Biologists warn of early stages of Earth's sixth mass extinction event

[GliderGuider]

The more hysterical of the ecological cognoscenti have been saying this for a number of years now. We are in the funnel, heading for the bottleneck.

Biologists warn of early stages of Earth's sixth mass extinction event

The planet's current biodiversity, the product of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error, is the highest in the history of life. But it may be reaching a tipping point.

In a new review of scientific literature and analysis of data published in Science, an international team of scientists cautions that the loss and decline of animals is contributing to what appears to be the early days of the planet's sixth mass biological extinction event.
Since 1500, more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates have become extinct. Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance. The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life.

And while previous extinctions have been driven by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes, the current die-off can be associated to human activity, a situation that the lead author Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of biology at Stanford, designates an era of "Anthropocene defaunation."

Across vertebrates, 16 to 33 percent of all species are estimated to be globally threatened or endangered. Large animals -- described as megafauna and including elephants, rhinoceroses, polar bears and countless other species worldwide -- face the highest rate of decline, a trend that matches previous extinction events.

[theHandpuppet]

1. Too. Many. Humans.

Our comeuppance is fast approaching.

[delrem]

2. We either learn. Or we die. n/t

[Phlem]

3. Well that effectively cut's the population in half

if not more.

[delrem]

5. If we don't learn, it'll be much more than half.

But maybe that's just how Darwin's theory predicts.

[Phlem]

12. Well, I am in 100% agreement and

have felt this way years. The frustrating part is watching the unlearnable's take us down by their sheer abundance.



Take Care my friend, I stand with you.

-p

[Nihil]

13. And I totally agree with your comment:

> The frustrating part is watching the unlearnable's take us down by their sheer abundance.

It doesn't matter how smart or caring the minority is when the overwhelming majority are
as thick as pigshit and twice as unpleasant.

[Phlem]

14. Exactly, welcome to our political system.

[pediatricmedic]

4. This is unlike any other extinction that has happened

It isn't the end of the planet or even a decrease in the living biomass found on the planet. It is a man made loss of diversity as we populate the planet with our useful domesticated animals and plants. Everything else gets pushed into extinction or killed off as we cultivate every square inch of land.

It is more people, more dogs, more cats, more cows, more pigs, more chickens, more goats, etc. It is also more corn, more wheat, more soy, more organic vegetable gardens as well. You can also add more wind farms, more solar, more tidal, and more "green" energy. We will turn every square inch into something productive and usable. We will reach levels of technology and efficiency not even imagined.

The human race will flourish, even with the occasional barbaric war or famine every couple years. The plants and animals that we haven't domesticated or crammed into zoos with breeding programs will not be so lucky. They will exist in books, recordings, or genetic data banks only.

Whether you love or hate nature, their isn't anything you can do to stop what is coming. Whether you roll coal or have your carbon footprint at zero, you can't stop it.

It's not really doom and gloom, as a bright future lies ahead, maybe far ahead. You can still choose how you live your life and how you effect your small part of the world. You can choose to live well and to conserve. This will slow the coming change, even if it doesn't stop it. Maybe this buys us some time to preserve a few more parts that would otherwise be lost to progress.

[delrem]

6. You're suggesting that some "extinction" is somehow planned.

You say "Whether you roll coal or have your carbon footprint at zero, you can't stop it."
I say that you don't take into account that those "rolling coal" are intelligent actors who chose that path out of all the others.
You're just saying "you can't stop it", as if the folk "rolling coal" had the ultimate decision.

I find that whole way of looking at things very weird. In the sense of being contradictory to the fact that those who "roll coal" explicitly and with glee show to the world who they choose to be.

[pediatricmedic]

9. Does anyone have the ultimate decision?

The answer is that nobody has the decision or can make the decision. There is no great plan to this either.

The apes who like to "roll coal" will be gone in a few decades at most(death by lung cancer most likely). That fad will probably die off in the next few years as those "rebels" move on to some other thing or can't afford their trucks. They really are irrelevant in the long run.

Break it down to two key variables:
Population Growth and Time

Time is pretty self explanatory if you think long term. This isn't about next year or the year after, you have to think ten thousand years or much longer.

Now add in Population Growth and how we expand to take every available area we can live in. Things like wars, disease, famine, natural disasters only prune back the population a little. Assuming even a small number survive, we will once again grow into billions of people.

What do people do? They build, they grow, they start families and reproduce. Your sons and daughters need space to build, grow, and start families as well. That growth times billions of people times thousands of years is what you have no power to change. That is what will cause the extinction of most species on the planet.

[delrem]

10. You make no sense.

I see no intelligence.
Goodbye.

[Dustlawyer]

7. And we debate... Birth Control! That about sums it up except to say that we are giving Capitalistic

Corporations personhood and religion! Will corporations survive the extinction?

[defacto7]

8. Hate to be the harbinger of doom... but,

this is only one of several extinction processes that are now set in motion. This isn't even the most catastrophic or probable cause of our demise just the signs of a larger global process, a process that we just may have tripped. It has happened several times since life evolved in the ocean to begin with and it will happen again sooner than it would otherwise have been.

But sometimes things are better left unrepeated. Yes, we have an interesting 50 to a few hundred years ahead whatever the source of change.

[phantom power]

11. what we've done will already show up in the future fossil record