Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun According to Scientists

[hanselthecaretaker]

Earth’s sixth mass extinction has begun according to scientists

Scientists warn that human-driven species loss is accelerating, with entire branches of life vanishing at unprecedented rates.

en.as.com

Worldwide it is thought that more than 500 species of land animal are close to extinction and could be lost within the next 20 years. The report was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and studied 29,000 species of land vertebrate. They estimated that the number of extinctions expected in the next two decades would likely take thousands of years if not for the negative impact of humanity.


Yay humanity. We’re really on a roll lately!

 

[Agema]

Yay humanity. We’re really on a roll lately!

There can only be one! We will defeat all these other creatures and take full mastery of the world: one Earth, one species.

 

[Cheetodust]

Like this is the thing that gets me. Even if you're a climate sceptic, surely you have to realise that just the amount of pollution and waste that we have piled into our land, air and sea isn't good. When there's a garbage island 3 times bigger than France just floating in the sea you, the amount of land we're using as landfills and how much pollution in the air, how can you think that's just going to be fine? Is your hope just that you'll be dead and it will be your grandkids that will have to deal with it, not you? Are we really that shitty as a species.

 

[Agema]

Like this is the thing that gets me. Even if you're a climate sceptic, surely you have to realise that just the amount of pollution and waste that we have piled into our land, air and sea isn't good. When there's a garbage island 3 times bigger than France just floating in the sea you, the amount of land we're using as landfills and how much pollution in the air, how can you think that's just going to be fine?

Because as long as that pollution is somewhere else, it's not getting in the way of your life. And even if it creeps up, as long as you've got money can move to somewhere else it appears to be having negligible effect. If dodgy chemicals are going to make everyone infertile in two generations, well, you've already sown your oats so no big deal, and chances are if you've got money your descendants can just pay for some sort of technological assistance anyway. If all the fish in the sea die, you can just eat more pork, beef, etc. instead. And so on.

Where people do not have to face the consequences of a problem, they will be less inclined to act on that problem. Power and wealth insulate people from a great number of problems.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Where people do not have to face the consequences of a problem, they will be less inclined to act on that problem. Power and wealth insulate people from a great number of problems.

And even when they do, well, anti-vaxxers still exist in countries full of people dying of covid.

 

[Agema]

And even when they do, well, anti-vaxxers still exist in countries full of people dying of covid.

Fundamentally, anti-vaxx rests on the idea of a low likelihood of death. Imagine if ebola (50%+ mortality) could spread like covid. Virtually no-one except the most extreme loonies would reject the vaccine. With covid, they can just act like it's a cold, or 'flu: because for most of them, it is. Some of them get unlucky and become seriously ill or die, but a 1/10,000 chance looks like pretty good odds to get away with it. This is why MMR can likewise be treated with skepticism: because measles, mumps and rubella have a low chance of death or permanent impairment. I doubt they'd take the same chances with their kids from smallpox. Lots of people don't have regular cancer check-ups, because they think the likelihood they'll develop it is low enough (and that includes me, although I don't have to consider infecting others in terms of cancer).

It's the same idea of estimated consequences. Doesn't really affect them directly or obviously, so no need to take action. Sure, the hospitals are full and putting off other surgeries: but they don't think they'll need hospital treatment, either.

 

[Cheetodust]

Because as long as that pollution is somewhere else, it's not getting in the way of your life. And even if it creeps up, as long as you've got money can move to somewhere else it appears to be having negligible effect. If dodgy chemicals are going to make everyone infertile in two generations, well, you've already sown your oats so no big deal, and chances are if you've got money your descendants can just pay for some sort of technological assistance anyway. If all the fish in the sea die, you can just eat more pork, beef, etc. instead. And so on.

Where people do not have to face the consequences of a problem, they will be less inclined to act on that problem. Power and wealth insulate people from a great number of problems.

Is your hope just that you'll be dead and it will be your grandkids that will have to deal with it, not you? Are we really that shitty as a species.

