Science tells us the planet has experienced at least five mass extinction events. Will climate change herald the sixth?
The sixth mass extinction event
Wed, 2015-01-21 14:22
#1
The sixth mass extinction event
Wed, 2015-01-21 14:48
#2
Apparently our region of space is on it's second Sun, with the first one having exploded to create the current solar system. Our bodily atoms are part of that explosion. Whatever the future holds for mass extinction events, I pity whatever has to walk or crawl around after we're gone, with all of the unmitigated nuclear radiation that will have been released. Even so, there is a certain amount of comfort in the fact that ultimately, what humans have wrought in our time is not destined to last forever. Even the worst of our poisons will deteriorate over time.
Wed, 2015-01-21 16:46
#3
Even so, there is a certain amount of comfort in the fact that ultimately, what humans have wrought in our time is not destined to last forever. Even the worst of our poisons will deteriorate over time.
some humans have wrought...others not. But does look like Mother N has finally had enough.
Temperature Rise
http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/2015/01/temperature-rise.html
"The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880, writes NOAA, adding the graph below..."
Thu, 2015-01-22 10:29
#4
Ten years, at best, before climate change is irreversible. A matter of decades before the change becomes catastrophic. Go tar sands!
Wed, 2015-08-05 03:49
#5
Sun, 2019-02-24 21:35
#6
Vandana Shiva: 'We Must Fight Back Against the One Percent To Stop the Sixth Mass Extinction
Better wake up...
Mon, 2019-02-25 22:41
#7
Hedges: Extinction Rebellion
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/extinction-rebellion/
"There is one desperate chance left to thwart the impending ecocide and extinction of the human species. We must, in wave after wave, carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capabilities of the major industrial countries.
The British-based group Extinction Rebellion has called for non-violent acts of civil disobedience on April 15 in capitals around the world to reverse our 'one-way track to extinction.' I do not know if this effort will succeed. But I do know it is the only mechanism left to force action by the ruling elites.
If we do not shake off our lethargy, our anomie and resist our misery, despondency and feelings of helplessness will mount. We will become paralyzed. Resistance, especially given the bleakness before us, is about more than living. It is about a life of meaning. It is about empowerment. It is a public declaration that we will no longer live according to the dominant lie. It is a message to the elites: YOU DO NOT OWN US..."
Thu, 2019-02-28 17:33
#8
Bolsonaro, Trudeau et al: Exterminators in Chief
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/28/bolsonaro-trudeau-et-al-extermin...
"I read the Canadian news today. 'Pipeline expansion should be approved: regulator.' Today the regulators ignorantly, negligently, criminally and in contempt of life, yet again gave the go-ahead to money over incontestable science.
Liberal democratic Canada is in league with Brazil's military dictatorship and the Lima Group in overthrowing the Maduro government and in deforesting the 'lungs of the Earth'. Theirs is a triple crime, of thrice proliferating greenhouse gas emissions at this time of the Earth's sixth great extinction event.
Are these arbiters of life on Earth, Trudeau and Bolsonaro et al, subject to the Nuremberg laws on individual responsiblity, with the implication that decision makers need to be fully informed and not just claim to follow orders?
The 'ostrich defense', burying one's head in the sand, and evasion through plausible deniability, are fundamentally dishonest. The decisions about pipelines, the tar-sands, deforestation of the boreal and tropical forests, reflect extreme disregard of facts about the state of the climate.
Alarmingly, not knowing, for multiple reasons, characterizes all levels of governmental and non-governmental bodies..."
And most of the other bodies that should be pitting themselves against this corporate capitalist ecocide as well.
Sun, 2021-07-25 13:18
#9
I heard it will be called the "Democracine" in sociology circles. Not coined by me.
Sun, 2021-07-25 16:34
#10
Good one.
Fri, 2021-07-30 08:49
#11
Means of Extinction: 'Death' by a Thousand Cuts (and vid)
https://guymcpherson.com/means-of-extinction-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/
"In other words we likely have already passed the threshold required for extinction of homo-sapiens..."
Sun, 2022-07-03 14:45
#12
Activists Fear “Tipping Point of No Return” as Fires in Amazon Rainforest Surge
The Brazilian government published data Friday showing that more than 2,500 fire hotspots were recorded in the Amazon rainforest last month, the highest number for June since 2007 — one of the worst years ever for the critical ecosystem.
The latest report from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research showed that the Brazilian Amazon has lost 1,450 square miles of jungle since the start of 2022.
