puny humans that will have to do the saving.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

Extinction will come from Climate change. And the surge of climate change refugees and subsequent migrations will impact food supply and density.

esarbe 8y ago

If you think that the human food supply will not be affected by a planet-wide ecosystem collapse, you might want to think again. Fertile soil is not just dirt. Talk to a soil expert and you'll find out very quickly how difficult it is to keep soil healthy, especially if you punish it every day with pesticides and herbicides. See you long you can maintain production if you don't have a support system of insects, arachnids, worms, fungi and so on. You'll end up with just dirt. Nothing grows in just dirt. You can try to keep up production by downing it in fertilizer, but in the end you'll just prolong the inevitable; loss of crop and collaps of production. See how many humans you can feed by growing crops in space stations. See how long you can maintain a closed ecosystem in space. To your last point; if you lose more than 30% to 30% of the productive workforce, you can kiss human civilization goodbye; our manufacturing is highly de-centralized, but heavily interdependent and without safety buffer.. Our infrastructure is wide-spread and needs tons of maintenance. Lose enough people and it all comes crashing down, leaving the survivors with broken machinery for which they don't have energy, don't have the knowledge to operate let alone repair if (not when) they stop working. They will also have to deal with all the poison and radioactive fallout from all the fission reactors that experience core-meltdown because nobody's around anymore to power them down over the period of ten years. Don't kid yourself; saving what's left of this earth's ecosystem is the only shot we have. There's not techo-utopia down the road to carry us to eternity and the heat-death of the universe. Its you and me and the rest of us puny humans that will have to do the saving.