https://secure.defenders.org/site/Ad...d61bd31.app20a
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIOjoKY5Nl0
https://secure.defenders.org/images/...lder/22424.jpg
Palin and Alaska are some crazy people..
Printable View
https://secure.defenders.org/site/Ad...d61bd31.app20a
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIOjoKY5Nl0
https://secure.defenders.org/images/...lder/22424.jpg
Palin and Alaska are some crazy people..
Sarah Palin is a sad excuse for a human. I think someone needs to "hunt" her and see how she likes it. ya real brave shooting animals from helicopters, planes or whatever.
Poor Wolf :( that bitch is gonna get whats coming to her.
Are you a vegetarian?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramos
I try to avoid meat as much as possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
They kill wolves to save more of the caribou population as there is overpopulation of the wolves (any deaths other than that, sure you can complain about). If they let the wolf population strive, there would be over predation. Before you think that it is just a fun killing game, think over it a bit more. Next you will be telling me that killing spiders and flies around my house is cruel and that I should be crushed. And did the vegetarians ever think of the plants when they eat them? Equally alive.
Nature balances itself out on its own. Before massive human intervention the eco-system was able to balance itself out on it's own. Look at how many animals are endagenered and threatened now adays. I'm sure the intentions are good but the results in the natural world are never as good as it would be if it was left alone and unmolested by hunters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhalent
When there are few predators around, the cariboo population booms. When this happens the Wolf population hunts the cariboo and their populations boom likewise. Soon enough the Cariboo Population decreases to the point where there isn't enough prey to sustain the wolf population. The wolf begin to decrease in population and as soon as this happens the Caribo gain in numbers and so on.
Sorry if this explanation is a bit simplistic, in my Science text book there was a good part of a section on Biomes which explained how energy was transfered in Eco-Systems and Biomes and it went into a fair amount of detail on the Predator-prety relationsip and how nature balances itself out. Unfortunately i can't recall much of it at the moment.
I give you credit for the post. Reasonable argument. :thumbup: I do not have the time, not now at least, to continue posting my thoughts so I will leave it to you guys.
Spiders and flies are not wolves. Maybe they should all leave Alaska if they can't handle the wolf population, god damn pussies. We've already taken most of North America, might as well let animals keep Alaska.Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhalent
Spiders and flies are still living creatures. Not believing that they should also be saved makes you a hypocrite. Unless you have a particular reason why wolves should be saved.Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathCell
People hunt things all the time. If we wanted to we could probably drive most of the hunted animals to extinction. But there are rules and regulations in place that prevent those things from happening.
Species of animals were going extinct by the zillions long before there were humans. Also, humans are just as much a manifestation of nature as any other animals.
Wolves should be saved because that is their natural habitat, and in general wolves is a fading population... Though obviously not so much in Alaska..Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Eagle
Spiders and flies are rampant and every single one of us probably sees one on a daily basis, we don't all walk outside and see wolves.
Yes they are all living creatures, but their is still a heirarchy...
Of course, but that doesn't mean we should be facilitating this.Quote:
Species of animals were going extinct by the zillions long before there were humans. Also, humans are just as much a manifestation of nature as any other animals.
By your logic, the wolves shouldn't be endangering the caribou, thus creating a need for us to kill them. That is to say, they're facilitating as much as we are.Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathCell
Not by my logic actually..... My logic is simply to not as a human population to get involved in killing animals that are endangered. While the populations in Alaska are high, the rest of the United States is lacking in wolves populations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Bennington
My logic is for humans not for wolves... How come you had such a hard time understanding that my point is for humans to keep their nose out of natural habitats... Though if the caribou population is fading, it would be smart have some in a zoo to try and avoid it's full extinction. (The natural ecosystem will change a lot in hundreds of years... nothing stays the same) The only acceptable answer to a lack of a caribou population, is to make the caribou that are mate and have more injected into the ecosystem.. not by killing a bunch of wolves..
People should be hunting things to eat, not just to kill.Quote:
People hunt things all the time. If we wanted to we could probably drive most of the hunted animals to extinction. But there are rules and regulations in place that prevent those things from happening.
They do the exact same thing with deer and stuff. When their is an overpopulation of deer, people go out hunting and kill them. Yet you don't see people complaining about that, except for people who is against all hunting. If you are against all hunting, then there is not much to say.
