Well I am going to say it would be us..

Well if we annihilate ourselves first then the rest of the earth's creatures will breath a sigh of relief...if they can just hold on a bit longer ;o). vgkg

Well, according to the article, the only species increasing are humans.

I didn't see where it said that, Althea. There are numerous species that piggy-back on our succesful manipulation of the environment. It seems likely that as our numbers increase, so do thiers. I would guess at at least the following:

Many of the rodent family: rats, common gray squirrel, mice, perhaps rabbits.

Cayotes. Domesticated mammals. Countless cultivated plants. Quite a few un-cultivated plants. Some insect species are probably increasing with our numbers and activity. All the microbes that live in our bodies.

Looks like we'll be in good company LOL. vgkg

It's just innacurate to think that ONLY we are increasing. Certainly our impact is immense (our actual bio-mass notwithstanding), but let's try to be cool and clinical in evaluation.

I suppose the absolute bottom line is with how few species does the "crucible of life" - as EOWilson calls it - become broken? Personally, I don't believe we can break it. I think our numbers will crash long before any life-threatening damage to the planet occurs.

Well Pat, you're right. Reading the word "some" as "only" was a grave error on my part. Since so few species have actully been catalogued, it is difficult to say how many of those remaining are vital to continued existence, as we know it.

Quite impossible for us to say, I guess. In which case it were smarter to preserve species, I agree entirely.

Unfortunately the human species is uncontrollable by humans.

We seem to be tolerating elements of genocide in recent history, notwithstanding the rhetorical flareups deploring deaths of vast numbers of innocent victims. Social Darwinism at work, folks.

We've been tolerating genocide throughout our history; recent's got nothing to do with it.

Ahhhh, but the scale of slaughter...both direct and through "neglect" (so to speak). It is true that we seem to be the only species that honors the mass killing of its own as often a higher good. We are horrified by mass murder numbering few but shrug off mass murder of hundreds of thousands and millions. What does that say about us as a species and about our "civilized" cultures?

"Uncontrollable humans" is the key phrase when speaking of our own mass extinction. Such great sadness comes in when witnessing the unatural extinction of those species that come before us.

I sympathize with your sadness Nagamaki. The article doesn't offer much hope for reversing the trend. It reads as if this extinction is a done deal, satisfaction of humans needs will always destroy the environment.

This newly released study offers the possiblility that there is an alternative to the way of life characterized by wanton habitat destruction.

Organic farming boosts biodiversity 09:45 11 October 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Organic farming increases biodiversity at every level of the food chain all the way from lowly bacteria to mammals. This is the conclusion of the largest review ever done of studies from around the world comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Previous studies have shown that organic farming methods can benefit the wildlife around farms. But "the fact that the message is similar all the way up the food chain is new information", says agricultural scientist Martin Entz of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. (clip) Mixed farming particularly benefits some bird species. Lapwings, for example, nest on spring\-sown crops, but raise their chicks on pasture. Intensive agriculture has been blamed for the 80% decline in lapwing numbers in England and Wales since the 1960s. One of the reviewed studies from the UK also points to benefits for bats. Foraging activity was up 84% on organic farms and two species, the greater and lesser horseshoe bats, were found only on organic farms. ~~~~~

I was speaking with a woman in regards to coming to her island and work with a group of lobestermen families on a craft project.

I asked how the lobstering was going... Being in a lobster area it is difficult not to hear some kinda of feed back or reactions. This year I heard that lobstering is way down. That some of the fisher men counted on larger harvests and find they are needing a bank loan to get them through. This should be the highest yeilds time period, and it doesnt look like they are biting (lobsters).

Her reply was that she was very excited to be going to the sustainable food convention in Italy this week and wanted to talk to me more about it all later. HOwever, in a nut shell, something caused the eggs which the lobsters lay at the waters surface not to hatch...the possible casues would be that the waters may have changed and the climate may have not be good either or just a weird cycle of mother nature, or preditors (not likely) currents could have upsetted the lobsters...perhaps they hatched else where or dies if the waters were not of the proper temps at the right time period. But the point is there has been a drastic reduction in lobsters as in previous years and the speculations for future years is optimistic out of hope, but there is concern.

The good news, although this years harvest looks poor, is that that hatching which failed was for the size lobsters which would be this years harvest. So the lobsters for the coming years...as far as we know, those lobsters are alive and growing out around our islands. Although, I havent heard numbers or any actual counts at this time.

It is believed that this was a poor year and future years are not restricted to this pattern.

I asked her if it could be a result of global warming. She was afraid it was. I asked her if she believed that global warming was caused by air pollution. I wish I could remember what she said as it seemed after that the conversation was cut short.

In November, I have an appointment to attend a holiday craft event on this island where this woman lives...I wonder how her international sustainable foods convention went...she represents the lobstering industry on an island here in Maine. I know that Johnny Seeds was invited to attend as well. Plus thousands others across the nation and fromother countries.

Hi, more reading regarding this topic in the link below.

