Anthropogenic extinction event

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It is not surprising to read that so much life has been killed on Earth in the last 50 years, but for some reason it is surprising to read the term, 'extinction event' used to describe it.

'Extinction event' is something usually associated with the meteor strike that killed the dinosaurs or with mantle plumes that bubble up to form new crustal land from time to time.

But if humans and their economic activities can cause mass dying of living organisms, why shouldn't that be considered an extinction event as well?

What's more, is there anything to stop such an extinction event from continuing to progress? Are we witnessing the re-birth of planet Earth into a totally artificial system?

https://www.foxnews.com/science/earth-enters-extinction-event-in-half-a-billion-years

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We are presently living in the sixth extinction event, the difference from prior extinction events being that formerly there was a recovery once the cause of the event ended. In this present extinction event, which humans are causing, it will require a massive collective shift in our attitudes towards nature, in other words a neo-religious myth regarding our relationship to nature.

By neo-religious I'm implying a return to a modified version of the religious credo that existed during the Paleolithic and early Neolithic periods, with a greater balance between the patriarchal and matriarchal aspects of the human psyche. Presently, our anthropocentric attitudes are working against the preservation of nature, which is ourselves. As Walt Kelly once said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

3 Replies

@coluber2001,

I'm impressed.
Nice post.

1 Reply

@mark noble,

Much thanks, Mark.

0 Replies

@coluber2001,

according to AGI, as originally defined by Raup, "extinction events" or "mass extinctions" are defined by one or more of the following.

1. the decrease in species and higher taxa is "significant" (greater than about 10% of taxa)

2. Environmental conditions causing a "reset" of the stratigraphic record that reflect the apparent disappearance of species and higher taxa within the underlying stratigraphic record

3. The rate of extinction exceeds the rate of speciation

The present "Extinction Event" (many paleontologists and paleostratigraphers are skeptical about whether such an event is occuring), is based entirely upon condition 3 (since 1900, according to AGI, the rate of extinction is exceeding the rate of speciation by over 1000%).

Anyway, most evo/devo scientists are pretty much not willing to stick their necks out to make such a claim. That's the job of the popular science reporters like Nicholas Wade or David Quammen.

"Its great marketing no matter what". I think Gerta Keller first said that.

0 Replies

@coluber2001,

Evangelicals (not the Fundamentalists) are taking a more non- Genesis
view of the earth and its riders . They are now touting "stewardship over dominion".
Only took em, what, 700 years? And I always blamed the Catholics and Jews for being dogmatically ossified

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Evangelicals (not the Fundamentalists) are taking a more non- Genesis
view of the earth and its riders . They are now touting "stewardship over dominion".
Only took em, what, 700 years? And I always blamed the Catholics and Jews for being dogmatically ossified

'Dominion' and 'stewardship' are two ways of saying the same thing. The word 'dominion' really means 'home' so what is 'stewardship,' except treating and honoring the environment as your home?

I think 'dominion' has taken on the connotation of exploitative-domination because we live in a Marxian/feminist cultural age where oppression and domination are criticized to support the view that throwing off the reigns of oppression is somehow supposed to result in liberated people properly stewarding their resources and not madly competing to fill the power vacuum left by overthrowing the oppressors, wasting and harming anything they have to in the pursuit thereof.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

As far as Dominion nd Stewardship are concerned I disagree. Whatever a word's etymology and orininal definition via source is, is
often not what you think. Ill accept that you believe the words have the same meanings (but theyd dont). Dominion actually derives from Dominium meaning "lordship" or "to rule over". (I just looked it up and found 8 definitions with the same root m/ L word dominium, and ALL meaning something like "right of complete authority"

'STEWARDSHIP, on the other hand , means "care on behalf of others", (assigns and/or children ) .

So Im sure the Evangelicals knew of the words theyd chosen, and they were correct.(Like Elmore leonard said all" words have meanings, and they are precise "

Quote:

Marxian

Groucho or Chico?

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Yeah, it would take a great stretch of the imagination and rationalization to equate dominion and stewardship. That would be like Hitler invading Russia and saying, "We're just here to help you guys out".

1 Reply

@coluber2001,

ha, nyway, I was more interested in the OP 's take on the "extinction event" terminology but look like we got mired down in some irrelevant word salad.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

As far as Dominion nd Stewardship are concerned I disagree. Whatever a word's etymology and orininal definition via source is, is
often not what you think. Ill accept that you believe the words have the same meanings (but theyd dont). Dominion actually derives from Dominium meaning "lordship" or "to rule over". (I just looked it up and found 8 definitions with the same root m/ L word dominium, and ALL meaning something like "right of complete authority"

'STEWARDSHIP, on the other hand , means "care on behalf of others", (assigns and/or children ) .

So Im sure the Evangelicals knew of the words theyd chosen, and they were correct.(Like Elmore leonard said all" words have meanings, and they are precise "

It's still an issue of cultural perspective regarding how to best steward the creation.

