The Holocene Extinction

[Tom_Mazanec]

Platypus on the ‘brink of extinction’
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/platypus-on-the-brink-of-extinction/news-story/379107f4db59ebeca75965a14610d60e

One of Australia’s most-loved mammals, the platypus, is being pushed towards the “brink of extinction” by climate threats and habitat destruction, researchers say.

[Tor Bejnar]

Here's a paper from October 2019 with a map.
A silent demise: Historical insights into population changes of the iconic platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)
Tahneal Hawke, Gilad Bion, Richard T. Kingsford
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00720

Highlights
•    Historical data highlight distribution and abundance declines in iconic platypus.
•    41.4% of sub-catchments have no platypus records in the last 10 years.
•    Shifting baselines has led to the underestimation of the magnitude of platypus declines.

Platypus map from the article.  Fire map from early January 2020.  Maps resized and rotated to approximate east coast match. [[urlhttps://ezgif.com/]EZGIF editor/maker[/url]]

Some of the fires are where platypuses haven't been seen in a decade.

[nanning]

Interesting Tor. Thanks for the creative work.
I think even being responsible for 1 extinction is a terrible burden on one's conscience. The losses of ecosystems and lifeforms are indescribable and unfathomable. Total destruction indeed. 

[TerryM]

Interesting Tor. Thanks for the creative work.
I think even being responsible for 1 extinction is a terrible burden on one's conscience. The losses of ecosystems and lifeforms are indescribable and unfathomable. Total destruction indeed. 

Manifest Destiny - writ large.


Unfortunately it's what our species has been doing since the last Neandertal was lovingly buried by her half breed son.


Personally I miss the Columbian Mammoths, but the list is long & its written in gore.


It's not you, me or "civilization".
We're human - and it's what humans do to their environment.
Terry

[Tom_Mazanec]

TerryM:
It’s probably what any sapient technopilic species would do to their biosphere on any planet.

[dnem]

Tom, there is a whole theory in exobiology that postulates that it will be very hard for us to find any other technophilic life form in the cosmos because technological species likely wink out shortly after they develop technology, so the chance that one is "out there" overlapping in time with our (likely!) short run is very low.

I really like the semantic distinction between technological or technophilic species, versus "intelligent life."  This planet is teeming with intelligent species.  I don't rank H sapiens particularly high among them!

[TerryM]

Tom, there is a whole theory in exobiology that postulates that it will be very hard for us to find any other technophilic life form in the cosmos because technological species likely wink out shortly after they develop technology, so the chance that one is "out there" overlapping in time with our (likely!) short run is very low.

I really like the semantic distinction between technological or technophilic species, versus "intelligent life." This planet is teeming with intelligent species.  I don't rank H sapiens particularly high among them!

Ramen!!
Terry

[nanning]

Re: technological species
as if the humans you describe is all of humanity but that isn't so: Our species has/had many non-technological humans

The aboriginals from Australia weren't a 'technological species', same as most of ancient tribes didn't have technological progress, city's, agriculture and ARMIES (voilently 'conquering') and commerce/profit.

Please face the truth: The violently-all-conquering-civilisation has reached its end-phase and you're still reasoning as if civilisation is all of humanity in stead of no more than a violently expanding and destructive tribe/culture. How can you forget all the non-civilsation tribes/humans troughout pre/history? What an insult that is to all the nature tribes who were violently 'conquered' by civilisation.

Your worldview of humans should incorporate all humans and not just your civilisation culture/tribe.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Even Aboriginals had boomerangs, didgeridoos and other items of technology.

[philopek]

Re: technological species
as if the humans you describe is all of humanity but that isn't so: Our species has/had many non-technological humans

The aboriginals from Australia weren't a 'technological species', same as most of ancient tribes didn't have technological progress, city's, agriculture and ARMIES (voilently 'conquering') and commerce/profit.

Please face the truth: The violently-all-conquering-civilisation has reached its end-phase and you're still reasoning as if civilisation is all of humanity in stead of no more than a violently expanding and destructive tribe/culture. How can you forget all the non-civilsation tribes/humans troughout pre/history? What an insult that is to all the nature tribes who were violently 'conquered' by civilisation.

