Another question about evolution?

In My Humble Opinion
101

If we had never come about, the carbon levels wouldn’t have gone down enough to have an impact on life before the Earth was rendered uninhabitable by the warming sun.

If you want to look at what does have a major role in what time life has left on this planet, look at phosphorus. All life needs it, and it does get depleted. Without us, there’d probably be more than enough for life to continue to thrive until the Earth warms up too much. However, we are going through it at a prodigious rate, causing problems with the ecosystems in the process, and even the most optimistic estimates show us severely depleting it within a few hundred years.

102

Yeah, I really don’t understand the focus on carbon. Very odd.

103

Considering that small changes can have such dramatic effects on plant life and that we hover not too far above the critical line. The original sources for carbon are not nearly as active. I think it’s odd that it doesn’t get much attention from that aspect.

104

I wish you wouldn’t have told me that!

105

Can you provide some cite that we’re running out of carbon? I’ve never heard of this.

106

It’s fairly self regulating over the longer term. As CO2 levels go up, plants absorb and sequester more, as they go down, plants absorb and sequester less. A warmer planet means more precipitation, which means more weathering and erosion to provide nutrients to the plants as well. Left to its own devices, the CO2 levels would stay pretty much the same for as long as life can continue to exist.

There are a number of sources of carbon that will more than keep up with anything actually lost to the ecosystem.

OTOH, we are putting the carbon that took tens of millions of years to sequester back into the atmosphere over a period of mere tens of years. That’s not a balanced system. If there is a “purpose” behind these actions, we have failed at it.

If you want to get into scientifically backed philosophy of the meaning of life, then I would start with Eric Smith (I’d avoid trying to google his name, apparently there is a child killer by the same name that gets higher ranking on google). His opening statement that the purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide has a number of strong implications.

The universe “wants” to be in a higher entropy state, but there are barriers to achieving that through mere chemical process alone. Complex chemical reactions only possible through living organisms increase the entropy of the universe far faster and more thoroughly than otherwise possible.

If you want to extend that into the “purpose” of higher intelligence, of human civilization and development, then our purpose is to “hydrogenate” the universe. Mere life can only increase the entropy of the Earth and the minimal impact that its altered emissions have on its surroundings. Intelligent spacefaring life can increase the entropy of the whole universe.

107

You are officially off my cat’s Christmas card list!

Cats are not as asocial as many believe. They get along fine in groups and I have no doubt if competition requires it, they would evolve from effective ambush hunters into effective pack hunters like their lion cousins.

Cats vs mustelids? Mustelids have a very high metabolic rate, which helps make them skillful hunters, but this comes at a steep resource price. They need to eat much more than cats (~7 x more). Who would survive best in an environment with limited food?

Although cats require less food than weasels (a mustelid) to survive, one-on-one the cat will usually kill the weasel in a fight to the death. The weasel is skillful at farting, but that isn’t a match for 5 sharp daggers on the distal phalanges of each cat paw.

House-cats have not lost the ability to survive in the wild. There is little difference between them and wildcats. They are outliers with regard to domestication. Surviving in homes and blighted urban areas are just additional skill-sets they’ve mastered. They adapt.

Certainly many cats would be killed by larger predators (at least until they evolve), but they can make up for the losses. Cat experts calculate that one female cat and her offspring will produce 100 cats in seven years.

When house-cats join the stray and feral cats I believe they will survive and thrive in the wilderness. Increased predation and competition for resources will spur them to evolve into even more formidable alpha predators—bigger, badder, and smarter.

Today Snowball and Tigger play with toy mice, honing their skills. Tomorrow they will be impaling wolves, coyotes, bears, mustelids, and octopuses with crossbow arrows (or maybe retractable ballistic claws).

I say this soberly with confidence and solemnity: pussycats will conquer the world. :grinning:

Warning: they may do so even before humans go extinct, so hide your kids and puppies.

