The Sixth Great Mass Extinction
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In a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances, biologists found that the Earth is losing mammal species 20 to 100 times the rate of the past. Extinctions are happening so fast, they could rival the event that killed the dinosaurs in as little as 250 years. Given the timing, the unprecedented speed of the losses and decades of research on the effects of pollution, hunting and habitat loss, they assert that human activity is responsible.
The Science Advances study is not the first to propose that the die-offs caused by human activity are now on par with the fatal cataclysms of millennia past. In 1998, an American Museum of Natural History poll of 400 biology experts found that 70 percent believe the Earth is in the midst of one of its fastest mass extinctions, one that threatens the existence of humans as well as the millions of species we rely on.
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@Captain Yeah, this is old news at this point.
When people think of the old mass extinctions, they think about a sudden die off. But even the dinosaur killer took like 1000 years to run its course, as food chains slowly collapsed. What's happening right now seem to be unprecedented.
On the other hand (and these are vague memories from articles read long ago), we ARE coming from a period with higher than normal bio-diversity. And maybe, we are just moving back to the mean in terms of how many different species can exist on earth.
My personal take on this? Long term, it's either humanity or nature. One future is humanity has turned the entire planet into a well controlled garden. Nothing exists unless we want it to. There's no such thing as "wilderness". Other future is, civilization has collapsed and nature slowly reclaims ground. This kind of shaky "balance" we have now won't survive long term.
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@cartman82 said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
But even the dinosaur killer took like 1000 years to run its course, as food chains slowly collapsed.
We don't really know that; 1000 years is very close to the error bars for instantaneous when you use something that can give evidence about 65 million years ago.
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@cartman82 said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
There's no such thing as "wilderness".
I can see how someone from Europe might think this.
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I hope the next one we get rid of mosquitoes and other biting insects.
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@fbmac Only downside to that is losing all the things that live by eating biting insects.
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@dkf yeah we should engineer some non-biting mosquitoes for the bats to thrive.
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@gleemonk Teach the male ones how to clone themselves and get rid of female ones?
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@dkf said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@fbmac Only downside to that is losing all the things that live by eating biting insects.
number one killer of humanity for all time?
Mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes have killed more humans with their bit than any other cause, ever. they are a fantastic transmission vector for disease and parasites.
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@accalia said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
they are a fantastic transmission vector for disease and parasites
They also cause massive stress when you turn out the light in order to go to sleep and…
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzWUP!
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@dkf
Don't forget the strange blood stains on the bed room wall or ceiling.
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@cartman82 said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
My personal take on this? Long term, it's either humanity or nature. One future is humanity has turned the entire planet into a well controlled garden. Nothing exists unless we want it to. There's no such thing as "wilderness". Other future is, civilization has collapsed and nature slowly reclaims ground. This kind of shaky "balance" we have now won't survive long term.
What on earth would lead you to think that we might be capable of exercising enough collective responsibility to act as stewards of a "well controlled garden" that's complex enough to be sustainable, when we can't get it together to limit the extent or even the consequences of our own growth? Hell, we can't even agree that such a limit is even desirable.
We're not in any way outside of or superior to "nature". We're biological beings, currently experiencing an unsustainable population expansion no different in kind nor likely outcome from a mouse plague or algal bloom. First comes the laying waste to our surroundings and consequent exhaustion of irreplaceable resources, then comes the population crash, then something else eats our remains.
The somewhat distressing aspect of this is that simply being able to see how it works is no more protective against it than understanding that everything dies is protective against one's own death.
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@gleemonk said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
we should engineer some non-biting mosquitoes for the bats to thrive.
I've long been saying we should engineer tiny, honey-producing hummingbirds and then exterminate all bees.
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@flabdablet That would be the other future.
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@boomzilla said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
I can see how someone from Europe might think this.
The Americas are no different.
The only difference is that the peoples who "geomodded" the Americas were, by and large, wiped out by disease, and so we're not aware of exactly what they did or how. (We do know, for example, that natives purposefully set fire to the great plains every so often. That'd proven both by archaeological evidence and eyewitness reports.)
