Scientists Warn that Sixth Mass Extinction Has 'Probably Started' (vice.com) 128
Over the past 450 million years, life on Earth has been devastated by at least five mass extinctions, which are typically defined as catastrophes that wipe out more than 75 percent of species in a short amount of time. Many scientists have proposed that we are entering a Sixth Mass Extinction, this time driven by human activity, though debates still rage over the validity and consequences of this claim. From a report: Now, a team led by Robert Cowie, research professor at the University of Hawaii's Pacific Biosciences Research Center, argues that "the Sixth Mass Extinction has begun on land and in freshwater seems increasingly likely," according to a recent article published in Biological Reviews. "We consider that the Sixth Mass Extinction has probably started and present arguments to counter those who would deny this," said the team, which also included biologists Philippe Bouchet and Benoît Fontaine of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, in the article.
"Denying it is simply flying in the face of the mountain of data that is rapidly accumulating, and there is no longer room for skepticism, wondering whether it really is happening," added the authors. Cowie and his colleagues refer to a multitude of studies cataloging the extinction of species across clades, but the article is primarily built around their research into mollusks, an invertebrate family that includes snails, clams, and slugs. This focus counteracts the disproportionate attention that vertebrates, such as birds and mammals, receive in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, among other conservation efforts.
"Denying it is simply flying in the face of the mountain of data that is rapidly accumulating, and there is no longer room for skepticism, wondering whether it really is happening," added the authors. Cowie and his colleagues refer to a multitude of studies cataloging the extinction of species across clades, but the article is primarily built around their research into mollusks, an invertebrate family that includes snails, clams, and slugs. This focus counteracts the disproportionate attention that vertebrates, such as birds and mammals, receive in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, among other conservation efforts.
Ya think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering how many species are already starting to be critically endangered, we have likely been in the 6th extinction for more than a century now. Some conservation programs have slowed various species from dying off, but ultimately we are already on the path of destruction and too few people are trying to stop it.
Re: (Score:1)
There may not be a lot of Pandas around but there's a shitload of Possums. Mollusks are going extinct? Tell that to the zebra mussel.
Re: (Score:2)
Dinosaurs are going extinct? Tell that to the mouse plague!!!1!
My dude this isn't a good argument. Yes there are species doing well. I suspect you'll find that for most extinctions. In the long term big extinctions clear the field for new species.But there are also lucky species that are put into a position where they can ride it out and find themselves in a situation where the can really go large with all their competition relegated to the paleontological memory hole.
The problem is, that might not include
Re: (Score:2)
It's especially ironic given how Zebra mussels are an invasive species that have nearly driven various other species extinct, including other species of mollusk. Some species of Opossum are also invasive species that endanger other species. Both Zebra Mussels and Opossums have been introduced to new ecosystems as invasive species by humans. Maybe that was actually the GP's point? It wasn't very clear.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ya think? (Score:4, Interesting)
As the sturgeons come back killing off the zebra mussels, we can then bring back other fish and mollusks.
Re: (Score:2)
But no species that went extinct are ever coming back. That is what extinction means.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Ya think? (Score:2)
Re: Ya think? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given the age of the other five extinctions, exactly what proof do we have that they were NOT caused by other species reaching industrial level technology?
Re: (Score:2)
We probably haven't found any bones or other artifacts that show such a creature(s) existed to build an industrial level society.
I've wondered about this though. I mean, are we sure a million years ago there wasn't any intelligent lifeforms running doing stuff like we are or similar? The way the world reclaims itself over the eons is quite amazing.
