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A professor famous for predicting the imminent demise of the human race at regular intervals since the 1970s has predicted the imminent demise of the human race.
Paul Ehrlich, who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says it's definitely on this time. In a tinned statement issued on Friday, the arm-waving prof lays it on the line:
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence ... the window of opportunity is rapidly closing ...
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said ...
"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos.
The original article can be found at The Register, with coverage of the cited study coming from ScienceMag.org
Original Submission
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @04:12PM
Refugee from that other place here.
The next time someone exclaims that we're causing global warming and we're going to cause our own demise, then just tell them that we are in a sunspot minimum right now. That will usually shut their traps up pretty fast. If they still don't get it, then talk to them like a 5 year old. "If the sun doesn't have as many sunspots, then more solar radiation hits the Earth and that heats the Earth up."
From NASA's website: The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml [nasa.gov]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:02PM
Is that other place reality that you're trying to escape from?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:11PM
We're still in a solar maximum you dolt, and its not colder during solar minimums, there's just less sunspots - less magnetic field activity, meaning less coronal mass ejections, not less energy output.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:32PM
Yikes. If you're going to talk to them as a five-year-old, at least you're thinking like a five-year-old.
Here's a little computational challenge to contemplate. Calculate the areal coverage of a sunspot as compared to the solar disk. Now multiply that by a million sunspots, all of which happen to be on the same side as the Earth for this given instant.
Now the hard part: connect the dots between this exercise and your brand of scientific reasoning.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:50PM
"If the sun doesn't have as many sunspots, then more solar radiation hits the Earth and that heats the Earth up."
How about a citation if you are going make such a claim. There is nothing in the NASA link you provided that even hints at such an effect. Plus we are (from the link you provided) just past the peak of cycle 24 and still 6~7 years away from minimum Sunspot activity.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:54PM
I just realized that AC is most likely a Faux News science reporter.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by chucky on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:19PM
Copied from http://spaceweather.com/ [spaceweather.com]:
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 24 2015, @09:49PM
That's not a citation for the claim
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.