"In other words, what we know about the past signals that we are in a truly traumatic phase of the planet’s history that could affect much of life on Earth, inc

"In other words, what we know about the past signals that we are in a truly traumatic phase of the planet’s history that could affect much of life on Earth, including our species." 'traumatic' is an emotive non-scientific word. From who's perspective? From this one person? From the perspective of humanity? The biosphere? The Earth? Were the previous mass extinction phases 'traumatic'? If not, why not? If it were not for those previous phases then perhaps evolution would never have come up with talking monkeys. And what if the by-product of our current mass extinction phase is something that could not have happened without this mass dying off. What then? Maybe if you want to be a palaeontologist actually use scientific language rather than non-scientific judgements.