Why care about extinction?

[Jekyll]

Extinction is a bad thing. Especially extinction caused by humans.

Dustin, could you explain the bit in bold to me? I don't get why it's worse, although I do agree with you that extinction is quite bad in general.

 

[EternalSceptic]

yep. Extinction is bad.


Unless it was mosquitos.....

Nope.
In my residence birds are living in one of the buildings (don't know their english name - "Schwalben" in german). Even in wet summers the number of mosquitos around my house is small enought to be bearable. They feed the birds.

In a balances ecology there should be no real Problem with insects, animals or whatever. But, well, most of us prefer to live in a sterile world. And get allergies.

 

[EternalSceptic]

Dustin, could you explain the bit in bold to me? I don't get why it's worse, although I do agree with you that extinction is quite bad in general.

Two planets meet, and one of them looks really ill. Asks the other: "Hey waht's the matter with you?"
"I've got a homo sapiens"
Responds the other:
"Don't worry, I had that as well several times. It goes by very quickly"

Seriously - the problem is, that mankind has no natural enemies left and therefore our population explodes. It is not unlikely that this will lead to a total disaster _for us_.

Unless we become clever enough to _really_ preserve a functioning ecology.

No. I am not a Greenpeace loonie. I just want my kids to survive.

 

[andyandy]

Nope.
In my residence birds are living in one of the buildings (don't know their english name - "Schwalben" in german). Even in wet summers the number of mosquitos around my house is small enought to be bearable. They feed the birds.

In a balances ecology there should be no real Problem with insects, animals or whatever. But, well, most of us prefer to live in a sterile world. And get allergies.

it was a flippant remark.

Nevertheless, it's rather myopic to judge the bearability of mosquitoes on the local population around your neighbourhood.

I'd suggest that Austrians as a general rule don't have to worry too much about Encephalitis, West Nile virus , Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever or malaria.....amongst others...
and given that mosquito bourne infections are estimated to account for between 3-5million deaths annually, you'd have to make a pretty strong ecological case for me to weight ecological concerns in favour of such widespread loss of human life.

 

[EternalSceptic]

it was a flippant remark.

Nevertheless, it's rather myopic to judge the bearability of mosquitoes on the local population around your neighbourhood.

I'd suggest that Austrians as a general rule don't have to worry too much about Encephalitis, West Nile virus , Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever or malaria.....amongst others...
and given that mosquito bourne infections are estimated to account for between 3-5million deaths annually, you'd have to make a pretty strong ecological case for me to weight ecological concerns in favour of such widespread loss of human life.

My ecological case just includes ourselves
Seriously, we have the choice
a) adapt ourselves to be a matching (not just dominating) member of the earths ecology.
or
b) permanently adjusting that ecology to our comfort.

I'd be glad if we can manage b). But can we?

 

[Jekyll]

Two planets meet, and one of them looks really ill. Asks the other: "Hey waht's the matter with you?"
"I've got a homo sapiens"
Responds the other:
"Don't worry, I had that as well several times. It goes by very quickly"

Seriously - the problem is, that mankind has no natural enemies left and therefore our population explodes. It is not unlikely that this will lead to a total disaster _for us_.

Unless we become clever enough to _really_ preserve a functioning ecology.

No. I am not a Greenpeace loonie. I just want my kids to survive.

I think you're overstating the fragility of life.

I believe that the course of action humanity is following has the potential to do us and many other species a great deal of harm. I don't think that we're capable of destroying the ecosystem however, just reducing it to a state where it can not support this many people.

I can't see the whole of humanity being wiped out by this either, it's just going to be a different kind of population control/reduction to being eaten by our natural 'enemies'.

 

[EternalSceptic]

I think you're overstating the fragility of life.

I believe that the course of action humanity is following has the potential to do us and many other species a great deal of harm. I don't think that we're capable of destroying the ecosystem however, just reducing it to a state where it can not support this many people.

I can't see the whole of humanity being wiped out by this either, it's just going to be a different kind of population control/reduction to being eaten by our natural 'enemies'.

Agreed. I was overstating just to be heard. My fault.

 

[Jekyll]

Agreed. I was overstating just to be heard. My fault.

Oh well, I guess we'll just have to be in agreement then .

 

[brodski]

Paleontologist David Raup (1991) estimates that 99.9% of all the species that have existed have gone extinct.

Extinction is a vital and important part of the ecosystem. It is part of nature. Without extinction or mass extinction events of the past, Man would not have evolved. A lot of animals you recognize and want to preserve would not exist. In the last 600 million years there have been anywhere from 5 to 20 mass extinctions. They are normal, and not our fault.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

100%* of all people who have lived are now dead, death is a vital part of the continuation of the human population- without the death of million of humans before you (and I) you (and I) would never have had access to the resources necessary for our lives, -most deaths are "natural" and not caused by other humans- but that doesn’t mean that murder doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t make any given death any less tragic or murder, accidental death or disease any less worthy of prevention.