We occasionally find dinosaur bones and date those back to 65 million years (wow, that's a long time) so I don't see why some kind of smart creatures couldn't of
Re:Ya think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if there was an intelligent species around millions of years ago, we know they didn't reach our level of industrialization because there was oil, coal, and easy to reach surface metals still available for us. If we fall it's gonna be real hard for those that follow to climb back up.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this is really severely underappreciated. We are digging up iron formerly concentrated in ores and distributing it across the landscape. What it's turning into might conceivably be refined into iron again, but it will be orders of magnitude harder to collect it in order to do so. Odds are good that the next wave of humanity would find it literally impossible to rebuild the chain of technologies that it takes to get back to this level of tech.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it might be much easier- because we've moved it nearer to the surface, and concentrated it into buildings, which will eventually turn into the very sort of ore deposits we've been mining.
Re: Ya think? (Score:2)
Except only some of.them will. The rest will be more broadly distributed into soil and whatnot making it essentially impossible to reclaim.
Re: (Score:2)
The two best sources of raw materials are former cities and former landfills. The Romans have known that for centuries. Why don't you?
Re: (Score:2)
The two best sources of raw materials are former cities and former landfills. The Romans have known that for centuries. Why don't you?
Congratulations, you just blathered in order to seem smart and proved you know dick about what we're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
https://lost-treasures-intolerance-greed.com/ancient-rome-thrown-limekiln-eternal-city-used-construction-material.html [lost-treas...-greed.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, we're sure a million years ago, there WERE intelligent life forms much like we are (5 difference species of hominids that we have fossil records for at that time). It's 5 million years back or more that we have issues with, and who knows if our reconstruction of physiology from mere bone remnants is accurate?
Re: (Score:2)
Once you've got enough bone to say "mammal" (versus "fish" or "squid"), you've got the physiology to an accurate enough level to know where you are on the intelligence front. If we knew which aspects of gorilla, chimpanzee and human physiology contributed to their different levels of intelligence, then knowing what part of the mammalian tree a bone is from might be useful. But you'd still have to deal with the problem that it'
Re: (Score:2)
We already know intelligent tool using isn't limited to mammals.
Re: (Score:2)
(Thinks, ... I can't think of an invertebrate tool user.)
Not that "vertebrate" is in any sense "higher" than "invertebrate" ; both are equally derived from the "Ur-metazoan".
Re: (Score:2)
There are invertebrate tool users, most are octopus or squid (well, if nature gives you 8 hands, you might have a tentacle up on everybody else when it comes to creating and using tools).
There are even a couple of avian tool using species.
And yes, there are insectoid tool users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Evidence of open pit mines could survive hundreds of millions of years in some places.
Some nuclear decay products.
The bare fact that fossil fuel deposits from hundreds of millions of years ago are intact.
Re: (Score:2)
Open pit mines weather and degrade within a few decades of ending mining as is. Fossil fuel deposits aren't intact, that's how biological matter becomes oil, other wise it would be full of ferns and stuff. There is a supposedly "natural nuclear reactor" in Oklo, Gabon that I suppose might have once been something though.
Re: (Score:2)
Something other than a water-moderated natural nuclear reactor operating when the concentration of U-235 in natural uranium was about 8 times what it is today. (Actually, as I recall from reading the reports when I was working in Gabon, 3 or 4 natural reactors within a kilometre or so of each other, operating at different times in an irregular episodic manner. Unfortunately I didn't get time o
Re: (Score:2)
How about an actual water cooled reactor, a few million years further from unnatural enrichment, with all of the concrete and iron parts degraded to almost nothing (or actual nothing) by mere weathering?
Re: (Score:2)
But since the exploration geologists didn't have "concrete and iron" parts, however degraded, to cue them, I'm not going to piss on their graves.
I do hear t
Re: (Score:2)
Anybody who has watched a Model T shell dumped in a creek back in the 1940s degrade over the next 80 years, or has ever watched what happens after a dam breach, knows that neither iron nor concrete are immune to the effects of wind and water once they stop being maintained. Not over a century, certainly not over several million years.
