Be sure to check out Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent piece on extinction
in the New Yorker last week
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_kolbert
(today's New York Times also had a short redux of it, but it missed the
point). This audience may not be Joe and Jane, but if
I'm not sure I agree about Joe and Jane and the influence of
anthropocentrism. Yes, most of us care more about our kids' education and
eating habits than we care about the phlight of myriads of arthropods, and
that's never going to change, ever. Anyone who has ever heard of evolution
will know
What I don't understand is why hardly anybody mentions
mass extinctions when they warn of global warming. Can
you imagine an Earth with 95% of its species lost? I can't.
For many decades a sizable fraction of the worlds population
hasn't seemed to mind living in very low species diversity
/ability
to destroy our habitat/world.
Steve
-Original Message-
From: Brendan Rogers brog...@gmail.com
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Sent: Fri, 22 May 2009 9:38 pm
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Why should I care about mass extinciton?
Okay, I'm the average Joe or Jane, concerned with my kids
Brendan,
There was an excellent NAS Sackler Symposium a few years ago that
focused on the biodiversity components of mass extinction (and
includes several talks involving or informed by the fossil
record). Jeremy Jackson (using both modern and ancient ecosystems)
sounded perhaps the most
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
neighbor, you don't know enough about
it. --Anon
- Original Message -
From: Robert Hamilton rhami...@mc.edu
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Why should I care about mass extinciton?
Global warming is a ruse
Okay, I'm the average Joe or Jane, concerned with my kids' educations,
mortgage payments, a failing economy, crime, and sometimes endangered
species. When the media warns of global warming, they most often cite three
reasons why I should care:
1) more heat waves
2) more storms
3) sea level rise
