| [ General ] | A variety of conversations about any environmental topic | | [ Pollution and Recycling ] | The effects of pollution, the necessity to recycle or not. Managing our consumerism. | | [ Technology ] | Where technology has brought us, where it is taking us, for better or worse. | | [ Threatened Species and Habitat ] | Species extinction, habitat destruction, and their causes | | [ Environmental Policies ] | The U.S. Government, and other governments policies on the environment. | | [ Climate Change ] | Debate the truths of climate change. | | [ People Polls ] | Conversations in response to the "People Polls" section. | |
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Dominant Species Since natural selection favors the dominant variation or competing species, should we?
Posts: 1 Created on: January 16, 2009 |
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| If you start reading anything relating to the work of Charles Darwin, especially pertaining to natural selection, you might get a little frustrated and confused about the importance and the effects of killing off so many of our species on earth. Its a staggering number. Animals and sea creatures everywhere are dwindling. But...... Charles Darwin seems to think (correctly) that when nature kills off a certain niche in the environment, it is filled up by something else. I think, and as Farley and Ed have explained to me through my frustration, Its not that they are being killed off, its the speed which they are being killed off. Time is everything when it comes to endangered species. Sure, nature will fill in the gaps in the ecosystem, just give it half a million years to get started and sure, we're fine. Well at the rate we are going were going to hit a wall at some point. We've had 3 1/2 billion years to get from Blue-green algae to Humans. In that regard its important to note that all life on earth is only temporary.
Our Sun is very stable, but it is not going to be around forever. In a few billion years, things are gonna start to get stranger, the sun will start to expand, and lose its heat (global warming just came too soon eh?). Its believed that we'll go backwards in evolution so to speak, where only the small survive. Finally the sun will putter out into a brown dwarf (roughly the size of the earth) and do not much of anything. Earth will die.
I only bring this up to show that nothing is really as infinite as we'd like to think. I think somewhere or another we all started to get comfortable being surrounded by infinities of things. We'd better face the reality that we live in a finite universe of finite space (although expanding space) and of finite time (on Earth). |
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| | May 11, 2009, 9:06 pm | Your Perspective : Do you think climate change is real in any way, shape, or form?
Posts: 4 Created on: March 19, 2009 | | May 6, 2009, 10:06 pm | The costs of Recycing Some say recycling is pointless and expensive.
Posts: 2 Created on: January 16, 2009 | | April 21, 2009, 1:00 am | Population Peak Its now predicted that the world population will cap around 8 1/2 billion in 2050.
Posts: 1 Created on: April 21, 2009 | | April 12, 2009, 12:43 am | What Bush Did Bush really did some odd things to our environmental polices, i.e. the clean(dirty) air act, etc..
Posts: 1 Created on: March 17, 2009 | | March 22, 2009, 1:48 am | Poll Conversation: Do you shop for organic food?
Posts: 1 Created on: March 22, 2009 | | March 22, 2009, 1:41 am | Poll Conversation: Should the U.S. explorer drilling in ANWAR?
Posts: 1 Created on: March 19, 2009 | | March 20, 2009, 12:28 am | Poll Conversation: Do you use CFL light bulbs?
Posts: 1 Created on: March 20, 2009 | | March 17, 2009, 12:19 am | Exponential Technology Some believe, and with good reason, that we will transcend nature to a state where it is controlled by man, not the other way around.
Posts: 1 Created on: March 17, 2009 | | March 17, 2009, 12:09 am | Dominant Species Since natural selection favors the dominant variation or competing species, should we?
Posts: 1 Created on: January 16, 2009 | | March 16, 2009, 11:58 pm | Your Ideas What matters to you in the face of environmental problems and their solutions?
Posts: 2 Created on: January 5, 2009 |
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