There would be nothing left to notice- at all. We'd have no way to spot an earlier industrial civilization at our stage; all their works, all their empty promises, would be j
Re: (Score:2)
The mineralogy of concretes is quite obscure, but relatively stable. It would also have a distinctly weirdly uniform mineralogy and geochemistry, uniform across watersheds because the concrete from one processing plant (with one set of sources of mudrock and limestone) tends not to get moved too far from that source plant. Moving hundreds of thousands of tonnes of stuff costs money, and people tend to use the nearest sources.
The signs might be subtle, but I do like to
Re: (Score:2)
Yes there are older ones - there are metamorphosed sediments from the Archean, over 3 billion years old, which contain chemical traces of kerogen (the ill-defined material that releases hydrocarbons when you "cook" it at several hundred centigrade and 3-4km depth. But they're volumetrically unimportant.
There was (probably) an oilfield of a few billion barrels (say, a North Sea or so) i
Re: (Score:3)
We have a lot of evidence that the last extinction before the present one was due to a cosmic body hitting Earth.
A problem with the way this question is posed is that it is demanding evidence ("proof" in fact) for something that is postulated to not have happened. How does one "prove" that there was no industrial driven extinction? What would the proof be?
There are several indicators that strongly suggest no prior industrial civilization on Earth, based on what the current one is doing.
We are carving rectan
Re: (Score:2)
Last but one - for major extinctions. For lesser extinctions, last but 4 or 5. There was a substantial mass extinction about 55.3 million years ago, probably related to the destabilisation of seabed methane clathrates in the north proto-Atlantic leading to drastic, rapid global warming. I spent about 10 years drilling holes in the North Sea, looking for oil and gas in the interbedded sandstones (
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, I have never heard of that one - and as a geologist with a more than passing interest in archaeology, I feel that I bloody well should have.
Lessee ... what DDG has? Well the first prompt is for "London Hammer debunked", which doesn't surprise me.
Ah, London [wikipedia.org] Texas - which would explain why I hadn't heard of it before. And it has been bigged up by Creationist idiots (which doesn't itself prove that it's a forgery, but it's bad company if you want to retain some cre
Fossil Record (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering how many species are already starting to be critically endangered, we have likely been in the 6th extinction for more than a century now.
I agree that on the face of it it does look very likely. However, I would be careful comparing past mass extinctions based on the fossil record to the current decline in species based on actual biological specimens. Given the patchy nature of the fossil record is it possible that events like this - where one species becomes dominant and reduces the diversity of species - has happened in the past without it being classed as a mass extinction?
This does not mean that we should not be doing our best to preserve species since we clearly are causing extinctions - I would just be careful of labeling it as a mass extinction given the very different nature of the evidence compared to past ones.
Re: (Score:2)
> Given the patchy nature of the fossil record
But, assuming the "patchiness level" doesn't change fast (ie over a million years species found in fossils rise about 1% compared to real biological number), the ratio should be comparable:
- over 100k years we saw a decline from 100 species to 20 species in fossils.
- over 100 years we saw a decline from 1 million species to 200k species based on biological specimens.
* made up numbers to illustrate my point.
Re: (Score:2)
However, smaller declines in the number of species - say only 10
Re: (Score:2)
So, I quickly read absolute basics on how extinctions are recorded, and one of the main measures is extinction of entire taxonomic families.
In support of your point: mostly marine fossils are mainly used to determine extinction levels. (guess why... )
At this point I give up, and say "I don't have any archeological (statistics) training". And trust that those people know what they're talking about.
Same as they don't tell me how to template my C++ code.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why important, money-making geological decisions are done using microfossils not macrofossils. Because in the dirt adhering to the astragalus of your dinosaur (not a random bone - a foot bone bearing one of the characters that defines "dinosaur" as opposed to "pterosaur" or "suchian") can contain hundreds or
So? (Score:2)
Nature should reap the rewards of what it sows.
Re: (Score:2)
Getting rid of humanity? Isn't spermageddon [youtu.be] a big enough problem [youtu.be]?