But the fact that there aren't giant sloths roaming Utah right now this instant is pretty good evidence that the American continents aren't in their "natural" state, either.
EDIT: you should read the last few chapters of the Lost City of Z to get an intriguing theory as to how the natives living along the Amazon River kept an amazingly high population density despite living in an "unproductive" rain forest.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
The Americas are no different.
No, there's a lot more open space that is actually wilderness compared to Europe.
@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
But the fact that there aren't giant sloths roaming Utah right now this instant is pretty good evidence that the American continents aren't in their "natural" state, either.
I maintain that even NYC is in its natural state.
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@boomzilla said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
No, there's a lot more open space that is actually wilderness compared to Europe.
But there's not, is my point. It's all been changed, starting about 12,000 years ago and ending about 500 years ago.
Well I guess it's "wilderness", but it's not "untouched wilderness". If you want to be a pedantic dickweed about it.
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@boomzilla said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
No, there's a lot more open space that is actually wilderness compared to Europe.
It also depends on where you are. There's lots of wilderness up in Scandinavia and through the north of Finland and European Russia. Forest, bog, mountains, and absolutely no reason to go out there unless you're doing mining or something like that. (It's basically the same deal as in inland Alaska and northern Canada.)
It's only when you go further south that human impact is more significant.
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@boomzilla That's great, but it's irrelevant to the problem of mass extinctions. We're the problem and will possibly be the cause of our own demise, whether you call us a force of nature or "separate" from nature.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
We're the problem and will possibly be the cause of our own demise,
Possibly.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
We're the problem and will possibly be the cause of our own demise,
We're a lot better at surviving shit than pandas are.
What exactly about mass extinctions puts the human race in danger? I'd love to hear an answer that isn't Greenpeace waffling.
Oh, oh, is this like Fox? Are we gonna be living in motorboats built from freezers? I want my freezerboat right now.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
We're a lot better at surviving shit than pandas are.
Uncertain. We've not yet actually proved that, so your assertion might just be unfounded arrogance.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
We're the problem and will possibly be the cause of our own demise,
We're a lot better at surviving shit than pandas are.
What exactly about mass extinctions puts the human race in danger? I'd love to hear an answer that isn't Greenpeace waffling.
It depends on what dies off. If something like the Great Permian extinction happens, where the plankton in the ocean dies, it eventually all collects on the ocean floor and the decaying plankton corpses release trillions (I think) of tons of hydrogen sulfide into the air and will poison any breathing thing.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
If something like the Great Permian extinction happens, where the plankton in the ocean dies, it eventually all collects on the ocean floor and the decaying plankton corpses release trillions (I think) of tons of hydrogen sulfide into the air and will poison any breathing thing.
Well if that happens in the course of 5 minutes, then yes I bet we're pretty fucked, but I think it's more likely it'd take tens of thousands of years and we wouldn't just sit around going "derp derp derp" until we suffocated.
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@Yamikuronue Oh my god yes. Bees are ok but I'll accept the loss of bees if we can wipe out the rest of hymenoptera, including ants and wasps.
Mostly wasps. FUCK WASPS. They don't fulfill an ecological role other than 'murder everything' and sometimes 'murder everything horrifically'.
Bees are like tiny fascists with a sweet tooth, wasps just want to see the world burn.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
If something like the Great Permian extinction happens, where the plankton in the ocean dies, it eventually all collects on the ocean floor and the decaying plankton corpses release trillions (I think) of tons of hydrogen sulfide into the air and will poison any breathing thing.
Well if that happens in the course of 5 minutes, then yes I bet we're pretty fucked, but I think it's more likely it'd take tens of thousands of years and we wouldn't just sit around going "derp derp derp" until we suffocated.
Really? Evidence points to the contrary...
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@dkf Pandas are really bad at being alive. They're just about as bad at being alive as you can be and not be extinct yet.
It's amazing, in a fucked up way.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Really? Evidence points to the contrary...
What evidence?
Why not just admit what you posted was idiotic gibberish, and you've been thoroughly thrashed by Blakeyrat here?
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
an "unproductive" rain forest
Any person who actually believes that "unproductive" is the right word to describe a rain forest - any rain forest - has completely failed to understand rain forests.
