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Post by linnie on Sept 4, 2012 5:05:37 GMT -5
Today at class, we had long discussion about this topic with Ms. Boyd. Especially Sergey had many ideas related to this topic. How we got to this topic is that we read a poem 'There will come soft rains' and its theme was insignificance of human. Do you guys all agree to this theme? I believe human is as important as nature. In the poem, it mentions that even though human are gone, nature won't notice it or care about the fact. But human has great impact on nature. We are one of the life cycle of Earth, so if we extinct, many other life cycle in Earth will change. As we learned in biology class, extinction of one species will break down whole food chain. For example, if frogs extinct, number of snakes will decrease, and that will lead to decrease in number of birds. On the other hand, insects that used to be prey of frogs will increase, dominating lake or pond. Likewise, if human extinct, that will harm at least one food chain. I am sure there will be many other reasons that human are important, but I will only state this
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Post by sergeyfen on Sept 4, 2012 6:57:52 GMT -5
I think people are very important to nature because there are lot of people who try to preserve nature and not just harm it like other people. Nothing is perfect and like i said some people do harm and other people make up for their mistakes. We live in life cycle that something should be sacrifice for another, i know it sounds kind of harsh but that's how it is. Some things we can't understand or maybe we just shouldn't know them yet.
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Post by woojongpark on Sept 4, 2012 8:08:38 GMT -5
In my opinion, I don't think humans are that important in nature.
Humans are just a small part of all the living organisms on this planet. Our achievements too, are just a fraction of changes Earth has faced.
If we vanish from this planet, do you think it would affect the planet?
Well, Lin said it would harm at least one food chain. However, I think differently. In fact, I think it would benefit the planet. Humans have done so much things to this planet. We have made many species extinct by overfishing, farming, destroying forests, and many other human activities. When we disappear, no more animals would be endangered. Some may argue that people also benefit the nature by caring animals and recovering some environment, but these so called "recovery activities" is just tiny compared to all these stuff we did to nature. When we disappear, still there will be bunch of other organisms that would replace our spot of the food web.
In conclusion, nature would not concern even if we disappear. I guess I was off topic too much.
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Post by brandonina on Sept 4, 2012 10:05:57 GMT -5
I think the answer to this question depends on the scale or where you place humans (?). If you think about it, on earth, we're really significant in the way how we interact with nature, though most of the time we destroy them. I don't think the fact that we are on top of the food chain doesn't really matter. Who eats us? But how small and insignificant are we in the scale of universe? That just ruins everything! I personally think humans are actually important. We've been interacting with nature for a long time that if we become extinct, things that were depended on would get affected at the same time. Though nature doesn't "care", wouldn't it be a big impact if we are gone? E.X.) Would nature be able to adapt to the environment and society that we have shaped if we are gone? I can't imagine how nature would've been so bored without us. We burn, destroy and create!
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Post by ExtremelyExtremeExtremist on Sept 4, 2012 10:24:54 GMT -5
Humans are important in nature because although they are considered as small part of biosphere, we are the animals that can "think". For millions of years, we have made cities, cultures, killed a lot of animals and plants, helped others, and made important events that can not be found in other living organisms in earth.
But if all humans become extinct in near future, it will both benefit and harm the earth (therefore, it will give a tremendous effect to nature). Living organisms may no longer be threatened by humans, but because of that, some organisms will attack other ones because there are no humans to separate them (these are only some of the examples).
And I made a guess (which is not likely to happen) that some other organisms will be "second human" (any organisms that somehow learned something from humans) which will affect the environment.
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sorn
Full Member
Posts: 126
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Post by sorn on Sept 4, 2012 10:34:54 GMT -5
For me, I don't think that humans are important to the nature because the world was always able to survive throughout different changes that had occurred in the past, way before human were born. Throughout the past decades, human had created many damages towards to nature and even though we knew that it was wrong, we still did it. Nature doesn't need to depend on human, only human need to depend on nature and because of our selfishness, we had been cutting down trees, creating pollutions, eating animals from nature, and using the natural resources to develop our countries and life. Even though human goes extinct, I also agree that nature wouldn't really care. It would still continues it natural process and find its own ways to balance the whole ecosystem.
