Sixth Mass Extinction

This ought to give you a feeling for why some folks, like me are very scared, pessimistic about our future. We've blithely jetted through all the barriers . . . And doing so at breakneck speed, geologically speaking. ~ ~ ~ So what did you think of the show, and what lesson do you draw from it? :)
I have already conceded that I think there is a significant possibility of 90% of the human race being wiped out. I consider that to be pretty pessimistic. I simply doubt very much that the human race will not survive it. If the population gets down to 500 million I would expect the wars to be over and people just trying to cope with the screwed up environment. But with that low a population feeding people may not be too difficult. It will be a question of how badly the technological infrastructure is screwed up. A large percentage of it will have ceased to spew out more CO2. But how much methane will be released? Still in all previous extinctions it was dumb animals that did not know what was happening and did not have hands. psik
Still in all previous extinctions it was dumb animals that did not know what was happening and did not have hands.
How differently we view the events and progression of the past centuries. I see multiple proofs that man is every bit as "shallow," "short sighted," and "instinct driven" as animals are. Sure, we managed to put together some mighty incredible marvels - but we never knew where to take any of it. Seems to me we haven't evolved one bit from the tribalism of the Bible, the Romans, Vikings, Portugal, Spain, Dutch, English, etc. empires -- all very animalistic, driven by instincts more than rational thoughtfulness. Otherwise we'd have realized back in the 1950s…60s…70s that Malthus had a damned good point and that we had better start proceeding with a heck of a lot of caution and forethought, as they sowed the seeds of future nightmares. Heck just look at the utterly insane way US embraced 9/11… Absolutely no respect for human nature, or considering blow back and the future, nah - it was one hell of a business opportunity… so on we go… rah rah. ~ ~ ~ But, back to our planet's ability to sustain complex life forms. We have started a ball rolling… and are doing absolutely nothing to slow it down. Once our injections of GHGs do drop, due to the economy getting crippled, by the full spectrum of extreme weather's onslaughts tearing apart ever more cogs and gears of our modern society. Perhaps warming will stabilize, but could well be above the Methane Hydrate threshold. As we've seen, once the oceans warm to the point that methane hydrates start getting released - show over. Your big fancy brain needs an awful lot of nutrition to keep it going. Ocean food chain killed off, fertile lands scorched to deserts, rain belt moving polewards, but dropping torrential amounts of rain, not to mention the wind, making establishing new farmlands challenging like no one can imagine, etc, etc.
UNICORN!!
DM, you do cut to the chase. I know some find you distasteful, yet seems to me that's the 'truth's' fault and not your own. Gotta admit, I don't even know what I'm doing any more, once I did have this dream of "being part of the change" but no one wanted to change. Now having watched unrecognized tipping point after unrecognized tipping point, now to recognized tipping points slipping past {http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/05/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapsing} I have an increasing difficult time explaining to myself why try to confront the lies that people love eating up like ice cream cones. Maybe I'm just pissed - and because of my particular background - and need be a witness - even if it's only to myself (although http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com is about to pass 75,000 visit, so someone else must care, at least a little. ;-) ).
Still in all previous extinctions it was dumb animals that did not know what was happening and did not have hands.
How differently we view the events and progression of the past centuries. I see multiple proofs that man is every bit as "shallow," "short sighted," and "instinct driven" as animals are. Sure, we managed to put together some mighty incredible marvels - but we never knew where to take any of it. Seems to me we haven't evolved one bit from the tribalism of the Bible, the Romans, Vikings, Portugal, Spain, Dutch, English, etc. empires -- all very animalistic, driven by instincts more than rational thoughtfulness. Who is WE? Tesla is not responsible for all of the stupid and garish electric signs in Times Square. The curious thing about this climate business is when things come apart it will be pretty obvious who the idiots were. What kind of sorting out will occur? psik
Still in all previous extinctions it was dumb animals that did not know what was happening and did not have hands.