Your worldview of humans should incorporate all humans and not just your civilisation culture/tribe.

I do not believe that his post meant to deny anything you emphasized in yours.

Once a poster wants to cover all eventualities (like i often did) posts get very long-winding and in each such post people find something to oppose while the original point gets lost in the often nitpicking noise that follows.

some times it's better to make an isolated statement in relativate later where needed and/or in reply to a specific concern like yours.

BTW technology is a term that would first have to be specified, i think that indeed ALL humans developed forms of technology.

for example i consider a native american's tipi and the way it was moved between places as technology. so are bow and arrow, spears and tomahaws and many other, more peaceful technologies. also native australian aborigines were not tech-free and as i said, so was none of any culture in the past.

The mayan, azteks, egyptians, chinese japaniese etc. were all "high-techies" for their times.

i understand very well what you're heading at and there remains nothing but to agree with your concerns but technology IMO is not the best suited term to distinguish.

[dnem]

Hi nanning. I think your response is little overstated.  My "worldview" understands well what you are saying.  But that does not negate that high-technology is the dominant cultural norm of modern humanity and the existence of small pockets of pre-industrial peoples won't change the trajectory of the modern human species, which, as I indicated, is toward oblivion. I am most certainly facing the truth!

I mean this as no attack. Please understand that I have great respect for you and the purity with which you live your life. It is an inspiration! That said, I think you often oversell the idea of the "noble savage." The sad fact is that we are all Homo sapiens and the traits that define us have led us to the perilous state we're in. Yes, certain dominionistic traits have become unfortunately dominant, but these traits arose, and then spread, among our global tribe. There is certainly much to learn from individuals and peoples that do not embody a dominionistic worldview, but I don't think it is useful to think of these traits as some how "other" from humanity.  They define humanity, for better or worse. Sure looks like worse.

[nanning]

Dear philopek,

"Once a poster wants to cover all eventualities (like i often did) posts get very long-winding and in each such post people find something to oppose while the original point gets lost in the often nitpicking noise that follows."

I have tried since my first post on this forum to make others see civilisation for what it is, especially that IT IS NOT ALL OF HUMANITY. I am standing up for truth and respect for all the non-civilisation humans.
Calling civilisation "human species" is insulting and wrong, and makes people lose the 'big picture' and make wrong conclusions. A civilisation bias/'bubble'.
This is have found out in my research and I am trying to explain that. It seems such a clear distinction but I have not in any way been succesful. It's as if this bias makes you 'blind'.

"BTW technology is a term that would first have to be specified, i think that indeed ALL humans developed forms of technology."

I find it strange that this clear part of my post is overlooked:

"technological progress, city's, agriculture and ARMIES (voilently 'conquering') and commerce/profit."

Mayans were also civilisation i.e. humans going bad with violence and cities etc.
Egyptians were part of the mediterranian civilisation that violently conquered the whole world. Civilisations are charaterized by armies, cities and conquering.

Technological progress is a symptom. The 'higher' the technology, the more 'powerful' and destructive a civilisation becomes.

--

Thank you dear dnem. I reacted to the use of the sweeping word "species" to describe civilisation humans. I don't see your post as an attack in any way. I welcome interaction. My 'purity' comes from living truthful to my understanding and my understanding is expert in this context. I didn't read books and ideas from others, I have thought it out by myself. My understanding-arguments are consistent with all other understanding and are from myself. I am a scientist and this is part of my completed research.
Good to read that I may be an inspiration to others. That is very nice and good.

I'm sorry but you appear to not yet understand what I mean. I will keep trying and try to get better at explaining and formulating.
I have no truck with civilisation-bias concepts such as "noble savage".
If you want to understand something large and complex, you have to get out of it and look at it from the outside. That's what I did and do. I can't go back.
if you want to see the structure of the building you're in, you have to step outside of it and walk around it

--

I have the observation of myself that I changed a bit in interaction/wording for the last couple of days. I'm recovering from a very nasty nerve gas attack last Tuesday afternoon.
I've also gotten somewhat word blind and have to focus and correct a lot. Apologies and please don't judge me too strict.

[sidd]

Re:  very nasty nerve gas attack last Tuesday afternoon.

