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On the brink: Sixth mass extinction


Still Waters

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but those of you who dont believe in god and think humans are just part of nature. did you ever think that this is what nature wants us to do.

No, that's not the case, nature cannot "want". This is happening and will only worsen things for us. It's a cop out to say that since extinctions occur, we can be safe in believing this one should.

it seems that nature cleans house every once in a while, maybe it is just time to clean house again.

Makes no sense, we weren't "planned" by nature and neither were other extinctions.

oh and 2/3rds of species dieing out isnt even close to what died when the dinos died out.

Actually, it is. Perhaps you're thinking of our worst M-E?

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Do you think that it's healthy to ignore certain potential, even probable, futures just because you'd rather be absorbed in other things? It's important to worry about things that can lead to catastrophe for our species, along with the rest of the biosphere. Yeah, it might be depressing, but ask yourself why that is. Because there was no one who could or would think of the consequences of what we've done, we've come to now. If we bury our heads in the sand because it's uncomfortable to deal with the realities we've forged, then we deserve extinction, and I can weep only for the collateral damage.

We don't have to dwell on this all of the time. But if we don't apply more than the modicum of thought to this problem that we've applied to historical problems, we will destroy ourselves for good. If we survive, miraculously, it will be in a deprived hell-hole of a world.

The point isn't to make people afraid; to scare people into a gloomy depression at the thought of our likely future, no, not at all. The point is to supply information that people can use to CHANGE this likely future. Nothing is set in stone; save the fact that if you don't check the engine in your car (Earth) when the engine light is on (all the warnings from the world around us), then your engine WILL fail.

Is it either healthy or logical to ignore even something so unimportant globally as your engine light simply because you have other things going on? It certainly is neither for an even more pressing concern, like our world being destroyed through our own denial and desire to have things remain the way they've always been. We can't do that, and if it is unhealthy to think and deal with such a problem, so be it. It's health to NOT go extinct; or, at the very least, devastate the biosphere. Ignoring the problem to focus on your own lives solely, selfishly, leads to horrible consequences for all life forms. We cannot afford such a travesty.

But thinking about it 24/7 takes the fun out of everything. You can't deny that.

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No, that's not the case, nature cannot "want". This is happening and will only worsen things for us. It's a cop out to say that since extinctions occur, we can be safe in believing this one should.

Makes no sense, we weren't "planned" by nature and neither were other extinctions.

Actually, it is. Perhaps you're thinking of our worst M-E?

im sorry but my math always told me that 80 was bigger than 66. but then again i was never taught new math.

The first great mass extinction event took place at the end of the Ordovician, when according to the fossil record, 60% of all genera of both terrestrial and marine life worldwide were exterminated.

360 million years ago in the Late Devonian period, the environment that had clearly nurtured reefs for at least 13 million years turned hostile and the world plunged into the second mass extinction event.

The fossil record of the end Permian mass extinction reveals a staggering loss of life: perhaps 80–95% of all marine species went extinct. Reefs didn't reappear for about 10 million years, the greatest hiatus in reef building in all of Earth history.

The end Triassic mass e

xtinction is estimated to have claimed about half of all marine invertebrates. Around 80% of all land quadrupeds also went extinct.

The end Cretaceous mass extinction 65 million years ago is famously associated with the demise of the dinosaurs. Virtually no large land animals survived. Plants were also greatly affected while tropical marine life was decimated. Global temperature was 6 to 14°C warmer than present with sea levels over 300 metres higher than current levels. At this time, the oceans flooded up to 40% of the continents.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Earths-five-mass-extinction-events.html

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Nature will take care of itself. Life has survived worse than humans before. There have been a number of mass extinction events. Unless we do something really stupid ilke all out nuclear war, life will change and continue...... Just nit for every one.

No fear mongering here, but mankind is out of balance with nature. It cannot continue indefinantly. Equlibrium will always be restored. Next time your in a crowd look into the faces of your fellow man.... Can these people change? Now multiply that by 6 billion.

This civilization is evenchually doomed, just like all the ones before it, we are not special or even more advanced. We have made our selves aliens in our own environment. Most people do not even know how to start a fire without matches/lighters etc. Or acuire protein without a raylys or mcdonalds.

