I agree. There are many false statements. For example, there is strong evidence that anthropogenic-induced climate change will lead to sea level rise. See the recent article by Bamber et al in the May 15 issue of Science and the references therein for more information. It is true that sea levels are naturally higher now than in the last glacial period, but that certainly doesn't mean they couldn't go higher.
Will global warming cause mass extinctions? What about landscape fragmentation? Invasive species? Pollution? Pathogens? Certainly taken together these problems have the potential to seriously lower global diversity. Solutions to all of these problems seems very daunting indeed. Perhaps we should be looking at this from another perspective: What is the one thing that all of these problems have in common? They are all anthropogenically-induced. In other words, there are too many people using too many resources and changing too many factors. In my opinion overpopulation is the root cause. Perhaps population management is the key: Less people means less environmental impact. Of course this entails lowering of population over many generations by a lowered aggregate birth rate, which is something humanity cannot or will not implement for various reasons. *** Paul E. Reyerson Department of Geography University of Wisconsin-Madison 160 Science Hall 550 North Park Street Madison, Wisconsin 53706 -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of William Silvert Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:50 AM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Why should I care about mass extinction? Hamilton's posting is so silly that it hardly merits rebuttal, but the sentence "Habitat conversion is the sole cause of human induced mass extinctions." is so astoundingly ill-informed that it might be useful for lectures on how unaware the public is about scientific issues, perhaps accompanied by illustrations of dodos, passenger pigeons, and numerous other species hunted to extinction. Bill Silvert ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Hamilton" <rhami...@mc.edu> To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 11:39 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Why should I care about mass extinciton? > Global warming is a ruse. There is no evidence contemporary global > warming will cause sea level rise, for example. Sea levels are pretty > high anyways. warm the atmosphere, more water goes into the air, more is > cycled onto land. Will sea levels rise? Will it make some great > difference, especially with respect to mass extinction? I, at least > don't see it. More storms? Even if so, so what? heat waves? Is that a > joke? It surely is silly. > > Habitat conversion is the sole cause of human induced mass extinctions. > When we advocate on the issue of CO2, we are buying into a meaningless > ruse that more and more looks like nothing more than a means to generate > revenue for people who want to invest in wind and solar power > distribution. > > Rob Hamilton