How differently we view the events and progression of the past centuries. I see multiple proofs that man is every bit as "shallow," "short sighted," and "instinct driven" as animals are. Sure, we managed to put together some mighty incredible marvels - but we never knew where to take any of it. Seems to me we haven't evolved one bit from the tribalism of the Bible, the Romans, Vikings, Portugal, Spain, Dutch, English, etc. empires -- all very animalistic, driven by instincts more than rational thoughtfulness. Who is WE? Tesla is not responsible for all of the stupid and garish electric signs in Times Square. The curious thing about this climate business is when things come apart it will be pretty obvious who the idiots were. What kind of sorting out will occur? psik WE are all in this pot together. :blank: and as much satisfaction as I may be able to squeeze out of I TOLD YOU SO…] it won't do me or my kids or others any good as this unraveling continues. :down:
WE are all in this pot together. :blank: and as much satisfaction as I may be able to squeeze out of I TOLD YOU SO…] it won't do me or my kids or others any good as this unraveling continues. :down:
I have mentioned the population going down to 500,000,000. That means a lot of people getting kicked out of the pot. Survivalists make a certain amount of sense to me. Have you read the book: No Blade of Grass? You come across as trying to be too nice if the crap really hits the fan. psik

Ok gentlemen, let’s not throw out the history books just yet. Everyone decries the idea of using fictitious folk stories (e.g. the Bible, ahem) to solve current problems when possible solutions can be found in human history and paleoanthropology. How did our species survive natural disasters far greater then what we face today? It may be simplistic to say we adapted to colder, warmer, smokier, dryer, wetter, diseasier? etc, conditions but we did. Man survived the last ice age when we as a species first appeared after having wiped out our last hominin rivals, survived a continuous series of devastating wars culminating with the nuclear holocaust we dropped on Japan, the Wars by proxy created by the Cold War that killed millions; our European ancestors survived the Great Plagues that literally wiped out half the population there, the Potato Famine that almost wiped out Ireland; Native Americans communities that were virtually destroyed by those very Europeans who survived the plagues (irony) from seven million in 1492 to 500,000 in 1900 in North America, natural disasters e.g. Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes albeit not on a global scale but locally.
Now don’t get me wrong here, We do have a major problem with global warming; it’s real, it will negatively affect the climate and we’re heading for a global disaster if we don’t get our head out of the fossil fuel trough but I’m optimistic about the outcome. We’ve solved the survival problem in the past; it’s what we do, we solve problems, we’re not turkeys who drown in the rain, well some of us are, but enough of will force our governments to act positively to back us away from the brink. Remember the Futurists and their atomic clock? before the Wall fell it was two minutes till midnight and we we all sucking air that this would be our last minute before total destruction. We’re getting there again and it’s time to reset the clock. If we begin to change now it will slow the process and if it doesn’t stop it then we’ll deal with it like we’ve always done. I know that there’s a lot of stupid Homo Sapiens out there but there’s also a bunch of smart ones; hell, some are even on this forum.
Cap’t Jack

This site may offer some additional information,

See the extent of human influence on the globe land surface. • Some species are now perpetually reliant on human intervention to avoid extinction. • Endangered species in the 2000s: Human-caused and human-delayed extinctions. • A change in focus from research on environmental destruction to socially relevant solutions may lead to a sustainable future. • Habitat destruction drives much of the current biodiversity extinction crisis. Examine the global potential for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services simultaneously....., http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/eldredge2.html
*yawns* Not even interested. You seem to conclude I'm oblivious the magnitude and ongoing problems in the world simply because I have I a very optimistic view of the future. Simpletons cry about problems and preach gloom and doom. Intelligent people go about tackling and solving the problems long before the simpletons were really aware of their existence in the first place.
