Is conservationism sustainable or will it lead to humanity's extinction?
....how could conservationism lead to humanity's extinction
>>1170579
Because our world is slowly dying, no amount of conservation will change that. We conserve when we should be expending resources to expand.
No. To survive some think we must colonize and terraform other planets. If we can terraform a barren waste we can fix earth. If we cant do either we are extinct anyway.
>>1170588
>he fell for the space-colonization meme
You realize sci-fi is literally, LITERALLY the only reason people even think about this shit, right?
>>1170588
I don't think you understand what you're saying when you say "expending resources"
>>1170588
>Because our world is slowly dying
Maybe in 6 billion years when the sun explodes, but if humanity lasts that long I'd be shockingly impressed. The world doesn't "die". It simply changes, and the organisms who can adapt will survive. Even if the climate changes, nothing short of becoming a barren waste like Mars would stop life.
Billions of years ago, Cyanobacteria came onto the scene and poisoned the air with oxygen through photosynthesis, killing off organisms that couldn't deal with the aerobic conditions. We're the offspring of that slime today.
>>1170588
>Because our world is slowly dying
[citation needed]
>>1170603
And? Electricity was LITERALLY magic before we figured it out.
At the very least we should be strip mining our solar system.
>>1170653
>There's a limitless supply of fossil fuel
>Population is going to magically stop increasing
>Food, clean water, space aren't increasing concerns
>>1170653
Not Op. but this is relevant
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
>>1170644
I was speaking metaphorically. The world's not alive and obviously cannot die in the traditional sense, but eventually it won't be able to support human life anymore.
Hell, there's so many potential extinction events that but we know about as it is, and with every human being on Earth, all our eggs are in one basket.
>>1170672
there is enough energy coming from the sun to power humankind if the entire Earth's biomass was converted into humans. this will be the case one day. its only a matter of time and dead people til we learn to convert it efficiently
>>1170675
"the world is dying" is a retardedly cutesy way of saying "humanity cannot sustain the bulk of itself with the current infrastructure relying on finite resources"
>>1170675
>NASA Statement on Sustainability Study
>The following is a statement from NASA regarding erroneous media reports crediting the agency with an academic paper on population and societal impacts.
>"A soon-to-be published research paper 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota’s Jorge Rivas was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity."
>>1170682
I don't think conservation means we will never try to colonize space. It just recognizes that a life-filled planet like earth is a humongous asset that we shouldn't take for granted. It's more like 'not shitting on your first basket' than 'putting all your eggs in one basket.'
>>1170662
Why?
>>1170566
You just stop sustaining Africa and China/India with aid and trade respectively, then the whole problem is solved.
Or just nuke the 500 most populous cities in the world, whichever.
>>1170672
>>There's a limitless supply of fossil fuel
Yet, for a bit, Germany had too much renewable energy.
>Population is going to magically stop increasing
It will. It's slowing down at an increasing rate..
>Food, clean water, space aren't increasing concerns
Depends.
We just need to play our cards smart.
>>1174040
>Yet, for a bit, Germany had too much renewable energy.
It's still a finite resource even if it's unused.
>>1170644
>we came from slime
You don't really believe that do you?
>>1175207
I think he mean we are related to 'slime' (and all other life on earth too), but obviously we are part of the vertebrates.
>>1175213
So you want to tell me they (vertebrates) came from slime, and we ultimately came from them?
>>1175219
My quick summary would be that early life capable of replicating itself became complex single celled life over time, which then became multicellular (Porifera), and eventually diverged to become many different types of multicellular organisms (plants, animals, fungi).
>>1173799
Not him but there is lotsa natural resources in orbiting asteroids in the solar system, as soon as we are able to im sure we will be mining the fuck outta them
>>1175219
And do you have an alternative theory that includes all geological, palaeontological and genetic evidence?
>>1175264
>difference between this single celled early non-complex life, and the complex single celled life
Instead of colonies of single-celled organisms, you have cells that form tissues. It's a man-made distinction so in the real world, there are cases that blur the line. Cancer, for example, is loss of multicellularity.
>>1175264
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate
>As the closest living relatives of animals, choanoflagellates serve as a useful model for reconstructions of the last unicellular ancestor of animals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor
>>1175272
So would you say life developed slowly over a long period of time, or that life appears in great variety from the very beginning, and also after extinction events? That is what the fossil record shows, anyway.
>>1175273
Why do they consider it the closest relative to animals?
>>1175288
Genetics
>>1175310
I'm not up on the specifics, but it's about sharing more with those groups positioned closer than those further away.
>But what do you think?
More intense selection pressures could increase the rate of speciation, and selection pressure aren't constantly uniform and stable, so a pattern resembling the punctuated equilibrium model is likely to occur, as well as more gradual changes too. And if you're talking about the cambrian explosion then I'd suggest looking into the ediacaran biota.
>>1175310
>bananas
Kent Hovind, please go.
