They may not teach you some things in school, but I remember with great fondness the free-topic essay I wrote: Riel - meglomaniac & murderer.
My, the fur did fly!

Clever. Of course dinosaur extinction did not involve humans. So I guess what you are implying is that human induced extinctions are natural.

Clever. Of course dinosaur extinction did not involve humans. So I guess Kate what you are implying is that human induced extinctions are natural.

Apparently even all the thousands and thousands of transitional life forms have all gone extinct. No new life crawling from the swamps. Man is such a destroyer. heh

Mother Nature's failures? Nah, it's our fault, we've frigged the environment for all time, just ask David Suzuki or Lizzie May or even Jack Layton.

Jack will be still on a high after getting a seat in the Quebec bi-election. He'll be strutting like a Peacock. Now we'll have Peacocks and Puffins in the HOC.

Eugene - lighten up. I was pointing to the absurdity of the oft made claim that we are killing off species we don't know exist. Fairies and gnomes among them, I suppsoe.

Now some wise guy just has to come up with the theory the dinosaurs were nothing but bunch of gigantic gas bags that caused GW and did away with themselves.

Yes, human caused extinctions are natural. The biological realm is a complex adaptive system and is constantly undergoing changes, caused by all species interacting with each other.

The point about this CAS (complex adaptive system) is that its very nature enables it to adapt. People are quite wrong to think that when one species goes extinct that there is a 'giant hole' in the world. One or more likely several new species develop in that biome.

Birds, for example, adapt to changes in food type by changing their beaks; over time, and reproductive isolation, that change becomes defined as a species.
Same with plants, insects and mammals.

The biological realm is a huge 'information processor', highly tuned to its content, and quite able to change the forms of that realm into species.

“I was pointing to the absurdity of the oft made claim that we are killing off species we don't know exist.”

Curses! Donald Rumsfeld strikes again. “There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”

"So I guess Kate what you are implying is that human induced extinctions are natural."

Given that humans are part of the natural world as much as any other species, the answer to that would be yes.

Makes sense ET.

Some recent extinctions are troubling and should have been prevented, like the Black Rhino, for example.

Whaling, poaching, certain fishing practices, etc. must be stopped.

An interesting question. Was the Auroch's extinction caused by man? (I looked it up)

"Although protected by royal decree, the last recorded live aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland.

In the 1920s two German zookeepers, the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, attempted to breed the aurochs back into existence from the domestic cattle that were their descendants. Their plan was based on the conception that a species is not extinct as long as all its genes are still present in a living population. The result is the breed called Heck Cattle, 'Recreated Aurochs', or 'Heck Aurochs', which bears an incomplete resemblance to what is known about the physiology of the wild aurochs."

I would think that most extinctions however, are caused by the natural ebb and flow of life on this planet.

Though, the leftist loser crowd will continue to blame the boogey man, capitalism, to justify their true cause, theft of wealth.

On a bright note, many of us will continue to work dilligently towards the extinction of leftists.

Kate, don't forget the jackalope. I haven't seen one in years. Could it be extinct due to habitat loss, or too few PETA/Sierra Club types to protect it?

The question is, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does my truck still cause global warming?

heh, phantom. Just because no-one hears that magnificent tree fall, doesn't mean that it didn't make a sound. I presume you are rejecting the hearing of animals, the vibration of the air waves felt by insects - and by plants; they feel vibrations and temperature changes too.

So, most certainly, the tree fall had an effect. Your truck idling has an effect as well. But, whether it causes global warming - now that's a different theme.

After all, when the biome or environmental temperature changes, the chemical and biological matter in that domain reacts. it will speed up or slow down its normal transformational changes; it will also develop new forms or morphologies that function quite well in that changed temperature.

The biological/chemical world is a complex system and highly adaptive. Furthermore, there are other and stronger causes of climate change - predominantly the sun - which has changed the earth's climate over many millenia, long before humans, long before industrialism. The point is, that the biological realm, of which we humans are a part, is adaptive.

So- unfortunately for the leftists and the emotional hysterics - there's no apocalyptic future. Sigh. Just the usual. Change and adaptation. Never any peace and quiet. Drat that biological world.

ET,

Do you have a sense of humour?

No, warwick. None. Sigh.

Guess what, Gaia worshipping LIBTARDS?

You'll be gone and turn to dust before millions of people get to know YOU and just think of all the generations past and future that will never get to know you?

Mind baffling, isn't it? That's life, get used to it.

Would someone please explain evolution to me. I thought it was survival of the fittest. To me, that means some species have to go extint, so others can be created. So, why is everyone so upset that those unfit species are going the way of the dodo bird. Would there have been demonstrations, in the nude, to save the dinasaur?

