Plants Humans Don't Need Are Heading for Extinction, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 53
Researchers have categorised more than 80,000 plant species worldwide and found that most of them will "lose" in the face of humanity -- going extinct because people don't need them. From a report: This means that plant communities of the future will be hugely more homogenised than those of today, according to the paper published in the journal Plants, People, Planet. The findings, which paint a stark picture of the threat to biodiversity, cover less than 30% of all known plant species, and as such are a "wake-up call," say the researchers, highlighting the need for more work in this field. "We're actually beginning to quantify what's going to make it through the bottleneck of the Anthropocene, in terms of numbers," said John Kress, botany curator emeritus at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the paper. "It's not the future, it's happening. The bottleneck is starting to happen right now. And I think that's part of the wake-up call that we are trying to give here. It's something we might be able to slow down a little bit, but it's happening."
Well... (Score:1)
*in Clint Eastwood voice* guess they shoulda evolved themselves then.
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I wish they really were, but I can think of one group of plants that humans WANT but definitely do not NEED- but libertarians would strongly object to us making them extinct, even though it would fulfill the literal requirements of the War on Drugs.
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I am a libertarian and say, "Extinct away!"
Calm your purple faces. Listen.
Bag it and tag it. Store the genes. In 100 years or less, all this will be in a computer and you can 3D print genes into an active cell for species resurrection.
Eat your wheaties. You may yet live to see dodos, mastadons, maybe even a sabertooth or neanderthal.
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Unlikely. They can't even create a full genome for rats that went extinct 100 years ago. Too much was lost.
As for Neanderthal, they had larger brains, were peaceful, and invented art and music. We could do with reviving them, I just don't think we'll be able to.
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Unlikely. They can't even create a full genome for rats that went extinct 100 years ago. Too much was lost.
As for Neanderthal, they had larger brains, were peaceful, and invented art and music. We could do with reviving them, I just don't think we'll be able to.
The difference is that you can't freeze a rat, thaw it after a hundred years, stick it in the ground, and grow a new rat. You can do that with seeds.
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True, and the great benefit of plants is that the genome exists in multiple copies, so there's a chance that there exists a copy of a given section somewhere, so recovery from total extinction is more likely to be possible. It's animals that are the problem.
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I the past, I've called this "promissory technology". It's just as ridiculous as the weirdest fringe religious beliefs. There are a lot of frozen heads that can never be safely thawed, after all, from people who thought along similar lines.
I think a lot of it comes for the nonsense belief that science is 'almost complete'. I'll remind you that epigenetics was considered heresy until very recently, so your mythical gene bank may not have everything you need.
Rather than pin our hopes on some magical future
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I'm trying to think of a recreational plant based drug that doesn't have at least one legitimate medical purpose but none are coming to mind.
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Anything a plant can grow, can be synthesized in a lab in a much more pure form without extra refinement.
It's just that the refinement might be cheaper and more efficient starting with the plant.
Most aspirin today doesn't come from willow bark anymore, even though that's where it started.
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We'll miss you (Score:2)
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I don't understand slashcode. You and I can't make a one word post without the ascii art error message, but then some dude can paste multi-page swastikas.
We could all use some more variety in the ascii art on Slashdot. It seems the troll posts are the only ones that put in the effort to make it through.
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> then some dude can paste multi-page swastikas.
"some dude" or slashdot moderators that can override checks.
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I don't understand slashcode. You and I can't make a one word post without the ascii art error message, but then some dude can paste multi-page swastikas.
We could all use some more variety in the ascii art on Slashdot. It seems the troll posts are the only ones that put in the effort to make it through.
That's because their filters are simple text pattern matches, like number of repeated characters, rather than something sensible, like requiring a certain percentage of the text to be known words, or using machine learning, or any number of other approaches that would actually be effective. The result is that it affects real people pretty badly, while apparently not affecting the trolls at all.
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This is a long con to start charging for bottled air and water.
oops we already sell bottled water, it's a 300 billion dollar industry.
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Some trees yes, but others are very useful, either for lumber or food. Those will be preserved.
Honestly though this is sort of a filter event. When the asteroid hit 65 million years ago it was an event where a lot of large animals died off and smaller animals survived the scenario. Biodiversity took a hit but it eventually went back up.
