Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Biologist warn of early stages of Earth's sixth mass extinction event
Biologist warn of early stages of Earth's sixth mass extinction event -- ScienceDaily
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.
Why not use dna to bring them back? We could bring back every one of these 320 creatures!
The opposite of natural is artificial or synthetic, ie, manmade. It is an arbitrary distinction but that's language for you.
Oi...
Oi...
So you do not believe in evolution?
Oi...
So you do not believe in evolution?
I know I will regret having asked, but where the F did you get that idea
I find the rapid rate of acidification most alarming. I can see a marine mass extinction taking place in my children's lifetime.
In the past, atmospheric CO2 (which causes ocean acidification) has risen and fallen, but always at a far, far slower rate than it has done today. As the pH of the world's water fell, the weathering of carbonate minerals (ex: CaCO3) buffered the process leading to much dampened pH responses. Today's rate of atmospheric CO2 increase is ten times faster than that observed in past, acid-based, mass marine extinctions. The weathering process will have no opportunity to keep this change in check. The effect on the oceans will likely be completely unprecedented in a record that already includes - as you noted - several mass extinctions.
You say we can do nothing about it. Unfortunately, you base that opinion on the mistaken and unsupportable belief that humans had nothing to do with producing the current situation. In face, we are almost totally responsible and we DO have it within our powers to remedy the situation.
deniers think that species going extinct due, in large part to manmade phenomenon- encroaching on lands to clearcut them to make baseball bats & raise hybrid livestock & throwing billions of tons of CO2 up in the atmosphere is fun/funny/
So you do not believe in evolution?
I know I will regret having asked, but where the F did you get that idea
Based on your anti-science posts, so are you going to answer the question or do we have to endure more AGW anti-science religious dogma?
deniers think that species going extinct due, in large part to manmade phenomenon- encroaching on lands to clearcut them to make baseball bats & raise hybrid livestock & throwing billions of tons of CO2 up in the atmosphere is fun/funny/
I know I will regret having asked, but where the F did you get that idea
Based on your anti-science posts, so are you going to answer the question or do we have to endure more AGW anti-science religious dogma?
I don't owe you shit. Your comments are meaningless drivel. You appear to be incapable of maintaining a cogent discussion on any subject. You keep flying off on completely unrelated tangents thinking you've got some profound insight into what other people are thinking when you can't even read what they've written here ... repeatedly.
There's some serious competition here, but you really and truly take the cake for the most useless poster on this board. You're even more useless than skookerasbil and THAT took some work.