We turn our noses up at the largest protien source in earth ( insects) and we can't even stay warm. Most people if you tossed them out on a 20 degree night in light cloths would be dead by morning. ( sheesh learn how to make a debrii hut)

We don't even belong in our own environment anymore.....

My advice..... Become an expert in aboriginal skills, and cultivate a stewartship with the earth. Native peoples were far more advanced than this society can ever be.

Rant over :)

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No, that's not the case, nature cannot "want". This is happening and will only worsen things for us. It's a cop out to say that since extinctions occur, we can be safe in believing this one should.

Makes no sense, we weren't "planned" by nature and neither were other extinctions.

Actually, it is. Perhaps you're thinking of our worst M-E?

How do you know nature dosn't want? Your being awfully presumtuouse. Collectivly life behaves like an entire organism. If you were the size of a planet you would see this one as a living planet with it's own conciousness. The verying sizes of micro organism the make it up would be irelevent just like the varying size of micro organizms ( cells) that make us up is. You don't say a human being is just a planet for a bunch of similar bacteria. What happens when one of your cells starts to grow uncontrolable and destroy everything around it. Well you go for kimo and try to iradiate the cells.

Guess what? The earth ( more like the collective conciousness of life) is very aware much more aware than we are, and guess who the cancer is? Yup!! Us. It will not let us to continue destroying her. It's comeing 1-1000 years. My guess sooner rather than latter.

If you have any doubts thst life on earth is a collective organism, then aply the definition of life to the earth as a whole from an outside perspective. See what happens..... Every tennent is satisfied.

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We are truly in the "last days!"

Just as Jesus said

Mat 24:21,22

"For then there will be a tribulation such has not occured sinc the worlds beginning until now, nor will occur again"

"In fact unless those days were not cut short NO FLESH WOULD BE SAVED"

"Hold on Dorothy cos Kansas is going bye bye!"

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This is more BS trying to make us think that Man is in control of this world when We are not. These lies come right from those Who want You to believe that a carbon tax is needed right now to stop Humans from using up the eco-systems-If Humans stops having Kids and stops using oil and stop taking in less air-then We save the world. So to save the world is to get rid of Humans. Then Why are We Here? This world was giving to Us by God not by People who think they are Gods that know the true scientific ways of Our world these want to be Gods did not make this this world , God did. So if Someone thinks they know more that God and are out to save Us and Our world from Humans and anyone who thinks He has this understanding I say to You that Human/s has to be insane.

Climate change, water shortages, ecological disasters, oil shortages, economic collapses ...

They're all connected and we are the connection.

I will go on record predicting some major disruptions by mid-century:

1. The melt-off of the Arctic ice cap will be substantially complete by 2035. It will be accompanied by a shift in thermohaline circulation as the Arctic Ocean becomes a new evaporation basin. What this will mean to climate is anybody's guess. Increased snowfall might trigger a new ice age, but a warming of nothern Canada and Europe seems more likely.

Climate changes of the past have usually started with a "flickering" as the climate approaches a change threshhold. It's too early to say that the weather of the past winter is an example of the new climate, but it would be consistent with past shifts.

Global warming isn't something that will happen in the future: it's already happening.

2. The deforestation of western North America will be well under way by 2050. Over the last decade we lost 200,000 acres of pinyon pines in the Four Corners area. Bark beetle epidemics are reducing forested acreage in Alska, Colorado, British Columbia and the American South. Bark beetle populations are controlled by hard freezes, of which there have been few in recent years.

3. In the Colorado Front Range banks are lending money for 30-year home mortgages when water supplies are predicted to run out by 2030. It doesn't take a prophet to predict a financial disaster about that time. Home National Bank went belly-up because it had loaned a lot of money to developers in Arizona who built some subdivions before they had secured water supplies. Ever hear of due diligence? That's something bankers don't believe in.

4. We are pumping the Ogalalah Aquifer far faster than it is being replenished. In Lyons, Colorado a cement plant sits directly on top of one of the aquifer's major recharge sites. I don't recall the timeframe for depletion of the aquifer, but it is in years, not decades. A lot of farmers are going to learn to raise cattle or sheep instead of corn and soy beans.