My objective as much as it may seem is not to cast out "doom" and "gloom", but rather to bring attention to the fact that we are as much connected to this earthly environment as any other creature.

ciao

Marshall,

Mass murder is not unique to the 20th century. Probably the best source I have found which lists many (can never say all) of the worst massacres through history is at Matthew White's history pages. They ain't especially easy to navigate, but he cites so many different sources that you get an idea or range of what happened, rather than a definite pronucement.

Nevertheless, a purty ugly history we humans have overall.

Peace,

- Sequoia

Sequoia, I have learned quite a bit on the subject already, having been a military history buff in my earlier years. I suspect "horror" is closer to a twentieth century value, begrudgingly applied to non-white-anglo-saxon-germanic-franco-protestant peoples of the colonial and post/neo-colonial regions. For many the deaths of thousands of Iraqi non-combatants cannot measure up to the death of one American service man or woman. To me this is disgusting, to put mildly. The inhumanity of it all.

What's next?
Well judging from past mass extinctions.....

Volcanoes Snuffed Out Most Life 250 Million Years Ago
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 02 December, 2004
6:30 a.m. ET
Scientists have gone back-and-forth in recent years on what caused the various mass extinctions clearly evident in the fossil record. The worst of these, known as the Great Dying, occurred 250 million years ago. More than 90 percent of all species perished.

Experts are pretty sure an asteroid was behind a more recent mass extinction, which took with it the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. A more controversial recent claim has been that a similar impact caused the Great Dying.

But a new study finds no evidence for an impact 250 million years ago, at what is known as the end of the Permian Era.

Wrong calling cards

A team of scientists led by Christian Koeberl from the University of Vienna studied rock samples in sections of the planet's crust in Austria and Italy that are dated to the end-Permian extinction.

"Our geochemical analyses reveal no tangible evidence of extraterrestrial impact," Koeberl said. "This suggests the mass extinction must have been home-grown."

Asteroids bring elements to Earth that are rare here. Excess iridium, helium-3 and osmium-187, for example, can serve as calling cards for a space rock. In a series of previous studies, a group led by Luann Becker of the University of California, Santa Barbara has claimed evidence from other locations for such extraterrestrial signatures, all associated with the end-Permian event. Several scientists have doubted those results, however.

The new study found only very small levels of iridium in the 250-million-year-old rocks, and revealed no traces of helium-3 or osmium-187.

There might have been several causes for the extinction, Koeberl said in an email interview, "but right now volcanism appears as the main culprit. I don't think an impact was involved in this case."

Choking the air and sea

The slight concentrations of potentially extraterrestrial materials were probably instead deposited by chemical interactions involving low oxygen levels in the ocean and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Koeberl said. The likely cause of the excess carbon dioxide: volcanic activity. That new interpretation is based in part on a more detailed analysis of the composition of the ancient materials by Koeberl's group.

Supercontinent
Pangea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago. This animation shows how it unfolded.

The researchers also cite other recent studies that suggested the extinction occurred at the same time as extensive volcanic activity in what is now Siberia.

Here's what might have happened:

Long ago, theorists say, all the continents were huddled in one giant landmass called Pangea. Ancient spurts of volcanic activity sometimes cause huge cracks, allowing new oceans to form and leading to the separated continents we know today.

A similar event at the close of the Permian -- but one that did not form a new ocean -- flooded the atmosphere with gas and dust, altering the climate and making life impossible for many species, Koeberl's team concludes.

The research is detailed in the December issue of the journal Geology.

Here are details of the five worst mass extinctions in Earths history and their possible causes, according to paleobiologist Doug Erwin of the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History. Erwin said estimates of extinction rates are from the late John J. Sepkoski at the University of Chicago:

Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, about 65 million years ago, probably caused or aggravated by impact of several-mile-wide asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater now hidden on the Yucatan Peninsula and beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Some argue for other causes, including gradual climate change or flood-like volcanic eruptions of basalt lava from Indias Deccan Traps. The extinction killed 16 percent of marine families, 47 percent of marine genera (the classification above species) and 18 percent of land vertebrate families, including the dinosaurs.
End Triassic extinction, roughly 199 million to 214 million years ago, most likely caused by massive floods of lava erupting from the central Atlantic magmatic province -- an event that triggered the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. The volcanism may have led to deadly global warming. Rocks from the eruptions now are found in the eastern United States, eastern Brazil, North Africa and Spain. The death toll: 22 percent of marine families, 52 percent of marine genera. Vertebrate deaths are unclear.

Permian-Triassic extinction, about 251 million years ago. Many scientists suspect a comet or asteroid impact, although direct evidence has not been found. Others believe the cause was flood volcanism from the Siberian Traps and related loss of oxygen in the seas. Still others believe the impact triggered the volcanism and also may have done so during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. The Permian-Triassic catastrophe was Earths worst mass extinction, killing 95 percent of all species, 53 percent of marine families, 84 percent of marine genera and an estimated 70 percent of land species such as plants, insects and vertebrate animals.

Late Devonian extinction, about 364 million years ago, cause unknown. It killed 22 percent of marine families and 57 percent of marine genera. Erwin said little is known about land organisms at the time.

Ordovician-Silurian extinction, about 439 million years ago, caused by a drop in sea levels as glaciers formed, then by rising sea levels as glaciers melted. The toll: 25 percent of marine families and 60 percent of marine genera.