5 ms·

Humans being the cause is speculation, not fact. It's worth looking into the alternative theories and making your own judgment based on available evidence.

thrown_22 5y ago
The alternative is that all mega fauna survived a dozen ice ages over the last 5 million years, only for all of them to go extinct when fully modern humans finally invent agriculture by sheer coincidence.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  > Why is Africa, the place where humans have been the longest, teeming with megafauna? Because they evolved with us and evolved to respect the threat we pose.
  - meristohm 5y ago
    Yeah, and I think this is noted in The Old Way, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Why is Africa, the place where humans have been the longest, teeming with megafauna relative to the rest of the world? Why did megafauna die out in regions where there was little to no human presence? Maybe the environmental conditions that allowed for humans to invent agriculture also spelled doom for the megafauna. If the world of relevant scientists agree that this is an open problem, it doesn't make sense to just pretend like we know the answer because it suits us in whatever manner. The fact is: We don't know what killed off the megafauna.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    We do in some cases though. The bison in the US were definitely killed off by European settlers. Rhinos in Africa were killed off for asian medicinal customers.
  - thrown_22 5y ago
    >The fact is: We don't know what killed off the megafauna. We also don't know that gravity works. All we know is that when we drop things they tend to end up on the floor. There have been enough experiments of isolated islands and continents being colonized by humans and having all their large animals go extinct within a century that the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science. The only reason to claim that humans are not the cause is an emotional one: to pretend that we have been at peace with nature in some mythical past. The alternative, that modern humans have always been an ecological disaster wherever they went, is not something that's palatable to many in the West since it means the noble savage wasn't.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      > There have been enough experiments of isolated islands and continents being colonized by humans and having all their large animals go extinct within a century that the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science. Come on
      - darkerside 5y ago
        > the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science I will double down and die on this hill. You cannot compare your confidence in this theory to the fundamental physical laws.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      So the vast majority of scientists who study this field are all enamored with an obviously false emotional claim, and are all crappy scientists. Except for you - who knows what really happened tens of thousands of years ago, because your gut tells you so.
    - Terry_Roll 5y ago
      So gravity fluctuates, I think in the 70's it was a little stronger, but the force changes depending on where you are on the planet anyway. Saying that, if we are 10,000 years into a Mass Extinction, how many more years before we can start gene editing to bring back extinct animals like the Dodo? I dont think we are more than a decade or two away from that, plus we are also now able to grow meat. Sure we havent solved the nuclear radiation problem for energy, but fusion seems to be close, I think the longest experiment was China running a fusion experiment for just over 15minutes. So are we at the point where some of us can now actually play God!?!
  - richardw 5y ago
    Take all the elephants and lions and giraffe in Africa. Put them in North America. Where are they safe? A few reserves maybe. In Africa they do mostly fine because there is a lot of undeveloped land. Develop the land and give a population a use for space, megafauna disappear. That’s what’s happening all over Africa now. When Europeans arrived in the US, the climate stayed reasonably static for a long time but the animals disappeared. Is there another reason except humans?
    - mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
      I agree that 'the climate stayed reasonably static' in comparison to the ice ages, which is what the above thread is discussing. But what's fascinating is that the arrival of Europeans in the US is hypothesized by some to have led to a dramatic cooling event called the "Little Ice Age". Quoting from the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Decreased_human_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Decreased_human... Other researchers have supported depopulation in the Americas as a factor and have asserted that humans cleared considerable amounts of forest to support agriculture in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans brought on a population collapse.[134][135] Richard Nevle, Robert Dull and colleagues further suggested that not only anthropogenic forest clearance played a role in reducing the amount of carbon sequestered in Neotropical forests but also that human-set fires played a central role in reducing biomass in Amazonian and Central American forests before the arrival of the Europeans and the concomitant spread of diseases during the Columbian exchange.[136][137][138] Dull and Nevle calculated that reforestation in the tropical biomes of the Americas alone from 1500 to 1650 accounted for net carbon sequestration of 2-5 Pg.[137] Brierley conjectured that the European arrival in the Americas caused mass deaths from epidemic disease, which caused much abandonment of farmland. That caused much forest to return, which sequestered greater levels of carbon dioxide.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  Are you certain there weren't changes in abiotic factors that coincided with the rise and expansion of modern humans?
meristohm 5y ago
“Looking into alternative theories and making your own judgement” seems like code for “there are ways around uncomfortable feelings”. I accept we are absolutely brutal animals who have significantly altered Earth’s environment and the other life here which, per Darwin, differs by degree rather than by kind. I don’t feel guilty about our past, and I accept my responsibility to do better (within my learned and adopted value-system where ecological diversity is important for resilience during inevitable change, and where the human story carries on unbroken for some arbitrary length of time. That seems meaningful, and maybe the best way is through culture and oral tradition?). It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, and important to decide what to do next.
kuhewa 5y ago
This is one of those topics I am more familiar with, and as such the number of users sharing superficial speculation as fact makes me wonder if the same is true on the topics I am not as familiar with.