I think you're just a complete idiot, you're philosophy is right up there with jumping out of an airplane without a parachute because you're a master sewer and plan on making one as you fall to the Earth. When you look at how precarious food security is right now with recent droughts in some of the most important grain producing regions like the US and Russia and growing risk in places like the prime rice growing regions in the Mekong and Yangtze Deltas, just feeding 7 billion people is going to be very uncertain in a few years let alone a few decades. Intelligent people don't destroy the natural systems that make life possible for complex life in the first place in some fit of hubris, and only a psychopath would willingly put the lives of 7 billion people at risk and a vast part of the biosphere from the same hubris. Basically what you're saying is you couldn't care less about the lives of other people, let alone the existence of other species that don't add to the obviously hugely over-inflated ego you have. Multiply the crap coming from this one person millions of times and you have a very good idea of why nothing is being done to prevent an unfolding catastrophe.
Preventable? Who said that? Even if suddenly the entire human race collectively decided to work on the problem momentum may well be against all efforts. I'm simply accepting of things I can't change. And as I said, letting species die off simply opens up room for new life.
Except we're not even being given that option because powerful interests like the fossil fuel lobby and industrial fishing corporations have the political process tied up and are so short sighted they are effectively blind. We're being led off a cliff by blindmen in a mad pursuit of a profit that will mean absolutely nothing in the coming freefall then deadly impact. And while checking out of the human race as you obviously have may provide you with some illusory buffer from what's happening, it makes the chances of a catastrophic collapse more likely if more people take that course.
You seem to conclude I'm oblivious the magnitude and ongoing problems in the world simply because I have I a very optimistic view of the future. Intelligent people go about tackling and solving the problems long before the simpletons were really aware of their existence in the first place.
If that were true society as a whole would have gotten serious about recognizing the basic math problem of a finite Earth and an ever exploding material consuming, biosphere destroying and polluting human population - and we'd have started taken remedial action when it could have made a different, like the 70s/80s/90s. I would suggest your problem fit's into the "disconnection from Earth's realities" category, given that you don't seem to have a clue how radically we have disrupted fundamental Earth processes. Here's a monster most remain ignorant about Ocean acidification already eating away at tiny creatures http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2014/04/ocean-acidification-already-eating-away.html As for weather, well it's looking a bunch of that "missing heat" is getting ready for the next stair step to oblivion Deep Ocean Warming is Coming Back to Haunt Us: Record Warmth for 2014 Likely As Equatorial Heat Rises May 16, 2014 http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/deep-ocean-warming-is-coming-back-to-haunt-us-record-warmth-for-2014-likely-as-equatorial-heat-rises/ Are you up on the latest science news, there have been a few zingers Speaking of 2014… looks like it's show time http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/05/speaking-of-2014-looks-like-its-show.html

And how intelligent are we really when we’re allowing some of the most cynical and sociopathic among us drive policy.
We’re not forging boldly into the future on coal, oil and natural gas power because it’s the most intelligent way, we’re doing it because the people at Philip Morris and Exxon found effective means to defraud the public and place all of us at greater risk for their profit.

To this end, she had hired a public relations company called APCO. She had attached the advice it had given her. APCO warned that: "No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople are, in and of themselves, not always credible or appropriate messengers." So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots" movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk science'. Coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin media outreach, eg editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states." APCO would found the coalition, write its mission statements, and "prepare and place opinion articles in key markets". For this it required $150,000 for its own fees and $75,000 for the coalition's costs. By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".
So we're not being bravely led into a new dawn of wonder and plenty as some idiots are claiming, we're being conned out of our very existence by psychopaths who can only think in strictly zero sum game terms where if you have something they want they lose unless they get it.
So let me get this straight, so far comments on the likelihood that we’re now in the midst of a preventable human generated mass extinction that would likely include us are basically; We’re god and can do anything we chose and I’ve killed so many things on PS3 that I’m now numb to reality. For some reason I was expecting a bit more.
