FWD: Extinction and education (Re: Traffic...)

[Semjase]

>Subject: Re: FWD: Extinction and education (Re: Traffic...)
>From: aa6g at AA6G.ORG (Chuck Vaughn)
>Date: 9/20/98 11:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <v03130306b22af4d1c990@[205.149.171.167]>
>
>I'm usually a lurker on this list but this one was just too much.
>
>>>Seven out of 10 biologists believe the world is now in the midst
>>>of the fastest mass extinction of living things in the 4.5
>>>billion-year history of the planet, according to a poll conducted
>>>by the American Museum of Natural History and the Louis Harris
>>>survey research firm.
>>>
>>>That makes it faster even than the crash which occurred when the
>>>dinosaurs died some 65 million years ago.
>
>Really! How did they come to that conclusion? Being somewhat up on
>astronomy and having read the various scenarios on comet and asteroid
>impacts I can't see how such a statement can be made. There seems to be
>a conscensus that a large impact would put so much dust into the 
>atmosphere that sunlight would be blocked for months and probably
>years. Photosynthesis would stop. Also the majority of the biomass
>would burn due to a raining of hot material around the globe ejected
>into the stratosphere by the impact. A mass extinction would certainly
>occur in a very short time. A large impact is a terrifying picture.

This is a very accurate picture of what would happen.
>
>>>Unlike that and other
>>>mass extinctions of the pre-human past, the current one is the
>>>result of human activity, and not natural phenomena, say the
>>>scientists.
>
>This is a completely ridiculus statement. Humans are unnatural. Everything
>humans do is unnatural. Wrong!

 Unless we were dropped off from a spaceship
>we are as natural as any other creature that evolved here.

I agree with this statement.  Even if a beamship or other spacecraft dropped us
off we would still be natural, just very exotic!
 Only our
>morality places the labels of right or wrong on things we do. We may take
>a lot of species with us in the process of making our species extinct but
>you can't call it unnatural.
>

Best,

S.
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