On 12/3/2017 5:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 1:11:41 AM UTC, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 6:17:18 PM UTC-6,
[email protected] wrote:
On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 7:42:30 PM UTC, Lawrence
Crowell wrote:
On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 12:55:04 PM UTC-6, Jason
wrote:
I can understand how in the darwinian sense, it could
makes predators and prey less successful. But in the
sense of humans, who have technologically escaped most
of the darwinian pressures, could this idea not
improve life on earth?
The human species since the time of Australopithecus has
worked to remove itself from the Darwinian world. With the
development of stone tools and fire our early hominid
ancestors took themselves off the menu. In turn they put
more on their menu. We have been able to figure out how to
untie any environmental constraint upon us and to further
generate more positive feed backs. The results have not
been an improvement of life on Earth. It has been rather
the demolition of life as we replace naturally occurring
systems with trash. The idea we are somehow improving
things only might operate for ourselves, and frankly it
might be argued it is for a subset of humans. In effect we
are engineering the sixth mass extinction of life. The
picture below illustrates an Albatross that has ingested
plastic in the oceans and died. In the end this is the
final legacy of Homo sapiens.
LC
Lawrence; dire situation to be sure, and we're losing precious
time with the moron in the WH. Any chance that Darwinian
evolution will solve the problem by selecting out species that
can learn NOT to ingest plastics? AG
Darwinian evolution or extinction will select out the species that
produces the plastic. The plastic will then degrade or become
buried. Curiously plastic and other materials will be buried away
in geological layers for hundreds of millions of years. Life on
Earth will be doing just fine 25 million years from now, in fact
up to 500 million years or more. We will be fossils in sedimentary
rock, along with our plastic stuff.
Why do you categorically deny the possibility of smart albatrosses,
turtles, etc. which refuse to eat plastic? AG
I think it would be possible if plastic came in only a few consistent
forms, say bottle tops, but plastic comes in many forms and it also
breaks up into smaller pieces. Wild life can learn to adapt to
artificial environments. My father told me that when he was young
rurual electrification came to Texas. Power lines appeared along the
highways. At first birds would fly into the wires and you would find
birds with broken wings under the power lines. But after a couple of
years the birds seemed to learn and stopped hitting them.
Brent
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