In the book of Proverbs in the Bible, it says that he who spares the rod spoils the child. That quote has been misunderstood to refer to beating children into submission, which may have been done a lot, but that's not really the point. The point is that a good father/lord/disciplinarian doesn't shirk discipline because it is for the good of the child.

The word, 'stewardship,' is used in a modern context because it sounds more gentle and generally people are scared of old-fashioned discipline these days, which they perceive as harsh. Sadly, this has resulted in a shortage of discipline for many people who, for whatever reason, shirk the responsibility to self-discipline, if they even perceive a need to do so.

Either way, there is a need to discipline the Earth as part of our stewardship of it, even if that mainly means disciplining other humans to steward it better by using it less exploitatively. It is our dominion, i.e. our home, so we need to steward it as such and not treat it as an external resource to be used up because our private bank accounts seem more important to us than public resources like air, water, climate, and future generations having access to the same natural resources we inherited from generations past.

Quote:

Marxian

Groucho or Chico?
[/quote]
Karl.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

I dont understand what youre trying to say. You are using "Steward too much, both as noun and verb. Youre confusing me.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I dont understand what youre trying to say. You are using "Steward too much, both as noun and verb. Youre confusing me.

Maybe you're just too confused to understand what I wrote.

I think you're too busy fighting religion in your mind and that causes you to worship the word, 'steward,' and demonize the word, 'dominion.' I've tried to explain how they are just different ways of explaining the same concept, but I think you will go on rejecting that because you don't want to believe that you've just misunderstood religion because of your own personal issues with it and/or issues that have been blown out of proportion by a post-religious secular culture that fears and hates religion instead of seeing it for what it is, a philosophy to honor nature.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

please sir, dont be getting upon the back of your percheron. I just asked for an explanation of what you said. My condition is non of your businss. As for my "dmonization" of a word like Dominion(and Stewardship?)__You are the one who insisted they are essentially the same thing and I merely explained why you were wrong. I guess I pissed you off.
NOW, if you wish to explain what that last paragraph was about in the previous post that I had no idea of what you were speaking.
I looked around and saw a few other folks had given you similar comments about your affinity for trying to "high hat" what are ordinary and simple thoughts. PS, "spare th rod and spoil the child is nowhere in any part of the Bible KJV or LVV. You seem to practice the fine arts of neologizing and "Incorrect quote mining"

Remember, the smart guy is the one who can best take the complex and explain it simply, not the other way around.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

please sir, dont be getting upon the back of your percheron. I just asked for an explanation of what you said. My condition is non of your businss. As for my "dmonization" of a word like Dominion(and Stewardship?)__You are the one who insisted they are essentially the same thing and I merely explained why you were wrong. I guess I pissed you off.
NOW, if you wish to explain what that last paragraph was about in the previous post that I had no idea of what you were speaking.

Do you mean this:

Quote:

Either way, there is a need to discipline the Earth as part of our stewardship of it, even if that mainly means disciplining other humans to steward it better by using it less exploitatively. It is our dominion, i.e. our home, so we need to steward it as such and not treat it as an external resource to be used up because our private bank accounts seem more important to us than public resources like air, water, climate, and future generations having access to the same natural resources we inherited from generations past.

Quote:

I looked around and saw a few other folks had given you similar comments about your affinity for trying to "high hat" what are ordinary and simple thoughts. PS, "spare th rod and spoil the child is nowhere in any part of the Bible KJV or LVV. You seem to practice the fine arts of neologizing and "Incorrect quote mining"

Proverbs 13:24

Quote:

Remember, the smart guy is the one who can best take the complex and explain it simply, not the other way around.

I'm trying. What I'm trying to tell you is that the Bible wants people to be good parents, good disciplinarians, as well as good shepherds, and generally take dominion over our resources and steward them right.

Good stewardship of resources used to just mean making the best of them for our benefit, because we naturally moved on to better land when the old land became barren, and that allowed the old land to fallow and regenerate. The concept of the Sabbath is to let the land/nature/people rest and regenerate.

Now, with industrialism, we can apply the same principle that nature/land/resources must be allowed to rest and regenerate to be used sustainably as long as humans survive as a species and/or as long as the planet survives. Taking dominion doesn't mean exploiting the planet to its degradation. That should be obvious to anyone who understands good stewardship of a flock, a field, children, a spouse, or anything else that supports you in stewarding other resources.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

OK now, that wasnt hard was it. The Evangelicals have even removed ANY references to "Dominion Over" and have begun substituting the stewardship of the planet for the glory of the deity and the enjoyment by our progeny.

