On the brink: Sixth mass extinction 'that will eradicate 75% of life on Earth is drawing closer'

Originally posted by IronArm
I think the whole George Carlin thing stikes a chord with me. Honestly, who are we to think that we are capable of screwing up something like our planet all on our own? If anything if going to kill us, it will be us, not the Earth acting in retaliation. Its boggling to think, we are truely not a huge deal in the span of millions/billions of years of everything else that the Earth has had to deal with. A meateor the size of a state wipes out a tonne of life, and we are worried that some gas is pushed out of chimneys. Not saying being 'green' is a bad thing, I really appreciate being able to breathe more air than smoke, but still kinda futile in the grand scheme of things.

I agree. When nature signs the peace accord and we're all dancing and holding hands i'll start to worry about the next million years. Right now nature is an awesome force and we should be focusing on surviving and getting ahead while we can not on bowing before her excellency and asking for forgiveness. Forgiveness for WHAT? She's been killing us and and causing havoc since we can remember. Not to mention she's indifferent. Crocodile tears mean nothing to me.

Originally posted by mikeybiznaz
read through the comments and not stopping at each post to to offer opinion de'sure, You know it just doesnt matter which demographic causes the OP's disaster its that likely it will happen. IMO mankind hasnt evolved from the warrior mantality and is drifting away from spirituality not tward it. Preasent day Enlightenment hardly counts. Where did I read that in the next 50 yrs it will take the amount of food previously produced in the last 8,000 yrs to feed mankind. Wages coming up in 3rd world countries and their better lifestyle is the reason and population expanding to an estimated 9 billion. Again in 3rd world countries with the better lifestyle. It doesnt take a "Rocket Scientist" to figure out the consiquences and implications....."I say Bring it" because the human race isnt going forward, Microsoft and the Internet doesnt count as Human Evolution. We still War with our selves. There cannot, again IMO, be a transfer of new energy from any higher power or Paradigm while we still war and feed our greed from our own race. please forgive and spelling as I have someplace to go right now!!! thanks for reading my comments

War will always exist. There'll always be a nutjob to throw us in a spin. Us humans will continue to get better and expand our wealth whether scienctists say it's so or not. The desire to go on and make things and have babies and see the universe are simply too strong. We will simply take our wars and our ills with us wherever we go. We wll get better too. We will conquer diseases and behaviors that once plagued us. But as we smash down one enemy another will pop up.

Our grandparents didn't throw up their arms and surrender when japan attacked us. When Magellan sailed the oceans he didn't put himself out when it kept going and going. He could have ended it all once he saw how hard it would be. But he didn't. He kept going becaus that's what humans do. They don't give up. They don't fall down dead at the first thought of hte next million years. Humanity is made of something sturdy and our ancestors didn't have their kids and do what they did so we could throw it all away. So sure enough we're going to respect their memory and keep swimming even when it gets hard. With some luck and big balls we'll make it. Take that and write it down because it's the surest prediction of the next million years you'll find anywhere.

It's the nature of things. Get used to it squirrel. Stop fighting the current. Learn to use it.

Don't be old and regret that you worried your whole life away. That's what will happen if liberals win. They make us worry about the bacteria in our fingernails and events that might happen in 5000 years. They even worry about people who lose. But that's nowt how humans get things done. We get things done by doing. That's how it has always happened. To expect us to suddenly worry ourselves into success or isolate ourselves in comfortable safe refuges far away from danger and to somehow survive the constantly changing universe is the hallmark of liberalism. Fact is, and i know a lot of people already don't like me, but you have to get your hands dirty to evolve!

If you don't got balls, grow em! There's a big universe out there!

reply to post by soficrow


I understand that, but truely, what effect does a few thousand pissed off people have on 10 people making a billion dollars a year triggering the earthquakes and polluting our air? Besides, take note of this, your computer you type on, a by-product of cracking raw oil. The power to run it? Coal, Nuclear, Wind, whatever, that requires oil and gas for the production of even the "green" projects. How do you get to work? Bus? Car? All require a massive sum of oil. We can't escape it, so it may as well just be a fact of life, if we are screwed, we are screwed. Paranoia gets us nowhere waaaay too fast.

Thats why I'm teaching my kids how to survive in the wild, build fires, shelter, hunt. If we go back to year zero, no one will be left after a 20 years anyway, because its rare to find someone who knows how to live.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka


This is such an amazing world we live in. And honestly, it's a very resilient world in my opinion. I think the only reason why it would be at risk due to man at this stage in the game is because we are everywhere in large numbers with crazy amounts of ecological disasters happening on an annual basis. In other words, we very well might be the cause of the next mass extinction event...



www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I think it is just common sense that man will be the cause of the next mass extinction event. Can you name one thing man has not destroyed at one time or another? It seems to me that destruction is our nature.

6th root race... 6th mass extinction event... 6th.....

reply to post by jonnywhite


thanks for your comments but I think we are on different levels...Kinda resent the "Grow some balls comment" cause you haven't walked in my shoes but I will kindly let you wear them for a while and see if you can get some more mileage out of them. You can patch up the Black gloves that go up to my shoulders and use them too.You can even use my apron but the back strings are fringed so bring scissors!!!

Whether the disasters in the past were influenced by humanoids, who knows. But from what we are told they were not, so thats what I will stick to. It does not matter what any study says, the truth is they have no idea when or if this will happen. The universe is a bigger place than a few scientists minds.

reply to post by IronArm

what effect does a few thousand pissed off people have on 10 people making a billion dollars a year triggering the earthquakes and polluting our air?

Check out what's happening in the Middle East and Africa.

