Is Civilization A Bad Idea?

[exploited]

[eynon81]

[Spider]

[eric]

[John Galt]

[The Dharma Bum]

Loss of 50% of the extent wildlife in the lastcentury is to be taken in terms of raw biomass, not a value that represents 50% of known species

also the holocene extinction began long before 1500 so that is not an complete accounting of all the species humanity has extincted

[John Galt]

first you said within the last 40 years. now it's last century? and now you say it's "biomass". i see. do you have a link? the numbers i took were from wikipedia's entries on mass extinctions.

you still stipulate that 5 million species will be extinct within a 100 years? are you expecting multiple comet strikes at the same time or something?

and yes, humans have led to the extinction of a few dozen megafauna at the end of the last ice age, or at least put pressures on them that contributed. but since 1500 human populations have exploded and would put even greater pressure. the number is still 875, but perhaps it's about 950 known then, including all of human history. obviously others would have gone extinct while protohumans were around, but i don't think you can reasonable attribute loss of say, whale species, when humans didn't know how to make boats

[The Dharma Bum]

You don't have to completely eradicate a species to remove a significant portion of the earths biomass.

Some species, such as insects or plants, contain such large numbers of individuals you could eradicate trillions of tons of biomass and significant numbers would remain.

other species, such as honey bees, perform important functions. While bees aren't extinct yet, they have had a significant enough decline that it is causing major problems for humans because we are in a symbiotic relationship with bees and the crops they pollinate.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]