Fuzzy, how many politicians are fist pumping and table thumping about a possible global catastrophe if we stay the course and use up as much fossil fuel as our machines can gorge? We allow them to drone on about how we need the pipeline because if we don't use it then China will get the oil and well, we ALL know their environmental track record so let's get it first because we can keep it cleaner and save the environment. This is the type of blinkered thinking that gets them reelected over and over again. "Well maybe they have the answers; sounds good to me anyway. Gas prices will be less and I can still drive my big ass monster truck so I can impress the ladies". "and besides, God's comin' ta pluck us off this rock anyway so who really gives a shit"? let the cockroaches have it when we "intelligent" primates kill ourselves off. Cap't Jack
Certainly there is personal responsibility in this, but we have to start attacking the gordian knot at some point.
Certainly there is personal responsibility in this, but we have to start attacking the gordian knot at some point.
I agree. Sitting back and letting it happen isn't an option for me either. But the most effective way to attack the knot is by pressuring those with the political power to first slow, then reverse the use of fossil fuel by replacing it with soft energy which we have discussed on this forum ad infinitum. For example we have the capability to produce alternate sources of energy without pumping tar sand into the system or drilling off shore until another BP spill screws up the food chain. the good news, if you can call it that, is that there are now around thirty well funded environmentalist groups in the U.S. alone not to mention many others in Europe so the grass roots organizations are getting some teeth. Now, if we only had the time. Get ready for one hellova hot Summer. Cap't Jack
Certainly there is personal responsibility in this, but we have to start attacking the gordian knot at some point.
I agree. Sitting back and letting it happen isn't an option for me either. But the most effective way to attack the knot is by pressuring those with the political power to first slow, then reverse the use of fossil fuel by replacing it with soft energy which we have discussed on this forum ad infinitum. For example we have the capability to produce alternate sources of energy without pumping tar sand into the system or drilling off shore until another BP spill screws up the food chain. the good news, if you can call it that, is that there are now around thirty well funded environmentalist groups in the U.S. alone not to mention many others in Europe so the grass roots organizations are getting some teeth. Now, if we only had the time. Get ready for one hellova hot Summer. Cap't Jack
Yah, as far as global warming goes we haven't seen anything yet, the indications are trade winds have been loading the western Pacific with heat for years and that will likely be released when the winds abate. The sad truth is that nothing real at a high political level is going to get done until they have a gun held to their heads.
The sad truth is that nothing real at a high political level is going to get done until they have a gun held to their heads.
This was meant metaphorically btw in case it's now in some flashing red box on the screen of a computer in some nondescript government office somewhere.
... But the most effective way to attack the knot is by pressuring those with the political power to first slow, then reverse the use of fossil fuel by replacing it with soft energy which we have discussed on this forum ad infinitum... Cap't Jack
Those with the functional political power, to effect policy changes, are not, so much, the politicians or government officials, but are, rather, the economically elite. I think that activists should be coming up with ideas targeting influencing what the economically elite want, if meaningful policy changes are going to actually happen.
Those with the functional political power, to effect policy changes, are not, so much, the politicians or government officials, but are, rather, the economically elite. I think that activists should be coming up with ideas targeting influencing what the economically elite want, if meaningful policy changes are going to actually happen.
This is bang on, if we stop buying their products then they lose power.
Not surprising. The planet is undergoing the most significant and amazing change of its entire history. Technology is changing everything and the future will be absolutely amazing. But only fools think such radical changes happen without cost or hardship. Even bringing a new life into this world requires a lot of pain and a lot of blood, but the end result is well worth it. The birthing of the future is little different.
What a load of nonsense, we're not on some magical quest for A.I., short term pursuit of profit is driving policies that will almost certainly bring an end to technological development as the chaos that results from climate change and ecological destruction causes social and geopolitical chaos. Some people just don't live in the real world I guess. Ya think? :lol: Lois
Those with the functional political power, to effect policy changes, are not, so much, the politicians or government officials, but are, rather, the economically elite. I think that activists should be coming up with ideas targeting influencing what the economically elite want, if meaningful policy changes are going to actually happen.
This is bang on, if we stop buying their products then they lose power. And buy the products of the economically elite who do the right thing. And name and publicly shame the ones who don't. And name and praise the ones who do. And... enlist the support of their friends and family members who would do the right thing. And... any other ideas?