700 Species going extinct.

[jshore]

*Originally posted by DreadCthulhu *
The thing is; does this mass extinction affect humans in any measurable way? If it doesn’t, why should be care about it.

Originally posted by MGibson
I’m not really all that concerned about mass extinction as I don’t see it as a threat to human life. I can get worked up over air and water pollution as well as overfishing but I imagine there are a lot of species that could go extinct without any effect on the quality of our lives.

To be honest, it kind of amazes me that it comes down to this for you guys. I.e., that it doesn’t matter unless it affects us humans very directly. But, be that as it may, the Nature article I linked to talks a fair bit about the ways in which the altered biodiversity (with the extinctions being one part of this) does affect us in the section entitled “Society Consequences of Altered Biodiversity”:

…Changes in biodiversity that alter ecosystem functioning have economic impacts through the provision of ecosystem goods and services to society ( Fig. 1 and Box 2). Changes in diversity can directly reduce sources of food, fuel, structural materials, medicinals or genetic resources. These changes can also alter the abundance of other species that control ecosystem processes, leading to further changes in community composition and vulnerability to invasion. Introduction of exotic species or changes in community composition can affect ecosystem goods or services either by directly reducing abundances of useful species (by predation or competition), or by altering controls on critical ecosystem processes (Fig. 4).

It goes on to give examples and talk in more detail about this.