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**Will Humans Survive the Sixth Great Extinction?
Species are disappearing at an alarming rate, a new study finds **
In the last half-billion years, life on Earth has been nearly wiped out five times—by such things as climate change, an intense ice age, volcanoes, and that space rock that smashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, obliterating the dinosaurs and a bunch of other species. These events are known as the Big Five mass extinctions, and all signs suggest we are now on the precipice of a sixth.
Except this time, we have no one but ourselves to blame. According to a study published last week in Science Advances, the current extinction rate could be more than 100 times higher than normal—and that’s only taking into account the kinds of animals we know the most about. Earth’s oceans and forests host an untold number of species, many of which will probably disappear before we even get to know them. (See pictures of 10 of the earth's rarest animals.)
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. We talked with her about what these new results might reveal for the future of life on this planet. Is there any chance we can put the brakes on this massive loss of life? Are humans destined to become casualties of our own environmental recklessness?
The new study that's generated so much conversation estimates that as many as three-quarters of animal species could be extinct within several human lifetimes, which sounds incredibly alarming.
Yes. That study is looking at very well-studied groups of animals. They restricted themselves to vertebrates—like mammals and birds and reptiles and amphibians—and said, OK, let’s look at what is actually happening. And they document pretty compellingly that extinction rates were already extremely elevated in [the year] 1500, and are just getting worse and worse.
They’re very high figures, and people are kind of getting inured to it. Kids who are born 10, 20 years ago—they’ve grown up their whole lives with these numbers. They don’t really think, OK, well that really is fantastically unusual. (Read about a study that says extinction rates are a thousand times higher because of humans.)
People have been debating whether we really are in the throes of a sixth mass extinction. What is your opinion?
To be honest, that’s one of those debates where I think we’re focusing on the wrong thing. By the time we have definitive answers to that question, it’s possible three-quarters of all species on Earth could be gone. We really don’t want to get to the point where we definitively can answer that question.
What is clear, and what is beyond dispute, is that we are living in a time of very, very elevated extinction rates, on the order that you would see in a mass extinction, though a mass extinction might take many thousands of years to play out.
Are there habitats or species—or groups of animals that you think are especially vulnerable to the changes that are going on?
Island populations are very vulnerable to extinctions for a couple of reasons. They tend to have been isolated. One of the things we’re doing is removing the barriers that used to keep island species isolated. New Zealand had no terrestrial mammals. Species that had evolved in the absence of such predators were incredibly vulnerable. A staggering number of bird species have already been lost on New Zealand, and a lot of those that remain are in deep trouble.
So, places that have been isolated for a long time. Those are very vulnerable. Species that have a very restricted range, that exist only in one spot in the world, those tend to be extremely vulnerable. They have nowhere to go and if their habitat is destroyed, say, then they’re gone.
The human component of this story—the fact that we appear to be responsible for the sixth extinction—what is some of the best evidence for our involvement?
I don’t think there’s any dispute that we are responsible for the elevated extinction rates we see now. There are very few, if any, extinctions that we know about in the last 100 years that would have taken place without human activity. I have never heard anyone argue, “oh extinction rates, that’s just a natural thing that would have happened with or without humans.” It’s just pretty much impossible to argue that.
If we’re pulling the trigger, what did we load the gun with?
There are thousands and thousands of scientific articles that have been written about this. We loaded it with simply hunting. We brought in invasive species. We are now changing the climate, very, very rapidly, by geological standards. We are changing the chemistry of all the oceans. We are changing the surface of the planet. We cut down forests, we plant mono-culture agriculture, which is not good for a lot of species. We’re overfishing. The list goes on and on.
There’s no shortage of bullets. We have a pretty big arsenal right now. (Read about which animals are likely
Worst Chemical Attack in Years in Syria; U.S. Blames Assad
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/middleeast/syria-gas-attack.html
so he was not a son of god...
Catbookss said that [yes]
"John Carter" aka Betty had tons of IMDB user profiles. Some of them she used to troll. Others she pretended to be a good user.
She also used to report users she hated 100 times a day. She would keep going to the admins and persisted for days, months even just to get the user she hated banned using her many socks. I am sure this users has many socks here. I think it will use its socks to further its agenda. It will use its socks to support itself.
John Carter's telling words " a mod with whom I have some acquaintanceship with and like for might target you as a result of this connection. "
No "John Carter" aka Betty had tons of IMDB user profiles. Some of them she used to troll. Others she pretended to be a good user.
John Carter's telling words " a mod with whom I have some acquaintanceship with and like for might target you as a result of this connection. "
Well said. "John Carter" of IMDb2 wants to impose his rules here.
This user is "John Carter" owner of IMDb2 and it wishes to stop users from registering here and posting.
bump
Fuck of Betty. Go back to your IMDb2. What you are describing is how you are doing things there and furthermore people are stopping to visit that site. You want to finish this site too. You insidious POS
Stop trying to control this place, destructive troll.
