It wasn't the SUV's? huh.

Look at the list "large mammals like giant sloths, short-faced bears, mammoths, and saber-toothed cats" Even if it were true, wouldn't it stand to reason that the only reason the author can pen this piece today is because some hairy spear thrower figured out he didn't want to read about how the critters drove man to extinction?

I dont really understand what you mean when you say, "its never nature, is it." Everything on earth is an extension of nature, although i know that a creationist like yourself would like to imagine some kind of divine separation between ourselves and the earth that we rise from and fall into.

Funny - in the thread below I just got through saying that we should ignore the misanthropists who claim humans are to blame for the death of the planet and the extinction of all God's beautiful creatures great and small. And bang on cue...

I'm blaming the Comanches.

Have you seen the story about the area of frozen peat in Siberia, the size of France and Germany combines, that has been found to be melting for the first time in 11,000 years? and is expected to release a tremendous amount of methane over the next decade or so?
You can find the story at www.commondreams.org, along with a collection of opinions that are far more informed than the idiotic propaganda that litters this poor excuse for a conservative website.

Anonymous:

I agree completely--there is no sense in which we can distinguish design by intelligent creatures from unthinking natural processes.

Anon. has a good point. It would have been unnatural if we had failed to fill the earth and subdue it, taking dominion over every living thing.

BTW, that stone-age spear-chukkers accomplished this sort of confirms how an upstart species might fare.

Anonymous II:

No one at Common Dreams argues that Nature rather than Man caused the melting, do they?

Anon: Whew! With the giant peat moss methane cloud providing me cover, I don't feel nearly so guilty having cut the catalytic converters off my F150 and run straight 2" pipes back to the Magnaflows. Fill'er up, Mac!

Giant ground sloths "cruised through" at least 22 major climate cycles as the continental ice sheets in North America advanced and retreated over the last two million years, said David Steadman, a paleobiologist at the University of Florida.

Wouldn't this suggest we can all sit back and enjoy global warming? Pass me the sunblock and a cold one, please. I'm cruisin' through the next climate cycle.

Think how awful it would be if giant sloths and saber-tooth cats were still around.

It's chilly here in Seattle. More methane please.

carter:

All the better restaurants would serve them over rice.

We'll see. The cause of the mega-fauna extinctions has been argued back and forth for a long time (certainly I'd already heard this theory back in the 70's). The implication from the article that this is some new theory or result is completely innaccurate. What's been found is some evidence supporting a pre-existing theory that had fallen on hard times.

Gee, I thought my Uncle Earl was a giant sloth.

Clearly, a vast right-wing conspiracy led to the mega-fauna extinction. As for the thawing peat in Siberia, we all know that "it's Bush's fault."

Peter, as long as your property is higher than about 100 feet above sea level, sit back and enjoy the heat.

Like the ivory woodpecker giant sloths may not be extinct.

http://www.pibburns.com/cryptost/mapingua.htm

AOG:

It just confirms the obvious.

AOG is correct - the theory has waxed and waned over the past 25 years or so. Vine Deloria Jr once devoted the better part of a book (Red Earth, White Lies) to flensing the theory of Pleistocene Natives driving the megafauna to extinction. An able and entertaining job he did, too.

"ancient hunters pushed the animals to extinction."

Those ancient hunters would be the native Americans, who, as we all know lived in harmony with nature.

Bruce:

Yes, the Darwinists can't let the hunting theory stand and they control the narrative.

giant sloths may not be extinct

Of course not. One of 'em is even a United States Senator.

Robert nails another. Precisely so. Alanis smiles.

Uhm, OJ, why can't the Darwinists let the hunting theory stand? Let's hear your misunderstanding of the fact of evolution.

dg:

Because it builds the case against Natural Selection and for intelligent design.

"Because it builds the case against Natural Selection and for intelligent design."

Nope. Natural Selection and intelligent design are not at odds. Once again (willfully?) you conflate an intelligent actor (such as the hunters in this scenario) with the notion of the Intelligent Designer posited by Intelligent Design. They have nothing to do with each other, and the former is certainly not proof of the latter - nor does it in any way negate the theory of Natural Selection.