Re: (Score:2)
That's interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That's interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I was once told by the head of a project that we only discuss *solutions* on teleconferences, not problems.
A few years later they discovered all the problems they preferred not to discuss.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Ha ha, I was wondering who that anecdote manage to annoy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I got the downmod notification by e-mail, wondered who has a special attachment to toxic positivity, then read your reply and understood it was an accidental mod.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like the influence of an executive that bought into some feel-good, self-help guru (or some fad "business process" which is pretty much the same thing). Did they give every employee a free copy of the guru's book and strongly encourage them to read it?
Re: (Score:2)
I would not be surprised if some inane "leadership" nonsense played a role. I had a friend once who was a middle manager in some unholy corporation or another. They had some pop psychologist type in to do a seminar and all of a sudden my friend was diagnosing all her employees with personality disorders and plotting how to fix them.
Would you take an amateur suggestion? (Score:3)
But the article fails to offer any solutions so it just comes off as complaining.
Would you consider an amateur suggestion?
We're currently starting a renaissance of sorts by applying robotics to agriculture. I can cite several examples, but I'm sure you've heard about a lot of them.
(OK, some examples: aeroponics (instead of hydroponics), robots similar to the Amazon stock robots that will bring in a potted plant for inspection and adjustment (pruning, weeding, picking), then take it back out to the growth floor. Increasing the length of daylight, then showing intense red light (ie - simu
Re: (Score:2)
All of this, on the surface, helps the situation.
In long-term it only lets us dig a deeper hole.
The problem is the combination of population and resources & pollution per person.
The good thing is that we don't really *have* to solve the problem.
The bad thing is that the problem is *us* and the solution isn't necessarily something of our own creation.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you worked out the energetics of that, compared to "adjusting" the plant in situ, collecting any cuttings into a waste bag, and moving on to the next plant. Unless your container + plant + soil/ water weighs considerably less than the robot, that would be a lot more efficient.
Plan B (if you're calculating your energy expenditu
Re: (Score:3)
It turns out that over the past 100 years we have identified and classified millions of species of life within the animal kingdom, which is a thousand fold more than we had known about previously.
Millions upon millions of species.
Then we look at the fossil record, and at no point in the past do we find evidence of millions upon millions of species, not necessarily because there wasnt, but maybe because thats just the limitations of the fossilization a
Re:That's interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
If they confine their analysis to species that would leave fossils, would that satisfy you?
I believe mollusks and vertebrates would fossilize under the right circumstances. So, does the science indicate an extinction is underway among those groups?
The answer is yes. To the extent that we have relevant data, it suggests that a mass extinction is underway.
We really only have two choices: Pretend we know nothing, or compare the extant data with what we already know.
Re: (Score:2)
Jellyfish will fossilize under the right circumstances (fine muddy seabed, and a microbial mat to give coherence to the surface under the forming fossil).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The solution is simple: reduce human impact on the environment.
There have been many, many, many, MANY people saying this for decades and offering solutions and they've all been brushed off because it will cost money and reduce profits.
This isn't complaining. It's a big "we told you so"
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What Time Is It Supposed to Finish? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think it started quite a ways back (Score:2)
If you go back thousands of years, like 20,000 and more, it is pretty clear that humans have been hunting things to extinction for quite a long time. The megafauna were already hurting from loss of their environment as the ice age ended, but humans clearly helped quite a few of them out the door. Then there are all the species we have killed outright over the last several thousand years of recorded human history, including the passenger pigeon. It will never be known how many other species we have extermina
What can you do? (Score:3)
Take Brazil, hopefully the people vote out slash and burn Bolsonaro.
If he does get re-elected, the only way to stop deforestation in Brazil is reduce demand for beef. Stop eating so much meat people.
What's the holdup? (Score:2)
Mi$$ing opportunity (Score:2)
Darwin approves of this message (Score:2)
Survival of the fittest.
How would you expect those dumbass pandas to survive with the intelligence and sex drive of a toddler?