Besides, take note of this, your computer you type on, a by-product of cracking raw oil. The power to run it? Coal, Nuclear, Wind, whatever, that requires oil and gas for the production of even the "green" projects. How do you get to work? Bus? Car? All require a massive sum of oil.

Mea culpa on the computer, heat and lights - but I have restructured my life, don't have a car, seldom go anywhere I can't walk.

We can't escape it, so it may as well just be a fact of life, if we are screwed, we are screwed. Paranoia gets us nowhere waaaay too fast.

Rethinking, reconfiguring, restructuring works.

Thats why I'm teaching my kids how to survive in the wild, build fires, shelter, hunt.

Always good.

If we go back to year zero, no one will be left after a 20 years anyway, because its rare to find someone who knows how to live.

Lots of people know how to live. True, few live in the "developed" nations, or in cities, but they know. ...Do you think such people are somehow less ?

I posted this exact thread yesterday:


www.abovetopsecret.com...



Sorry...

The way I see things..... the oil crisisof the 70s was the start of OPEC to push the use of oil. Now the big push is "electric cars" this will push the price of electricity as high as oil so that the electric companies can upgrade their power grids.

Whose to say humans didn't cause the last extinctions? Is that not what a lot of these prophesies tell us?
every 26000 years or so man reaches a certain level of evolution, then he screws it up thinking "i am great and lord of everything" etc etc
He then finds himself blasted back to the stone age, with only one generation not learning how to write and it's back to banging rocks together.
For history we have to listen to spoken history of the "elders", the last generation of survivors.
The only way to get "un educated people to live by a code to survive, like planting crops in the correct season for example. Is to replace the science with religion." If you do not do this then the big god in the sky will be angry yadda yadda"
And so it all begins again.
Historians and archeologists will marvel in the future at how clever we were and yet so uncivilized.

To be honest, I care about what happens to this planet for the next century, but next FEW centuries? Not only would falling into an ice age counter-balance any greenhouse gas induced global warming, but scientists would also have measures to counter-balance the 'effects of global warming'. If not, its hundreds of years away - let them deal with it! Daily Mail... grr... nonsense.

Originally posted by discolo
Whose to say humans didn't cause the last extinctions? Is that not what a lot of these prophesies tell us?

Lol! The fact that we didn't exist for most of them should suffice..

Ok, ok...so what? Its only because we are on this Earth to begin with that we care. The earth doesnt care. Its what it does. Solar flares, tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, massive fires....I mean, so what? It has always been this way.

I assure you this. If we were sitting up another planet or spaceship looking down here for a few thousand years, we would just watch and think nothing...nothing...of it. Its what happens down here. Why worry about life doing its thing? Its only because now we are sitting on it that we even care.

In a hundred years, a thousand years, or next week...the Earth will go thru what it does naturaly. Whether we are here or not. You cant stop it, so quit complaining folks with all the "OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO!!!?"

We'll do nothing...except maybe if we are lucky figure a way off this orb....and STILL. It will do what it does, and always has done. So, calm down. Its no big deal. Its as it always has been.

reply to post by soficrow




No, No, I do not think of them as less as a person (and/or people) but rather, ignorant as to where and what we had to do even 150 years ago. Even 100 years ago. I come from a "redneck" area of Canada, where if you cant survive for a week on your own in the bush (save the alcohol part) you havn't cut it. Its just how we were raised. And I lived in town at that, not even out in the sticks.

That being said, I think it is a healthy, and important part of life to be able to survive in any situation where such skills are needed. My wife and I got in this argument last week actually, her being from a big city. She doesn't see the need for knowladge of survival, because she sees the world and it's human function as eternal in the way it is currently.

But back to the original topic, mayhaps my comment about a few thousand to 10 wasn't accurate. You are correct in your point in the issue of the Middle east, but I was refering to something less political and more social-ecological. Think PETA or Greenpeace. Nutters in my opinion, but there are many members, which have had little to no impact on the way the lives we live are progressing.

Perhaps we've moved into the parasite category and all of this is just Earth's immune system kicking up. Or it's on a timer and each era's top species' goal is to get the hell off of our rock before it resets. I don't know but I do know that it's not the Earth that's in danger but us.

I'm surprised that nobody read the entire OP's link.
No one mentions this......

The authors admitted to weaknesses in the study. They acknowledged that the fossil record is far from complete, that mammals provide an imperfect benchmark of Earth's biodiversity and further work is needed to confirm their suspicions.

Sorry, didn't mean to spoil the hysteria

Originally posted by MrWendal

I think it is just common sense that man will be the cause of the next mass extinction event. Can you name one thing man has not destroyed at one time or another? It seems to me that destruction is our nature.

If man is responsible for the next mass extinction event, can you please explain how these same events have been taking place for more than 500 million years?

Further, I am not saying that man has had no effect, which is an entirely different argument. However, if man has sped up mass extinction by 500, 5000, even 50,000 years -- it is a rather small amount of time when comparing it to the lifespan of the Earth itself.

Why should we spend billions of dollars trying to prevent the inevitable? I believe man lives rather selfishly and each person should take better care of our planet, but I believe it is more of a moral issue, perhaps a humanity issue, but I don't believe one way or another doing so will stop a future extinction event.

A bit of an update to help substantiate my earlier statement that the 6th Mass Extinction is already happening..

World's sixth mass extinction may be underway: study

...in the last five centuries, at least 80 out of 5,570 mammal species have bitten the dust, providing a clear warning of the peril to biodiversity.

"It looks like modern extinction rates resemble mass extinction rates, even after setting a high bar for defining 'mass extinction," said researcher Anthony Barnosky.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


Transpermia is what causes mass extinctions, and of course humans are part of that picture.