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Earth might be experiencing 7th mass extinction, not 6th
- optimalsolver 4y agoSo the sixth wasn't too bad?
- ASalazarMX 4y ago> occurred 550 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period. [..] > Although unclear whether this represents a true “mass extinction,” the percentage of organisms lost is similar to these other events, including the current, ongoing one. > The researchers believe environmental changes are to blame for the loss of approximately 80% of all Ediacaran creatures, which were the first complex, multicellular life forms on the planet. Pretty bad, but a very old extinction, and order of magnitude older than the dinosaurs' extinction.
- ImJasonH 4y agoGood news everyone!
- oxfordmale 4y agoClimate change deniers were right after all, earth will be perfectly fine, it may just have to do with one less ape species /sarcasm
- CameronNemo 4y agoYou kid, but two ape species are indeed on the brink of extinction. They get all of the costs of our civilization, such as rampant pollution and out of control infectious disease, with none of the privileges. Five great apes exist on earth today, two of them are on the brink of extinction, two are decreasing rapidly in population, and one is the most abundant primate species on earth. Orangutans and gorillas are critically endangered. Chimpanzees and bonobos are endangered. Humans are expanding. https://www.orangutan.com/why-are-orangutans-endangered/ https://www.orangutan.com/why-are-orangutans-endangered/
- zython 4y agoBuy 6, get one free.
- zapataband1 4y agoany ideas on how to stop?
- epgui 4y agoWe need to better price in the cost of destroying ecosystems-- think like we're doing with the carbon pricing, but much broader in scope. Basically what the "E" in "ESG" should stand for, if the system made sense. And we need international, cross-party alignment on this. I'm not extremely optimistic on our ability to do what it takes.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoYou could kill all life on Earth, then there'd be no mass extinctions after that. You could put all animals in zoos and maintain their populations at a constant level but that's not a 100% guarantee. Best way would be to continue advancing human society so that we reach a state of such abundance that no one on Earth needs to put undue pressure on wild populations of animals while at the same time achieving a mastery of the natural world that would allow us to avert any major disasters that might befall the Earth such as asteroid impacts, coronal mass ejections, super volcanoes, gamma ray bursts, rogue black holes, and the death of the sun. Look sharp, we've got a lot of work ahead of us!
- defaulter4once 4y ago
- qwytw 4y agoYou're assuming that almost all of those wild animal species won't be extinct by that point?
- throwaway4aday 4y agoI'm talking about future mass extinctions. The hard fact of life on Earth is that species die, we've had several mass extinctions (defined as >75% of species going extinct) but there is always a background extinction rate. That background rate is conservatively estimated to be 130 vertebrate species every 100 years. The reason people are saying we are at the beginning of another mass extinction event caused by human activity is because we have apparently accelerated that rate. I say we are at the beginning because as it stands about 1% to 2% of vertebrate animals that were present throughout human history have now gone extinct. We have a fair ways to go before we hit mass extinction levels but there are a significant number of species that are threatened or endangered. The confounding issue is that we are studying this problem and also have been mitigating it for at least 50 years if not longer if you count less organized attempts at conservation. Personally, I don't think we are going to continue to increase the rate of extinction as long as we continue to modernize the rest of the world. As people are lifted out of poverty they have more time to spend worrying about their environment and the animals that inhabit it. The best thing we can do is to make sure that no one on Earth lives in poverty that requires them to cut down and burn wood for fuel and heat, make sure they have fertilizer so they can get the best crop yields out of limited land without having to slash and burn wildlands, have access to refrigeration so they don't waste l3% or more of the food they grow, and have proper infrastructure so they can manage their waste water and garbage disposal without polluting natural water ways and the land surrounding urban centers.
- jsemrau 4y agoOne thing that lately really fascinates me is the Younger Dryas impact theory. The discovery journey was Joe Rogan (Podcast) -> Netflix Docu -> Joe Rogan (Youtube) -> Other Youtuber. Which in itself is a content consumption cycle that I had before. What I find fascinating about this is that there are new discoveries of underground structures that really changed the game. It solves the mystery why ancient megasites are looking at summer and winter solstice, because that's where the danger would come from. It ties in with flooding myths that are found in many cultures. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
- gnz11 4y ago> Netflix Docu I’m assuming you are referring to Graham Hancock? In which case, I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. He’s been hawking conspiracy theories for a long time. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
- HPsquared 4y agoNot a great critique, limited to matters of personal taste rather than the actual content, while calling it "dangerous". Isn't there a better critique which covers the actual claims made in the series?
- RosanaAnaDana 4y agoI think certain classes of claims one should be cautious about engaging with. The fact that so many have with so little scrutiny has had a seriously negative effect on our society. Having an opinion does not make it worth scrutinizing. My cat has an opinion on whether she should go to the vet or not. I don't take it into consideration.