Did we decide that like 20 years ago? (Score:3)
Seems clear to me that the lose of species such as the Passenger Pigeon and the Dodo marked the beginning of this extinction.
The real question is will mankind be the last species that dies off in the 6th extinction, or will it be some other victim.
Goal (Score:2)
None of this matters. In a hundred years we will be able to resurrect all dead species, nd cuatomize them by computer.
"We're so sure" is thus irrelevant. But sure gets you brownie points from corrupt politicians looking for another excuse to get in the way, to get paid to get back out of the way.
Define 'short amount of time' (Score:2)
Bear in mind that people who study things like mass extinctions usually think of time in geologic terms. To them 100,000 years is like a blink of the eye. Homo Sapiens have been walking on this Earth for only 'a short amount of time'.
Humans... (Score:2)
... When will they go extinct? :P
Probably? (Score:2)
I'd simply reply - no joke! The Anthropocene Extinction
I am trying to do my part, here's what I did (Score:2)
It may sound insignificant and even a bit lazy.
But we've had numerous reports of a rapid decline in bees and bumblebees which are essential for our agriculture and nature around us. Sweden have even imported bees from other country in order to balance out the losses, even an online television campaign "don't mow your lawn" to stop Obsessive homeowners from always keeping their lawns so clean, cutting away all trees and making it literally impossible for insects to thrive and survive.
I took that to heart imm
Oh Well (Score:2)
If it's true, then we should all just throw up our hands, and enjoy what's left.
Re:Doomed, Doomed I tell ya. (Score:5, Insightful)
nobody is saying it's the end of the world, nobody is saying to shit yourself, but acknowledging what is happening and being able to explain doesn't constitute alarmism if it's true
that you don't present any information for or against the veracity of what's being claimed just means that you choose to permit the feeling of resentment of knowing you have nothing to add to dominate
Re:Doomed, Doomed I tell ya. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not the end of the world, just a "mass extinction event". Geez you people.
The world doesn't care if your gene line and all of the mammals and slugs dissapear. If in the end the new ecosystem rebuilds from tardigrades and cockroaches any future uber-roach palaeontologists will just tell the story of how your species had a boom-bust evolution that was so short they can barely see any difference between specimens in the carbon-dating.
Of course, that's assuming humans are so stupid that they can't acknowledging what is happening and do something about it. It's very easy to have a different story, we already have the technologies to do it and are building plenty of renewable energy.
Re: (Score:2)
The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
Re: (Score:2)
Oh no, did a scientist hurt your feelings, by showing how you, and others are part of the problem.
How dare those scientist show how our actions create particular reactions and consequences.
And they are so nasty in calculating a forecast on what the current trajectory would be if we don't do anything.
The Human Species with its technology had made us Faster, Stronger, Able to see better, swim better, fly higher and further.... We are an Apex animal. Apex animals created havoc in the past with the ecosystems,
Re: (Score:2)
Define 'better'
Re: (Score:2)
...you should be more worried about the 1500 scientists that agree we are about to be wiped out by planet X.
I would love to see a link to that. Sounds like a laugh. Pretty sure none of those people are scientists though.
Re: (Score:2)
...you should be more worried about the 1500 scientists that agree we are about to be wiped out by planet X.
I would love to see a link to that. Sounds like a laugh. Pretty sure none of those people are scientists though.
I was actually rather surprised to find this. [uark.edu] But it's only two scientists, not 1500.
Re: (Score:2)
Planet X has not yet been discovered, and there is debate in the scientific community about whether it exists.
So maybe, but not really. Sort of.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, msmash should just kill himself already so it he doesn't have to suffer through the hellscape of post climate change Earth.
Using biodegradable rope, and of course over a compost pit.
Re: (Score:3)
"...and there is no longer room for skepticism, wondering whether it really is happening..."