Wait, what ?

sidd

[kassy]

Bad batch of weed?

[nanning]

Yes sidd you've read it correct, and no kassy because other days from the same batch would result in the same symptoms.
I am undergoing this for a bit over 2 years and I am very good at truth finding and calibration. I make as much hypotheses as I can see and try to shoot them down with observations, calibration and analysis. Then I get better hypotheses etc. It took me a whole month after the first effects to be certain of the origin of the effects (the air that I breathe). The first effects were simple with e.g. a suddenly a sharp short-lived headache at a particular spot in my head which went away when i moved outside or to another room. I have never had headaches in my life before. Other simple effects like clenching ones teeth/jaws or like an unstoppable urge to vomit (if I don't move to better air). These 'simple' effects I am now no longer experiencing that often. Most nerve gasses are not directly detectable by me. This is very high tech professional torture stuff. It is also outside and I know a lot about it, so e.g. when I sit at the side of a lake with the wind coming from the lake, I am safe from these gasses which makes sense. What all people do when hearing this, is search for all things that might disprove that and say it's my own health or brain or crazy fiction. It took ME a month to be certain. How can I commuicate that in short?
I have hypotheses of course but no real idea who's responsible.
This is the other thing nobody will believe from me. Too unconsciously uncomfortable I think.
With enough money and tech and effort, a lot is possible.

edit: added last sentence

[Aporia_filia]

Well nanning, here you have another approach.
It all depends on Chaos theory. We know that with just 2 genes which expressions influence each other, are enough to explain all different aspects in the colors of mammalians' skins.
Humans are the same (and all different) but gathering in different size groups has different consequences for their behavior.
What has happened to technology and population in the last 50 years?
I agree with dnem there are not many differences in intelligence but in how it is expressed.
When you force animals to live in different size groups their behaviour change. Our one, too.
So, I propose that Civilization is a emergent property of size, but it's a natural product of our nature.

A cancer cell is another one of a normal body cells, but when it grows crazily... Boom!

[nanning]

'Our' nature?
Who is 'Our'?
Have you taken the stable 60000+ years tribes of e.g. the Australian aboriginals and the African San people into account in that 'Our'?

[Tom_Mazanec]

Re: 60,000 years of ecological stability Australian Aboriginals and San:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna#Extinct_Australian_megafauna
As for the San, they are at best the exception that proves the rule. They developed in a continent which had a hundred thousand generations for megafauna to evolve to handle hunters with Paleolithic technology. And for 99% or so of their existence that was the kind of technology they had. Are they living in balance in the 21st Century?

[wili]

Most small-scale, traditional communities around the world had reached some kind of sustainable equilibrium with their immediate environment by the beginning of the modern era (~1500).

There were and are hundreds and probably thousands of ways for humans to live sustainably in their environment. It is really only one society that has proved utterly disastrous and unsustainable on a global level, and that is modern industrial society.

And yes, that now includes nearly all humans to some extent or another, but the top ~20% do ~80% of the consumption and damage.

[sidd]

Re: nerve gas

Seek medical help.

sidd

[kassy]

I agree but posted here:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2995.0.html

[TerryM]

Re: nerve gas

Seek medical help.

sidd

Damn good advice!
I inhaled a huge quantity of R-12 that had passed through an Oxy-Acetylene flame. The phosgene, a WW1 nerve gas, left me unable to scale a ladder for >a week.
The doctors couldn't do much about it, but they did make me very conscious of the danger the next times I was welding R-12 systems.


It's not impossible that it is responsible for my present problems, though the doctors think not.


Stay Healthy
Terry

[Aporia_filia]

Wili, did humans have early population booms (small compared to the last one) coming with the development of old civilizations? What happened to those civilizations?
Although they were ridiculous in size compared with actual.
I can not see any other important difference between the San and a 'civilized' EU citizen than that I see between animals and a 'civilized' citizen: the number of members and the way they take in their relation with their environment. Animals and Sans adapt and enjoy, we have to change everything for our 'benefit'.