The big problem is that you can't let nature take care of it, because we already throw it so out of balance. We hunt all the stuff that they do as well.
Its probably more a competition than anything. Humans can't hunt caribou when their are that many wolves there, so they hunt the wolves so that the caribou population remains high enough for humans to hunt.
"They kill wolves to save more of the caribou population as there is overpopulation of the wolves "
Not true, in fact... wolves are in danger again! They protect them until they're at a 'stable' level... then they send out helicopters and gun down wholes families, up to 1500 wolves in a month... sure... save th caribou :roll: You don't have to be vegatarian to realize that the killing of 1500 animals, young and old, without any intentions of eating or using them in anyway... is wrong. Especially considering that wolvea are extremely intelligent creatures, that are very social... and share several 'human' emotions...
It's one thing to hunt for food, but there's no justification in hunting for sport. Willfully inflicting harm on others and finding some kind of joy in that speaks volumes about how royally fucked up in the head one can be.
I eat meat, and I am not opposed to the killing of animals for meat. However, I could never kill a big animal myself for any reason other than defense. I have a hard time fathoming how people can feel good about shooting deer, wolves, etc. I couldn't even shoot a duck or a squirrel. If I ever did, it would severely screw with my head. I still feel bad about killing a frog when I was 12. I am always very skeptical about the morals of people who kill complex-brained animals for the purpose of having fun. It seems very psycho.
Yeah same here, i'll eat the meat but i can't kill for sport. I'm not even sure i would even defend myself if i had to save my life, i've been choked untill i could not breathe, i did not do anything but laugh, and i have been hit on the back by a wooden broom and the guy grabbed my head and took me down, and all i did was laugh. I bet if i get shot, i would just laugh, maybe if someone had a gun in my face i would laugh at them and not take them seriously.:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
hahaa... I still feel guilty about pulling the wings off a fly when I was 7.
I think hunting purely for sport should be banned. If you eat or otherwise use what you kill then it's okay within reason... but to kill something and then just leave it to rot in the elements is wrong IMHO.
This isn't really true.Quote:
Species of animals were going extinct by the zillions long before there were humans. Also, humans are just as much a manifestation of nature as any other animals.
We're currently going through a massive extinction event called the Holocene extinction event (the Holocene being the current geological time period), and it is on a scale that has only been seen around 6 times in the Earth's 4 billion year history. Nobody knows exactly why it is happening, but it coincides with the dawn of modern humans.
You're saying #6 started when humans came about? Then #1-5 happened before there were humans. What I do know is that tons of species went extinct before there were humans.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
No, these events are not normal. Extinction normally occurs at a rate equal to the production of new species, but in major extinction events massive groups of organisms are totally wiped out. One of the five events was the meteor which completely destroyed the dinosaurs.
I don't really see where you are disagreeing with me. I didn't say the events are "normal". I said humans didn't cause them. I know humans have caused many extinctions that otherwise would not have happened and will cause more. I was just saying lots and lots of species of animals went extinct before there were humans. That is true, isn't it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Yes of course. They have been caused by various events which can generally be described as huge natural disasters, so it's very concerning that we appear to be causing another one.
I'm honestly not so concerned. The first mass extinction happened when photosynthesis evolved and started flooding the air with oxygen. It is just the way of life that each animal makes room for itself. We can expect that it will taper off sometime after humans go extinct and that new and amazing life forms will evolve some time after that. While it is very sad for us to be losing so many species, I personally don't see what the big deal is from the big picture stand point. It's just clearing the way for something new.
I do not like killing things, I used to. I used to just go around and smash things. Now I can't unless it needs to be done.
For example.. if there is a bug on me I freak out and smash it. If there is a spider in my house I kill it, I don't want my animals getting bitten.
The killing of the wolves is very sad and it shouldn't be done unless it absolutely needed to be. It just disturbs me that they take great pride in doing this without feeling any remorse, I mean it's not even for food.
