Anthropogenic effect on biosphere

[captivebolt]

On a thread I was posting to recently the claim was made that "The effect of Man on the biosphere is very small". I can't find either the original thread, or the relevant post, so I am starting again.
You must be joking. There have been 5 previous major extinction events; we are now well on with the sixth. There is room for argument about the cause of the previous five, although there is little reason to doubt that asteroid/comet impact played a major role in the Cretaceous and Permian Events. The extinction now occurring bids fair to exceed even the Permian Event, in which 95% of all species, marine and terrestrial, died out. There is no possible doubt about the cause of the sixth extinction and WE ARE IT.
It now seems likely that there were several migrations from Africa during the course of evolution of the hominids. There is evidence of settlement near Lowestoft by Homo ergaster some 700,000 BP. None of these migrations significantly affected the biosphere. Then about 100,000BP Homo sapiens sapiens moved out of Africa. Co-incident with the arrival of modern man, species extinction started big time. We started by eating all the mammoths, went on to woolly elephants, and generally et our way across Europe. The record clearly shows that when Man arrives, everything else dies.It took us less than 1000 yrs to wipe out the biggest and most diverse fauna ever to have existed on the planet when the Clovis and Na'Dene peoples crossed the land bridge from Siberia to North America. In less than 2000 years we turned the Americas from the richest to the most impoverished fauna on the planet.
We can't restore what our forefathers destroyed. We can try to preserve what is left to us, and if that entails controlling the surviving fauna, so be it. If the choice be between a man-made landscape and a man-made deathscape which would you prefer?

Captivebolt