Similar thing here. Plants (and animals) that benefit humans are surviving while others are dying off. We can try to make behavioral changes to prevent that but in the l
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The problem is that we're not protecting plants that may/will be beneficial to us, they'll go extinct and in a few decades/centuries we'll learn that plan species X would have helped us defeat medical problem Z, etc.
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The wood industry is striving with the Federal and State Governments as the greatest and deadliest natural enemy.
The problem with "need" (Score:2)
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Return of the Giant Hogweed (Score:2)
The only self sustaining system is constant change. Species go extinct. Ecosystems go extinct. But life goes on.
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> If we actually needed organism X, we'd probably have figured it out by now.
Does this apply to slashdotters LOL
RIP Canada Thistle - you won't be missed (Score:1)
Canada Thistle is like the plant equivalent of the mosquito. I can't think of a plant I'd miss less.
https://www.invasivespeciesinf... [invasivespeciesinfo.gov]
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Oh, there's no danger that *weeds* are going to go extinct. It's an oversimplification that useless plants will go extinct; rather as natural ecosystems collapse, the plants that survive are going to be ones that we work to make survive (crops) and those that are adapted to human disruption (weeds).
Thistle do nicely. (Score:2)
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> I can also do without beets
You may want to rethink that, even if you don't eat beets directly.
In 2020, Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Turkey were the world's five largest sugar beet producers.[3] In 2010–2011, North America and Europe did not produce enough sugar from sugar beets to meet overall domestic demand for sugar and were all net importers of sugar.[4] The US harvested 1,004,600 acres (406,547 ha) of sugar beets in 2008.[5] In 2009, sugar beets accounted for 20% of the wor
horrible mistake (Score:2)
There is little doubt that amongst that 80K different plants, we would/will find solutions to some of today's/tomorrow's issues. But to have that will, requires that we save them. At the very least, save the seeds.
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It's not just that. Plants depend on complex systems and complex interactions, especially between different soil bacteria. If a species goes extinct, other species (some of which we might well depend on) will also go extinct.
Can poison ivy be one of them? (Score:2)
Speaking as a human... (Score:2)
We may not need them (Score:2)
But it is a certainty some critter out there does. And when that critter goes away so does the one who needed that critter, and so on.
It's almost as if things in nature are connected to one another.
Except for kudzu. No one wants or needs kudzu.
If I remember right (Score:2)
there have been multiple natural disasters such as asteroids that have wiped out millions of plant species. And the asteroids didn't even mourn the loss of the plants when they were gone.
Plants humans need are not in great shape either! (Score:2)
All the great tomatoes with good flavor and taste have all gone extinct. We just have something that looks like a perfect tomato in the shape and color, transports without getting damaged, produces great yield per acre, but is totally absolutely flavorless and tasteless. In my living memory I have seen 20 varieties of bananas in South India. Now I hardly saw six in my last trip. Even that is six times more than what I see in Trader Joes or in the W
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We cannibals do 7.
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All the great tomatoes with good flavor and taste have all gone extinct. We just have something that looks like a perfect tomato in the shape and color, transports without getting damaged, produces great yield per acre, but is totally absolutely flavorless and tasteless.
Not sure if it's true for tomatoes in particular, but for fruits in general, a lot of that is also caused by picking them long before they're ripe. The difference between the quality of fruits and vegetables at your local farmer's market and the quality when purchased from grocery stores is often significant, and it's because the stuff sold locally was allowed to ripen on the vine, rather than being stuck in a refrigerator truck for weeks and then ripened on your kitchen counter.
planet corn (Score:3)
there will just be corn
not soy fast (Score:2)
Choices: (Score:2)
#1. Convince most humans to cut back on consumption and reproduction.
#2. Kill most humans.
#3. Kiss the plants goodbye (which may result in nature doing a #2 on humans).
This is from the Guardian. (Score:2)
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Damn right, who's going to trust news from Russia these days anyway?!
I only trust news from Colossus!
uTopIA (Score:1)
Survival of the fittest always wins. (Score:2)
I could do without a few (Score:2)
Cat claw and Acacia bushes could go away and nobody would miss them. Oh and cholla cactus is evil incarnate.
What is the definition of "need"? (Score:2)
No answers, just a cry for money (Score:1)