* ( 0.9999.... =1 )

 

[geni]

What many don't seem to be understanding is that all life on earth is part of the global ecosystem.

With the stuff living around ocean vents this is somewhat questionable.

This means that every single species has evolved to be part of a fragile chain of other species.

Flase. Every single species has evolved to maximise the chances of passing on it's genes in the enviroment it finds itself in.

If one species goes extinct it can cause many other species to go extinct which in turn can cause many other species to go extinct. Humans, being part of that chain, have an invested interest in the well being of all species, even the ones that don't seem to make much of a difference.

No it would be posible to build ecosystems optomised towards supporting humans. Everything else isn't required.

Scientists can't predict how the extinction of a single species will affect the entire ecosystem let alone the extinction of hundreds or thousands of species. This has effects for all humans in every way imaginable. If humans care about the existence of their species then they should care about the extinction of any species.

We will get by.

Another important reason is the fact that many of our medicines are derived from natural products including numerous plant species.

This is becomeing less common.

Who remembers the story of Penicillin? Penicillin was one of the most widely used antibiotic agents. It is derived from the Penicillium mold and was accidentally discovered 1920's. Imagine how many people would have died if this specific Penicillium mold had somehow gone extinct centuries earlier? This story attests to the fact that preservation of species, any species is of the utmost importance. We currently simply don't know which DNA of which species might be able to be used in the future to cure any number of diseases, cancer for instance. It could be that in the near future we will discover a method of using the DNA from some obscure jelly fish to breast cancer. But unfortunately that Jelly Fish might of went extinct because we didn't think it could of been of any use. A potential cancer fighting drug derived from some obscure amazonian plant could be going extinct as we speak!

It's the 21st century. With the advances in chemistry and molecular biology over the last few years plant sources are of less importance. Since it is now posible to work out the molecular cause of many things it is posible to design a chemical to counter them. Organic synthersis has pretty much got the point where anything can be synthersised from fairly limited feedstocks.

More reasons to care about extinction of species is simply the fact that we want future generations to be able to observe their beauty directly, and not just from a text book.

A text book would be an improvement on the current situation where most people won't see much stuff outside of what lives where they do.

How tragic would it be for your offspring to blame your generation for not being able to witness first hand, many species that are currently going extinct? I for one, would of loved to of seen the Dodo bird or the Thylacine, or even the recently extinct Chinese river dolphin.

There are other species.

Either way, anyone with any sense is worried about extinction of any animal let alone mass extinction.

Most animals are not critical. Plants and bacteria would be more of an issue.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what happends to the remaining giant tortoises in terms of haveing an effect on human survival.

Scientists simply aren't able to "clone" extinct species and likely will never be able to due to the fact that many recently extinct species in the past 500 years, their DNA is simply too degraded to be of any use. The Dodo for instance will never be cloned. It's gone, forever.

Generaly betting against scientific progress is a bad move.

 

[EternalSceptic]

100%* of all people who have lived are now dead, death is a vital part of the continuation of the human population- without the death of million of humans before you (and I) you (and I) would never have had access to the resources necessary for our lives, -most deaths are "natural" and not caused by other humans- but that doesn’t mean that murder doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t make any given death any less tragic or murder, accidental death or disease any less worthy of prevention.


* ( 0.9999.... =1 )

Right. My best friend died a year ago from a melanom. And it was a tragedy.

What you are (implcitely) saying her, if I read you correctly, is, that death is necessary to make life for the next generation possible. Which is exactly what I am thinking. But now spin out this idea a little bit wider: What if the relationship between death and new offspring is unbalanced? Won't we start to "eat up" ourselves at some point?

Remember: we don't have any natural enemies anymore (except ourselves)

 

[brodski]

Right. My best friend died a year ago from a melanom. And it was a tragedy.

What you are (implcitely) saying her, if I read you correctly, is, that death is necessary to make life for the next generation possible. Which is exactly what I am thinking. But now spin out this idea a little bit wider: What if the relationship between death and new offspring is unbalanced? Won't we start to "eat up" ourselves at some point?

Remember: we don't have any natural enemies anymore (except ourselves)

I am sorry about your friend.

I was responding to "the painter" claiming that extinction is no big deal because it's natural and we wouldn't be here without other previous extinctions.

I was making an analogy with death to show the paucity of that argument.

I don’t quiet see what you are saying with your argument, except that if the birth-rate exceeds the death rate then a population will grow, and if a population grows beyond its ability to acquire necessary resources then individual members of that population will suffer, and evenly the population as a whole may suffer., which is just Malthus revisited.

 

[EternalSceptic]

I am sorry about your friend.

I was responding to "the painter" claiming that extinction is no big deal because it's natural and we wouldn't be here without other previous extinctions.

I was making an analogy with death to show the paucity of that argument.

I don’t quiet see what you are saying with your argument, except that if the birth-rate exceeds the death rate then a population will grow, and if a population grows beyond its ability to acquire necessary resources then individual members of that population will suffer, and evenly the population as a whole may suffer., which is just Malthus revisited.

That is what I wanted to say. The problem, as I see it, is, that during the growth of (our) population we are not just approaching a limit in resources, but, by extincting other species with all it's (yet not fully known) implications we are as well reducing possibly the amount of available resources.

I am trying not to "paint black", just forwarding my ideas and trying to have them challenged.

Methinks we have to find a way to make the ecology "grow with us" and limit ourselves. The only alternative I can see is (and that is not soo unlikely) that we ignore the problems on our planet and start expanding into space. But that - as desirable as it is- would only postpone the problems. Huw long? I don't know... centuries, millenniums, forever? Do you know?

 

[athon]

This is another one of those 'humans aren't nature' arguments, which are massivel flawed. It's an easy argument to win if you manipulate the definition of nature to be 'anything that doesn't have anything to do with humans'.

Extinctions have happened before because of new species being introduced. Ecosystems always evolve, with niches being emptied and replaced by novel organisms better suited. Humans have changed the environment massively, but just because the scale is unprecedented doesn't mean the action is unique. The 'extinction is amoral' reasoning is based on subjective views on the matter, on emotional reasoning which mourns when something passes.

Indeed, we can tie some threadbare rationality to lamenting the loss of biodiversity for human resources. However, this is very selective. When the tigers all die, there will be minimal impact on the surrounding ecosystem (hardly any great plagues of tiger food, for instance), yet we will still be upset. So this form of rationality doesn't equate our emotional responses; we'd sooner mourn those species we find human-like (tiger versus, say, a parasitic worm in a swamp), even though the disappearance of some insect might have a greater impact on our own wellbeing.

The truth is, we could lose most mammalian species in the world and the impact on our wellbeing would be negligable. We could remove all humpbacks and no ecosystem would crumble. Even large shifts in niche occupation would balance out in due time. Hell, all the species around today are still here in spite of the Permian Extinction. That's the wonderful thing about life. It's so resilient.

So, am I for wiping out entire species? Hell no. For one thing, I have an aesthetic disposition to liking complexity. I like more biodiversity rather than less purely on an appreciation level. For another thing, even small difficulties should be avoided by humans, as we have the ability to model the future and anticipate change. While the disappearance of a type of coral might not bring great doom, the loss is permanent, and if we can avoid permanent loss than we should do so.

Extinction isn't a good thing for humans, by any means, especially for some key species. But the truth is that there is no doom and gloom reason why it's bad in most cases, especially those we celebrate most (such as pandas and tigers).

Athon

 

[Tief]

Yep, precisely, we should keep all species around because they might be useful some day.

Which is why I am in favor of keeping nukes. Extinct nuclear war is a bad thing, because we might need it some day.

Elimination of a species does not cause a collapse in an ecosystem; the ecosystem changes in response. A bird that dines only on mosquitos, if unable to learn to eat something else, would go with the extinction of mosquitos, but another bird that feeds on something else would fill the niche. Bad if you lose your favorite bird from a personal standpoint, meaningless from an ecosystem standpoint.

I'm not sure exactly how to say it, but there seems to me to be something wrong with the idea that the Three Gorges Dam shouldn't have been built because a certain rare dolphin will go extinct. Doesn't our knowledge of the benefit to humans count? Doesn't our knowledge that the ecosystem will change, for the detriment of some species but for the benefit of others, but not be destroyed count for something?

Certainly there are examples where we could have done a better job at predicting the outcome of some changes we have made, of changes that were ill advised, but it seems to me a clear benefit at hand, considered judiciously, outweighs a blue-sky type of benefit (O, but we might have just killed off the cure for cancer! We will now never find a cure for cancer!).

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Keep a psychotic mass murderer alive in case it becomes rehabilitated? I don't buy the argument for humans or other animals, and I don't buy it for viruses and bacteria.

Did I ever use the word "rehabilitation"? No. Don't put words into my mouth. I said that we should keep strains of the polio virus alive in the lab for future study because it might provide valuable scientific information in the future.

You want to change my opinion? Give me something besides opinion and pure speculation.

