Hi Alan -
You know well that the diff. between this and the Perm. for example is this is the result of a particular species running amuck. And with 40-50 % of ocean life scheduled to disappear, etc. as a result of climate, microspherules, etc., the situation is a mess. Yes, there will be something afterwords. But we're slaughterers trashing the planet, and for me that's unacceptable.
I hear where you are coming from, and no disrespect, just disagreement about how to act/react.
It's there I disagree -- in the differentiation of us as some special life-form, separate from everything, above, better at trashing, whatever. We are doing what Life always does: helping wind down the universe to its heat death, whatever, by expending available energy to maximize our (Life's!) need to project itself into the future.
In terms of historical geological epoch, I was not talking about an extinction event, but more of the geodynamics of Life at that point in history. Carboniferous coal beds came from a vast anaerobic dead/dying zone that evolved on Pangea's equatorial region -- as a result of a massive fluorishing of Life that came from the easy availability of energies at that time. The life-forms that fluorished in that environment gave their lives into creating higher-level (energy packaging) hydrocarbon bonds that our life-form is now releasing, eventually, back into space as waste heat. We are not special.
Guilt driven by ethereal or unrealized altruism needs to be replaced by active awareness and actions that the species is capable of. I doubt the capabilities of our species are any more than any other in the ability to alter the fundamentals of Life. Consume available energy until it is gone, then pass away. At best, offer ones own body as sustenance for others to gain from, for a time, until they too shall pass... etc.
JH -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
