(December 4, 2010 at 1:14 am)Shell B Wrote:(December 4, 2010 at 1:07 am)Chuck Wrote: The fact seems to be that the current climatological fluctuation in the last 60,000 years is not severe compared to what repeated transpired in the last 2.8 million years. Yet there were no major global extinction events between 2.8 million - 60,000 years, but there is what appears to be a fairly severe global extinction level event starting 60,000 years ago and rapidly picking up pace in the last 12000 years. The spread of modern Homo Sapiens seems to be one major global scale influence that coincided with this latest extinction event. To remove human as the most important agent of interest, one needs to identify another.
Of course, humans shouldn't be removed as a suspect in this mass extinction. Nonetheless, I think it is the scale of the extinction that we are to blame for, not the extinction itself. "Climatological fluctuation" is not the only problem here, either. Invasive species, over-hunting, etc. all have their place among the ways humans wipe out species. I'm actually not as concerned about climate change as I am about habitat destruction.
With regard to at least the current event, I think it would be a mistake to try to separate or else emphasis one thing over another (i.e., climate change from habitat destruction). It seems rather obvious that the two go hand in hand.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