5. It is already too late for an easy transition away from oil. We will likely see another oil price spike soon (This is really not a prediction, as prices are already going up.). This time, some economists think it will be bad enough to start Americans seriously buying electric cars. If not this time, then within a four or five years when the next one hits. We're already past peak production, so a forecast that we're running out of oil is not really a forecast.

It's all one system. We're the common link. We can take action to head off ecological disasters, or we can adapt to them when they get here. It's our collective choice, but it will be easier to take action before disaster strikes than to do it in the middle of a financial collapse and/or major drought.

Doug

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Climate change, water shortages, ecological disasters, oil shortages, economic collapses ...

They're all connected and we are the connection.

I will go on record predicting some major disruptions by mid-century:

1. The melt-off of the Arctic ice cap will be substantially complete by 2035. It will be accompanied by a shift in thermohaline circulation as the Arctic Ocean becomes a new evaporation basin. What this will mean to climate is anybody's guess. Increased snowfall might trigger a new ice age, but a warming of nothern Canada and Europe seems more likely.

Climate changes of the past have usually started with a "flickering" as the climate approaches a change threshhold. It's too early to say that the weather of the past winter is an example of the new climate, but it would be consistent with past shifts.

Global warming isn't something that will happen in the future: it's already happening.

2. The deforestation of western North America will be well under way by 2050. Over the last decade we lost 200,000 acres of pinyon pines in the Four Corners area. Bark beetle epidemics are reducing forested acreage in Alska, Colorado, British Columbia and the American South. Bark beetle populations are controlled by hard freezes, of which there have been few in recent years.

3. In the Colorado Front Range banks are lending money for 30-year home mortgages when water supplies are predicted to run out by 2030. It doesn't take a prophet to predict a financial disaster about that time. Home National Bank went belly-up because it had loaned a lot of money to developers in Arizona who built some subdivions before they had secured water supplies. Ever hear of due diligence? That's something bankers don't believe in.

4. We are pumping the Ogalalah Aquifer far faster than it is being replenished. In Lyons, Colorado a cement plant sits directly on top of one of the aquifer's major recharge sites. I don't recall the timeframe for depletion of the aquifer, but it is in years, not decades. A lot of farmers are going to learn to raise cattle or sheep instead of corn and soy beans.

5. It is already too late for an easy transition away from oil. We will likely see another oil price spike soon (This is really not a prediction, as prices are already going up.). This time, some economists think it will be bad enough to start Americans seriously buying electric cars. If not this time, then within a four or five years when the next one hits. We're already past peak production, so a forecast that we're running out of oil is not really a forecast.

It's all one system. We're the common link. We can take action to head off ecological disasters, or we can adapt to them when they get here. It's our collective choice, but it will be easier to take action before disaster strikes than to do it in the middle of a financial collapse and/or major drought.

Doug

remove climate change and i can agree with you.

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Danielost, IIRC the K-Pg extinction event took roughly 50-70% of all life, sea and land. Now, I don't know about you, but I see that as less than 66% (with a small chance of equal or slightly above). Yes, much land based life went extinct but much in the water survived. Your 80% figure only accounts for land extinctions, only some 33% of all marine species went extinct.

Seeker, I'll deal with your ideas when I have a keyboard.

I will say this, though: Nature can't want, sorry, but it can't. That's not presumption, that's simply logic And I want a M-E event not to occur. I want everyone able to say that their species was not responsible for ruining the equilibrium slowly built up over the millions of years since the last one.

Edited by Druidus-Logos
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remove climate change and i can agree with you.

Why? Seems ludicrous of you, it is a very well-documented phenomenon. Even if it isn't caused by us, it is happening, and to our detriment. And much of what was posted goes hand-in-hand with CC.

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Well if a Mass extinction event is due lets hope it's a Mother Nature one and not a Humanity one...What I mean is, sure mother nature can flood the earth, hit us with asteroids ect which could wipe out a lot of life but it's not unrecoverable.

Whats really scary is that in the future I can see humanity bringing far worse extinction events, like shifting the earths orbit around the sun leading to the earth becoming a "wandering" planet fully destroying it for good.

