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>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 o

>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!?!
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  The last known specimine of the dodo was stuffed on display at harvard library. It was burnt by a libriarian that thought it was attracting mites. So we have no source of dna to bring it back with last i read.
ncmncm 5y ago
> The only reason to claim that humans are not the cause is an emotional one False. 30+ genera vanished from North America in a geological instant, at the same time as the Clovis culture. Dire wolves, cheetahs, sabertooths, horses, camels, a bear much bigger than the grizzly, woolly mammoths, mastodons. A layer of platinum-enriched dust is left from that instant, with bones below and none above, Clovis points below, none above. Where do you imagine the Clovis people got all that platinum dust, and how did they scatter it all across the continent? And, where did they go after that? Lions survived on the Greek mainland into the classical era, possibly eliminated finally by Romans.

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!?!

citizenpaul 5y ago
The last known specimine of the dodo was stuffed on display at harvard library. It was burnt by a libriarian that thought it was attracting mites. So we have no source of dna to bring it back with last i read.

ncmncm 5y ago

> The only reason to claim that humans are not the cause is an emotional one False. 30+ genera vanished from North America in a geological instant, at the same time as the Clovis culture. Dire wolves, cheetahs, sabertooths, horses, camels, a bear much bigger than the grizzly, woolly mammoths, mastodons. A layer of platinum-enriched dust is left from that instant, with bones below and none above, Clovis points below, none above. Where do you imagine the Clovis people got all that platinum dust, and how did they scatter it all across the continent? And, where did they go after that? Lions survived on the Greek mainland into the classical era, possibly eliminated finally by Romans.