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Now, try to focus.
This is hardly about "fear mongers."
This is about a philosophy that has demanded that one believe that man controls everything that happens...in this case, to the planet.
In short, you have been manipulated by the same kind of folks who have organized the revolutionary clubs and take oaths to a new humanocentric religion, the Cult of Reason (which is French for People for the American Way).
No, it isn't. I think you're HYPER-focused on making sure that your particular biases are treated as if they're absolute truth. Why should we think your philosophy is any more correct? Apparently we have to have "faith" that we aren't doing to the planet, which really isn't science and has no place in the discussion.
Yes, yes...the claim of 'science,' or 'reason,' or....philosophy?
At the risk of being redundant, you must do some reading, study.
Your views echo that earlier revolution...the one that went so well...
1. Frances new leaders fishmongers, cobblers, butchers, and lots of lawyers and journalists- set out to invent a new, nonreligious calendar. It began with Year 1, witch was really 1972, and had 12 30-day months based on reason and nature. Each month was three 10-day weeks.
a. Has any reform been more futile? The Governments arrogant discard of Christianity means that weeks have been extended to ten days instead of seven. The revisions intent is to supplant the papal calendar with a uniform alternative of twelve months of thirty days each, based on the system of ancient Egypt. Bibles themselves were torn up to make paper gun cartridges in the grim days of 1793, and now the biblical week has been guillotined, each month instead divided into three decades of ten days, with the year, with the year beginning at the autumn equinox and five to six holidays added to balance idealism with our solar orbit. Not content with regimenting the calendar, the government has introduced a new metric system for weight and measure. There are even proposals for a new clock of precisely 100,000 seconds each day. Reason, reason!...The new calendar is the kind of logical idea imposed by clever people that completely ignores habit, emotion, and human nature and thus forecasts the Revolutions doom. From the novel Napoleon Pyramids, by William Dietrich
While written in a novel, it is clearly well research, as all the charges are true.
b. Napoleon abolished the French Revolutionary Calendar on January 1, 1806.
Of course, your 'science' is just as tenuous. It will be rejected, as well, but sadly, will be replaced by other nonsense....because there are folks easily led.
If the shoe fits....
Do these fools really think because we just classified these creatures that they are new?
There is only one species that is the biggest concern and its man.
If you dont understand that all life on the planet is connected in some way then you have no idea what Cannary in a coal mine means.
Exactly.
First, nobody is claiming that we will wipe all life off of earth. Just another dingbat strawman from the wingnut section. In fact, we are not claiming that it will even wipe out mankind. However, it will make a much harder existance for our descendents.
The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Current Extinction Rate
Branosky et al. find that over the past 1,000 years, the average extinction rate is 24 E/MSY (13x background). Breaking the data into 1-year bins, the maximum extinction rate over that period is approximatley 693 E/MSY (385x background). Clearly these values far exceed the background rate. And the worst case scenario, if all currently threatened species go extinct, results in a clear divergence from the natural extinction rate:
"In the scenario where currently threatened species would ultimately go extinct even in as much as a thousand years, the resulting rates would far exceed any reasonable estimation of the upper boundary for variation related to interval length"
The authors also find that the extinctions over the past 500 years are happening at least as fast as the species extinctions which triggered the Big Five:
"Current extinction rates for mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles, if calculated over the last 500 years (a conservatively slow rate) are faster than (birds, mammals, amphibians, which have 100% of species assessed) or as fast as (reptiles, uncertain because only 19% of species are assessed) all rates that would have produced the Big Five extinctions over hundreds of thousands or millions of years"
They understand but little and yap very much.
First, nobody is claiming that we will wipe all life off of earth. Just another dingbat strawman from the wingnut section. In fact, we are not claiming that it will even wipe out mankind. However, it will make a much harder existance for our descendents.
The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Current Extinction Rate
Branosky et al. find that over the past 1,000 years, the average extinction rate is 24 E/MSY (13x background). Breaking the data into 1-year bins, the maximum extinction rate over that period is approximatley 693 E/MSY (385x background). Clearly these values far exceed the background rate. And the worst case scenario, if all currently threatened species go extinct, results in a clear divergence from the natural extinction rate:
"In the scenario where currently threatened species would ultimately go extinct even in as much as a thousand years, the resulting rates would far exceed any reasonable estimation of the upper boundary for variation related to interval length"
The authors also find that the extinctions over the past 500 years are happening at least as fast as the species extinctions which triggered the Big Five:
"Current extinction rates for mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles, if calculated over the last 500 years (a conservatively slow rate) are faster than (birds, mammals, amphibians, which have 100% of species assessed) or as fast as (reptiles, uncertain because only 19% of species are assessed) all rates that would have produced the Big Five extinctions over hundreds of thousands or millions of years"
This paragraph alone illustrates the complete bankruptcy of thought and the inability to think critically about these issues.
A more brilliant example of pseudo science at work would be harder to find. And allways remember class whenever the conmen are using words like they are covering themselves. Scientists (well real scientists anyway) use words like "will", "will not", "can not", "must". Do you see the difference?
Real science tells you what you will see. It tells you that if X is done Y will be the result. Not if Z is done A may be the result....see the difference?
First, nobody is claiming that we will wipe all life off of earth. Just another dingbat strawman from the wingnut section. In fact, we are not claiming that it will even wipe out mankind. However, it will make a much harder existance for our descendents.