I can see it now...there'll be a massive asteroid or something and we'll be all "hey thats no problem lets just move the earth a few meters to the left to avoid this" - hah

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It seems quite possible that we are going through a mass extinction of sorts. Maybe not a catastrophic event like an asteroid impact; but there is a major die off of species.

It's estimated that the 'background extinction rate' is around 1 species per million per year, between 1500AD and 2000AD the estimated rate was 100 species per million per year. That is an exponential increase over the norm, and it seems likely that the culprit is us. Bearing in mind that the bulk of time was before anthroprogenic Climate Change took hold, which means other factors were the likely cause (deforestation, changes in land use, hunting, etc). It also seems likely that Climate Change can only exacerbate the situation.

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Why? Seems ludicrous of you, it is a very well-documented phenomenon. Even if it isn't caused by us, it is happening, and to our detriment. And much of what was posted goes hand-in-hand with CC.

because you clumped it with known man made problems. at best man made climate change is speculation.

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mass extinctions happen more or less on a regular basis. from what i understand we are due for one or half way to the next one, depending on what you read.

not all aminals on the planet are threatened by man, some are even prospering. the ones that are able to adapt to what man is doing are prospering. those that cant adapt are dieing.

adaptation is the means for mother nature to get of the failures.

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Back again...

I can't help but notice that some people here are actually saying that man made climate change is a fallacy or speculation. If I may, I would like to disagree. What I would like to ask is, do you read these posts in brail? :wacko:

Either you're blind, or you live in a bunker, 12 feet underground and you don't see the world much!

There are soooo many ways in which man has helped things along the path of destruction that I wouldn't even know where to begin. Too many facts, so little time. few examples go look up some more on the web.

Strip mining

the toilet sanitation systems of the world

coal burning electricity plants

cars

buses

diesel trains

airplanes

believe it or not, Human flatulence :lol:

over farming livestock (especially when some fools decide do start feeding the livestock the deadstock and create a virus called mad cow disease)(also assuming thats how bird flu started)

and so forth and so...

Ok so maybe i am being a bit harsh in the beginning but how could you possibly say we have no influence on the environment around us, surely if you see everything the way it is you would agree with me that it's all wrong! everything we do in our daily lives effects everything around us in every way we allow it to. I really am not trying to offend, just trying to bend a mind or two. :tu:

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mass extinctions happen more or less on a regular basis. from what i understand we are due for one or half way to the next one, depending on what you read.

not all aminals on the planet are threatened by man, some are even prospering. the ones that are able to adapt to what man is doing are prospering. those that cant adapt are dieing.

adaptation is the means for mother nature to get of the failures.

The 'overdue' concept is redundant. All the events that caused the previous extinctions were random, and they weren't that evenly spaced out.

The whole point of a mass extinction is that some wildlife will survive better than others, it's the ones that cannot cope as well that we need to focus on. Those that are evolved to specialise in certain niches are the hardest hit. Species such as rats will do well, simply because they are so adaptable and ubiquitous.

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remove climate change and i can agree with you.

Why?

Oklahoma is 1.33 degrees F. warmer than it was in 1975. That's not something that's going to happen - it already happened. What does that mean? For one, our growing season is nearly two weeks longer than it was 35 years ago. Two more weeks of chiggers if you work in the woods. That means southern pine beetle epidemics in the eastern part of the state (The last hard spring freeze was in 2002; beetle broods have not been killed back since then.). Beetle epidemics mean dead trees, which means fewer board feet to sell, which means landowners with less money in the bank, which means some college educations aren't going to happen. That's what global warming is all about - your standard of living (and mine) is going to decline.

I attended the annual meeting of the Ecology Society of America in Pittsburgh last summer. Over a thousand research papers were presented on topics related to global warming. Among professional ecologists, there is no doubt that the earth is getting warmer. The only doubters now are those who know nothing about ecology or climate - and those deliberately being misled by rightwing scare mongers who are trying to keep from being regulated.

Doug

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because you clumped it with known man made problems. at best man made climate change is speculation.

What convinced me that climate change is real is a regression analysis I did. I used Hansen's list of global climate temperature anomalies as my independent variable. I used the mean annual temperatures of Fort Smith, Arkansas as my dependent variable. The model was a simple straight line. The two variables came up strongly correlated.