The second you start making statements like that, you cease being a scientist and have become an evangelist. Science is always willing to doubt its assumptions and consider new evidence. That weren't the case, we'd still believe the world is build out of the 4 basic elements, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious. Is *all* bad news automatically "FUD"? If not, how do you decide what bad news is something to take seriously, and what bad news is just scare-mongering?
Re:Not as long as the Earth remains warm (Score:5, Informative)
Mass extinctions are always tied to periods of global cooling, or events that cause global cooling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The scientific consensus is that the causes of extinction were elevated temperatures and in the marine realm widespread oceanic anoxia and ocean acidification due to the large amounts of carbon dioxide that were emitted by the eruption of the Siberian Traps.
So always, in the sense of not always.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Citation needed.
Or not. [nature.com]
Of the Big Five extinctions, for example, the end-Ordovician mass extinction (~443Ma) was related to a short-lived cooling event accompanied by a glaciation maximum and a major drop in sea level7,9. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (~252Ma), the largest of the Phanerozoic10, occurred within a short interval of ~60,000 years and was associated with rapid climate warming8,11. Although the temporal coincidence between climate change and extinction is clear, there is a paucity of quantitative analysis investigating the precise relationship between magnitudes and rates of temperature change and extinction through the Phanerozoic Eon.
Re: (Score:3)
Reduction of energy into the environment is ALWAYS the thing that kills off large quantities of animals/vegetation without resources to live on.
I'll raise you the Great Oxygenation Event. Maybe the "without resources to live on" was supposed to be some sort of qualifier to that sentence, but if so it's not very clear.
Re: (Score:3)
Mass extinctions are always tied to periods of global cooling, or events that cause global cooling.
It's even better than that. Previous mass extinctions are always tied to periods of no humans on the planet and there's tons of humans now!
Or, more likely, rules of thumb based on historical evidence no longer hold when applied to radically different scenarios.
The Earth, and plants/animals thereon always generally prosper with more energy going into the system.
Yes some species have been going extinct but that will always be an ongoing thing at any given point in time; all life evolves. A real extinction though requires dramatic changes to the downside to truly kill off many species at once.
Reduction of energy into the environment is ALWAYS the thing that kills off large quantities of animals/vegetation without resources to live on. That includes loss of habitat, but such loss of habitat is a pretty localized phenomena compared to what is seen with mass extinctions which affect all plants and animals across the globe.
The thing that causes extinctions is the environment changing faster than species can adapt. Sure, cooling is probably harder to adapt to than warming, but historically, most of the things that cause a rapid change in the environment (asteroids, volca
Re: (Score:2)
Might it have something to do with human beings actively targeting insects for extermination?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it was the BBC and Germany. European ideas of "nature preserves" are more what we think of as tree farms in Oregon. That land has been under human (and hominid cousins) control for the better part of 2 million years. It's not exactly untouched.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, how can I put this politely? Try this - "that might be true, up to half the time, for cases in which the temperature changed significantly over the relevant time period."
Well ... "dramatic" in the sense that a 0.1% change in species a year might be construed as a dramatic change. But it would still w
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and? Do you think that Mass extinction events are fly by night events and you can have another one every few years?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and? Still waiting to be under water from that global warming .. er.. "climate change" the talking heads have been shouting about. Meanwhile all the "public servants" at the top of the elected officials big name list are buying up ocean front properties?
Yeah, but you have to have a pretty poor understanding of what they're talking about to have expected anything different from what's actually happening from climate change predictions. Sea level rise is definitely happening. If you've confused, for example, "Waterworld" with actual scientific predictions, that's on you. I'll tell you what, point to the papers you read predicting significantly higher sea level rise by this point and we can go over them and discuss the errors in their methodology and assumpti
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, they're going to be so pissed when Musk pulls off his rubber mask (it's got to be a mask. Really. A Musk Mask.) to reveal his Putin face, then directs the swarm of cubesats to start impacting on NASA's fleet of targets.