Very interesting article on what could / would happen to our planet if all human life ceased to exist tomorrow.

Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet.

Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust.

"The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. But would the footprint of humanity ever fade away completely, or have we so altered the Earth that even a million years from now a visitor would know that an industrial society once ruled the planet?

Full article here.

What a bunch of misanthropic garbage. I suggest that these people who imagine the utopian world without humans lead by example.

What a load of crap!! Another self-hating doofus, just like those PETA freaks, so many hungry & suffering children in this world but they dedicate their lives to saving animals....total morons!!

Small problem with that theory- a bunch of toxic matierals. Without humans to maintain the facilities, it will dump in the local enviroment in massive quantities, creating massive dead zones.

Now, if you want to talk about an Earth were nothing human, human-like, or even sentient developed... Someone might enjoy the quiet, but I doubt anything would have the brain power needed to make such an conclusion.

There was a scenario something like that in a book called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart (1951). I thought it was kind of stupid, as the "hero" was mostly just a philosopher, not the most productive member of a tiny society.

But the destructive capabilities of Man weren't quite as extensive then as they are now. The first nuclear power plant didn't exist until a few years later.

As whacked-out as I think the leaders of PETA are, they certainly aren't the cause of any of the hungry and suffering children of the world, who are more the victims of human politics than anything else, IMHO.

"Without humans to maintain the facilities, it will dump in the local enviroment in massive quantities, creating massive dead zones."

We've already created them. Chernobyl, Love Canal, previously fertile land that has been decimated by overgrazing, the application of thousands of tons of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides. That stuff doesn't just disappear like the stray bullets on TV; it's all still there. We've got genetically-modified crops that animals don't want to eat, and if they are forced to eat them or starve, their health seems to be deteriorating, but they are still feeding them to us.

Who knows? Maybe the scenario that Sherpadog offered is on its way.

Sue

There was a scenario something like that in a book called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart (1951). I thought it was kind of stupid, as the "hero" was mostly just a philosopher, not the most productive member of a tiny society.

But the destructive capabilities of Man weren't quite as extensive then as they are now. The first nuclear power plant didn't exist until a few years later.

As whacked-out as I think the leaders of PETA are, they certainly aren't the cause of any of the hungry and suffering children of the world, who are more the victims of human politics than anything else, IMHO.

"Without humans to maintain the facilities, it will dump in the local enviroment in massive quantities, creating massive dead zones."

We've already created them. Chernobyl, Love Canal, previously fertile land that has been decimated by overgrazing, the application of thousands of tons of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides. That stuff doesn't just disappear like the stray bullets on TV; it's all still there. We've got genetically-modified crops that animals don't want to eat, and if they are forced to eat them or starve, their health seems to be deteriorating, but they are still feeding them to us.

Who knows? Maybe the scenario that Sherpadog offered is on its way.

Sue

There was a scenario something like that in a book called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart (1951). I thought it was kind of stupid, as the "hero" was mostly just a philosopher, not the most productive member of a tiny society.

But the destructive capabilities of Man weren't quite as extensive then as they are now. The first nuclear power plant didn't exist until a few years later.

As whacked-out as I think the leaders of PETA are, they certainly aren't the cause of any of the hungry and suffering children of the world, who are more the victims of human politics than anything else, IMHO.

"Without humans to maintain the facilities, it will dump in the local enviroment in massive quantities, creating massive dead zones."

We've already created them. Chernobyl, Love Canal, previously fertile land that has been decimated by overgrazing, the application of thousands of tons of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides. That stuff doesn't just disappear like the stray bullets on TV; it's all still there. We've got genetically-modified crops that animals don't want to eat, and if they are forced to eat them or starve, their health seems to be deteriorating, but they are still feeding them to us. The human cancer rate is skyrocketing, but who cares?

Who knows? Maybe the scenario that Sherpadog offered is on its way.

Sue

[yawn]

These comments make me wonder if you even read the article, or just the quote. No where in the article does the author suggest that humans should start killing themselves off. The article isn't about the world being a better place without humans, it's about a hypothetical situation, what the world would be like if humans disappeared. The article isn't about humans being "bad".

The article asks how humans have affected the world, what the mark we would leave behind is, and what impact we've already had.

Another self hating doofus? Believe it or not, human activity does have an impact on the world. Foreign animals are introduced into new ecosystems, forests are cut or burned down, plants and animals are domesticated.

However, unlike some articles which state that humans are destroying the world, this article says that our mark would be almost unnoticeable. If humans disappeared, the world would continue. The end of humans is not the end of the world. You could look around the planet, and find almost nothing that suggested we impacted the world.