We are killing them because we need to make their population smaller, yet we can't kill other humans when we are in the billions and it's hurting us. The big picture does not count when we are interfering, the big picture is done via nature, not by us. I can place a bunch of nukes around the world and kill everything and say it was part of the big picture which of course we all know it wasn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned
I agree that hunting the wolves to control their population is BS. If we are going to do it, than we should use their bodies. I think that it would be best to just leave them alone and let natural population dynamics clear it out. I was commenting on the topic of mass extinctions.Quote:
Originally Posted by LucidFlanders
I don't think that god and creationism really have much to do with this conversation.Quote:
Originally Posted by LucidFlanders
Why? Do you realize how much better it is for the environment to let the animal's carcass rot? I mean, besides providing food for the microbes that decompose the body, that process puts a lot of carbon back into the soil. Overpopulation of carnivorous animals like wolves also leads to them coming into contact with humans more often, searching for food. That means more people in danger from wolves, and wolves in danger from humans, aside the fact that prey populations would start to diminish totally. A much better way for us humans is controlled killing rather than unchecked growth. Do you realize in states like Pennsylvania that professional hunters are payed to keep deer populations down, since the deer have no other major natural predators?Quote:
I agree that hunting the wolves to control their population is BS. If we are going to do it, than we should use their bodies.
And let the wolves drive their prey to extinction, thus leading them to extinction?Quote:
I think that it would be best to just leave them alone and let natural population dynamics clear it out. I was commenting on the topic of mass extinctions.
Quote mining is fun!Quote:
I can place a bunch of nukes around the world and kill everything.
I was thinking along ethical lines since the main topic of this thread seems to be ethical. I don't like the idea of killing anything unless I have a use for it. We could (and I was thinking when I suggested using them) use them for organic fertilizer and take a load off the strip mining that is currently carried out to manufacture chemical fertilizers.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
Cool. As LucidFlanders pointed out, there are too many humans anyways. I see no basis for valuing human lives or human suffering above wolf lives and wolf suffering. Care to enlighten me?Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
I do and I hope that they use the deer bodies for food and/or fertilizer.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
See my initial post in the thread. Extinction is no big deal. Although I must say that I wonder how life existed prior to the evolution of humans. What species managed their populations to make sure that they didn't go extinct?Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
What are you, a misanthrope? It's called survival of the species. If you equate the death of an animal to the death of a human, then you are a seriously sick person. Humans should be moe important to you, since you are one. Wolves, on the other hand, are the problem here. Thus the solution is to get rid of them before they drive most other animals in the area to extinction. That is called population control. It means thatQuote:
Cool. As LucidFlanders pointed out, there are too many humans anyways. I see no basis for valuing human lives or human suffering above wolf lives and wolf suffering. Care to enlighten me?
Uh, they probably store and eat the meat like most hunters.Quote:
I do and I hope that they use the deer bodies for food and/or fertilizer.
Humans have a huge global impact on species today with our technologies and population, so we see it fit to try and preserve as many species that are dieing off as possible. Anyway, wolf overpopulation is a detriment to humans, so that's why it's a big deal there not be so many. All species manage their own and sometimes others. It's called co-evolution and survival instincts.Quote:
See my initial post in the thread. Extinction is no big deal. Although I must say that I wonder how life existed prior to the evolution of humans. What species managed their populations to make sure that they didn't go extinct?
Humans are animals. Apes in fact. I'm rejecting the anthrocentric viewpoint that humans are somehow better than other animals or somehow endowed with rights that other animals lack. I see no mechanism for this to be the case and nobody has ever been able to justify it for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
You're working with group selectionism here? That doesn't lead to a consistent theory. Evolution happens via selection of the individuals within a species, not the species itself. No organism behaves with regard to the well being of the whole species: only with regard to its own wellbeing and those that will statistically bear its own genes.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
Would you like to make a sacrifice? Maybe a few of your friends can also add to the offer.Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned
Would you sacrifice your life to save a wolf?
Okay, start your human hunting rampage.... until you are hunted.Quote:
Originally Posted by LucidFlanders
Why do you say that we are not part of nature? We are just as much part of nature as any other living thing. And for all we know, the 'big picture' could be what happens after the nukes, that is, if you believe in destiny.
That's ridiculous. Of course I value my own life to much to do that. But it's beside the point. Justify the statement that a random humans life is more valuable than a random life of an animal from another species. I would like to see you try.Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhalent
I do respect your opinion, as it is intelligent and thought out; but understand that I do not endorse killing without a concrete purpose.