(I hope your feeling better nanning. If you look at  https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/monitoring-air-pollution-across-europe  you'll find that you live in one of the most polluted places in Europe and also searching a bit more you might find links between pollution and health symptoms like yours)
((Hope you're right with your perception of stronger winds, that could help your problems considering that you are right))

[TerryM]

My understanding is that when primitives polluted their environment, they moved.
Terry

[nanning]

They didn't pollute their environment. Like other animals, everything they leave behind is part of living nature.
And in my understanding: Before 12000 years ago, all humans lived in small nomadic tribes.

[Tom_Mazanec]

And those nomadic tribes killed off some of Eurasia’s megafauna and most of the Americas’ as well as Australia.

[TerryM]

I think that pollution played a part in their nomadic lifestyle. Pollution, lack of accessible firewood and lack of game are the reasons usually given for indigenous wanderings in North America.


Not surprisingly, they often returned to a site after leaving it fallow for 50 years or more. At one with the land, as long as there was plenty of land & sufficient time for the land to heal itself.

Terry

[Tor Bejnar]

Define "pollute".

I remember walking on Black Butte in central New Mexico (BLM land) where (I recall reading) a pueblo people lived for a spell on two occasions (something like 800 and 600 years ago), undoubtedly due to periods of frequent invasions. (It is more defensible on the butte, but water needed to be hauled from the Rio Grande at its base).  [The area was 'peaceful' (in fact generous) when Spaniards came to the area in May 1598.]  When I first went to Black Butte, there were areas where potsherds were so thick one literally could not walk without stepping on them.  Decades later, these areas merely had lots of potsherds - one could navigate around the bits of pottery pretty much (representative photo at the link above - earlier the broken pottery pieces included much larger ones (up to about 5 cm across) and only a little 'dirt' showed between them where they were most dense).  I'm certain (illegal) 'collectors' removed most of this ancient rubbish.

In northern West Australia, I recall seeing an Aboriginal shantytown (a consequence of the welfare state, someone told me) with discarded tin cans and broken bottles 'everywhere', not as thick as the potsherds once were, but getting there.

[nanning]

Tor, an Aboriginal shantytown has not resemblance to their nomadic lifestyle before civilisation arrived. For bottles you need high tech. These are not the Aboriginals I refered to as non-civilisation.
welfare state? Civilisation's welfare state? From the same civilisation that stole all their land and destroyed their old lifestyles? That's welfare? The violent conquerors give a handful to the victims/prisoners.

Only civilisations have pollution because it's only pollution if you leave behind stuff that is not living nature, stuff that is technology.
For pottery you need ovens and specific locations to get the clay.

Have a think: How much pollution (technology) did civilisation find when they 'discovered' what is now the U.S.A. ? How much pollution (technology) did civilisation find when they conquered Aboriginal Land (Australia)? What did the San tribes leave behind when they were still in their original way of life (i.e. before civilisation arrived)?

[Tom_Mazanec]

If the old ways were so good, why do all these tribes join Civilization when it arrives?

[wili]

If being sober were so good, why do so many become alcoholics?
If being clean were so good, why do so many become junkies?
If being free were so good, why are so many in jail?
...

[Ktb]

If the old ways were so good, why do all these tribes join Civilization when it arrives?

In most cases we do not give them a choice. Join us or perish. And once we have completely stamped out their old way, we have the audacity to say "See how the (insert native/aboriginal/original owner) drinks/is lazy/is dumb" etc, etc, etc.

Even when we gave the original landowners a choice of remaining in their own culture or joining ours, it was a false option. See native Alaskans. "You're free to keep practicing your way of life, but if you want to stay with your children you have to settle in this town over here."

[Tom_Mazanec]

Ktb & willi:
Points.
Still, I think nanning has rose colored glasses when he looks at noncivilized humans. And I also think the problems with Civilization are from its immaturity. Ten millennia is like ten minutes in the history of a species. Maybe when it grows up we will solve those problems.
Or maybe that is only theoretically possible but not practical. Maybe that is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

[Ktb]

Ktb & willi:
Points.
Still, I think nanning has rose colored glasses when he looks at noncivilized humans. And I also think the problems with Civilization are from its immaturity. Ten millennia is like ten minutes in the history of a species. Maybe when it grows up we will solve those problems.
Or maybe that is only theoretically possible but not practical. Maybe that is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

If they got tired of being agriculturalists, if they found they didn't like where it was leading them in their particular adaptation, they were *able* to give it up. They didn't say to themselves, 'Well, we've got to keep going at this even if it kills us, because its the *right* way to live.' For example, there was once a people who constructed a vast network of irrigation canals in order to farm the deserts of what is now southeastern Arizona. They maintained these canals for three thousand years and built a fairly advanced civilization, but in the end they were free to say, 'This is a toilsome and unsatisfying way to live, so to hell with it.' They simply walked away from the whole thing and put it so totally out of mind that we don't even know what they called themselves. The only name we have for them is the one the Pima Indians gave them: Hohokam--those who vanished.