Science is based on speculation.

Keep it up, and you'll die early and alone. Take that seriously.

I'll die early and alone because I take serious things seriously, huh?

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

So I would say more species have benefited from man than have directly become extinct due to man related actions.

I don't know the number of species that have gone extinct because of human-caused actions, but I can tell you that the number is increasing each day. Even if your assumption that more animals have benefited from our presence up to now than have gone extinct, that won't last for long.

And as species become more and more specialized, they open themselves up to extinction. Which perhaps is why all species will eventually be replaced.

When humans put pressure on the ecosystem like they have, there is no time for most animals to "evolve" into new species that can adapt. Elephants, if they go extinct nothing will replace them. They will be gone for good. Since evolution even in the fastest states takes tens of thousands of years, elephants for instance could not possible evolve to adapt to humans. The only life forms that could possibly evolve to adapt to humans are the small fast breeding life forms like insects or bacteria.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Paleontologist David Raup (1991) estimates that 99.9% of all the species that have existed have gone extinct.

So?

Extinction is a vital and important part of the ecosystem.

Tell me how the currently endangered species going extinct could benefit the ecosystem.

It is part of nature.

So is disease and death. Will you argue in support of that too?

Without extinction or mass extinction events of the past, Man would not have evolved.

So?

A lot of animals you recognize and want to preserve would not exist.

So?

In the last 600 million years there have been anywhere from 5 to 20 mass extinctions. They are normal, and not our fault.

You're looking at past extinctions that occurred naturally and are then concluding that current extinctions are thus 'natural' and not anthropogenic. Global warming skeptics do the same thing. And the same argument refutes them as refutes your argument. We have proof that humans are causing current extinctions and there is no way it could benefit anyone at the rate it's going.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Dustin, could you explain the bit in bold to me? I don't get why it's worse, although I do agree with you that extinction is quite bad in general.

Because it can be prevented. For one.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Flase. Every single species has evolved to maximise the chances of passing on it's genes in the enviroment it finds itself in.

You're underestimating the affect of co-evolution. The fact that most life forms seem to be closely linked in an ecosystem is no coincidence.

No it would be posible to build ecosystems optomised towards supporting humans. Everything else isn't required.

Explain how.

We will get by.

Explain how.

This is becomeing less common.

So therefore no other life forms can provide cures for disease?

It's the 21st century. With the advances in chemistry and molecular biology over the last few years plant sources are of less importance. Since it is now posible to work out the molecular cause of many things it is posible to design a chemical to counter them. Organic synthersis has pretty much got the point where anything can be synthersised from fairly limited feedstocks.

We can't synthesize something when we don't even know what it is. We also can't predict how various molecules will react with other molecules with certainly when we don't even know what those molecules are. You're putting too much emphasis on chemists being able to predict how some hypothetical molecule will react with another molecule when they don't even have a basis for the said molecule. The chemistry of disease is far too complicated then simply finding a chemical, inventing some hypothetical chemical to counteract it and then predicting how it will interact with the other chemical. If it were that easy we'd have cancer cured by now.

A text book would be an improvement on the current situation where most people won't see much stuff outside of what lives where they do.

I haven't mentioned your atrocious grammar and spelling up until now but this sentence makes absolutely no sense. "most people won't see much stuff outside of what lives where they do"? What's that supposed to mean? I'm assuming English isn't your first language. At least I hope it isn't.

If you're saying that textbooks are better than first hand experience then you're simply full of it. I and anyone else interested in animals would much rather observe them first hand and up close then simply looking at pictures of them in a text book. This is why people go bird watching, wildlife watching, go to zoo's, etc. If you prefer textbooks over real life experiences then that's your preference, but don't try to argue it as a case in support of extinction!

There are other species.

So?

Most animals are not critical. Plants and bacteria would be more of an issue.

Many animals are critically endangered.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what happends to the remaining giant tortoises in terms of haveing an effect on human survival.

You really can't predict that. It could be that their DNA holds the secret to cure aids or cancer or some other deadly disease. It's impossible to know for sure.

Moreover, Even if they had no effect on human survival. So what? That's not an excuse not to preserve them.

Generaly betting against scientific progress is a bad move.

Not when so much is in the balance. If I'm left between the choice of assuming Science will be able to clone the DoDo bird and the Thylacine or other recently extinct animals and allowing current animals to go extinct on that assumption or preserving the animals as much as is possible then I will preserve them. If we don't preserve them and assume that science will be able to clone them in the future and then find out it's impossible, we have done something terrible. However if we don't make assumptions and simply preserve them because science may (and likely won't) be able to clone them in the future then if they are able to clone them it won't be a problem since we'll have populations of them already.