Of course life is equal, but it mostly comes down to individuals. Should the situation that you or a dog be up for judgment, I would choose to let you to live. However, I would not choose you if you were a psychopathic serial killer. I would rather let something like a mouse live, then.
Think about this situation.. If your dog had a parasite, would you kill it? Or would you let the dog to suffer and die?
Animals of course should be treated with respect, but when it comes down to the survival of mankind, I do not see why we should just let ourselves die out because we are all the same part of life. Therefore, there has to be a tradeoff somewhere. Some things are necessary (as to whether these wolf killings are or not, is debated)
[And about the point I made earlier, I was referring to the so-called "human population overload".]
Well, I'm off to save a slaughterhouse full of cows.
If you were a dog, I am sure you would think another dog's life is more important than a humans. Even if humans are not more valuable than animals, their still humans and we got to stick together. So yea, a human's life is more important than an animals.
nope. I got attacked by a dog one time in my yard and "my" dog laid into the other dog so quick I barely saw him coming up. The other dog ran away but I have no doubt that "my" dog, bill, would have killed him if he hadn't. Reverse the situation. If some other human was attacking my dog, what should I do?
At any rate, your argument is for why we should behave as if human life is more important, not for why it actually is.
I'm not saying we aren't a part of nature, but the big picture is not us killing things. I don't get human superiority, just because we are better we are more privaliged(sp), and can do whatever we want? we kill for sport, animals kill to survive, i would have no problem if the deaths were to survive, as they would do the same but to kill for sport, or to kill them off is pretty dumb. Yeah, let's kill for the sake of killing. Humans do that with humans, but what did animals do to force us to kill them? they only wanna survive, and they all live in the moment, and that is all they know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhalent
Who cares if they over populate, we are in the billions. They will die off the way they were meant to die off, we are just murdering them. When there is alot of animals, there is alot more food, and there will be a battle untill the end, it's not like a never ending battle.
People live for up to a hundread years, animals like a dog live up to 8-30, i'd say a dogs life is more valuable because their life span is MUCH lower. This goes to any animal, we live much longer thus our lives are less valuable then animals who lives MUCH less lives, but we are a pretty stupid race. We don't like to follow common sense, but we know better, animals don't which is why we are already better then animals.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alric
That is not what I said. I said that, since you are a human, you should value human life over other animal life, unless you are a misanthrope.Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned
No, I mean that your statement was retarded so I countered with a dumbed-down explanation of something that goes like:Quote:
You're working with group selectionism here? That doesn't lead to a consistent theory. Evolution happens via selection of the individuals within a species, not the species itself. No organism behaves with regard to the well being of the whole species: only with regard to its own wellbeing and those that will statistically bear its own genes.
Shit interacting = Shit interacting. How you interpret it, is a completely different matter. You see wolf overpopuation as something natural that we should not 'interfere with' (Wait what? Interfere? I didn't think there was such a thing with your worldview!) and I see it as a problem that can be controlled to help balance the populations and keep the ecology of the area from becoming lopsided, or at least undesirable.
Certainly you belive in the preservation of rare species, don't you?
That's an assumption though. I'm asking you to justify it. Maybe I'm just an ananthrope.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
If it is a rare species, then why do we need to kill them off? I see the act of killing off wolves, genetically engineering crops and everything in existence as natural. It is a meaningless word. I don't think that it's bad per se to interfere in the process but I just don't like the aesthetics of slaughtering animals and not using them afterwards. It's crufty.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Roxxor
The argument that we are doing it for their good falls apart upon the observation that If they didn't have their shit already in balance, then they would have gone extinct long before we got on the scene. The wolves are just on an upswing, that will put pressure on the caribou and the most fit will survive past the downturn in the wolf population that will result from the caribou decreasing in numbers and then that will in turn place selection pressure on the wolves. A lot of the wolves will die off and and the caribou population will rebound. Evolution will happen. If one of the species goes extinct, no biggie: happens all the time. Something will take it's place.
We are randomizing evolution in this case by adding a new selection pressure to avoid people in helicopters. The whole thing is pretty stupid unless we have a good reason for it.
I am a human, therefore I value human life above other life. Of course I value my own life above all other, but that's something entirely different.Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned