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A report has been published in the prestige journal Nature, a report on humans causing mass extinction, the 6th mass extinction to be exact. The study was done at the University of California, Berkley by a group of scientists who showed scientific facts that humans are in a way accelerating mass extinction by 3x to 12x times.
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Evolution will likely overcome the role of humanity, but pressure is unlike any in history
A mass extinction is a world-changing event. In order to qualify, 75 percent of species must be eliminated within a "short" period (between a few hundred thousand years to a few million years).
This has only happened five times in history, and according to researchers at the University of California, Berkley, it's happening a sixth time. This time, they claim humans are to blame.
The worst mass extinction in history occurred during the Permian Period, when most land species perished. While that won't likely happen, the majority of non-domesticate large land species may perish over the next a thousand years if mankind doesn't change its behavior, according to the researchers.
Anthony Barnosky, the curator of the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley and another co-author of the study, comments that species go extinct today just as they have always. However, the real question is, "Is the pace of extinction we're seeing today over these short time intervals usual or unusual?"
To try to answer that question, Professor Barnosky and his student Elizabeth Ferrer had to comb both the fossil record and modern conservation biology for clues. This wasn't easy as the fossil record has plenty of holes and the best source for modern data -- the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened and endangered species -- only has examined 2.7 percent of the planet's 1.9 million named species (which is likely far from the total species count).
Comparing to historically-known times of normal extinction rate, the pair says that current extinction rates are conservatively estimated to be 3 to 12 time higher, with the actual multiplier possibly being as high as 80. Even under the "best case" 3x scenario, within 22 centuries the world would reach a "mass extinction" scenario.
The team says we're just on the cusp of causing this. Over the last 200 years we've caused approximately 1 to 2 percent of species to go extinct -- much higher than normal extinction rates. As invertebrate data was still too week to draw strong comparisons, the study focused its efforts largely on vertebrate extinction. Its findings were that man is driving the Earth towards a mass extinction.
The results will likely be the evolutionary mechanism being kicked into overdrive due to less species, more resources, and smaller populations of surviving species (allowing for random gene drift).
In an interview with LiveScience, David Jablonski, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago who did not participate in the study, states, "If the fossil record tells us one thing, it's that when we kick over into a mass extinction regime, results are extreme, they're irreversible and they're unpredictable. Factors that promote success and survival during normal times seem to melt away."
The study was published [abstract] in what is arguably the science field's most prestigious journal -- Nature. The article is drawing a great deal of attention for its comprehensive review and the startling perspective it provides.
Ms. Ferrer morosely remarks on the attention the study is drawing, "It's bittersweet, because we're showing that we have this crisis."
Some reacted to the study with prophesies of doom and gloom. Comments Paul Ehrlich, the president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University and author of "The Population Bomb" (Sierra Club-Ballantine, 1968), "Everything we're doing in Washington [D.C.] today is working in the wrong direction. There isn't a single powerful person in the world who is really talking about what the situation is … It's hard to be cheery when you don't see the slightest sign of any real attention being paid."
Others, like Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University, were more optimistic. He comments, "If we have a business-as-usual scenario, it is pretty grim, but it isn't yet written. I hope that this will alert people to the fact that we are living in geologically unprecedented times. Only five times in Earth's history has life been as threatened as it is now."
Regardless of whether the trend continues or reverses, some of the extinction event's most noticeable changes may be coming soon. Several large land predator species, including the tiger are on the verge of extinction in the wild and may vanish within a few decades.
Interestingly, while rainforest destruction continues at a break-neck pace threatening mass extinction of millions of species, mankind's attention remains largely wrapped around debating "climate change" a shift in the Earth's temperatures due to carbon dioxide -- a change which would contribute far less to the loss of biodiversity (and could even promote biodiversity in some areas).
Do you think man is responsible for mass extinction and will this be mass extinction event or is it blown out of proportions?
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On March 04 2011 23:13 thehitman wrote: Do you think man is responsible for mass extinction and will this be mass extinction event or is it blown out of proportions?
Well we sure can't blame the dolphins for such an "event". Makes perfect sense, we are by long and far the highest creature on the food chain, and we are consuming far too much. I don't really give a damn since this is a natural cause of events.
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On March 04 2011 23:21 HeIios wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2011 23:13 thehitman wrote: Do you think man is responsible for mass extinction and will this be mass extinction event or is it blown out of proportions? Well we sure can't blame the dolphins for such an "event". Makes perfect sense, we are by long and far the highest creature on the food chain, and we are consuming far too much. I don't really give a damn since this is a natural cause of events.
Nobody try to better yourselves, you're just being natural.
There are so many things that are "natural" that we've done away with because it's a negative thing for ourselves, but here it doesn't directly affect you so you don't give a shit. Being egoistic and only caring about yourself is perfectly natural, by the way, so you can just keep on trucking with your point of view.
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On March 04 2011 23:21 HeIios wrote: Makes perfect sense, we are by long and far the highest creature on the food chain, and we are consuming far too much. I don't really give a damn since this is a natural cause of events.
This. We're just another species living beyond ours means; a compensating decline will happen, and the world will stabilize again, albeit around a new equilibrium point. I'm more worried about what will happen to us humans, than about the well-being of the planet. Yes, species will die out, but that always happens when radical environmental changes occur, and new species will fill the void eventually. It's cyclical, and I don't yet have a reason to doubt it.
EDIT: firebat?!
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A mass extinction is a world-changing event. In order to qualify, 75 percent of species must be eliminated within a "short" period (between a few hundred thousand years to a few million years).
Is any credit given for creating species? Most food crops are unrecognizable from their wild stock. And while most animals are just hybrids at this point, in the not too distant future we will likely be designing completely original animals from the ground up with DNA sequencers.
On a million year time-scale the only thing that would prevent humanity from reshaping the surface of the Earth is our extinction.
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I think like 50% of the land surface of earth has been changed by humans, depending on how you count it exactly. If you look at an image from space taken at night, the light pollution is stunning and shocking. It doesn't get dark at all in the western world.
Any change is going to cause extinctions. That's how it works. And humans often change it for the worse.
What one would expect considering how much earth has changed is a mass extinction. So when people go out and count, it is no surprise to find it.
97% of all vertebrate biomass is either humans or their domesticated animals. It was probably 50/50 in 1900.
The biomass of plankton is being seriously reduced right now. It is the most important ecosystem on the planet. Just a few tenths of a degree in temperature will significantly chance plankton biomass. This is just the beginning and humans are only keeping on growing exponentially. The coming 20 years will be as bad as the last 100 years.
Ooh, and when our civilization falls, which is not unlikely, there won't be another industrial revolution. There is no more easily accessible oil. If we don't solve the overpopulation and energy crisis, humans will not go extinct but they will go back to a strange mix of hunting gathering and agriculture with modern technology mixed in.
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On March 04 2011 23:48 Alshahin wrote: I think like 50% of the land surface of earth has been changed by humans, depending on how you count it exactly. If you look at an image from space taken at night, the light pollution is stunning and shocking. It doesn't get dark at all in the western world.
Any change is going to cause extinctions. That's how it works. And humans often change it for the worse.
What one would expect considering how much earth has changed is a mass extinction. So when people go out and count, it is no surprise to find it.
97% of all vertebrate biomass is either humans or their domesticated animals. It was probably 50/50 in 1900.
The biomass of plankton is being seriously reduced right now. It is the most important ecosystem on the planet. Just a few tenths of a degree in temperature will significantly chance plankton biomass. This is just the beginning and humans are only keeping on growing exponentially. The coming 20 years will be as bad as the last 100 years.
To be honest, I don't think we're as bad as a meteor strike yet. Human population growth isn't sustainable, it will reach an equilibrium, or even a turning point.
