Sixth Mass Extinction

Sixth Mass Extinction, what would it look like?

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence. Wow, beat you weren't ready for that? This is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.   From the study, the accelerated rate of mammals extinction is 15 to 100 times as fast as the new fast rate from the past. We never experienced such a rapid rate there is general agreement among scientists that extinction rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago.  In a handful of times in the past 500 million years, 50 to more than 90% of all species on Earth have disappeared in a geological blink of the eye.

Guess we best get on that True North Course Mates, times running thin. Notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain, Earth's climate, toxic nuclear waste, manufacturing pollution, (60% of China's drinking water is toxic) ocean pollution combined with radiation discharge, that alone is the worst human disaster we ever created.  In the meantime, the researchers hope their work will inform conservation efforts, the maintenance of ecosystem services and public policy.

Give that an Amen and\or Aye


Stanford researcher declares

Stanford

 

Life At The Brink

About the Show

It’s a mystery on a global scale: five times in Earth’s past, life has been nearly extinguished, the vast majority of plant and animal species annihilated in a geologic instant. The Permian-Triassic extinction event about 250 million years ago was the deadliest, more than 90% of all species perished.  What triggered these dramatic events?  And what might they tell us about the fate of our world? 

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