Study outlining defining chracteristic of Sixth Extinction

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Feb 15, 2011
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What the ‘sixth extinction’ will look like in the oceans: The largest species die off first

In this case, the perturbation is us, rather than, say, an asteroid. As such, you might expect to see some patterns to extinctions that reflect our particular way of causing ecological destruction. And indeed, a new study published Wednesday in Science magazine confirms this. For the world’s oceans, it finds, threats of extinction aren’t apportioned equally among all species — rather, the larger ones, in terms of body size and mass, are uniquely imperiled right now.

Discuss.....
 
What the ‘sixth extinction’ will look like in the oceans: The largest species die off first

In this case, the perturbation is us, rather than, say, an asteroid. As such, you might expect to see some patterns to extinctions that reflect our particular way of causing ecological destruction. And indeed, a new study published Wednesday in Science magazine confirms this. For the world’s oceans, it finds, threats of extinction aren’t apportioned equally among all species — rather, the larger ones, in terms of body size and mass, are uniquely imperiled right now.

Discuss.....

As noted there have been 5 previous major mass extinctions going back about 500 million years. The largest was the Permian/Triassic, or what is known in science as The Great Dying, as around 95% of all species went extinct 242 million years ago. It took life 10-20 million years to recover from that event that left life dangling by the thinnest of threads. The oceans turned from supporting aerobic organisms to supporting anaerobic organism. The oceans in essence flipped. It took about 5 million years for them to flip back. The K/T event, or the event that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct occurred 65 million years ago and some 75% of species to go extinct, is one of the major extinction events.

In addition there have been 17 or 18 minor mass extinctions. A major mass extinction would be 50% + of all species going extinct, while a minor extinction would be 20% - 50%. Hardly minor in reality. That science views the current extinction event as the 6th major extinction event speaks for itself. And it started decades ago. It is estimated that 15 species go extinct each day in the Rain Forest alone.

And there is no question this is manmade. The current era is in the process of being renamed the Anthropocene era as human activity will be visible in sediments even 100 million years from now. Humankind is like a slow-motion asteroid strike on Earth. We COULD change this but it would mean a different way of life for humans on Earth and it's likely this won't happen. If the entire Arctic Ice Cap is melting as we watch on video and some people still don't believe the Earth is warming, what exactly will it take. Some people will only accept reality when it's far too late.
 
This DOT COM meathead......anything seen on the intanets and his head explodes. Like a bunch of k00k progressives in here, needs some real responsibilities in life to deter some of the OCD stuff.......
 
What we are seeing in the peer reviewed scientific journals is that the warming is taking place, it is caused primarily by the very rapid addition of GHGs into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. In prior geological eras, when we saw a very rapid change in temperature worldwide, whether up or down, we saw a period of extinction. We saw this in North America as recently as the Younger Dryas. That the deniers refuse to see this only speaks to the fact that they are poliically driven, and totally out of touch with reality.
 

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