Earth Has Entered into a Sixth Mass Extinction Event

Megalith

Megalith

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That’s the claim made by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Professor Gerardo Ceballos, who recently published work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science detailing the significant rate of mammalian extinction across Earth. Animal populations across the planet have decreased by as much as 80 percent since 1900, an event akin to "biological annihilation.” The loss of wildlife means stark repercussions on food production and our national ecosystem.

Large regions in all continents have lost 50 percent or more of the populations of the evaluated mammals from 1900 to 2015. While the small sample size only covers 177 species, and is biased to larger mammals, this figure can be used to visualize likely trends in global population losses. Assuming that on average each of the 10,000km2 occupied quadrats studied held a single population of the species found within it, Ceballos estimates that roughly 58,000 populations of the 177 mammals examined have gone extinct.
 
That's a load of bull. The most numerous animals on the planet are insects, I doubt their numbers decreased by 80%.
Sure if you cherry pick and look at only animals that are in the public eye you might be able to claim such bullshit. And even then it has nothing in common with mass extinction events of the past as the reduction in living space and thus numbers in those species are clearly a result of human population growth and intermingling.
 
M76 said:
That's a load of bull. The most numerous animals on the planet are insects, I doubt their numbers decreased by 80%.
Sure if you cherry pick and look at only animals that are in the public eye you might be able to claim such bullshit. And even then it has nothing in common with mass extinction events of the past as the reduction in living space and thus numbers in those species are clearly a result of human population growth and intermingling.
Click to expand...
FTFA:

"Earth is now in a period of mass global species extinction for vertebrate animals,"

So yeah, that would exclude insects. We HAVE lost a tremendous amount of species in the past 150 years or so. For everyone saying "bullshit" as a kneejerk reaction, just look up how much deforestation we've had over that amount of time. It's equivalent to a natural disaster, you think that doesn't affect the ecosystem? Our way of life is not even remotely sustainable.
 
The planet's biodiversity has been decreasing at an alarming rate, and unlike global warming, this can be linked directly to human influence.
 
M76 said:
That's a load of bull. The most numerous animals on the planet are insects, I doubt their numbers decreased by 80%.
Sure if you cherry pick and look at only animals that are in the public eye you might be able to claim such bullshit. And even then it has nothing in common with mass extinction events of the past as the reduction in living space and thus numbers in those species are clearly a result of human population growth and intermingling.
Click to expand...

Would you like grub fries with your grasshopper burger sir?
 
Yeah earth has gone through multiple mass extinction periods, but has any one of them included mass extinction of insects? Well, except for the very first one when earth had almost nothing BUT insect-like sea creatures. Insects are hardy creatures, the saying "only thing that survives nuclear holocaust are cockroaches" is not just a joke. In any case, a mass extinction of bigger animals is a sad thing. What makes earth special in space is heavily reduced and basically everything goes back to the drawing board for million years.
 
I think it's a good thing that I don't have to worry about getting eaten by wolfs or grizzly when I leave my house.
My thanks to the pioneers who settled this area and who hunted them to extinction a hundred years ago.

With all the "wildlife" protection laws we have now days, we are seeing more people being maimed or killed by sharks, coyotes and other predators.
 
nutzo said:
I think it's a good thing that I don't have to worry about getting eaten by wolfs or grizzly when I leave my house.
My thanks to the pioneers who settled this area and who hunted them to extinction a hundred years ago.

With all the "wildlife" protection laws we have now days, we are seeing more people being maimed or killed by sharks, coyotes and other predators.
Click to expand...

Do you have an active hunting community? Without predator populations deer populations tend to explode (and we as humans usually end up hitting them with our vehicles).

Or, they out eat their food supply and starve/die.
 
This is 50% a serious problem, 50% bullshit, and 100% someone's else's fault because _______________.

Multiple choice time!

A. Thanks obama
B. Thanks trump
C. I'm white so it can't be my fault
D. All of the above


Jokes aside this is kind of scary but it really is our own fault. Lions and elephants don't shoot themselves. Monkeys don't destroy their own forests. Polar bears don't mine coal and burn it in excessive quantities to produce electricity for their Cubs to play video games. The question is what do we do about it and how do you get people to give up their creature comforts or realize they need to change their habits to try and help us survive the incoming issues? Answer is you can't. You can't even get most people to look beyond their day to day problems to try and make things better next month.

Now I am sad. :( next time I should lead with the seriousness and end with the joke....
 
