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