Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve, say experts ..”For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve, one of the world’s experts on biodiversity has warned…..The calculated increase in the extinction rate should also be compared to another study of thresholds of resilience for the natural world by Swedish scientists, who warned that anything over 10 times the background rate of extinction – 10 species in every million per year – was above the limit that could be tolerated if the world was to be safe for humans”
Posted by: r.m. | March 9, 2010
more extinctions…
Posted in climate change, ecology | Tags: evolution, extinction
Green Resistance (teaching, organizing, and eco-thinking) 
will human’s activities lead to its own extinction..???
By: mike malek on March 11, 2010
at 12:11 am
Well Mike, I think human’s activities will eventually lead to its own extinction, simply because at the end species that are important for us as a source of food, drugs, chemicals, and some with experimental use will disappear. Thus, finding replacements would be so hard and time consuming in addition to being restricted to a much less species biodiversity. In my opinion, as more species are going to be extinct, as less chance of survival of human’s population leading to a decrease in the time left for usto be used in order to correct this dangerous situation in which we are suffering.
Every individual is contributing more and more to this unexagerated crisis. Group’s movement is a must if we are willing to save our planet for our future generations.
People are extremly selfish, unconcerned to the yet unidentified future that may be “super dark”. Even if some people are hearing on the news about a specie that might be extinct soon, their responses would be limited to “I don’t even care” or “What a shame!”. No body is interested to open his eyes, observe and understand what he sees. People are just walking blindly!
By: Georges Elias El-Khoury (BIOL207) on March 12, 2010
at 2:07 pm
Well, God gave us brains and think and use, but I guess we rarely use it. Animal are going to extinctions for our benefits from food, research, experiments,etc..
Well, there are always alternatives, Humans are working on genetically modified animals. What happened to genetic engineering and it’s huge impact on the field of science and discovery. George You can’t say People are walking blindly, you can’t include all, there are people working for years of research trying to save the animal population. All we can hope for is for more people to be interested in what is actually happening.
By: Majed Hassanieh (BIOL 207) on March 14, 2010
at 11:20 pm
Definitely Majed I was not including all people, but I was including the majority because what is the percentage of researchers from the human huge number? When one person is trying to save animals versus a million who don’t even care about them whether alive or extinct, I was pretty acurate of my generalization when claiming that all people are walking blindly.
Then, from this tiny percentage of scientists working-or claiming to work- for the benefit of animals, there are many who are just working to work, for their curiosity and their love of research and not to save the lives of these endangered species. They may just want to discover new things and understand complex processes.
Thus Majed I was somehow right in my saying!
But I kind agree with you about the issue of hoping to find more people interested in the current crisis.
By: Georges Elias El-Khoury (BIOL207) on March 15, 2010
at 8:40 am
Guys I think that a conclusion can be deduced from your both thoughts. We should credit those scientists working in their field trying to understand the truth of what happening and doing their best and doing just what they can, so Majed you have a point in your say.
But let’s not just underestimate Georges’s point of view. We should definetly blame ourselves for watching and not acting. People are fascinated by words and not actions. What is the point of doing all the researches and staying SILENT? why big organizations don’t adopt these researches in order to apply them instead of doing other unuseful things or at least useful for themselves alone?
Work shouldn’t stay on papers but directed into practice because let’s face it Majed, George is right, people ARE “walking blindly” because if not, we wouldn’t observe all these extinctions, right?
Finally, I hope, like you both, that humans start acting before extinction affect them too !!!
By: Sally El Helou (Biol 207) on March 15, 2010
at 10:28 pm
Hi i’m am the best ” Tina Turner”
By: Anonymous on March 16, 2010
at 12:24 pm
When i hear that some species are becoming extincted the image i get is bad because each species is unique by itself and it would be a great loss not to have it alive anymore…But when it comes to the effect one species has on the others, i can’t really imagine it because it is known that one species feed on many others (not only one)so I wonder.. when one gets extincted it doesn’t imply that its predator will also get extincted and so on… isn’t it right? By giving the number 10/million/ year i can’t see the damage we are talking about. I think an example here would help a lot.
Moreover, Id like to know if there are any researches studying the new species evolving. Do any of the new species create any threat to human life?
thanks.
By: Michella Abi Zeid Daou on March 16, 2010
at 7:21 pm
it is true that most animals aren’t even having the chance to evolve and adapt to the changes that we are causing, but i do believe that some species are going to be able to servive and these species will be the source of new evolved creatures and so on…After all, according to evolution, we all came from one common ancester. This implies that it only takes one surviving creature to make a whole new earth. Sure we will be loosing so many wondeful creatures, but that is life and we should get over it, after all extinction has been going on for millionsof years and so many wonderful creatures have already been gone. “c’est la vie” and we should accept it….
By: ghattas el bassit (biol 207) on April 7, 2010
at 1:16 pm
when i hear the word extinction for the first time about species,,i think about the end of human life,,becuase some species are really important in our lives …
By: tsoler(pdhp 212) on May 26, 2010
at 4:36 pm