108

This all fits in very well with my line of thinking and I will definitely look into Eric Smith. I don’t entertain any thoughts of any kind of divine intervention, but I have always suspected a higher intelligence at work. I can’t even imagine earth or the creatures living on earth having any kind of impact on the universe beyond the possibility that we may be contributing some minute neuron activity within a much larger system. It is hard for me to accept that DNA developed naturally through natural chemical processes. I have a very weak suspicion that some kind of seeding took place but even that doesn’t sound very probable. As I get older and my sex drive goes down my brain seems to be changing focus and I have become aware that I don’t have much time left to learn these things.

109

I have never seen a site state emphatically that we are running out of carbon, only that carbon levels have been trending downward over millions of years. Anytime something is trending up or down it will eventually reach the top or bottom. Lots of speculation among scientists in this area as getting accurate data on carbon levels beyond 1,000,000 years ago is difficult. Pre industrial I think we were hovering at around 250 parts per million. Below 200 parts per million there is a notable slow down in plant life. I would like to see more studies published on optimum carbon levels for life on earth. It may not be optimum for all species and that’s where it can get ugly. At any rate when we stated putting all this carbon back into circulation we may have put ourselves into a position where we have to start managing other aspects of the environment that are now badly out of balance, primarily the carbon nitrogen cycle.

110

I guess at this point it is ok to go off topic. My interest in carbon and global warming doesn’t stem from an interest in global warming. I have been working on a book for longer than I care to admit I have titled “The Collaboration”. I needed something very big to write the story around. Climate change seemed to fit this bill perfectly because it potentially involves an endless number of sciences and skills. I also needed some serious controversy and I needed to hear what that might sound like. I have a core belief that civilization suffers from a general form of identity malnutrition. I believe our identity craves nutrients that are not always readily available, so we tend to sustain our identities with a less than healthy diet. When we identify a source of nutrition, we become dependent on it. Once we become dependent on something we will often do most anything as to not lose our source of nutrition. This is heavily evidenced by our attachment to religion, political groups, clicks, gangs, etc. So, the book tries to demonstrate the power of people who have established identities based on the right kind of criteria and the importance of being loyal to yourself first. I postulate that a person can never be logically objective without a well-defined identity based on creating himself as a valuable asset to his family and society.

111

Still betting on the coyotes, myself. They don’t need to evolve into anything new to succeed, either. Name a place where cats thrive and reproduce where humans have not drastically altered the environmental balance, and I’ll reconsider.

112

Very few feral cat populations exist far away from human settlements

113

While the wolf is chasing the coyote and the coyote is chasing the cat, the cat will climb a tree and snack on squirrels and chicks, while the coyote is being eaten by the wolf.

114

Feral cats:
https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/4251/ogan1.PDF

“They tend to be concentrated around populated areas where they are turned loose or left to run wild by their “owners”, but are also widely distributed in remote locations. “

Many are already distributed in remote areas. No reason to believe they could not expand into additional remote areas if they have to. With a world cat population already at >700-million, they can afford to lose quite a few, recover and expand further.

115

I give up. Your cats can go right ahead and inherit the earth, since it means so much to you.

116

You shouldn’t have given them the go-ahead. Whatever happens next rests on your shoulders.

117

One last point (promise):

Cats account for 6 out of 9 of the world’s deadliest mammals (highest kill rates).

With a success rate of 32%, the domestic cat is #5. It is the only domesticated species on the list. And in open habitat, their kill rate rises to 70% (which would make them #2). It’s also notable that they eat only 28% of their kills (i.e. they kill more than they need to survive).

African wild dogs (not really dogs) are #1 on the list, but as is the case with great apes, they too are endangered.

118

The bottom doesn’t have to be zero though.

119

Humans account for eight billion of the world’s eight billion deadliest mammals.

120

And everything else is a mere rounding error on our predation, both deliberate, accidental, and incidental. Everything.

We are utterly in a class by ourselves as THE apex predators. Like it or not, the World lives or dies on our whim and within our predatory periphery.

It is interesting to speculate how the other critters would fare vs one another in our sudden absence. But ultimately, we so much make the arena as well as the competition, that any intuition anyone may have about the post-human victor is likely garbage.