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Do you honestly believe this evidence of mass extinction? Or perhaps this MIT geophysicist is a human like the rest of us, trying to make a name for himself, se
by bigyellow 5y ago
Do you honestly believe this evidence of mass extinction? Or perhaps this MIT geophysicist is a human like the rest of us, trying to make a name for himself, secure grants in academia, make social connections, and maybe ... just maybe being hyperbolic to get attention? It's not like we haven't had these boogey-man "extinction" headlines pollute news sites for the last decade.
- runnerup 5y agoI should probably delete my comment, and almost certainly shouldn't have posted it in the first place. I hadn't read the article. I just posted an aside which I probably believed would be well received on HN because I've seen it expressed around here previously. Additional discussion of my top-level comment will probably de-rail a productive conversation about this particular article. To engage with your presumably good-faith prompts: While I personally believe that something I would call a mass extinction event is occurring right now, I'm not sure how it compares in severity to other past events which we've labeled "mass extinction". Now that I've read this particular article, I don't think it's a good catalyst for discussion on the topic. It's not clear why they chose to write this particular article at this time -- usually there's a linked study or at least press release or something but there's nothing like that mentioned in this article, or I missed it. Perhaps I could find such a kernel if I DDG'd around. Taken in isolation, this particular article seems to provide little substance of anything.