This might sound like a stupid question but if they go extinct before we knew they existed, how do we know they existed at all ?

There are too many species that we didn't know existed that have gone extinct already:

- The Principled Liberal
- The Moderate Muslim
- The Intelligent Socialist

Alas and alack! We miss them mightily!

"Would there have been demonstrations, in the nude, to save the dinasaur?"

Gee Mary T, what would the prehistoric PETA protestor have worn back then(in order to strip from)? The thought of Wilma and Betty in the buff has forever ruined my childhood memories.

No, mary t, evolution is not about 'survival of the fittest'. That sets up an abnormal idea of biological reality - suggesting that only the 'fit survive'. That puts the focus on individuals or single species - each of which has to be 'better and stronger'.

Nature doesn't really work that way. The gazelle doesn't evolve to run faster and faster away from the lion. The lion doesn't evolve to run faster and faster after the gazelle. They develop, together, into a reasonably stable co-existence.In reality, evolution is about diversity of morphology or forms that interact with each other.

So, if one species becomes extinct (and we know about this from fossil remains) then, other forms develop to exist in the same environment. A new mammal, a new bird, a new plant.

The image that many of us have, and it's a wrong image, is that when one species goes extinct, there's some kind of 'hole' in the env't where they used to be. No. Nature, as they say, 'abhors a vacuum'. That ecological niche isn't empty and lots more biological organisms develop to use the energy of that biome.

Is the extinction prediction model created by the same people who do the global warming climate models?

I don't understand the huge concern about extinctions. Virtually every species that ever existed is now extinct. Every species that exists today will be extinct at some point in the future, including humans, if only because inexorable genetic mutation will change us into something different. Lest you think I'm a nihilist though, I do hope we stop the next comet before it hits.

One species that is not well known outside the Canadian prairies that is not about to go extinct despite the fact that urbanites, easterners and southerners know nothing about them are snow snakes. Dreadful creatures that serve no known purpose and make prairie driving more difficult.

"Species in vulnerable habitats may be going extinct before their existence is even known."

Dateline 2009:
Hmmmmm, I see a connection between that statement and one Stephane "hot-dog" Dion......ever heard of him?

Yup, nothing more natural than seeing a D9 Cat in it's natural setting, the Brazilian Rainforest, bulldozing trees to make room for herds of cattle in their natural environment. Too heck with the animals that can't adapt. I guess they didn't get the natural selection memo.

Natural selection is mother nature at work in her natural setting Gary. I live on the lower mainland of British Columbia, a natural rain forest. The trees are coming down fast and furious making room for people and cars, I presume you live closer to the BC rain forest than the Brazilian one. Why the hell aren't you protesting the destruction of our own rain forest? My guess is you're silly, you pick and choose your protest without knowing anything.

Natural selection is mother nature at work in her natural setting Gary. I live on the lower mainland of British Columbia, a natural rain forest. The trees are coming down fast and furious making room for people and cars, I presume you live closer to the BC rain forest than the Brazilian one. Why the hell aren't you protesting the destruction of our own rain forest? My guess is you're silly, you pick and choose your protest without knowing anything.

WOW! My post flew right over your head! Sarcasm is not your forte I guess. Re-read the two unrelated links again, then the comments by some of the "intellectuals" that post here then read mine again. Next time I'll try harder. P.S. Brasil was used as an EXAMPLE.

if you believe in the theory of evolution then you must believe that all extinctions (right word?) are natural and evolutionary.

if you believe in the theory of evolution then you must believe that all extinctions (right word?) are natural and evolutionary.

NO I MUST NOT! If you believe in Creation then you MUST believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa. Same sort of logic.

Just throwing this out there.

If you don't believe in God, we are just another animal. We modify the environment to our advantage like beavers and termites and ants etc etc etc. Humans are not going to destroy the planet. We might destroy our ability to live here, but that is not the same things. We are not the only animal that destroy our ability to live in a particular environment. The same thing happens when you get to many deer competing for food in a forest and they kill all the trees, or like we have here on the shore of lake Ontario with cormorants destroying the trees they nest in by producing so much dropping that the trees die.

Because we only get one life we don't see the long term effects but every species goes through boom and bust cycles. Humans have done it before and we will do it again. The medieval plagues wiped out thirty percent of the European population and set back civilization a thousand years.

This is the conundrum I see with the logic of the eco-freaks. If they think we are just another animal on the earth they should accept this and go on with their lives. But they don't, they are constantly on us to save the planet. If we are the one and only species that is capable of saving or destroying the planet, we must somehow be above the other life forms that inhabit it. If we are why would that be? Would it be because God put us here for some other purpose? If we are just another animal, our fate is the same as every other animal. If we are special and different, their must be a reason.