The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Current Extinction Rate
Branosky et al. find that over the past 1,000 years, the average extinction rate is 24 E/MSY (13x background). Breaking the data into 1-year bins, the maximum extinction rate over that period is approximatley 693 E/MSY (385x background). Clearly these values far exceed the background rate. And the worst case scenario, if all currently threatened species go extinct, results in a clear divergence from the natural extinction rate:
"In the scenario where currently ‘threatened’ species would ultimately go extinct even in as much as a thousand years, the resulting rates would far exceed any reasonable estimation of the upper boundary for variation related to interval length"
The authors also find that the extinctions over the past 500 years are happening at least as fast as the species extinctions which triggered the Big Five:
"Current extinction rates for mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles, if calculated over the last 500 years (a conservatively slow rate) are faster than (birds, mammals, amphibians, which have 100% of species assessed) or as fast as (reptiles, uncertain because only 19% of species are assessed) all rates that would have produced the Big Five extinctions over hundreds of thousands or millions of years"
This paragraph alone illustrates the complete bankruptcy of thought and the inability to think critically about these issues.
A more brilliant example of pseudo science at work would be harder to find. And allways remember class whenever the conmen are using words like they are covering themselves. Scientists (well real scientists anyway) use words like "will", "will not", "can not", "must". Do you see the difference?
Real science tells you what you will see. It tells you that if X is done Y will be the result. Not if Z is done A may be the result....see the difference?
Yeah, I see the difference, but the problem is the exceprt you cited DOES NOT contain "could", "may" or "perhaps". The article uses phrases like "WOULD go extinct". That's pretty strong, as you say science should be. Makes me wonder what article you are commenting on?!?!
Of course you don't even bother to address the point I highlighted either. Care to explain why it is relevent?
Today, there are still only around 250,000 known fossil species. This might seem a lot, but since virtually all plant and animal species that have ever lived on the earth are extinct, it in fact only represents a small subset of the estimated 4 billion species that have lived in the geologic past.
In addition, the fossil record has many holes, making it impossible to count every species that evolved and subsequently disappeared, perhaps, scientists believe, some 99 percent of all species that have ever existed.
Likewise, a different set of data problems complicates counting modern extinctions.
Dating of the fossil record also is not very precise, Marshall said.
"If we find a mass extinction, we have great difficulty determining whether it was a 'bad weekend' or it occurred over a decade or 10,000 years," he said.
"But without the fossil record, we have no scale to measure the significance of the impact we're having."
"Instead of calculating a single death rate, we estimated the range of plausible rates for mass extinctions from the fossil record, and compared it to where we are now," Marshall said, explaining how researchers got around this limitation.
I just love how cavalierly the science for this extinction biz just spouts off crap like:
"""Branosky et al. find that over the past 1,000 years, the average extinction rate is 24 E/MSY (13x background). """"
How much of the earth was biologically surveyed 1000 years ago? And even going from fossil records you run into knotty little problems like:
Lab Times online: Editorial - From Origins to Extinction - A Brief History of Extinction (1)
Today, there are still only around 250,000 known fossil species. This might seem a lot, but since virtually all plant and animal species that have ever lived on the earth are extinct, it in fact only represents a small subset of the estimated 4 billion species that have lived in the geologic past.
Which makes sense since in general slime molds and many plants don't leave too many trails.
It's one of those silly number deals that trick the eco-left time and time again. A complex problem boiled downed to ONE NUMBER like for instance "Global Mean Temperature". What does "extinction rate" imply? It implies that you know the AGGREGATE rate for ALL species at that moment in time.
It doesn't say extinction rate of KNOWN species because certainly we KNOW more species now than in 1066AD. And we probably knew more species in 1066AD than we know now from the entire fossil..
Sorry -- doesn't pass the smelll test. Let's LEARN to catalogue and track CURRENT extinction rates and biodiversity and NOT PRETEND that we can relate that to 10,000,000 years ago OR even 1000 year ago..
If I'm wrong on being EXTREMEMLY skeptical about the methods.. PLEASE SET ME STRAIGHT.. But even the scientists writing SCARY papers about the SIXTH MAJOR EXTINCTION aren't quite convincing...
Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction
In addition, the fossil record has many holes, making it impossible to count every species that evolved and subsequently disappeared, perhaps, scientists believe, some 99 percent of all species that have ever existed.
Likewise, a different set of data problems complicates counting modern extinctions.
Dating of the fossil record also is not very precise, Marshall said.
"If we find a mass extinction, we have great difficulty determining whether it was a 'bad weekend' or it occurred over a decade or 10,000 years," he said.
"But without the fossil record, we have no scale to measure the significance of the impact we're having."
"Instead of calculating a single death rate, we estimated the range of plausible rates for mass extinctions from the fossil record, and compared it to where we are now," Marshall said, explaining how researchers got around this limitation.
Fossil record isn't worth shit.. Without the fossil record we have no idea what the CURRENT extinction rate means. Therefore we fudge.. QED ---> sleep well..
This paragraph alone illustrates the complete bankruptcy of thought and the inability to think critically about these issues.
A more brilliant example of pseudo science at work would be harder to find. And allways remember class whenever the conmen are using words like they are covering themselves. Scientists (well real scientists anyway) use words like "will", "will not", "can not", "must". Do you see the difference?
Real science tells you what you will see. It tells you that if X is done Y will be the result. Not if Z is done A may be the result....see the difference?
Yeah, I see the difference, but the problem is the exceprt you cited DOES NOT contain "could", "may" or "perhaps". The article uses phrases like "WOULD go extinct". That's pretty strong, as you say science should be. Makes me wonder what article you are commenting on?!?!
Well the title of the article is "The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway" so I can understand how that would escape you!
Yeah, I see the difference, but the problem is the exceprt you cited DOES NOT contain "could", "may" or "perhaps". The article uses phrases like "WOULD go extinct". That's pretty strong, as you say science should be. Makes me wonder what article you are commenting on?!?!
Well the title of the article is "The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway" so I can understand how that would escape you!
Title only and only "may"? What of the other words you mentioned? We aren't "playing games with the data" are we?