This analysis was based on direct measurements of temperature by hundreds of observers over a period of 105 years. There is no way that an observer 80 years ago could have known that his measurements would one day confirm global warming.

In America we have a little over 100 years of climate data. In Europe, it's about 400 years. Climate proxies (like tree rings) go back thousands, or even tens of thousands of years.

I refer you to a paper by Burnette, Stahle and Mock*. They worked out the daily mean temperatures for Manhattan, Kansas going back to July 1, 1828. I quote: "...this new daily record indicates significant warming in all seasons; in heating and cooling degree days; in the warmest and coldest days of the year; in extremes above the 90th percentile and below the 10th percentile; in the frequency of winter cold waves and summer heat waves; and in the overall annual-mean temperature, which has warmed by 1.57 degrees +/- 0.23 degrees C since 1855 (1.27 degrees +/- 0.23 degrees C since 1829). .... These data indicate the nineteenth century was fundamentally cooler than the twentieth and early twenty-first."

Sorry, Daniel. Global warming is supported by hard science - thousands of papers of hard science.

Doug

*Burnette, Dorian J., David W. Stahle and Cary J. Mock. 2009. Daily-mean temperature reconstruction for Kansas from early instrumental and modern observatiosn. Journal of Climate Vol. 23, pp. 1308-1333.

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This is more BS trying to make us think that Man is in control of this world when We are not. These lies come right from those Who want You to believe that a carbon tax is needed right now to stop Humans from using up the eco-systems-If Humans stops having Kids and stops using oil and stop taking in less air-then We save the world. So to save the world is to get rid of Humans. Then Why are We Here? This world was giving to Us by God not by People who think they are Gods that know the true scientific ways of Our world these want to be Gods did not make this this world , God did. So if Someone thinks they know more that God and are out to save Us and Our world from Humans and anyone who thinks He has this understanding I say to You that Human/s has to be insane.

We're not in control of this world but we do affect it. Given that God trusted us to look after it and we've quite impressively messed that up, can you really see a reason for Him to step in and save us when we can do it ourselves. Call me insane if you want; it doesn't change the facts. The climate is wariming up, fairly soon, it will rach a level which initiates a positive feedback cycle and the whole world will eventually become uninhabitable.

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Why?

Oklahoma is 1.33 degrees F. warmer than it was in 1975. That's not something that's going to happen - it already happened. What does that mean? For one, our growing season is nearly two weeks longer than it was 35 years ago. Two more weeks of chiggers if you work in the woods. That means southern pine beetle epidemics in the eastern part of the state (The last hard spring freeze was in 2002; beetle broods have not been killed back since then.). Beetle epidemics mean dead trees, which means fewer board feet to sell, which means landowners with less money in the bank, which means some college educations aren't going to happen. That's what global warming is all about - your standard of living (and mine) is going to decline.

I attended the annual meeting of the Ecology Society of America in Pittsburgh last summer. Over a thousand research papers were presented on topics related to global warming. Among professional ecologists, there is no doubt that the earth is getting warmer. The only doubters now are those who know nothing about ecology or climate - and those deliberately being misled by rightwing scare mongers who are trying to keep from being regulated.

Doug

i am not saying that climate change isnt happening. i am just saying it isnt man made. man may be helping it along, but we are not causing the climate to change. this planet goes through climate change ever 300,000 years. we are currently at the peak of that time period. so in about 150,000 years we will be in another ice age.

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i am not saying that climate change isnt happening. i am just saying it isnt man made. man may be helping it along, but we are not causing the climate to change. this planet goes through climate change ever 300,000 years. we are currently at the peak of that time period. so in about 150,000 years we will be in another ice age.

We could spend two pages explaining why that is an incorrect interpretation of the facts - but whats the point.

Br Cornelius

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We could spend two pages explaining why that is an incorrect interpretation of the facts - but whats the point.

Br Cornelius

the point is it is not an incorrect interpretation. it is one interpretation of the facts and you have yours.

climate change has been going on on this planet and in this solar system for 4 billion years. why all of a sudden cant it take place without man causing it.

Edited by danielost
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