Having issues with the conclusions they've drawn is one thing. Argue the science of the matter. But don't argue "the person is stupid for saying the world would be better this way", when they haven't even said it! Judge the article in it's entirety, not on one quote in the beginning. A quote used to introduce the idea of humans disappearing.

I’d rather imagine the reverse situation… people without Earth. Think of all the survival gear and skills you’d need for that!

Charlton warned us all about this over 30 years ago, you can either go out with a BANG or a wimper

If there were no humans on Earth, there would be no stupid animals writing senseless articles like that. It's a PETA pipe dream, however "logical" it may sound to the gullible few. Who is paying people to write "dreams"? (Probably the same people spending tax money for artists who aren't qualified and skilled enough to sell their "art" [like scrap metal welded together with no theme or end vision] on the free market. Us!)

FYI,

The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is a research center of the University of California, Santa Barbara. It has no affiliation with PETA.

Funding is provided by the National Science Foundation, the State of California, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

NCEAS supports cross-disciplinary research that uses existing data to address major fundamental issues in ecology and allied fields, and their application to management and policy. NCEAS is a unique institution with an explicit mission to foster synthesis and analysis, turn information into understanding and, through effective collaboration, alter how science is conducted.

They are trying to help us.

bsmith

No, it's not sponsored or written by PETA, but it remains a PETA pipe dream, I think.

No, they're not trying to help us with this article, no more than they'd be trying to help us if they hypothesized Earth without PETA.

- Thank you for agreeing that PETA does not sponsor nor did not write the article.

PETA website: PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds and other "pests," and the abuse of backyard dogs.

Granted their sometime terrorist style affronts common decency. But so did the American Revolutionaries. Point is, sometimes people have felt it necessary to do the outlandish to capture attention.

I am not a member of PETA. I don't know what they stand for. Their website statement, I can agree with..

- If people did not think about what could or could not be - we would never have walked upright, nor walked on the moon. That's what the article is about - imagining what earth would be like w/o us - and then perhaps thinking how we can change our daily living to ensure that we don't cause our own extinction w/toxic waste, pollution, nuclear waste, and all of the man-made 'things' we've created that could kill us all.

I try to remember that although we are currently on the top of the food chain, it wouldn't take much to change that. For most people that would be to go in the woods after dark.

I applaud the scientists - and i hope they keep thinking.


bsmith

Just in case any B.E.M. is planning something, I've set all the reactors to go prompt critical and the ICBM'S are now in fail deadly mode.............

Hmm, I think I have a far different take on the outcome of non-human future for this planet... annihilation.

If there is any hope for this little marble for the next few million years, it rests singularly with us. Of all the species to have come and gone on this planet, we are the only ones who've made it to a technological condition whereby we possess the capability to actually avert the effects of a natural cataclysm. It may well rest with us whether or not the pushing of nature's reset button can be pre-empted, and most life on this planet can be spared.

I do not subscribe to the chicken little inuendo of the author, though I would tend to affirm his posit that our relative impact on our planet's ecological dynamics have, to date, been rather modest and superficial. Alarmists have a tendency to grossly exxagerate the size of our footprint so as to disproportionate the environmentalists' argument. Were it not for the author's opening statements, I would conclude this article has appropriate perspective. Alas, the theme doth run a bit droll.

Sorry, but the entire slant of the article implies that the earth without humans is "natural" and somehow we are an alien species that may or may not "leave its mark".

I find it funny that the same camp that believes humans are just an evolved hairless ape also believes that humans are the only species that is not part of "nature".

Oh, and it’s obvious that the purpose of the entire article is to get to the sermon on "Carbon dioxide, the biggest worry in today's world". You gotta laugh at the statement "There will be CO2 left in the atmosphere, continuing to influence the climate, more than 1000 years after humans stop emitting it" I hope so, otherwise everything would die.

They say that it would take over 1000 years for CO2 concentration to get back to 280ppm "pre-industrial levels" as if that is the "correct" level of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact the only other time in the past 600 million years that the CO2 level has been below 400ppm was the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. Why don't they tell us how long it will take to get back to the "correct" 7,000 (that's seven thousand) ppm of the Cambrian period?

How about an article on how long its going to take for the effect of pre-historic life to be erased. You know, all those plants sucking CO2 out the air, they dying, becoming buried and turned into fossil fuel, depleting our atmosphere of an essential gas?

imagine... a world without chihuahuas, cows, persian cats, and thoughts of other specialized breeds which could never exist naturally.

"I'm still trying to understand why anybody would consider this article relevant."

Relevant to what? This is Around the Campfire, so can't we talk about anything? We could talk about the color preferences of mice ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9W-49SFF11-2&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bb1d58c83b7a76ed709579ecd5bc943d ) or recipes for cooking your own dog food. We COULD even talk about zombies and pirates!