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On March 04 2011 23:48 Alshahin wrote: Ooh, and when our civilization falls, which is not unlikely, there won't be another industrial revolution. There is no more easily accessible oil. If we don't solve the overpopulation and energy crisis, humans will not go extinct but they will go back to a strange mix of hunting gathering and agriculture with modern technology mixed in.
Lol, that leads to a very interesting scenario, where we have all this technology, but no longer the ability to produce more or understand it.
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On March 04 2011 23:54 buhhy wrote: To be honest, I don't think we're as bad as a meteor strike yet. Human population growth isn't sustainable, it will reach an equilibrium, or even a turning point.
What a strange comment. You realize a significant meteor strike would mean wiping out every species heavier than 25 kg?
And that the human population reaching it's 'equilibrium' would mean hundreds of millions of people dying of famine and war over food, water and resources on every continent?
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In order to qualify, 75 percent of species must be eliminated within a "short" period between a few hundred thousand years to a few million years
Are people really even worried about the idea anything or even the whole earth being extinct in hundreds of thousands of years or MILLIONS? Some the things they study and try to figure out at least to me sometimes is so absurd! If anything on earth makes it a few million years from now ill consider that a damn freaking miracle in itself.
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Now watch as this turns into a debate on whether this is justified for the benefit of our well being or not between tl's squad of american capitalist nuts and common sense.
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Humanity has pretty much grown with little regard for natural life since the beginning of our time. Since we've moved beyond our former selves, I see two possible outcomes. One is that human population grows faster than we can control, and we're forced to justify destroying any last natural habitats in order to shelter ourselves. Two is our growing conscience about our impact on the Earth will prevent us from harming the environment any more, and as our technology progresses we'll find ways to continue living while leaving smaller effects on nature.
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As far as I see it, to date, humans have sort of "won" at evolution. There's no indication that our particular planet has produced anything like humanity, so we might be the best our particular little solar system has to offer. If that's true, then preserving humanity could be considered more important than ensuring that the whole "natural cycle" continues. We got one shot at using up all the world's oil, it would be fairly irresponsible to let anything get in the way of finding a sustainable means of keeping up that advancement once we're out. If a few hundred thousand species need to go extinct along the way, we can save up some DNA or whatever, no big deal.
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On March 05 2011 00:09 SharkSpider wrote: As far as I see it, to date, humans have sort of "won" at evolution. There's no indication that our particular planet has produced anything like humanity, so we might be the best our particular little solar system has to offer. If that's true, then preserving humanity could be considered more important than ensuring that the whole "natural cycle" continues. We got one shot at using up all the world's oil, it would be fairly irresponsible to let anything get in the way of finding a sustainable means of keeping up that advancement once we're out. If a few hundred thousand species need to go extinct along the way, we can save up some DNA or whatever, no big deal.
You are correct. Other animals themselves have actually lead to some animal species becoming extinct through either hunting or disease, etc.
Humans are having a large and detrimental effect on the worlds ecosystem, but are at the same time fighting against it.
We keep some species safe and help them reproduce, and for ones that cannot, we are saving their dna.
As time goes by, within the next century most likely, genetic research will allow us to recreate these dead species if we so choose.
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Of course we are responsible. But in the end, the planet will laugh last. As the beloved late George Carlin said: Fuck saving the planet. The planet will be fine. The people are fucked.
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SharkSpider, what a strange and arrogant comment. We humans need the entire earth to survive. Other species need almost nothing which allowed them to survive hundreds of times longer than homo sapiens has existed. don't. How the hell did we 'win' at evolution?
Also, how does saving the DNA of people suffering famine help them? That's absurd.If your DNA is saved on some disk your suffering becomes bearable or irrelevant?
Also, how does saving DNA of species going extinct and then bringing them back later help? Species going extinct is a symptom, not the problem. If you bring extinct species back, you don't solve anything.
Also, species humans will keep in existence will be species like the giant panda or maybe the mammoth. What good does a giant panda or a mammoth in a zoo do?
