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I'm impressed, that's a surprisingly good pop-sci-style article. The writing is clear, correct, accessible, and a nice summary of the scientific context for th
by jofer 13y ago
I'm impressed, that's a surprisingly good pop-sci-style article. The writing is clear, correct, accessible, and a nice summary of the scientific context for the paper in question. The original PNAS article is also clearly linked.
At least with geoscience, science journalists usually manage to get things horribly wrong. Judging from previous articles, Helen Thompson (the writer) looks like she might be a biologist instead of a geologist, but she nailed the subject matter, regardless.
- mathattack 13y agoI agree - well written. Perhaps the only quibble is that my intuition was that it would be much shorter. 60,000 years (or even 5,000) is a long time to react.
- AutoCorrect 13y agoyou say react as if there's an awareness by the group of organisms that they are dying out, when that's far from the truth. Think of a species as a network, with the leaf nodes around for only a specific length of time. Add in several events that isolate portions of the network, and it dies off in spurts, as each isolated portion becomes less fit and eventually ceases reproduction. With the decline in our birthrate, it will be interesting to see (from a historical perspective, I'll be long dead) if we die out, or if we get out of this funk we're in now.
- happyscrappy 13y agoBefore it was overpopulation, now it is declining birthrate? Why does the narrative always have to be doom? All objective evidence shows substantial progress yet everyone wants to believe in doom.
- mathattack 13y agoI think the decline in birthrate helps us. If we get to under a billion, we strain the planet less. But there are plenty of other ways for us to make ourselves extinct.