Sue

IIRC, we have already done that !!

I thought it was an interesting article in many respects, especially the section on Pripyat near Chernobyl. It led me to Google more information on the subject.

Regarding humans being natural, I think that we're quite natural and by extension so are our actions. Therefore and along that line of thought, we as a species will eventually bow to the laws of nature. Once an organism overextends itself and outstrips its resources or makes the environment inhospitable to itself, it moves on or dies off. That's nature. That's us. The difference, I believe, is that it will eventually be up to us to decide whether we move on or die off entirely.

Nothing continues on in an upward manner in perpetuity. The best we can hope for is a balance and I fear few of us are truly striving for that, myself included. Also, there are not too many forces out there keeping us wholly in check.

The difference between human beings and other natural species is the capacity of understanding, the ability to imagine the possibilities and theorize about an action's consequences. Just as it is natural for us to think, so too is it natural for us to act on our more primal instincts to consume, multiply and be concerned only for ourselves. Unfortunately and to our own detriment, it often feels that the primal takes precedence over all else in our lives.

It could be argued that in our capacity of understanding and imagination we can often be wrong, but it seems to me that a "better safe than sorry" approach might be a good course of action until the outcome can be known. The ETS forums are concerned with the "what ifs" even though a good portion of us prepare for things that may never happen. I mean, I carry a PSK with me when I'm out even though I rarely stray further than a days walk back to my home, and there are innumerable options between here and whatever theoretical trouble spot I find myself in.

It can also be argued that our abilities have gotten us out of situations that we did not see coming, but I don't know how long it is reasonable to expect that we can do so as we progress.

On invasive species and their impact on different environments, human beings are an invasive species in many respects. We've gone beyond our natural habitat because our natural ability to think has given us the capabilities to move beyond those regions. I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing it just means that we can work faster than evolution and outpace natural balance. So, I think we have to artificially limit ourselves.

On the world being better off without humans, that could go either way, but there are some areas of thought on how we can help an environment grow even stronger than it could in its natural state. A collective name for this endeavor escapes me at the moment, but if you're interested in the subject, look up "Native American Forestry" or "Tribal Forestry".

When it comes to thoughts about humans having an impact on the environment, I am left with little doubt at this point. During the day I can walk into a city and feel the heat trapped in and reflected off of all of the concrete, and then travel to a forest 20 miles away shortly afterward and easily feel the difference in a lower temperature. I could then return to that same city at night and feel heat being released from what was gathered during the day, and once more go back to the forest and actually get a chill because of the wide temperature swing. If we can trap that kind of heat in an area with concrete I don't feel it's a stretch to think we can trap heat on a larger scale with a combination of things including greenhouse gasses. I realize that it's two different effects happening, but that we may very well be the common denominator in the equation.

I'm not bashing human beings at all. We've done some spectacular things. However, I'm not saying we're perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It's not that we are inherently bad, but rather that we can do bad things from time to time.

As always, I could be wrong.

IIRC, I didn't think that humanity's footprint is that significant. Most of our impact would be on the surface (or a few miles below) with little or no effect upon the crust, mantle or core. Seems to me that this rock orbiting an average star would survive quite well on its own, with or without us.

Now, blowing the planet into atoms, courtesy of Lex Luthor, Dr. No, Blofeld, Dr. Evil, Marvin the Martian, et al, would be significant

Hmmm, interesting statement. What would you define as mankind's "natural habitat"? The African plains? Anywhere that "cavemen" lived? Anywhere on the planet mankind can survive using stone tools and animal skins?

It seems to me our natural habitats are anywhere but underwater, mountain tops and maybe Antartica (though I think Inuits could probably make a go there...).

I always laugh when people talk about mankind being the only ones who poison their own environment. It shows the person has no scientific background. Yeastkind will multiply over an over until they kill themselves and every other living thing off with their own pee. Then we drink the resulting chemical wasteland after a hard day's work (beer/wine/hard liquor).

Another example? The original blue-green algae. Before they appeared Earth's atmosphere had very little oxygen. Over the course of time these algae produced enough oxygen to trigger a massive self-extinction.

True, mankind has the ability to reason and therefore should be able to avoid this same fate. You know what? Very smart people are working on the problem. Some are looking at ways to reduce waste. Some are looking at ways to escape the planet. I have complete faith in mankind's ability to come up with a valid technological solution to the problems we face. Heck, the fact that the oil industry saved the whales from extinction is proof of that.

What, you didn't know that? Remember reading "Moby Dick" in high school? People used to hunt whales for the oil they contained. This oil was burned in lamps and lubricated machinery. Eventually the number of whales was reduced to a handful and everyone panicked that "Peak Whale Oil" had occurred and now we were all headed back to the dark ages. Luckily a guy figured out the black goo seeping out of the ground in Pennsylvainia and Ohio could be refined into lamp oil and lubricants. Overnight whale oil was replaced by "rock oil" and the whales were left to repopulate the oceans.

Mankind is smart. A lot of times it may not seem so, but it is.

-Blast

p.s. Besides, at the risk of sounding egocentric, what use is a world if there's no sentient life to admire it? Rocks/plants/cats don't care or notice that they exist.

"Peak Whale Oil"

Do zombies or pirates use recipes? Are the special recipes for zombie dogs? Are zombies color-blind? If not, are there colors they avoid or are attracted towards - but only if they are carbon-neutral colors?

The petroleum oil industry didn't save the whales from extinction as the majority of the worlds whale species were already on the brink of extinction by the turn of the 20th century. The petroluem oil industry had been established for 50 years before this near extinction point. Whaling just became economically non viable simply because the whale fisheries had been fished out. Whaling continued throughout the 1st half of the 20th century and expanded considerably after the 2nd world war after the whale population began to recover.

What saved the worlds whale species was international agreements not to continue exploiting the worlds fishery through pressure from environmentalists during the 1960s and early 1970's. The petroluem industry had now been established for over 100 years. The worlds whale fisheries again collapsed during the 1970s.

What is a human being's natural habitat?

It's kind of a conundrum to me.

With what we are able to do with our minds, and the technology that has come from them, we've made almost every part of the surface of this planet livable to some extent. There are stations in Antarctica that are manned year round and that have had some scientists living in them for well over 2 years at a time. We have submarines and under water stations that can be manned in a similar way. I would also suspect it's possible to live on mountaintops with our current capabilities. All of these are only a matter of trucking the right resources to the right spot for resupply or taking the spot to the supplies as the case may be.

Viability of a habitat at this point is only limited by the effort and expense that can go into starting it and what can be allowed to keep it going, I guess. So, it may be that our natural habitat is only an area into which it's viable to keep the resources of survival flowing if those resources can't be found in the area naturally. Of course that may fluctuate over time and through different circumstances in all areas.

Very interesting! Thanks for that!

No sentient life might mean there are no cats but lots of humans. Just ask them, they'll tell you. :P

How the Oil Industry Saved the Whales

-Blast

Thanks for the link, the article has got me intrigued about a certain local historical conundrum.

From Wikipedia



Dundee was a major whaling centre during the 19th Century producing whaling ships for the industry. Famously these ships were used in the Antarctic expeditions of Shackleton and Scott such as RSS Discovery and Terra Nova.

I’m beginning to suspect Mr Linday may have had a visit from certain representatives of those in the Whale Oil industry to enquire about the silliness of this new form of electric light as there were plenty more whales in the ocean in 1835 still to pursue. Perhaps he was convinced to move on to more personal profitable inventions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_whaling

The discovery of petroluem oil production didn't stop whaling. It just became uneconomic to pursue whales in dead fisheries.

A related question is to try to put an upper bound on the technology the dinosaurs had. That was about 60 million years ago, which is long enough for most of the evidence to disappear.

(Incidentally, they went extinct without human help. Extinction events can be natural.)

I dunno, maybe I ought to blame the zombie pirates for the declining whale population after the "no whale hunting" treaty was enacted. Aren't Norwegian pirates called Vikings, or was that Pittsburgh? I get confused on those team names sometimes.

As I ponder what the ecological burden might be should a preponderance of behemoths deplete the oceans' biological resources, I am wondering what is it exactly that the big behemoths contribute so urgently to our ecological structure that eliminating the bigger species should be of such grave concern. Then again, these are semi-sentient creatures, and who knows, maybe someday some big concrete cylinder will come hurling through space casting it's interrogative melody toward our globe, wreaking havoc with our weather system, and throwing us back to the stone age, all because there was no one here to answer it's mournful tune??? Naw, that could only happen in the movies...Dammit Jim, where's that pointy eared demon when you need him?

Like that TV show "Dinosaurs" from a while back?

And don't forget what Star Trek has taught us about Saurian culture, including the Brandy that they are sooooooo famous for!

Now Now, so much anthropocentric egotism.

"Save the Planet"? That simply means save humanity from its own folly, the planet will carry on

Apart from a few species dependant on humans - lapdogs or parasites (is there a difference?)- most creatures would be better off without us.

It is human conceit that we and our atifacts are worth preserving.

I am waiting for the leaning tower of Pisa to fall and for Venice to sink (it would make a great dive site)

BOD.... You sir, are a moron...