joe@montebello.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Joe Dellinger) (04/15/91)
In article <4607@orbit.cts.com>, rambler@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Dan Meyer) writes: |> There is nothing, yes, NOTHING that we can do here on the planet that will |> cause global changes in the earth's climate! Are you serious? It's amazing what people can do and have done. You're just used to it so you don't realize it was ever any different. Examples: 1) Fly in an airplane over the great plains. Almost every acre of land in the entire great plains has been plowed, destroying the tall-grass prairie that used to be there. 2) Fly in an airplane over the former great Eastern forests. Almost every acre of land has been cleared for agriculture, destroying the old-growth forest that used to be there. 3) The Golden Hills of California are due to introduced grasses. The native grasses stay green in the summer. 4) I have yet to encounter a native bird in Hawaii. I've seen all sorts of interesting birds, but except for a few shore birds that habitually fly across oceans they were all introduced by man within the last 150 years. Some of the most common ones were only introduced in the last 15 years! We're in the middle of a mass extinction event, human-caused. 5) At the AGU somebody was showing several spectrograms they had taken spanning a period of years showing absorption bands from various atmospheric constituents. The lines for various nasty manmade ozone-eating compounds were plainly visible, and were plainly getting stronger each year. 6) There is mounting evidence that most ancient civilizations collapsed because of environmental suicide. If the modern world collapses the same way (which now seems quite likely) it's going to be one hell of a ride down. You're right in one sense: Nature can easily outdo us. A massive volcanic eruption, a significant meteor strike, etc, would do more to alter the environment than anything people have done so far. BUT, that's like saying that at any time a burglar could break down the front door and shoot my family dead, so I might as well leave loaded guns lying about all over the house where my children can play with them. Sure, there is nothing people could do to destroy all life on the planet, just like one crazed man with a gun couldn't destroy an entire metropolis. But we aren't "all life on Earth". We are one species. Most of our close genetic relatives are long extinct, and the few hangers-on are on the brink of extinction in the wild. Do you really want to turn all the madman loose with guns just because they can't kill everybody? Isn't it enough to try to stop them because they could kill _you_? /\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________ / \ / \ /Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, Honolulu\/\/\.-.-....__ ___/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger, Internet: joe@montebello.soest.hawaii.edu\/\.-.__