So basically, yes to this part.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Pretty sure this has been warned about for a few years already. But, just like climate change, no-one with the wealth and/or power has any interest in taking any action that may harm their precious fucking quarterly increases.

 

[Agema]

So basically, yes to this part.

Yes indeed.

But the people driving or exploiting this view most tend to be very rich. Powerful people know that money gives them options - and will give their offspring options - to avoid the worst. So even they can view themselves as securing their dynastic future - the world might go to shit, but they'll be the ones on the top in this dilapidated new world order.

Of course, there are lots of other reasons. Some people genuinely just don't give a shit. Some people find the idea so terrifying that they pretend it won't happen, or some as yet undefined future technology will make the problem go away.

 

[Gergar12]

I did find one contrarian opinion on this, that accepts climate change, but does not think we should do anything about it. I don't necessarily support this opinion but I do find it persuasive.

https://thetech.com/2010/10/15/yost-v130-n45

Basically, it's not in the US's national interest to stop climate change. If you think like an international relations realist, someone who only cares only the US, then doing nothing about climate change costs the US more than solving it with other countries and a lot more if we take the lead on it.

"For example, the National Resource Defense Council estimates that if left unchecked, global warming will cost the U.S. 1.8 percent of its GDP by the year 2100. Meanwhile, the Stern Review estimates the cost of carbon mitigation to total 2 percent of world GDP by the year 2100. It appears that the hot areas of the world should be bribing us to take action, not the other way around."

"For a wealthy, cold, non-agrarian, stable country such as ours, it is unclear whether we even stand that much to lose from a rise in temperatures"

7 reasons America will fail on climate change

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

 

[CriticalGaming]

Yay humanity. We’re really on a roll lately!

Do be fair to us, extinctions have been happening long before us and will happen long after we're gone. I'm sure we are fucking with things while we are here, it isn't like it also wouldn't happen if we weren't

 

[Cheetodust]

Let the world burn because money. Fuck this species.

 

[Cheetodust]

Do be fair to us, extinctions have been happening long before us and will happen long after we're gone. I'm sure we are fucking with things while we are here, it isn't like it also wouldn't happen if we weren't

Did you read anything about this before you wrote that?
First mass extinction event in 65 million years, the 6th in 500 million years, what should take thousands of years is expected to take 20 years because of human activity.

 

[Dalisclock]

Speaking of which, Elon Musk apparently thinks we don't have enough people or some shit.

Elon Musk says population collapse ‘potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization’

Musk has previously warned population collapse is a bigger problem than most people realize.

thehill.com

We've got 300+ Million Americans and the World Pop is about 8 billion or so. We're not anywhere close to a population collapse, at least at this moment. Now when ecological disaster hits hard, then this might be a problem but 8 billion people is not sustainable at the rate we're using resources and polluting. It sure as hell isn't gonna be sustainable going forward when we lose more arable land, potable water and such to rising sea levels and climate change.

Fuck, world population is expecting to peak in a couple decades and then start sloping down.

If you're really worried about people not having kids, maybe you should take a look at all the people living in fucking poverty not only around the world but in this country, Rich boy. How about donate a billion or so for universal childcare? Or stopping climate change? Or making sure everyone can fucking eat on the regular?

 

[Dalisclock]

Do be fair to us, extinctions have been happening long before us and will happen long after we're gone. I'm sure we are fucking with things while we are here, it isn't like it also wouldn't happen if we weren't

Except we're speeding this shit up far faster then it would happen without us. That's not something to be proud of.

 

[Gergar12]

Of course, my counter to the above argument that climate change is real, and not worth solving is something I learned in the United Nations Class I took. The cooperation game. If the US does not cooperate once in a game theory real-life simulation like the game of fighting climate change or defecting/not fighting it. The next time the US needs help with fighting China, or another crisis that affects the US, the US won't get help from other countries. It's really that simple. Also in theory countries could stop trading with the US, leaving the UN, and form their own United Nations without the US is a security council member, and so fore. And this could affect US allies, trade partners, and security partners in South America, Africa, and Asia.