We are the reason for this. Agent Smith had it right. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.

The answer? Cull the herd. That one Sliders episode where you win the lottery, is a pretty good solution. Keeps the population low, so we have enough resources to sustain ourselves.
 
nutzo said:
I think it's a good thing that I don't have to worry about getting eaten by wolfs or grizzly when I leave my house.
My thanks to the pioneers who settled this area and who hunted them to extinction a hundred years ago.

With all the "wildlife" protection laws we have now days, we are seeing more people being maimed or killed by sharks, coyotes and other predators.
Click to expand...
Taking out predators in a region near humanity doesn't have the same level of impact if they're replaced with hunters. That's not really the problem. Clear-cutting and / or burning off hundreds of millions of acres of old forest or jungle to replace it with grazeland is.
 
Without immigration, the US would be shrinking in population. Europe, Canada, Japan, China... all shrinking. The problem is the poorer areas of the world where the population is exploding and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it. If your kids gotta eat, then something's gotta die.
 
Well, maybe if the idiots of the human race would quit breeding, we wouldn't have them overflowing the world and killing things off because they need home. Our problem is we have too many stupid people on this planet.
 
Just enforce population control for a few generations... congratulations, you had a child! Now, we're sterilizing you.

Hello, male over 35 years of age. We have a present for you *snip*

100% serious here. Do it for 4 generations, and stabilize the human population at ~500 million.

Might need 5 generations, for the people that try to hide. All you do then is wipe out the entire family when they're caught, any anyone harboring them. Easy peasy.

....

Did I get too dark?
 
Charlie_D said:
Just enforce population control for a few generations... congratulations, you had a child! Now, we're sterilizing you.

Hello, male over 35 years of age. We have a present for you *snip*

100% serious here. Do it for 4 generations, and stabilize the human population at ~500 million.

Might need 5 generations, for the people that try to hide. All you do then is wipe out the entire family when they're caught, any anyone harboring them. Easy peasy.

....

Did I get too dark?
Click to expand...
Genocide is never an answer. Human population growth rate is starting to shrink naturally across the world due to a number of factors. All we need to do is stop protecting stupid people and let Darwin sort them out.
 
We are the custodians of the planet. I wish we could do better. I find the caustic reaction to the science of it kind of strange, personally. I have people gulping down twenty tablets a day without question as to the science behind those tablets. People have a lot of trust in the science that makes their phones, cars, or TVs possible. But climate science, or conservation science? Hogwash! Scientists are politicians! Then again, you do have the folks who refuse to vaccinate their kids too.

I don't think people are ignorant, but I do think that there is a breakdown between communication between the scientific community and the rest of us. As to the science itself: it's the only tool we have to figure stuff out. Sure, a few scientists may have personal or political agendas, but that's where consensus opinion comes in. The consensus is pretty clear by now.
 
Charlie_D said:
Just enforce population control for a few generations... congratulations, you had a child! Now, we're sterilizing you.

Hello, male over 35 years of age. We have a present for you *snip*

100% serious here. Do it for 4 generations, and stabilize the human population at ~500 million.

Might need 5 generations, for the people that try to hide. All you do then is wipe out the entire family when they're caught, any anyone harboring them. Easy peasy.

....

Did I get too dark?
Click to expand...

As I always say to the depopulation people. You lead from the front, have someone call me when you are gone.

They always get pissy about it.

The environment is not a stable place. It never has been. The question is have you replaced an ecosystem with another ecosystem that will function? If the answer is yes, humans are probably fine. Things like overfishing the answer is likely no. Too much damage too fast.

However, for things like this stuff where you are talking about large mammals being overrepresented, the odds of simply having swapped large mammals for smaller ones that work out ok over time is much higher. There's a rich critter ecosystem even in urban areas. It just doesn't involve elephants, bears, elk, etc.

Also at a deeper level, I have problems with the fact this dude or his translator has zero grasp of the words they use.

each 10,000km2 quadrant has 1 populaton .... big assumption, but hey whatever treat them all that way and the math should apply if you properly measured existence and jsut aggregated them as one group for the purposes of math.
58,000 populations are gone... WTF dude. quadrant = four. you take an area, divide in four eaqual sections with two lines you have a quadrant. You don't get 58,000 quadrants. 58,000 areas perhaps. but they aren't fucking quadrants. When everything you are claiming needs to be backed by math and you fail at basic usage of math words, it makes me question if anything you claim has been measured or calculated properly.
 