Even forest products industries of the US have taken up a more "liberalized" Christian view of their forest maintenance and use.
Apparently, the various versions of the Bible are become rather more plastic than they had been in the past . Has education had anything to dow ith it?? Im gonna say NO?
The respect for sciences is still tanking and is much lower than when I was in grade SChool when pres Eisenhower ,after Russian space successes, made a big deal about upgrading and 20th "centuryizing" our science curricula.
SInce that time , Ive seen how science has become a real target for political place making based upon defiant ignorance and denial, and I can seea growing mass of people who dont take the time to learn the pertinent facts and theories it teaches.

Ive just read on another thread how one contributor states with what he believes is candor that biology is taught in US colleges by bribing the faculties against teaching "Biblical and or religious truths about evolution ". I challenged him to read about accreditation procedures in Universities and colleges (Im sure he wont , he will instead come up with some twisted path of logic to obscure facts about what he denies).

2 Replies

@farmerman,

So, wherever were at now in this thread, I do want to summarize my own thinking that, YES, we are within an extinction "event", not like the "big Five" but the other 25 to 30 other events that cant be called "Mass Extinctions"
I buy Dave Raups definition that (omitting protists and the various phyla of archea and bacteria) life is now going extinct or approaching xtinction at a rate faster than speciation. AND, the anthropogenic portion of that goes back to the mid 5000 years Bp when the Rangell and Channel ISland Mammuts, giant sloths, cav bears, Sea Eagle, NA River Otters, Moa's, dodos. Passenger igeons, Red Elk, etc etc became extinct with no other common subspecies kin there to attain speciation statii. What looks like an eye blink in geologic strata can actually be multi decamillenia.

So yeh, its an xtinction event, just not a mass extinction event (yet)

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

OK now, that wasnt hard was it. The Evangelicals have even removed ANY references to "Dominion Over" and have begun substituting the stewardship of the planet for the glory of the deity and the enjoyment by our progeny.

Even forest products industries of the US have taken up a more "liberalized" Christian view of their forest maintenance and use.
Apparently, the various versions of the Bible are become rather more plastic than they had been in the past . Has education had anything to dow ith it?? Im gonna say NO?
The respect for sciences is still tanking and is much lower than when I was in grade SChool when pres Eisenhower ,after Russian space successes, made a big deal about upgrading and 20th "centuryizing" our science curricula.
SInce that time , Ive seen how science has become a real target for political place making based upon defiant ignorance and denial, and I can seea growing mass of people who dont take the time to learn the pertinent facts and theories it teaches.

Ive just read on another thread how one contributor states with what he believes is candor that biology is taught in US colleges by bribing the faculties against teaching "Biblical and or religious truths about evolution ". I challenged him to read about accreditation procedures in Universities and colleges (Im sure he wont , he will instead come up with some twisted path of logic to obscure facts about what he denies).

I just read an article claiming that 'the rod' in the Proverbs quote refers to a rod used to guide sheep, not a stick to beat them or children or anyone else. Probably what happened with religion will also happen with science, which is that people take what they want to make out of it and then subtly manipulate the words and meanings to fit their agenda.

Many if not most people don't want to steward anything for anyone's benefit besides their own convenience and desire. So just as 'dominion' came to be equated with exploitation to some people, 'stewardship' will probably also come to be used to justify exploitation/sacrifice of nature and sustainability for short-term interests.

I've already been reading people talking about giving up on stopping/reversing climate change in favor of mitigation and coping. Now, instead of giving up air-conditioning to stop energy waste, they're going to be investing in it by reference to the threat of climate change. Denial will turn into stewardship of resources to protect ourselves against it.

Then, in a few years the discourse will change to advocating 'release' of nature instead of stewardship, or something similar, because at that point stewardship will have become synonymous with misuse and waste of resources, so some other buzz word will be needed to attempt to change human behavior yet again to something that won't last very long before it is perverted and appropriated to suit some other interest besides true sustainability.

[/quote]

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Quote:

I just read an article claiming that 'the rod' in the Proverbs quote refers to a rod used to guide sheep, not a stick to beat them or children or anyone else.

You dont even remember the 23rd Psalm?? That's why I was dubious about your advanced Knowledge of Biblical lit.

Reading the rest of your stuff, as a confessed religious one, you dont seem to have any visions of hope, only blackness and obscurity is in our futures. Sure youre not just an old line Calvinist? You leave your TULIP tracks in your commenst

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

You dont even remember the 23rd Psalm?? That's why I was dubious about your advanced Knowledge of Biblical lit.

Reading the rest of your stuff, as a confessed religious one, you dont seem to have any visions of hope, only blackness and obscurity is in our futures. Sure youre not just an old line Calvinist? You leave your TULIP tracks in your commenst

I'm definitely not as forgiving as I should be. When I read comments like this one that take jabs at religion while simultaneously challenging me intellectually regarding Bible knowledge, it tempts me to return from love to hate and just spit and kick back. That would probably be gratifying for you if I did that. Are you a hater/satanist?

1 Reply

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