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On March 05 2011 00:06 dudeman001 wrote: Humanity has pretty much grown with little regard for natural life since the beginning of our time. Since we've moved beyond our former selves, I see two possible outcomes. One is that human population grows faster than we can control, and we're forced to justify destroying any last natural habitats in order to shelter ourselves. Two is our growing conscience about our impact on the Earth will prevent us from harming the environment any more, and as our technology progresses we'll find ways to continue living while leaving smaller effects on nature.
Those aren't two possible outcomes, they are two possible extremes
Chances are 1. we are causing a mass extinction event 2. it will not be total... ie natural habitats will remain and some will recover (like forests cut down for farms that have been abandoned in the eastern US) 3. We can/will deliberately "ressurect" many species/ecosystems and "guide" evolution.in our 'nonnatural haitats'
On March 05 2011 00:14 Alshahin wrote: What good does a giant panda or a mammoth in a zoo do?
What good does a giant panda do.. Period.
ie What is wrong with a mass extinction event?
1. You lose the "uniqueness" (aesthetic + research value)... and that will be big since many invertebrates will die out and won't be preserved. But saving the DNA does help with that for larger vertebrates. (a panda in the zoo is almost Better than a panda in the wild for #1)
2. There is the issue of 'ecosystem services' ie things the natural ecosystems do in terms of providing recreational locations, water/air purification, etc. However, those services could be replaced... or maintained even in the face of mass extinction by "designing" ecosystems to do those things.
So We are in a mass extinction... but that is not some doomsday scenario, we will survive that (although it will be a loss) and so will the planet.
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I thought this was common sense. If you spend any amount of time thinking about it, it quickly becomes clear that we are speeding up the process.
The real question here is... did we kill the dinosaurs? (Insert inception music+apply theory)
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On March 04 2011 23:13 thehitman wrote: Do you think man is responsible for mass extinction and will this be mass extinction event or is it blown out of proportions?
I don't think this is controversial at all. Humans have changed the Earth in the last 200 years. We've destroyed the habitats of a lot of species and hunted many of them to extinction. Destroying forests and marshes to use it for agriculture probably had the biggest effect but there's also overfishing as well as increased toxicity in rivers.
In a way this shouldn't be surprising. The world has been here 4.6 billion years, life maybe 3.5 billion. Yet we've completely changed the face of the Earth in 200 years, less than 1 tenmillionth of that time. There's bound to consequences.
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I don't consider this applicable. I actually took a class on this at the University of Kentucky, called "Dinosaurs and Disasters", studying the mass extinctions. The fact that humanity will exist negates that.
Natural disasters are what cause this, not species.+ Show Spoiler + unless there is a ghost with cloak entering our natural expansion
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On March 05 2011 00:14 Alshahin wrote: SharkSpider, what a strange and arrogant comment. We humans need the entire earth to survive. Other species need almost nothing which allowed them to survive hundreds of times longer than homo sapiens has existed. don't. How the hell did we 'win' at evolution?
Also, how does saving the DNA of people suffering famine help them? That's absurd.If your DNA is saved on some disk your suffering becomes bearable or irrelevant?
Also, how does saving DNA of species going extinct and then bringing them back later help? Species going extinct is a symptom, not the problem. If you bring extinct species back, you don't solve anything.
Also, species humans will keep in existence will be species like the giant panda or maybe the mammoth. What good does a giant panda or a mammoth in a zoo do? It's not arrogant, it's just taking logic over your usual "common sense" as defined by people who have an agenda to push. We "won" at evolution because we control the world. We do depend on its ecosystem to live, but it's no symbiotic relationship.
I also think you're misudnerstanding the purpose of my comment. I'm not suggesting saving the DNA of people suffering famine, that's ridiculous. What I am suggesting is that we're close to being able to reproduce any species we make extinct through our actions, here. Extinction in the long run is regrettable only because it represents a permanent loss, and we are the first species to have come out of earth that has a way of reversing that. That's a fairly big deal.
Anyways, the real question you need to answer is what good a Panda outside a zoo does.
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