Greenpeace Brazil said in response to the alarming figures that the far-right Bolsonaro government’s systematic rampage against basic environmental protections is responsible for the surge in rainforest fires and overall deforestation, which have helped transform parts of the Amazon — long known as a key carbon “sink” — into sources of planet-warming greenhouse gas.
“Agribusiness is hitting new records for forest destruction as the dry season arrives in the Amazon,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, a spokesperson for Greenpeace Brazil. “Illegal burnings and deforestation have accelerated over the last three years as a direct result of the Brazilian government’s anti-environmental agenda that encourages the destruction of the forest.”
“If this trend does not change,” Mazzetti added, “we will approach the tipping point of no return in which the Amazon could fail as a rainforest.”
....
https://truthout.org/articles/activists-fear-tipping-point-of-no-return-...
Sun, 2022-07-03 15:04
#13
Maybe our species doesn't belong on this planet?
Sun, 2022-07-03 21:38
#14
laine lowe
I would agree JKR. We would rather spend billions on war and ramping up fossil fuel production as a by-product of war efforts, as well a prop up investment markets making money despite the consequences on the environment - doesn't provide much hope for humanity.
Thu, 2022-07-07 16:01
#15
Why There Is No Public Sense Of A Climate Crisis
6th July 2022, David Edwards
....
Peter Kalmus is a courageous NASA climate scientist who was among a group of scientists arrested after they chained themselves to a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles to protest the bank’s financing of fossil fuels. Dramatic footage showed a tearful Kalmus pleading with the world to listen:
‘We’re going to lose everything. And we’re not joking, we’re not lying, we’re not exaggerating.’
Kalmus said recently:
‘It’s incredible to me how many people aren’t yet terrified by the climate emergency’
The point being, as he has also said:
‘there is no way to escape a heat wave, if it’s bad enough.’
Kalmus tweeted a few days later:
‘I’m amazed by how prevalent climate denial still is. Even at 1.3°C of global heating in 2022, with the world burning and melting all around us. If everyone agreed this was an emergency, we’d halt it in a few years.’
Julia Steinberger, professor in social ecology and ecological economics at the University of Lausanne, shares Kalmus’ frustration and alarm:
‘I can’t stand how fast we are putting ourselves into danger. I can’t stand people casually driving around, in big cars, flying to conferences or on holiday, eating meat. I can’t stand it. We are doing this to ourselves, to each other.’
Hitting The Alarm – The Suprahuman Character Of Authority
The confusion and outrage are understandable. But why is climate denial still so prevalent? Why are so many people behaving as if there is no crisis?
The reason is that we live in a society where the public is trained to respond to loud, shocking alarms punched by politicians in positions of authority backed to the hilt by powerful media.
Be in no doubt that authority is a very big deal indeed for modern men and women – we are relentlessly trained to defer to people in power. Psychologist Stanley Milgram commented:
‘Authority tends to be seen as something larger than the individual. The individual often views authority as an impersonal force, whose dictates transcend mere human wish or desire. Those in authority acquire, for some, a suprahuman character.’ (Stanley Milgram, ‘Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View’, Harper Perennial, 2004, p.162)
When ‘suprahuman’ people with authority hit alarm buttons, which ring loud and clear across the society and globe – across every newspaper, every website and TV channel – the public listens and reacts.
On Twitter, writer and climate activist, Dave Rhody, supplied the usual, wistful, climate red herring:
‘galvanizing fear into action is a tall order for most people. Looking away is the most common reaction, unfortunately’.
This just isn’t true. State-corporate interests generate and galvanise public fear into action with great efficiency when they want to....
https://www.medialens.org/2022/why-there-is-no-public-sense-of-a-climate...
Tue, 2022-08-16 01:24
#16
Environmental Disaster Triggers Mass Fish Die-Off in the Oder River Bordering Germany and Poland
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/15/rrub-a15.html
"Since the end of July, tons of dead fish have been floating in the Oder River, which runs between Germany and Poland. This is an environmental disaster of enormous proportions, the cause of which has not yet been clarified and the full extent of which cannot yet be foreseen.
'It seems that everything that breathes air from the water has died,' Johannes Giebermann, of the Frankfurt/Oder Landscape Management Office - told Der Spiegel. 'Not only fish on a large scale, but also mussels and snails, for example - we can't even estimate the dimension of it right now..."
More and more such ecocidal stories come thick and fast. What an apocalyptic, blighted and abridged planetary future we are leaving to those that come after us. Yet we are urged to defend capitalism and its 'rules-based-order'.
'O, pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers...' -Shakespeare-