Ban trolls trying to take over
Just ban them already. Trying to control this place.
One of the pioneers of rock and roll music !
Thanks. I will ignore them
John Douglas speculated David Cohen or someone like him, and he rarely seems to be wrong in his profiles.
My best guess was someone tied to the medical profession, a surgeon or a doctor.
Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, the City of London Police Surgeon, stated that the person who inflicted the wounds on Catherine Eddowes would have required a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them.
Best clue.
So there was only 5 victims total and there are questions as to the connection of the murders. Some accounts say up to 14?
Did the Ripper have sex with his victims?
Contemporary medical examinations on the Ripper's canonical victims reported that there was no evidence of "recent connexion"
So that rules out one motive.
On some victims there were only a few cuts and stab wounds, while others were mutilated beyond recognition.
Seems like an Inconsistent pattern.
I think we should not forget that all the new philosophical movements critiqued the concurrent movements -- to move to a new direction -- their proposed movements that people are supposed to follow. So post-modernism per se is not a specific movement that has been blamed by the zeitgeist for the on the surface so called failures of human society.
Atheism without nihilism?
It is possible to deduce the existence of rules of logic and rule of morality that govern all men, all life. And if rules of morality exist, virtue and vice exist, are meaningful terms, and apply to real objects and events. A meaningful life is one lived according to virtue. Hence, if virtue exists, life can be meaningful, even for an atheist.
So you are a secular humanist and an atheist, and believe in Holistic Cosmos.
You used love as an example. What is love ? According to Classical western tradition, Empedocles viewed Eros -- Greek god of love -- as the force binding the world together. In Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus constructs that love is one of the most ancient gods, the most honoured, the most powerful in helping men gain honor and blessedness – and sacrificing one's self for love will result in rewards from the gods. Pausanias, introduces a distinction between a nobler and a baser kind of love: The base lover is in search of sexual gratification, and his objects are women and boys. The noble lover directs his affection towards young men, establishing lifelong relationships, productive of the benefits described by Phaedrus. Eryximachus claims that love affects everything in the universe, including plants and animals, believing that once love is attained it should be protected. The god of Love not only directs everything on the human plane, but also on the divine (186b). Two forms of love occur in the human body – one is healthy, the other unhealthy (186bc). Love might be capable of curing the diseased. Love governs medicine, music and astronomy (187a), and regulates hot and cold and wet and dry, which when in balance result in health (188a). Eryximachus here evokes the theory of the humors. He concludes: "Love as a whole has ... total ... power ... and is the source of all happiness. It enables us to associate, and be friends, with each other and with the gods" (188d Transl. Gill). He comes across as someone who cannot resist the temptation to praise his own profession: “a good practitioner knows how to treat the body and how to transform its desires" (186d). Aristophanes says that people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. The women who were separated from women run after their own kind, thus creating lesbians. The men split from other men also run after their own kind and love being embraced by other men (191e). Those that come from original androgynous beings are the men and women that engage in heterosexual love. He says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all, as evidenced by the fact that only they grow up to be politicians (192a), and that many heterosexuals are adulterous and unfaithful (191e). Aristophanes then claims that when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated (192c). This feeling is like a riddle, and cannot be explained. Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. Agathon implies that love creates justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom. These are the cardinal virtues in ancient Greece. Agathon contributes to the Platonic love theory with the idea that the object of love is beauty.
The conclusion is that love consists in being conscious of a need for a good that is not yet possessed. Socrates uses love as “the perpetual possession of what is good”. Lovers are pregnant with what is good and attain immortality through procreation, either intellectual or physical.
Men should make an ascent to arrive at the discovery of the Ideal Form of Beauty. Men should start with the love of a particular beautiful person. The next step is to pass from this particular instance to beauty in general, and from physical to moral beauty. The fourth step is to attain the love of wisdom, and then from this to the appreciation of the absolute and divine beauty (the Form of Beauty). This speech, in the interpretation of Marsilio Ficino in De amore (1484), is the origin of the concept of Platonic love. Of particular importance is the speech of Socrates, relating the idea of platonic love as attributed to the prophetess Diotima, which presents it as a means of ascent to contemplation of the divine. For Diotima, and for Plato generally, the most correct use of love of human beings is to direct one's mind to love of divinity. genuine platonic love, the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things. Socrates, in Plato's "Symposium", explained two types of love or Eros—Vulgar Er
So meta-ethicists are just as morally relativistic as the post-modernists they condemn. I was beginning to be interested in this post-post-modernism you call "meta-ethics" but here it sounds like more of the same.
I didn't deem post-postmodernism as meta-ethics but rather just referenced them as something to discuss. Feel free to do your own exploration and get back at me.