So even if you are a selfish realist, fighting climate change is better for the US as it means the US could form coalitions easier in the future to solve IR problems.

Edit: And now I know why people don't even get up to this part of the debate, they either deny human-caused climate change or climate change in general.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Did you read anything about this before you wrote that?
First mass extinction event in 65 million years, the 6th in 500 million years, what should take thousands of years is expected to take 20 years because of human activity.

Not what I meant. I meant the small single species here and there. Individual things go extinct all the time. Either because something in their environment changes (like a predator getting better at wiping them out) or natural evolutions yielding failures to adapt.

The mass extinction thing is exaggeration. Just like that Doomsday clock nonsense. Especially like the article says when you consider that they refer to geological timeframes of MIllions of years.

We've got 300+ Million Americans and the World Pop is about 8 billion or so. We're not anywhere close to a population collapse, at least at this moment. Now when ecological disaster hits hard, then this might be a problem but 8 billion people is not sustainable at the rate we're using resources and polluting.

Fuck, world population is expecting to peak in a couple decades and then start sloping down.

Yeah it's called the K-line iirc, it's the line in which an ecosystem's resources can no longer support the population that exists. Humanity has been able to raise our K-line due to technology and artificial means like farming and aggriculture which allows us to forcefully produce food in an environment that wouldn't naturally have such things. Even still there is a limit and we are starting to see that limit in more ways than one.

In some ways, great plagues and mass death end up being a good thing for a species because it provides relief on the ecosystem and releases stress of resources. Sanitation and medicine both advanced dramatically after the Bubonic Plague swept through a shitload of people. It taught people very valuable lessons in medical treatments as well as home santitation. The same thing applies to a lot of other creatures.

Nature is about a very fine balance, and that balance constantly bobs back and forth between too much of a thing and too little of a thing. Extinction occurs when the balance breaks and cannot swing back the other way.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Except we're speeding this shit up far faster then it would happen without us. That's not something to be proud of.

Are we though? Humans have not been around very long when you consider the history of the Earth. How can we tell that we've sped up extinction, unless you can name a species that hasn't existed until after humans and is now extinct because of humans. There are a lot of factors that might lead an certian species towards extinction and I'm sure we might be responsible for a few things due to destruction of natural habitat, like city building over swamplands or something like that.

Even if you want to make the argument about climate change, in reality that in itself wouldn't directly lead to the extinction of something because of us. The Earth's climate has changed something on the order of 15 - 20 times if you look at the geological record. By that I mean 15-20 different Ice Age levels of climate change in which the Earth has cooled and warmed rinse and repeat.

Hunga-Tunga's eruption is a gentle reminder that nature can just tell the world to go fuck itself at any time it wants. Tonga is a volcano that is perfectly capable of erupting hard enough to cool the planet by several degrees for a number of years. Krakatoa can do the same thing. One massive Volcano and suddenly global warming vanishes overnight. Not to say that we shouldn't watch what we are doing, but just to highlight that natural things are capable of far more extinction than we are.

 

[Cheetodust]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12816

Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible. Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is...

www.pnas.org

 

[CriticalGaming]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12816

Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible. Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is...

www.pnas.org

This is a good article. But the prevailing message should be highlighted. Even if we are destroying the environment that leads to a planetary extinction event. Life will likely survive, as it has done in every extinction event before it. Humans might die out, and likely we will, but life itself will remain for a time.

At some point though, the Earth itself will die. The core will cool, which will cause the magnetic poles to vanish thus allowing the atmosphere to drift off into space killing everything on the planet. OR the sun might die first and consume the Earth as it expands to millions of times its current size.

Extinction is enivitable ultimately. But until the big extinction, life will continue to bounce back because eventually the contirbuting factor will be snuffed out and once it is gone, life will flourish again.