- Ishmael

And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.

- Ishmael

As you say, only 10,000 years or so, perhaps as far back as 12,000. The blink of an eye vs 3+million years of hominid evolution.

We know that this/our civilization will never work. That it will always go on destroying the world.

[dnem]

I think the problem is fossil fuels. For all history, organisms have had to make do on the energy available in the ecosystem in which they exist, which comes from annual primary production. Through agricultural and food storage perhaps you can store surplus production for later leaner times, but the amount of energy available for work is set by how much producers capture from the sun, and on up through higher trophic levels.

Then one species found this amazing stash of millions of years of primary production compressed into a remarkably dense and easily exploited form. This discovery EXPLODED the potential of this species to do work, leading to an runaway population growth and an absurd expansion of its impact on its ecosystem as each individual found the he or she could now accomplish what it would take hundreds to do before the discovery.

It's pretty simple: no fossil fuels, no human explosion.  Can we figure out a way to capture and concentrate incoming solar energy effectively enough to run the massive civilization machine without burning too much more of the fossil stuff?  I doubt it. Can we dramatically scale back the machine and run THAT on annual incoming energy? Possibly, but I doubt we will.

Nuclear energy is a whole 'nuther beast, and there is obviously essentially unlimited energy there.

[kassy]

I think you are right about that dnem.

On a general level i think we can easily run the system on solar + wind and some other renewable energy resources. Then again it would have helped if we started planning for that in the nineties.

Nuclear should not really be an option since that leaves toxic crap around for ages. The one type reactor we could build is one which burns the nuclear waste we have leaving much less harmless material. No idea what the type is called but there were proposals for such a thing a while back.

*

One other thing to consider in general is that there were always other choices.

Methane fuel was a serious alternative for a while. Then there was the prohibition.

But you could run civilization on biofuels. It might make renewable resources even more interesting.

[wili]

Yes, fossil-death-fuels were and are the ultimate 'forbidden fruit.' We rushed into exploiting them, and have yet to really develop effective taboos, legal or cultural, against their use. Most small scale, traditional societies do develop a rich set of such taboos that help to steer them away from over exploiting critical local resources. For many/most capitalists, the very notion of any such taboos at any level is itself taboo for them!

But, as with most things, the rise of modern industrial culture and population explosion is a bit more complicated than just ffs. Expansionist cultural drives lead to the age of colonialism (aka, the global spread of Western European piratic ventures. This in turn, among other things, lead to the world-wide spread of various (most 'New World') crops like maize, potatoes, yams...which proved to do well in many environments and allowed for global population to start its exponential increase well before the effective use of ffs.

[nanning]

Thank you wili and ktb. Very nice to read your words because I have not yet seen people put it and understand it like that .


Re: "If the old ways were so good, why do all these tribes join Civilization when it arrives?"

Tom, why are you posting these one-liners with assumed but false facts? It is not respectful discussion in my view.

As I have written many times before in the past week, civilisation has violently conquered all other tribes and is in the proces as-we-speak to conquer the very last remaing ones in South America and South-East Asia. I don't mean the ones who are already trading for civilisation goods and walk in t-shirts. Those are not non-civilisation anymore. I mean the ones completely outside civilisation.

When you travel back in time through the holocene, you'll notice that the cancerous spot of civilisation draws inwards and the Garden of Eden returning. I wish you didn't forget about all life and habitats on Earth that are degraded or gone or extinct because of high technology?
I see a strong correlation: The further back, the lower the technology and the less destruction. Even 100 years ago there was so much more nature. Only with current high technology can we destroy living nature at the current rate. Are you unable to imagine going back, reverting to lower technology? The blind temptations of high tech need to be recognized for their true meaning and effect.