- xattt 4y agoTo add to this, the grandparent post wants to hear the critiques about the content rather than the messenger. I think about the story of he discovery of H. pylori as contributing to peptic ulcer disease. The theory was widely rejected but ultimately proven. The mitigating factor in accepting the theory was that the researcher did not have a reputation of peddling quack theories. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour.
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- eucryphia 4y ago
- bamboozled 4y agoSorry, but I have to ask, what are you talking about ?
- ChrisClark 4y agoHe seems to think that if we stop polluting the earth, the trees will not have enough CO2... Never heard THAT one before. He also mentioned the sun going 'quiet', so he's probably one of those that thinks global warming is only because the sun is hotter right now, not because of CO2.
- sammalloy 4y agoKoch network propaganda. They also believe we should move underground and evolve into subterranean cave dwelling Morlocks to escape the heat—instead of using less oil. And yes, they actually proposed that idea in lieu of transitioning to renewables. It was one of the highlights of their science museum exhibitions about climate change. Nothing is too crazy for these people. My favorite, however, is when they sold specialized Koch lesson plans to schools. The Koch curriculum was designed to teach students to sacrifice their health and well-being on behalf of the free market, since as major oil producers, environmental regulation hurt their bottom line. From what I understand, some US states are still using those lesson plans or similar ones like them.
- m_dupont 4y agoI really wish they hadn't framed it this way. They could have just said "Possible new historical mass extinction event discovered". See, because of the way they have framed it we now have people in the comments arguing about global warming. While I certainly believe that we are doing a lot of damage to the planet right now, we dont need to incorporate every news article into the permacrisis narrative
- NetOpWibby 4y agoBut how else will the site get clicks?
- rob74 4y agoIt also sounds pretty strange to me to take the number of 5 previous mass extinctions as unshakable fact. I'm not a paleontologist, but in the several billions of years before living organisms evolved shells/skeletons that could be fossilized, there could have been any number of mass extinction events that we no longer have evidence of?
- zaarn 4y agoThere is evidence of a lot of mass extinctions. The Big Five is just the biggest 5 we know off (all of them feature atleast 75% of all species becoming extinct on a relatively short timeframe, with the quickest being the KT which lasted at most a thousand years, the biggest of them, the PT event, making 95% of all species extinct). For smaller extinction events, Wikipedia lists about 30 of them. But those aren't nearly as interesting because they didn't have that much impact.
- javajosh 4y agoI agree with this. In fact - it's reasonable to take the same attitude toward these numbers as "age of the universe, in billions of years" type numbers: the error bars are pretty big! But the OOM is basically correct, and that's Good Enough (tm) for most people's purposes, including academics in far away fields like climatology.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
- julianeon 4y agoMaybe the 8th. This article doesn't even mention one which is suspected to have happened, the extinction of megafauna when humans came on the scene. If we're talking about extinctions Earth might have experienced, that deserves to be mentioned.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoSure. However, I don't see how the exact number of previous mass extinctions is particularly relevant to the idea that we're probably experiencing one right now, and we (humans) are the primary cause.
- nisegami 4y agoConsidering the time scales at which the other mass extinctions happened, I don't think it's reasonable to count that as separate from what's happening now. It might instead be better to rethink the whole thing as one somewhat prolonged extinction event due to the appearance and subsequent activities of humans.
- DFHippie 4y agoThey are working from a particular definition of mass extinction which rules this event out. The megafauna that went extinct were a small percentage of the species in existence at the time.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agothere weren't enough megafauna for their extinction to be comparable to the others.
- Borrible 4y agoIt won't be the last. Who or what will pick the baton?
- Tepix 4y agoSlime
- mif 4y agoBecause people here talk a lot about extinction, I just wanted to point out that 99% of all species ever to have lived died out. What remained are the one we currently are in company with. Also, after each mass extinction, there was a massive radiation of new species, for example the Cambrian explosion. No new species without extinction. Evolution, baby!!!
- wruza 4y agoCambrian explosion is probably not a good example because one of the reasons (correlations) was oxygen levels and other planetary chemistry shifts. I mean yes, rocking the boat should probably restructure life in a more sophisticated way (like shaking a cup of screws makes it fill more gaps and settle better), but if the previous bacteria went extinct without these changes, that explosion could be unremarkable.
- nathias 4y agoI just want to add that 100% of all species will eventually die out. Cosmic death, baby.
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- Bricklace 4y agoThis is interesting
- Bricklace 4y agoThis may still not be the last. We have a lot ahead
- tamaharbor 4y agoHopefully, we will be able to adapt to the climate changes here on earth, much like we would if we were to colonize an alternative planet.