4 ms·

I don't want to take away from the seriousness of this but > we are in the midst of a new mass extinction event. mischaracterises the reference they link: >

I don't want to take away from the seriousness of this but > we are in the midst of a new mass extinction event. mischaracterises the reference they link: > Biologists now suggest that a sixth mass extinction may be under way, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia. 'in the midst' != 'may be under way' My point is not to nitpick, but to say, unlike climate change, we still have a fair bit of time on this one. If you read the relevant literature more closely, it says something like (from memory) "if current rates keep up for 500 years, it will be one of the largest mass extinctions ever". This is a deeply important issue. If our species ends up responsible for a death-of-dinosaurs scale mass extinction its.. hard to overestimate how bad that would look, from any sort of, I dunno, galactic-UN sort of application-process-review sort of perspective. But implying we are 'in the midst' aka 'approximately halfway through' might rob people of hope. We are at the start of a mass extinction event which, like many other terrible potentialities ahead of us, we can very much avert.

sixbrx 4y ago
Agree, and this point, that the current age can't yet count as a mass extinction, was made well in the book "The Ends of the World", which is about the five major mass extinctions (and which was a good read). It's not that what we've done so far isn't a possible start on a mass extinction, it's just that the big five (and especially the end-Permian) were mind-bogglingly destructive "perfect storms". They killed most organisms of all types and sizes in all environments over the entire world. It's hard to imagine how that's even possible!
- filoeleven 4y ago
  “If current trends continue, we are on target for meeting the requirements for another mass extinction.”
- toss1 4y ago
  >> It's hard to imagine how that's even possible! And that is exactly what will make it possible. We, in our individual experience see only the stuff moving around us. Moving earth for a few days for a new house or driveway or shopping center. But we have no realization that it was years ago that humans surpassed all other natural processes as movers of earth [0], or that over half the world's land is use for agriculture [1], or that we've already increased the CO2 levels to 150% of the value from 1750 [2] or reduced insect biomass by 76% in a few decades [3], or polluted every raindrop with beyond-unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals [4], etc., etc., etc., and that's just the stuff off the top of my head. The naive view is 'How could puny humans have an effect so big?'. Yet we do, and it is because we can magnify physical forces and scale operations. No more than a failure to imagine that you could drive off a cliff and die does not mean that you cannot, there is zero to say that we will not make an error with this scaling and effectively kill our planet and ourselves. In both cases, the failure to imagine how it would even be possible will massively magnify the risk. [0] https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/humans-overtake-nature-as-the-biggest-contributors-to-landscape-evolution/ https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/humans-overtake-nature-as-the-big... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations [4] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfas-in-rainwater-what-it-means-for-health https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfas-in-rainwater-...
toss1 4y ago
Perhaps, if we look only at the species that we know have already gone fully extinct. And of course, if there are more than a handful of any species, it technically could recover. But driving looking only through the rear-view mirror is a plan for disaster. We must also look at the declines in existing species, like 80% over just a few decades of insects, many types of plants, birds, fish, and more. These are massive and rapid declines, and there is little in the way of trends that are turning in their favor. In fact, more than climate change, habitat destruction and over-fishing/over-grazing/over-extraction may destroy many species far before climate change would undo them. Moreover, the actual measurements of climate change indicate that it is changing far MORE rapidly than the models. Plus, we're apparently blowing right through a number of tipping points, including arctic albedo (from sea ice completely melting where it never did before, and the last few inches of ice no longer reflecting white), gigatons of methane starting to release from the thawing permafrost, and several other feed-forward disasters. Plus, few are looking at what point the food web breaks. Once that happens (and no one knows if we first lose the bees, the plankton, or some other critical link, or a zoonotic pandemic where we don't get as lucky as the last time) we're so far beyond screwed.... and so is the ecosystem

sixbrx 4y ago

Agree, and this point, that the current age can't yet count as a mass extinction, was made well in the book "The Ends of the World", which is about the five major mass extinctions (and which was a good read). It's not that what we've done so far isn't a possible start on a mass extinction, it's just that the big five (and especially the end-Permian) were mind-bogglingly destructive "perfect storms". They killed most organisms of all types and sizes in all environments over the entire world. It's hard to imagine how that's even possible!

filoeleven 4y ago
“If current trends continue, we are on target for meeting the requirements for another mass extinction.”
toss1 4y ago
>> It's hard to imagine how that's even possible! And that is exactly what will make it possible. We, in our individual experience see only the stuff moving around us. Moving earth for a few days for a new house or driveway or shopping center. But we have no realization that it was years ago that humans surpassed all other natural processes as movers of earth [0], or that over half the world's land is use for agriculture [1], or that we've already increased the CO2 levels to 150% of the value from 1750 [2] or reduced insect biomass by 76% in a few decades [3], or polluted every raindrop with beyond-unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals [4], etc., etc., etc., and that's just the stuff off the top of my head. The naive view is 'How could puny humans have an effect so big?'. Yet we do, and it is because we can magnify physical forces and scale operations. No more than a failure to imagine that you could drive off a cliff and die does not mean that you cannot, there is zero to say that we will not make an error with this scaling and effectively kill our planet and ourselves. In both cases, the failure to imagine how it would even be possible will massively magnify the risk. [0] https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/humans-overtake-nature-as-the-biggest-contributors-to-landscape-evolution/ https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/humans-overtake-nature-as-the-big... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations [4] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfas-in-rainwater-what-it-means-for-health https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfas-in-rainwater-...

toss1 4y ago

Perhaps, if we look only at the species that we know have already gone fully extinct. And of course, if there are more than a handful of any species, it technically could recover. But driving looking only through the rear-view mirror is a plan for disaster. We must also look at the declines in existing species, like 80% over just a few decades of insects, many types of plants, birds, fish, and more. These are massive and rapid declines, and there is little in the way of trends that are turning in their favor. In fact, more than climate change, habitat destruction and over-fishing/over-grazing/over-extraction may destroy many species far before climate change would undo them. Moreover, the actual measurements of climate change indicate that it is changing far MORE rapidly than the models. Plus, we're apparently blowing right through a number of tipping points, including arctic albedo (from sea ice completely melting where it never did before, and the last few inches of ice no longer reflecting white), gigatons of methane starting to release from the thawing permafrost, and several other feed-forward disasters. Plus, few are looking at what point the food web breaks. Once that happens (and no one knows if we first lose the bees, the plankton, or some other critical link, or a zoonotic pandemic where we don't get as lucky as the last time) we're so far beyond screwed.... and so is the ecosystem