Debate Environment. Frail, or not?

Do you think that the environment is in an un-fixable state and is ready to fall apart because of the actions of humans? Are we that powerful, even when there is still much that isn't known about ourselves and the planet?

 

We have probably killed some years off of the life of earth, b/c of all are polution and carelessness. Prehapse, maybe in the future they will find a way to, um get ride of all this junk.

 

You can't kill 'years of life' off the Earth, only certain species. Life's tenacious. We're just making it, at worse, inhospitable to ourselves and most other advanced (read: non-monocellular) life on Earth. The Earth itself is good to go until it's orbit decays into the Sun, the Sun goes nova, or we somehow manage to blow the Earth into little tiny pieces.

- Ark

 

Our world is stong, but not invincible. It's just sad that some people dont realize that.

 

The absolute worst that humanity can currently do is to crack the crust of the planet with nuclear weaponry. Which would cause devastating ecological results, but not destroy life. The only way I can think of to destroy life in it's entirity would be to nuke EVERY inch of the planet's surface, and poison all the oceans with the nuclear waste... and odds are, evolution would provide some radiation-resistent species out of it.

- Ark

 

There is a very interesting part, somewhere in the middle or second half of the novel "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton. The mathmetician character explains, through chaos theories, that the Earth can actually take care of itself through the long run. Also, the existence of humans is just a TINY part of the life of the planet. Earth has survived through extreme conditions for billions of years, and after all that, it did manage to create all the glory today, right? So even if we burned up the planet, a few eons later the planet would've rebuilt itself, complete with new species that have adapted to any conditions that are still around.

However, the environment today still has its use and value. May not be on a galactic scale, but we can find medicines and stuff in the forests to solve smaller scale problems like human diseases. In that view, yes, humans do have the power to do nasty damage to the environment. Other stuff, like screwing up food chains and poisoning future generations of offspring, are really not so bad compared to the LONG life of the planet.

 

Life will adapt and evolve for eternity.

Even if you nuked every city on earth, cockroaches will survive. The bastards are damn near invincible.

As for the environment, it might change but it doesnt just magically collapse.

 

The planet is in a tight spot right now but it will heal the key is evolution.

To bad us humans have stopped evolving. we use machines now to make our lives easier no longer nature. Seriously one day humans will die of boredom from not having anything to do.

 

Humans have not stopped evolving, we just have evolved in a manner different from the traditional sense. You'll note that we live longer, are taller, smarter and presumably faster than a medieval european.

Additionally, we can make the landscape evolve to us. That is how we know we are the current pinacle of evolution, when we are no longer bound by the environment and can alter it to an extent.

 

I hear every now and then these wacky predictions from groups of people at college about how the earth is going to end, the planet is going to turn into venus because of the greenhouse effect and other various, and other similarly bizzare things. I never believed it, I don't even believe that humans can completly destroy the earth even if we wanted to (with nuclear weapons and such). Humans think of themselves too highly. We are not as all powerful as our possesions lead us to believe.

 

When our nukes are in the gigaton range, then I'll start to worry about seriously cracking the planet

 

Ok I totally take back what I said after reading other posts. I feel stupid now, oh well. I dont know where I got that from, but I see it was like wrong.

 

Pfft relax when I first started debating I made the same mistakes.

 

Actually Quisty, don't feel bad. We might have taken a few years off the earths clock, but whether humans really did or not really doesn't matter. The earth has been around and will be around for billions of years. So even a few thousand years makes only a little bit of difference.

 

Plus this world is screwed when the sun dies anyway! I hope that if mankind is still alive at that point, we do a "Noah's Ark" project, save the life on the planet, then exploit every single natural resource possible!!!!!

 

It is not our planets future that we should agonize over, but rather it is our own future for we are the ones to be judged not our fellow brethen of this ever charitable planet. We may not exist in the coming future because of our baneful actions, we continue to exploit and use our environment at our every amusment and desire failing to see the deleterious residuum of it all. We are overpopulating and polluting our planet at extreme rates, it is far worse now than it was in the medieval or classical eras of time. We are inevitably by sheer numbers more corrupt than any of our predecessors, we are tarnishing and tainting our planet far worse than our predecessors could have ever hoped to achieve, we are furthering our own demise at a furious ever perpetuating rate. Eventually our planet will give in and then our consistent revelry and self-indulgent exuberance toward exploition and corruption will fail us and then the very environment that we have exploited with scant hinderance, with scant tolerance will shower upon us the seeds of our own destruction. We will die and possibly the other advanced species on our planet, but the lower organisms will arise to take our place as long as the ever encompassing rays of light from the sun continue to shine in all its glorious preeminence. It is not our environments future we should worry about, for it will continue as it has for eons of time, but it is our continued existence that is at stake for only in aberrance to this course will we able to maintain our dominance upon this planet.

 

*cough* Ever heard of a paragraph break? It makes reading predictions of doom much easier. *cough*

- Ark

 

Deal with it.

Are you really sure you want me to? - Ark

 

Like I said before. Humans think that they are too powerful. The earth has been around for billions of years. Is anybody supposed to believe that mankind, a resident of the planet for a few thousand years, are this advanced?

Nature causes much more harm to itself than humans can at the present time (nukes can cause considerable harm, but like was stated in Jurassic Park "Life finds a way").Take for instance these fires in Southern California. Currently, they have burnt over 250 thousand acres. Imagine back before modern firefighting took place, fires would burn areas the size of states. Volcanos, droughts, floods, hurricanes and all manner of disasters cause considerable damage to the earth. Yet suddenly, we humans are a big problem and are destined to destroy the world. As Shao Kahn said (from Mortal Kombat): "Don't make me laugh".

This is not to say that humans should "want and waste" either. Don't get me wrong.

 

All i can say is technology is the demise of all life....people will find out in the future and as we are finding out today.