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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the putting-your-affairs-in-order dept.

Environmental scientists are warning of a sixth mass extinction, pointing to a decline in vertebrate population sizes, even among species of least concern:

Many scientists say it's abundantly clear that Earth is entering its sixth mass-extinction event, meaning three-quarters of all species could disappear in the coming centuries. That's terrifying, especially since humans are contributing to this shift.

But that's not even the full picture of the "biological annihilation" people are inflicting on the natural world, according to a study published Monday [open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704949114] [DX] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Gerardo Ceballos, an ecology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and his co-authors, including well-known Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, cite striking new evidence that populations of species we thought were common are suffering in unseen ways. "What is at stake is really the state of humanity," Ceballos told CNN.

The authors: Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo.

Also at The Guardian and DW.

Related: For the Second Time, We Are Witnessing a New Geological Epoch: The Anthropocene
Crystals Win in the Anthropocene: 208 Manmade Minerals Identified


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:39AM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:39AM (#537920) Journal

    Well, sure. But whose fault will it be when we get "unlucky"?

    That is like asking who's fault it is that gravity exists. Sometimes there isn't any better solution or it can't be had right now due to limitations.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:33AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:33AM (#537938) Journal

    That is like asking who's fault it is that gravity exists. Sometimes there isn't any better solution or it can't be had right now due to limitations.

    Or someone playing whack-a-mole with the productive members of their society.

    It's worth noting here that the "luck" had been in play for decades before 1970. For example, the infrastructure for breeding/discovering and distributing more efficient strains of crops had been around globally since after the end of the Second World War, and in place in the developed world for at least a century before that. So the agricultural gains or "luck" that have permitted humanity to grow to its current extent has been around since well before the 1970s when Paul Ehrlich made his extremely erroneous predictions.

    He also ignored economics. There's a variety of natural ways for humanity to deal with scarcity of a natural resource, by using it more efficiently or by using something else instead.

    My view is that to say that Paul Ehrlich was wrong merely because humanity was "lucky" is to insult the billions of people who have toiled hard to make the Earth a better place and tame the problems that never became serious.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:47PM (1 child)

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:47PM (#538237) Journal

      R&D results is not a deterministic activity. It requires hard work, persistence and indeed some luck. Previous gains will not guarantee future ones. Getting people to use resources efficiently without learning by hard mistakes is not an easy task. Free market economics is not necessarily overall efficient.

      I don't doubt people work hard to make the world a better place but realities puts up limits even for hard work. Sometimes people find a a way around them by doing something else. Sometimes not.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:48AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:48AM (#538506) Journal

        R&D results is not a deterministic activity. It requires hard work, persistence and indeed some luck. Previous gains will not guarantee future ones. Getting people to use resources efficiently without learning by hard mistakes is not an easy task. Free market economics is not necessarily overall efficient.

        And you had "good luck" in not getting struck and killed by an asteroid while writing that post. At some point, the likelihood of the "luck" becomes so high, it makes little sense to speak of luck.