The old ways are gone now because violent civilisation culture has erased all the old knowledge. Our history and science only sees 'worth' if it originates from the succesful conquerors, from civilisation itself. Document the low tech cultures of the barbarians, the savages? No, that started much later when almost all old ways were already gone.

Some tribes close to civilisation may fall for the enormous material temptations of our poducts. Material temptation and commerce/advertising are forms of violence.

Temptation = evil, the way of the devil, the way to greed, jalousie, loss of empathy, insanity, destruction. High tech is a temptation.


Are these images from looking through 'rose colored glasses':
High child death rate, disease, many dangers, survival, no control. I would sign/choose for it because I have a good idea about what 'we' have lost when 'we' wanted security and control in stead of facing reality.

[wili]

You're welcome

And thank you, nanning.

I would just add that there are a number of recorded cases of 'civilized' Westerners giving up 'civilized' life and going to live with the 'savage ' Natives.

These went against the dominant cultural narrative, so they generally didn't get a lot of coverage, but if you look carefully at the footnotes of works like Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, you will find plenty of examples.

So, to turn Tom's question on its head, if 'civilized life' is so obviously superior to 'savage living,' why would anyone ever chose toleave the former to join the latter?

In any case, the main point is not which way of living is most pleasant, but which way of living destroys the earth (one, modern industrial consumerism), and which ways of living don't (pretty much every other society ever developed).

[dnem]

Wili, I would argue that colonialism arose from the desire of a portion of the human family to fuel its expansion by coopting the resources and labor of other parts.  But that's just "robbing Peter to pay Paul."  It fueled the expansion of one culture at the expense of another, and at the expense of the natural resources of another place.

But humanity could not have, and would not have, broken the bounds that restrained every other species that has ever existed on this planet, had it not tapped the enormous potential to do work embodied in FFs (ignoring speculation about the possibility that humanity might have learned to tap, concentrate and store solar energy in some alternate history w/o FFs).

But I stand by my statement: No FFs, no massive human overshoot here on our home rock in 2020. And I also think it is close to impossible to transition the massive human endeavor to non FF energy in time to avert the calamity that burning FFs is causing.  And even if we can do that, many other non-renewable resources are being depleted way faster than we are figuring out alternatives, and many waste sinks are being overwhelmed by the byproducts of civilization at an alarming rate.  These downward trajectories of maintaining the enormous human endeavor are independent of the problems being caused by FF emissions alone.

[Tom_Mazanec]

The Holocene extinction is actually the Quartenary extinction. We have been doing this for hundreds of centuries, not just since Watt’s steam engine or Columbus.

[nanning]

Do you have a link for that Tom?

[Tom_Mazanec]

Do you have a link for that Tom?

Since you mention Wikipedia on the Education thread...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event

[Tor Bejnar]

If 'wiping out other species is a sin', then 'we' have been sinning for millions of years (cross-post below).  In general terms, as exposed by the geological/paleontological record, many a species new to an environment has caused the extinction of once common species.  And those dasterdly cyanobacteria that turned the Earth's CO2-dominated (reducing) atmosphere into an O2-dominated (oxidizing) atmosphere back in the Paleoproterozoic [/sarc] (Wikipedia link).  But I would agree that modern humans should behave better!

Human Ancestors Caused Animal Extinctions Millions of Years Before We Even Arrived

...

By examining the fossil record in East Africa, biologists have been able to trace a decline in carnivores that correlates with an increase in hominin brain size and vegetation changes - but not with climate or weather changes, as is commonly found.

This, the researchers say, can be interpreted as a connection between hominin activity and carnivore extinctions.

"Our analyses show that the best explanation for the extinction of carnivores in East Africa is … that they are caused by direct competition for food with our extinct ancestors," said computational biologist Daniele Silvestro of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

...

"By investigating the African fossils, we can see a drastic reduction in the number of large carnivores, a decrease that started about 4 million years ago," said palaeontologist Lars Werdelin of the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

"About the same time, our ancestors may have started using a new technology to get food called kleptoparasitism."

