11–20 of 21 posts
Also worth reading is Robert May's commentary "Why Worry about How Many Species and Their Loss?" http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...
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>How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep sea, namely. I've thought the same while seeing The Blue Planet. It's interesting that we seem to be more interested in exploring the galaxy than the deepest depths of our oceans.
I think part of that is that due to the immense pressures and other factors it's almost easier to explore the galaxy.
I think we've come to understand that whatever we perceive to be greater than us from what exists beyond the clouds.
Just when you think that we have become masters of our own domain something like this comes along. It truly is hard to imagine that with all our technology, all our exploration, we have only just begun to understand our own world. How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep sea, namely.
>How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep sea, namely. I've thought the same while seeing The Blue Planet. It's interesting that we seem to be more interested in exploring the galaxy than the deepest depths of our oceans.
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I'm trying to grasp what you mean by scary in this context.
We destroy species before we have any knowledge of them. That's my interpretation but I can see why you're asking it.
That's not my interpretation. In any event, species have been going extinct for almost as long as there have been species. It's unclear that we've appreciably changed the extinction.
And, while one may be scared by species extinction, it's how things work. (I'm scared of height, but that doesn't imply that someone should do something about height.)
BTW - we've probably preserved and enabled species, especially at the low-end, that would have otherwise gone extinct or never come into being.
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>How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep sea, namely. I've thought the same while seeing The Blue Planet. It's interesting that we seem to be more interested in exploring the galaxy than the deepest depths of our oceans.
It's not an either/or situation. There is active work in both areas.
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I'm trying to grasp what you mean by scary in this context.
We destroy species before we have any knowledge of them. That's my interpretation but I can see why you're asking it.
Why should we feel bad if a species comes and goes without we ever knowing about it? Isn't that expected and natural? Doesn't that happen all the time in the universe?
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We destroy species before we have any knowledge of them. That's my interpretation but I can see why you're asking it.
I was just thinking in the line of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?". Why should we feel bad if a species comes and goes without we ever knowing about it? Isn't that expected and natural? Doesn't that happen all the time in the universe?
The fact that there are species that we don't even know about means there is still a lot to learn about life on Earth. It is generally a bad idea to aggressively mess around with a system that is not well-understood, that is what we're doing and this news items demonstrates how little we actually know about our ecosystem.
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I was just thinking in the line of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?". Why should we feel bad if a species comes and goes without we ever knowing about it? Isn't that expected and natural? Doesn't that happen all the time in the universe?
Sure, it happens all the time and has happened since before humans existed. The concern is about how much extinction humans are CAUSING. Given that extinctions can impact entire ecosystems, we (as a species) should be worried about the impact we're having on other species, if only for our own selfish reasons. The fact that there are species that we don't even know about means there is still a lot to learn about life…
For example, I am appalled at how we still farm outdoors, where we have little control over pests and weather, especially given that our main methods of pest control tend to hurt us, such as through chemicals or through Monsanto-style genetic modification and patenting. We could begin to move in a completely new direction, and that is to create something like the Ultima Tower, as envisioned by Eugene Tsui.
It's clear that if we don't take grand steps towards engineering a sustainable future, we won't be able to survive a variety of calamities to which we are now exposed, and in that grand scheme, untold numbers of species dying, whether at our hands or due to our carelessness, is irrelevant.
http://www.tdrinc.com/ultima.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Tsui