Has the world ever suffered from a worse disease than Man?

[Real Sorceror]

Has the world ever suffered from a worse disease than Man?

Yes, if you don't count those mass extictions a while back....
I don't think we've quite managed to meet up with those. We'll have to work harder, eh?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Earth is not a living organism. The notion that humans are a disease is dishonest and in no way sparks the intellect or actually pushes humans towards achieving a more hospitable living environment.

Of all people to talk about the environment George Carlin put it best. We are not going to destroy the Earth. We cannot. We can destroy us.

Taking the debate into pseudoscientific terms is of no help to preserve habitats, rid our cities of pollution or basically "save the planet" as is mistakenly put forth.

:clap Excellent! :clap

 

[Halcyon]

Of all people to talk about the environment George Carlin put it best. We are not going to destroy the Earth. We cannot. We can destroy us.

Well, we can destroy us and all other life along with us, turning the Earth into a lifeless rock like Venus. I guess that's not technically destroying the planet, but rendering it uninhabitable to life as we know it is about as destructive as you can get.

 

[Faint]

The Native Americans for one had come to terms with the limitations of nature and their resources. It was certainly a tough life and a fairly short lived one but it was sustainable.

We have made no attempt at all to ensure our life style is equally sustainable.
So which of the two are the stupid ones?

The Native Americans, while in harmony with nature (not each other) were also stagnating. We are in the process of scientific risk, which I believe is better than no risk at all. Human kind is advancing, and it's unfortunate that pollution/eco-destruction has become a part of our advancement. I don't think the level of damage we're doing is at all necessary to advancement, but I also would not advocate humans remaining in some kind of primitive "sustainable" state. Despite the damage we've done to the planet, mankind is better off than it ever was before. We need to look to our own species first.

I believe we are not a threat to Earth. Earth will continue just fine until the sun's red giant phase turns it into a nice, smoldering rock. The important thing for our survival is space travel and exploration. I think that the problem we're really seeing here is that we're outgrowing our home. It's time for the children to move out, and get on with their existence.

 

[gnomon]

Well, we can destroy us and all other life along with us, turning the Earth into a lifeless rock like Venus. I guess that's not technically destroying the planet, but rendering it uninhabitable to life as we know it is about as destructive as you can get.

3rd attempt to post.:cover:

That's sort of the point I would say more but unfortunately there seem to be technical difficulties at this time so instead:

edit: Let's see if this works now. Earth turning into Venus sounds like a "runaway greenhouse effect" which I'm not sure is credible. I doubt we have the capability to do as much "damage" to the planet than certain past geologic activities have done to this planet.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Well, we can destroy us and all other life along with us, turning the Earth into a lifeless rock like Venus.

How would you propose that be accomplished?

 

[Yerda]

Well, we can destroy us and all other life along with us, turning the Earth into a lifeless rock like Venus. I guess that's not technically destroying the planet, but rendering it uninhabitable to life as we know it is about as destructive as you can get.

I once read that when plants started pumping out oxygen they were in effect spouting out the most deadly pollution into the atmosphere. At this time life was almost entirely anaerobic, and oxygen a potent oxidant - a toxin. The history of life in one sense is the struggle to adapt to inhospitable environments that encourage disorder.

Humans may well kill humans (and do kill thousands of other species every year), but it's far from certain that we're heading down the road of extinction of all known life.

 

[Inky]

I'd like to restate something I said earlier--the question of whether we can wipe out all life shouldn't be the only question we're asking. I doubt that any of us would say that the capacity of the planet to bear life is the smallest significant thing about it, and the life that is here now has no true value as long as something can come along to replace it. Say we did devastate the current ecosystem; to me, that would be morally reprehensible even if life survived in other forms. I wouldn't judge plants and such the same way, though, since human beings can have moral responsibility and plants can't (in my way of thinking at least). Since we're thinking beings with free will, I wouldn't consider major environmental destruction by humans the same way I would a meteor strike or volcanoes or whatnot.

 

[Halcyon]

How would you propose that be accomplished?

You make it sound like a plan of action...

Well, you burn up all the coal, oil and gas. That releases all the abiotic CO2 trapped by dead life-forms. Then you move onto burning biotic matter, plant material, to create methane that way. Eventually all the forested areas of the earth are used up and we move onto nuclear and "altenative" fuels.

By that time there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere, and so little vegetation to retrap it that we do get a runaway greenhouse effect.

 

[Simon Gnosis]

You make it sound like a plan of action...

Well, you burn up all the coal, oil and gas. That releases all the abiotic CO2 trapped by dead life-forms. Then you move onto burning biotic matter, plant material, to create methane that way. Eventually all the forested areas of the earth are used up and we move onto nuclear and "altenative" fuels.

By that time there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere, and so little vegetation to retrap it that we do get a runaway greenhouse effect.

Not to worry...

We could always Genetically Modify some quickly breeding blue green algae with rapid respiration and life cycle rates with the result being that when sufficent masses of these bugs are grown they eventually combine lots of surplus atmospheric carbon dioxide by photosythesis into insoluble carbonates as do their un modified relatives normally..and when the little blighters expire their chalky little carbon rich constituent parts, fall to the ocean floor, the net effect being polluting carbon removed from the atmosphere and safely locked away in a 'new' carbon reservoir.....oxygen and lots of algae as by-products, GM algae burgers anyone?

Well its the best I could do sorry...

 

[retrorich]

How would you propose that be accomplished?

If George W. Bush had another full term as U.S. president, he just might find a way.

 

[Smoke]

Has the world ever suffered from a worse disease than Man?

Yeah. If the Snowball Earth hypothesis is correct, the whole surface of the earth may have frozen over before, and maybe more than once. Whether that's true or not, there have been five mass extinctions since the last supposed Snowball Earth event. It's widely accepted that we're living during the sixth. What's unique about this particular mass extinction is that for the first time a species with the intelligence to know better is actively contributing to it, and may well be one of the casualties of it.

 

[Simon Gnosis]

Yeah. If the Snowball Earth hypothesis is correct, the whole surface of the earth may have frozen over before, and maybe more than once. Whether that's true or not, there have been five mass extinctions since the last supposed Snowball Earth event. It's widely accepted that we're living during the sixth. What's unique about this particular mass extinction is that for the first time a species with the intelligence to know better is actively contributing to it, and may well be one of the casualties of it.

It certainly is correct and is not a hypothesis, its a widely accepted theory.

Right now the Earth is in its 'inter-glacial' phase.