You probably know kleptoparasitic animals very well. Seagulls, swooping in to nick your chips. Hyenas and lions, which steal each other's kills willy-nilly. The less said about the poor, displaced Australian white ibis the better.

https://www.sciencealert.com/human-ancestors-drove-animals-to-extinction-millions-of-years-ago

[nanning]

^^
Thanks Tor,
I had already read that interesting post from kassy.

I think it is wrong to morally qualify that as a 'sin' because it is part of how ecosystems and natural selection work.
I would say that killing of another species with technology by taking more than you need does qualify as a 'sin'. It is because technology is used to not kill for food but for other reasons which signify a supremacy over nature. It means stepping across the limits set by nature and not having respect for other life. It means going against ecosystems functions through the use of technology. Without technology it is impossible. Without limits, discipline and being-one-with-nature, higher technologies and total destruction follow (which may take some time). e.g. The North American 'indians' didn't kill off the bison and the passenger pigeon and didn't empty the rivers and seas of fish. And didn't have an army. Those bad (civilisation) actions can be qualified as 'sin's. I don't think the Australian Aboriginals sinfully made any megafauna extinct. But it only takes 1 tribe going bad and technologically violent to execute an extinction and then all other human tribes will, thousands of years later by civilisation, be seen as also bad whilst they have nothing to do with it. Things are not as simple as they seem.

[TerryM]

Is placing the blame of greater importance than working to end the mindless slaughter?
Terry

[nanning]

^^
Dear Terry, I don't understand what you mean by blame. I think I was just giving observations and understanding and not judge, although I have made moral implications. So sorry, to put it at a firm basis I refer to my morality theory. To give some context: My morality morals are not the same as human religion/culture morals. It is about optimization of discipline and living-with-nature, give and take. Civilisation doesn't give.
My morality morals are partly found in Jezus' morals (from the way he thought about interacting with other people and other things) and in some great interpretations of Christian religion culture, such as certain sins and temptation and devil and the broad easy standard downbend road and the difficult path of doing the right thing, discipline, sharing, respect for all, non-violence, understatement, non-status, courage, standing up for the disadvantaged, change and not wanting to participate in bad systems.

Blame probably reflects your own perception of guilt, I suggest.

[dnem]

This a cool video that goes to the idea that the tapping of fossil fuels by H. sapiens has freed up an enormous potential to do work, which has allowed our numbers to explode and for us to dramatically transform the entire planet with dire consequences.

[TerryM]

^^
<Snipped>

Blame probably reflects your own perception of guilt, I suggest.

It could well be. I've seen many things that I blame humanity (and therefore myself) for.
Take a trip to one of the buffalo "jumps", where buffalo herds were stampeded over a cliff so that a season's, (or a month's), meat might be procured. It tarnishes your vision of pre-Columbian people living at one with nature.
There is a Mammoth kill site in Arizona where the Clovis people killed 13 Mammoths - and ate the right rear leg of one of them. These guys never developed the bow and arrow.


We're more efficient than our technically deficient ancestors, but I feel that it's only because they hadn't developed poisoned bait, high powered rifles or atomic bombs. They didn't burn the prairies to regenerate the land, but rather so they could club a few rabbits.


Blaming the civilization of our kind for the destruction you see may blind you to scenes of family groups preying on other family groups well before they came together as tribes. Civilization & our mastering of technology has only increased the effective scope of our predations.


The Yanomami believed a boy needed to kill a male from a neighboring tribe before he "became a man" - i.e. "before he could get laid". The missionaries found they could attract adherents simply by offering shotguns to their converts. Another success for the White Man's Deity, or simply a more efficient method of limiting population growth among the heathen?


Stay Healthy, but remember that you're the progeny of thousands of generations of predators.
Terry

[gerontocrat]

The scientists tell us that life on earth is largely driven by the imperative to procreate, which if successful tens to increase the population.

Thus all species use the environment they are in to the maximum, and even beyond when the climate / weather is kind.  When the weather/climate is unkind, the inevitable mass cull reduces or eliminates the population.

Mankind has found the way to temporarily go beyond the natural capacity of the planet to support life. Vulnerable species are made extinct first. On a bad day like today, I assume most life on earth will be sacrificed to continue to delay our mass cull.