thrown_22 5y ago

The alternative is that all mega fauna survived a dozen ice ages over the last 5 million years, only for all of them to go extinct when fully modern humans finally invent agriculture by sheer coincidence.

cultofmetatron 5y ago
> Why is Africa, the place where humans have been the longest, teeming with megafauna? Because they evolved with us and evolved to respect the threat we pose.
- meristohm 5y ago
  Yeah, and I think this is noted in The Old Way, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Why is Africa, the place where humans have been the longest, teeming with megafauna relative to the rest of the world? Why did megafauna die out in regions where there was little to no human presence? Maybe the environmental conditions that allowed for humans to invent agriculture also spelled doom for the megafauna. If the world of relevant scientists agree that this is an open problem, it doesn't make sense to just pretend like we know the answer because it suits us in whatever manner. The fact is: We don't know what killed off the megafauna.
- colordrops 5y ago
  We do in some cases though. The bison in the US were definitely killed off by European settlers. Rhinos in Africa were killed off for asian medicinal customers.
- thrown_22 5y ago
  >The fact is: We don't know what killed off the megafauna. We also don't know that gravity works. All we know is that when we drop things they tend to end up on the floor. There have been enough experiments of isolated islands and continents being colonized by humans and having all their large animals go extinct within a century that the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science. The only reason to claim that humans are not the cause is an emotional one: to pretend that we have been at peace with nature in some mythical past. The alternative, that modern humans have always been an ecological disaster wherever they went, is not something that's palatable to many in the West since it means the noble savage wasn't.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    > There have been enough experiments of isolated islands and continents being colonized by humans and having all their large animals go extinct within a century that the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science. Come on
    - darkerside 5y ago
      > the two are as correlated as anything we can expect in science I will double down and die on this hill. You cannot compare your confidence in this theory to the fundamental physical laws.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    So the vast majority of scientists who study this field are all enamored with an obviously false emotional claim, and are all crappy scientists. Except for you - who knows what really happened tens of thousands of years ago, because your gut tells you so.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    So gravity fluctuates, I think in the 70's it was a little stronger, but the force changes depending on where you are on the planet anyway. Saying that, if we are 10,000 years into a Mass Extinction, how many more years before we can start gene editing to bring back extinct animals like the Dodo? I dont think we are more than a decade or two away from that, plus we are also now able to grow meat. Sure we havent solved the nuclear radiation problem for energy, but fusion seems to be close, I think the longest experiment was China running a fusion experiment for just over 15minutes. So are we at the point where some of us can now actually play God!?!
- richardw 5y ago
  Take all the elephants and lions and giraffe in Africa. Put them in North America. Where are they safe? A few reserves maybe. In Africa they do mostly fine because there is a lot of undeveloped land. Develop the land and give a population a use for space, megafauna disappear. That’s what’s happening all over Africa now. When Europeans arrived in the US, the climate stayed reasonably static for a long time but the animals disappeared. Is there another reason except humans?
  - mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
    I agree that 'the climate stayed reasonably static' in comparison to the ice ages, which is what the above thread is discussing. But what's fascinating is that the arrival of Europeans in the US is hypothesized by some to have led to a dramatic cooling event called the "Little Ice Age". Quoting from the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Decreased_human_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Decreased_human... Other researchers have supported depopulation in the Americas as a factor and have asserted that humans cleared considerable amounts of forest to support agriculture in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans brought on a population collapse.[134][135] Richard Nevle, Robert Dull and colleagues further suggested that not only anthropogenic forest clearance played a role in reducing the amount of carbon sequestered in Neotropical forests but also that human-set fires played a central role in reducing biomass in Amazonian and Central American forests before the arrival of the Europeans and the concomitant spread of diseases during the Columbian exchange.[136][137][138] Dull and Nevle calculated that reforestation in the tropical biomes of the Americas alone from 1500 to 1650 accounted for net carbon sequestration of 2-5 Pg.[137] Brierley conjectured that the European arrival in the Americas caused mass deaths from epidemic disease, which caused much abandonment of farmland. That caused much forest to return, which sequestered greater levels of carbon dioxide.
kuhewa 5y ago
Are you certain there weren't changes in abiotic factors that coincided with the rise and expansion of modern humans?

meristohm 5y ago

“Looking into alternative theories and making your own judgement” seems like code for “there are ways around uncomfortable feelings”. I accept we are absolutely brutal animals who have significantly altered Earth’s environment and the other life here which, per Darwin, differs by degree rather than by kind. I don’t feel guilty about our past, and I accept my responsibility to do better (within my learned and adopted value-system where ecological diversity is important for resilience during inevitable change, and where the human story carries on unbroken for some arbitrary length of time. That seems meaningful, and maybe the best way is through culture and oral tradition?). It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, and important to decide what to do next.

kuhewa 5y ago

This is one of those topics I am more familiar with, and as such the number of users sharing superficial speculation as fact makes me wonder if the same is true on the topics I am not as familiar with.