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@blakeyrat He means we're not doing anything about climate change and it might already be too late.
Anything that self-reinforces like a great ocean die-off is a question of whether humanity can plan far enough ahead to see it coming in time. As a species we don't have unlimited resources.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Really? Evidence points to the contrary...
So what should do do about "it?"
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
What exactly about mass extinctions puts the human race in danger?
First they came for the pandas, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a panda.
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@AyGeePlus said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Mostly wasps. FUCK WASPS. They don't fulfill an ecological role other than 'murder everything' and sometimes 'murder everything horrifically'.
Yes, they're much like us in that respect.
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@flabdablet said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Any person who actually believes that "unproductive" is the right word to describe a rain forest - any rain forest - has completely failed to understand rain forests.
I put the scare quotes there for a reason.
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@blakeyrat I thought your point was a good one and could use a bit of affirmation.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
I think it's more likely it'd take tens of thousands of years and we wouldn't just sit around going "derp derp derp" until we suffocated.
rat, yes we adapt and that extra hairy nipple on your eye will be very crucial in filteingr the acidity of the air
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@dse I've seen The Twilight Zone. It'd be the ones without the hairy eye-nipples who were considered the ugly ones.
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@AyGeePlus said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
FUCK WASPS.
Agreed. Murder them all and replace them with DDT
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Really? Evidence points to the contrary...
What evidence?
Why not just admit what you posted was idiotic gibberish, and you've been thoroughly thrashed by Blakeyrat here?
Because you're the idiot... Carbon dioxide levels are rising faster than they did in the events leading up to the Permian extinction. Keep in mind that the extinction was caused by carbon dioxide getting trapped in the oceans and acidifying them.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at the highest level it has been since the time of the dinosaurs. Seriously.
Once the oceans are acidic and sea life starts dying, there's no turning back. There's no undo button. At that point, human extinction is virtually guaranteed.
Also, as it happens, humans suck at solving problems where no one person or group is to blame. It's too easy to pass the buck. There is a lot of evidence on this point.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at the highest level it has been since the time of the dinosaurs. Seriously.
Oh noes!
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Grass only needs sun light and water, and cows only need some grass. We're safe.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
At that point, human extinction is virtually guaranteed.
To be fair, human extinction is virtually guaranteed anyway. It's really only certain bacteria and the occasional fish and reptile that have managed to achieve significant evolutionary stability. Long-persisting species are the exception, not the rule.
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@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at the highest level it has been since the time of the dinosaurs.
I seem to recall mammals did pretty good in that environment.
@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Once the oceans are acidic and sea life starts dying, there's no turning back. There's no undo button. At that point, human extinction is virtually guaranteed.
Pfft. We'll just all move into Biosphere 2. Sure we'll get annoyed by Pauly Shore and his loser friend, but we'll be safe and sound.
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@fbmac said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
We're safe
I saw cattle moving about on the slopes of those hills, so I went up there to see about getting a little milk, and ran into the only other human being I've seen for the last thirty years. He wouldn't give me any - tried to run me off - so I had to kill him and steal the animals. That proved fairly easy, but on the way down the valley I got my legs crushed in this rockfall and all the cows got away. So now I'm just waiting here to die.
Pity.
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@blakeyrat said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@Captain said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at the highest level it has been since the time of the dinosaurs.
I seem to recall mammals did pretty good in that environment.
Yes, but they were also mouse-sized with commensurate energy/nutritional requirements.
In any case, the point of bringing up dinosaur levels of CO2 is that we're quickly closing in on Permian levels of CO2.
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@cartman82 I like to think that 20,000 years from now we'll declare Earth a "natural reserve" and just live in every other planet.
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@anonymous234 I like to think I'll be around 20000 years from now too.
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@anonymous234 said in The Sixth Great Mass Extinction:
@cartman82 I like to think that 20,000 years from now we'll declare Earth a "natural reserve" and just live in every other planet.
Humans will never live away from Earth in any significant numbers.
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@cartman82 We don't need to physically go there, all we need is the SOMA Ark: