New Scientist: Imagine Earth Without People

[lanlady]

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?

...more....

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19225731.100-imagine-earth-without-people.html

[villager]

1. Wow! Thanks for posting...

both grim and, well, hopeful, all at once...

[Big Kahuna]

2. Every human civilization has reached a point

of unsustainable growth and diminishing returns, and those societies have walked away from the pyramids, megaliths and other hubris, to return to a simple, relatively happy life. We might be dragged back kicking and screaming, but I think Peak Oil will force the issue.

[greyl]

3. Just as importantly, if not more so,

is that thousands of human societies have never taken the turn of believing that Earth was somehow divinely granted to them. Our culture isn't one of them.

I think with this article, NewScientist has screwed up yet again. Holmes makes the all too common error of supposing that our culture represents humanity. When he says "we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures", he isn't speaking as a human. He is speaking purely mythologically as an arrogant member of but one culture out of thousands, as if our particular civilizational experiment, along with all of it's unsustainable attitudes and practices, is the one that humanity was created to undertake.

The article had some redeeming factoids, but another thumbs down for NewScientist from me for context and framing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. How do you define 'our culture'?

The vast majority of humanity gets food from agriculture, and fuel from non-sustainable means. "We" means most humans alive at the moment. Are you then defining 'our culture' as the one the majority of humans are part of? It seems so, in which case the article is quite valid.

[greyl]

13. We lock up the food.

Is there some intrinsic value in numbers? Some non-divine, non-mythological, scientific, rational, reasonable, basis that the human culture with the largest population earns some right to represent what it means to be a human on Earth?

In which mythological system does the homo sapiens sapiens culture who over-populates Earth first win the accolades of "most successful", most deserving of the title of iconic, representive specimen of human society? Answer: Ours.
It's is not in human DNA to destroy other human cultures because we think ours is better, and it is no weakness in the human DNA of the Mattoponi or Talaandig that their numbers have dwindled because our culture thinks of them as non-evolved savages.

It is only arrogant for us to believe we know the One Right Way to Live, feel validated by being the majority, and patronize the other thousands of human cultures who want no part of our failing experiment while we guiltily ponder how we've brought the Earth to its knees, bleeding to death.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. But that's not what the article is about

So I can't see why you're arguing against it - it's a straw man. The article is talking about the effect that humans have on all the other species, and the general environment. Nowhere does it claim that the culture to which New Scientist belongs is the "One Right Way to Live", or has a special "right". If anything, its description of how humans have affected so many other species can be taken as a criticism of the cultures that have done so.

But, yes, being the culture followed by the majority of the world, it is the representative specimen of human society. It is 'typical'.

[whistle]

4. Send the 6.5 billion earthlings to the galaxy known as NGC 6240

...and give Earth a 25 million year rest.


<snip>
Pair of Super massive Black Holes Inhabit Same Galaxy, Destined to Collide
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12:15 pm ET
19 November 2002

A pair of gargantuan black holes have been found to inhabit the same galaxy and will eventually merge with a violence that will slingshot stars out of the galaxies center and unleash a torrent of radiation and gravitational energy.

The discovery is the first proof that one galaxy can contain two super massive black holes, astronomers said today at a NASA press conference. The work also adds to other theoretical suggestions that black holes can in fact merge.

Researchers have known that the galaxy known as NGC 6240 has two bright spots, called nuclei, near its center, based on observations with radio, infrared and optical telescopes. Since the central region of the galaxy is shrouded in dust, however, it cant be observed in much detail.

To investigate the pair, scientists pointed the Chandra X-ray Observatory at it. X-rays penetrate dust.

"With Chandra, we hoped to determine which one, if either, of the nuclei was an active super massive black hole," said Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. "Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes."

Active black holes are those that are actively consuming matter. Astronomers detect them because some of the incoming matter is not consumed, but rather is converted to energy in a frenetic environment of high-speed travel. The stuff is shot out as X-rays, other radiation and superheated matter called plasma.

Our own Milky Way harbors a super massive black hole weighing as much as 2.6 million Suns. It is not, however, very active. A study earlier this year suggested that black hole mergers could serve as an on-off switch for the input and output of a black hole.
<more>

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/merging_backhole_021119.html







<here is the animation which takes about a minute to load>

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0192/BH_merge_sm.mov

[Igel]

5. "Nature would begin to reclaim the planet ..."

To what end?

There's no evidence that it's sentient. In so many billions of years it'll be consumed when our sun expands, prior to collapse and going nova. This has undoubtedly happened to many planets, plausibly many with life. But it's gone unnoticed, and unmourned, and the planet and any life it had was meaningless.

Same for Earth, if humans haven't moved beyond the Solar System.

[greyl]

12. As if humans aren't a product of nature... nt

[Canuckistanian]

7. OMG, all the forests would burn to a crisp

Without us humans to clear all that flammable brush.

[mimitabby]

8. actually, the corpses would be a good thing

all those corpses would give nutrients to the soil and all the animals and organisms left over.

[OneBlueSky]

9. well . . . I suspect the Earth would be very pleased . . .

after all, we've been trashing her since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution . . . she'd probably breath a huge sigh of relief -- similar to what you might feel if you finally got rid of that parasite that's infected you for a long, long time . . .

[greyl]

14. Don't believe the hype.

Humans have existed for 3 million years, with the Earth's unconditional approval.

[applegrove]

10. Wasn't it Kurt Vannegurt who said mother earth was trying to cough

up humans to get rid of them with the global warming crisis?

[goforit]

11. No more humans?....LOL!!! This is what Bush/Cheney wish for.