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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal
Message-ID: <569@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Sep-86 17:26:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.569
Posted: Sun Sep 28 17:26:38 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 08:18:33 EDT
References: <26500101@inmet>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 43

[janw]
>I was answering an assertion that, by multiplying, we are crowding
>out "the rest of creation".  The volume of our bodies *is*
>appropriate to compare with the volume of other things in nature -
>which includes the Great Lakes.  The amount of stuff we *process* is
>another measure; it can be compared to the amount of stuff moving
>about in nature.  The answer would be the same - we are as yet a
>(physically) minor effect in creation.  We are not crowding out the
>Gulf Stream or the monsoons, we have no influence on volcanoes and
>earthquakes - and all of *these* are merely surface phenomena on one
>planet.

Humans are influencing weather and climate, possibly disastrously,
e.g., through deforestation and CO2 buildup -- evidently Jan has
never heard of these effects.  Humans have caused earthquakes by
filling reservoirs such as Lake Mead.  Humans are mobilizing minerals
through erosion at rates comparable to geologic rates.  Humans are
turning rivers such as the Volga into a chain of reservoirs; by
damming the Nile they have caused the Nile delta to be eroded by the
sea.  But in any case Jan misses the point, which is the nature of
the effects that human activities are having on the BIOSPHERE, the
totality of organisms and their sustaining environment.  He might as
well argue that we have had no effects on other galaxies -- true but
irrelevant.

I recently posted an article, apparently read by Jan, explaining (via
long quotations from an article in *BioScience*) one of the best
measures of human effects on the biosphere, the percentage of net
primary productivity appropriated in various ways by humans.  NPP is
the basic energy resource for all organisms that do not
photosynthesize.  The article concluded that the human impact on the
biosphere is enormous and increasing, and (given expected population
increases during the next half century) likely to result in the
extinction of huge numbers of species.  If human population growth is
"controlled" by a large-scale nuclear war, the impact on the
biosphere is also likely to be immense, as the nuclear winter studies
have investigated in detail.  If Jan does not consider the extinction
of a million or so species to be "crowding out the rest of creation",
I would like to know what the phrase means to him.  In any event I'm
not sure how I ought to respond to someone who ignores the points I
make.

Richard Carnes