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Post by lukejoo1092 on Sept 5, 2012 6:00:30 GMT -5
Personally, I believe that humans aren't that important according to how nature would view us. We are the dominating species on the planet but we don't provide much to the environment. Actually, we're quite dependent to it. Without nature, we'd be homeless and starving. However, nature doesn't really need us. It'd probably be better of for nature if we didn't interact with it at all. We cut down trees, dig out precious soil, pollute air and seas, eventually killing all of the life within them. We are the cause to these misfortunes. So when you come to think of it, if we were to be gone, then all of these things wouldn't happen at all. Nature wouldn't be harmed at all. People are important to each other but not it's not the same for nature.
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Post by |Ruchira| on Sept 5, 2012 8:04:59 GMT -5
Originally, the message that humans are not that important really didn't faze me. I was interested at the fact that this was message. I mean, I feel like all the damage we've done do earth, eventually earth will give up and we will die out. But I like how Lin pointed out that if humans die, that will interrupt the food chain. That gave me a new perspective. But I still feel like we will eventually go extinct and I also believe that a long time from then other species like us would emerge. And they will know about us because now we know about the cavemen who lived millions of years ago. So I don't really know if humans are that important or not but I feel like we will not be forgotten, be will be discovered by others way in the future.
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Post by |Ruchira| on Sept 5, 2012 8:06:56 GMT -5
I also like how Sorn said that humans are not important because the earth was able to go on without us before so why would it matter now?
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Post by KevinW on Sept 5, 2012 17:02:42 GMT -5
Humans are important to humanity because humanity is the only species that understands what will be lost if humans go extinct. Nature, the ecosystem at large, and every other animal on the planet couldn't care less. They're endured major extinction events before. We're protecting largely animals that were supposed to run extinct or animals that we were responsible for endangering. Many of them are large reptiles or mammals. Their extinctions do not cause biosphere collapse. It is the arthropods that are the most important animals to the planet. I also like how Sorn said that humans are not important because the earth was able to go on without us before so why would it matter now? We have carved out a niche in the world--because of what we did in recent centuries. The past is not the same as the present. But don't be fooled, nature will simply adjust to the empty vacuum and achieve equilibrium again. Our disappearance nature will find a way to fill. It has overcame major extinction events, which I don't think we'll even be able to cause, so we're no issue.
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jisu25
Junior Member
Posts: 95
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Post by jisu25 on Sept 7, 2012 3:45:03 GMT -5
I totally agree to Kevin how that we are important to humanity and that we are not very important within nature. I think this because that we humans cause the most damage towards nature and we killed a lot of animals due to destroying their habitats. I think that because nature is a enormous existance that humans might look small, however we can change from our mistake and try to show that humans are also important to nature.
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dwsuh1
Junior Member
Posts: 61
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Post by dwsuh1 on Sept 7, 2012 23:47:00 GMT -5
This theme shows how cruel we are against nature right now since we are harming nature moer then trying to save it and nature it self will not only not care about human being extinct they would be happy since it would make plants able to survive. So I really agree with the theme of "There Comes Soft Rains" since it is not only true but tells the future i guess very little about how plants actully will feel when all human's are extinct
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irin
Full Member
Posts: 101
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Post by irin on Sept 8, 2012 7:19:48 GMT -5
I don't think human is important sometimes human doing bad thing fo the world like some people destroy environment and nature and people kill alot of animals sometime human is not helful to the earth. And world can live without human. But human is important too because human can do many things so human can help better live in the world.
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Post by munisa on Sept 8, 2012 20:40:18 GMT -5
Well I think that human beings are only important among humans, we try to prove ourselves as the best. But compared to nature we are almost nothing no other species really care about us. Humans are the ruler of the world, well for now, but what happens when we die? as I said before we cannot really do anything we aren't important to the nature but for our own species we are important.
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Post by munisa on Sept 9, 2012 4:54:59 GMT -5
For me, I think that humans are important, because we can interfere with other things in nature. Everything in nature is important in my opinion. Even the tiniest things are important in my opinion. If there weren't any of the tiniest creatures then our world wouldn't be the same place as it is today. Everything in nature is important, it is important somehow in some ways. For us these things may not seem so important but they actually are if you think deeply maybe but that's just me. Sometimes I think that humans may be a little too important because every single mistake that we make that involves the nature may destroy the nature for example global warming according to the recent article that I've read in yahoo global warming is a man-made creation its all our fault. So yeah sometimes I think that us as in humans may just be a little too important to other animals maybe.
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