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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: Extinctions, etc.
Message-ID: <573@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 16:20:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.573
Posted: Thu Oct  2 16:20:55 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 09:38:35 EDT
References: <564@gargoyle.UUCP> <26500114@inmet> <1168@cybvax0.UUCP> <297@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 30

[Lucius Chiaraviglio]
>Before you people say that extinction of many species would be worse
>than such disasters as nuclear war and economic collapse, keep in
>mind that some of these disasters could very well *include* a massive
>species extinction as bad as or worse than the one we are now
>threatened by without those factors.

Yes, but I don't think anyone has claimed that mass extinctions would
be as bad as a global nuclear war.  Edward O. Wilson spoke of
*limited* nuclear war, by which he presumably meant one too small to
have catastrophic consequences for the biosphere.  As you point out,
the nuclear winter studies suggest that the environmental
consequences of a large-scale nuclear war would be horrendous,
possibly including, with draconian justice, the extinction of the
species that devised nuclear weapons.

>Even a totalitarian government could cause a mass extinction, even if
>the government were relatively evanescent -- say it lasts for 20
>years.  

True, but it's also possible that a totalitarian regime would cause
less environmental damage than the alternative.  But this is beside
the point:  Wilson's point was that the *predictable* consequences of
totalitarian conquest (loss of freedoms) had at least a fair chance
of being reversed in the relatively near term, but that the loss of
genetic and species diversity through habitat destruction was nearly
certain to take millions of years to repair, and that this process is
now well underway and accelerating with each passing year.  

Richard Carnes