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RosieG

How long before HOMO SAPIENS are extinct? Your best guess?

I have no idea how "they" know this but this is what I read.

"More than 99% of the FOUR BILLION SPECIES that evolved on earth are now gone. At least 900 species have gone extinct in the last 5 centuries."

So say they. Upon what they base what they say I cannot say.

A wilda** guess? Whatever.

Our days are numbered don'tcha think? How long do you give us best case? Worst case?

Posted - July 11, 2021
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Responses


  • 3719
    The  numbers are estimated based on fossil records, but whilst individual species come and go their genus and higher classifications last longer. Mammal species appear to average about 3 million years each; but of course almost all of those counted existed for only fractions of the some 500 million years of Life on the planet, during which time there were several mass-extinctions.

    We hominids are real-Johnny-Come-Latelies, appearing within the last few million years; and our own H.[species] in less than 1 million as far as the rather scanty fossil record can reveal. (Land mammals are not very good at becoming fossils. With the exception of humans developing burials, their dead tended to lie about as dinner for scavengers.)

    That is nothing in the spread of time in which those 4 billion appeared and disappeared; and I wonder of those how many were species-disappearances simply by adaptation while their basic groups carried on for much longer; so their extinctions not significant except by their fossils being useful geological markers.

    Unfortunately, whilst Homo Sapiensis appears to have been the most recent highly-developed animal to appear, it has also proven the most pernicious predator as far as the rest of Earth's life is concerned. So whilst many of those 900 in the last 500 years may have faded away anyway, a lot were probably killed off by human activities.

    ++++

    How long we last before becoming extinct? That's anyone's guess because we won't let Nature take its course, and we contain the seeds of our own destruction. That does not mean we will wipe ourselves out, because whatever disasters befall us very many people will survive; but we will influence whatever natural controls there would be on us. This post was edited by Durdle at July 12, 2021 2:29 AM MDT
      July 11, 2021 3:06 PM MDT
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  • 113301
    Are you familiar with the cartoonist Walt Kelly Durdle? His comic strip POGO was quite popular back in the day. In one of his strips he included these immortal words...."we have met the enemy and they is us." Truer words were never spoken. If homo saps were intelligent and aware of their impact/effect on the environment and took great care of the planet early on what might our world be like now. Oh. Is everything a two-edged sword? FIRE for example. It is good and it is a lethally destructive thing. If FIRE were never discovered would the earth have been better off? What else due to homo saps would the earth have been better off without? I shall ask. Thank you for your thoughtful and helpful reply. Every answer is the seed of another question. And so it goes. :)
      July 12, 2021 2:33 AM MDT
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  • 3719
    I had not heard of Walt Kelly, no, but he's right about that "enemy" line!

    The discovery of fire, or more accurately the discovery of how to make, control and use it, is mankind's most fundamental; for everything else we do depends on heat in one form or another. In prehistoric times a fire allowed us to eat things inedible without cooking; as well as providing wamth and some protection from predators that might like a nice juicy human as a change from rabbits and deer.

    As far as what the Earth might have been better off without our species doing, frankly I sometimes think it is having ever existed in the first place! (If we weren't here, we would not notice it.....)

    The world and humanity sort of rubbed along together quite well for something like a quarter of a million years. Then our species really started to expand in about the last 10 000 years maybe, and started to make a right mess of the place within the last 1000 or so, with that rate of expansion and damage increasing since.
      July 13, 2021 4:55 PM MDT
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  • 113301
    Here's my next question. You get first look. "When was greed born? Who was the first to LUST AFTER wealth and do/say anything to get more of it?" Or words to that effect. I believe it is greed and fear and hate that drives the power obsessed. Not one good thing is an underlying factor. And so it goes. The rapidity of the decline once it began is shocking the GUANO is the accelerant for sure. He has exacerbated everything evil bad awful disgusting. He didn't invent the monstrous people who adore him for the evil he unleashed. He just gave them what they wanted. Who is more evil? The GUANO or his adoring worshippers? I dunno.  Thank you for your reply Durdle.
      July 14, 2021 5:02 AM MDT
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