Charlie_D said:
Just enforce population control for a few generations... congratulations, you had a child! Now, we're sterilizing you.

Hello, male over 35 years of age. We have a present for you *snip*

100% serious here. Do it for 4 generations, and stabilize the human population at ~500 million.

Might need 5 generations, for the people that try to hide. All you do then is wipe out the entire family when they're caught, any anyone harboring them. Easy peasy.

....

Did I get too dark?
Click to expand...


Yeah you went bit too overboard but you do have the right idea. China was right when they enforced the only 1 child per family rule. Their population growth stabilized. Now, children not having siblings is kinda bummer but it is definetly more humane solution to the problem than wishing for massive war or meteor strike that wipes half of the human population. If world leaders would get together and admit overpopulation is a serious problem and together decide that 1 child rule should be kept for 5 generations through the world the problem would get fixed in relatively short time. We already cull the numbers of animals to prevent accidents or their population getting too big for their own good. Its time to do the same for us.
 
Surely the reduced numbers of Co2 producers (natural gas) must counter the lack of forests.
 
Its not surprising.. I think many dont understand you can have upside down pyramids for a while.
 
tetris42 said:
FTFA:

"Earth is now in a period of mass global species extinction for vertebrate animals,"

So yeah, that would exclude insects. We HAVE lost a tremendous amount of species in the past 150 years or so. For everyone saying "bullshit" as a kneejerk reaction, just look up how much deforestation we've had over that amount of time. It's equivalent to a natural disaster, you think that doesn't affect the ecosystem? Our way of life is not even remotely sustainable.
Click to expand...
To be honest TLDR
Anyhow I already explained why is it bullshit even if we restrict it to a few classes of animals. Species go extinct all the time. The number of species that are still present are a fraction of all the species that have gone extinct trough earth's history. I don't see anything that would suggest we're in a natural mass extinction period. Mass extinction is an ice age, or a meteor. This to me just seems business as usual coupled with human expansion.
 
tetris42 said:
So yeah, that would exclude insects. We HAVE lost a tremendous amount of species in the past 150 years or so. For everyone saying "bullshit" as a kneejerk reaction, just look up how much deforestation we've had over that amount of time. It's equivalent to a natural disaster, you think that doesn't affect the ecosystem? Our way of life is not even remotely sustainable.
Click to expand...

If you have a solid logical justification for telling people in Brazil why they are not allowed to follow self determination while Americans are, we're all ears. I'm sure they would love to hear your reasoning.

Obama did kind of have the right idea, he told a bunch of Africans that the world would boil over if the quality of life on this planet improved to the point that even Africans had big houses, air conditioning and cars. He might be right.

 
Armenius said:
Genocide is never an answer. Human population growth rate is starting to shrink naturally across the world due to a number of factors. All we need to do is stop protecting stupid people and let Darwin sort them out.
Click to expand...

Other than the 'kill all the people that won't do it!' piece (which was a bit tongue-in-cheek), it's not genocide. We're not talking about rounding people up and cleansing the Earth, rather a strict birth limit for a number of generations. People get to live as long as they can, but natural die off would still take care of things within a couple centuries.
 
I'm not worried, humans will nuke each other into oblivion and the ecosystem will eventually recover.
 
Charlie_D said:
Just enforce population control for a few generations... congratulations, you had a child! Now, we're sterilizing you.

Hello, male over 35 years of age. We have a present for you *snip*

100% serious here. Do it for 4 generations, and stabilize the human population at ~500 million.

Might need 5 generations, for the people that try to hide. All you do then is wipe out the entire family when they're caught, any anyone harboring them. Easy peasy.

....

Did I get too dark?
Click to expand...
If you'd look at the actual data it shows that all well educated and economically stable countries are actually shrinking and not increasing. If you have education and a purpose then you won't pop out offspring left, right and centre.
 
Armenius said:
Genocide is never an answer. Human population growth rate is starting to shrink naturally across the world due to a number of factors. All we need to do is stop protecting stupid people and let Darwin sort them out.
Click to expand...


Unfortunately we have to protect the stupid people if we are to protect ourselves. If we allowed stupid people to do stupid things the non-stupid also have a high chance of becoming victims of their stupidity. Think of a dumbass texting while driving and running over an innocent bystander.
 
M76 said:
If you'd look at the actual data it shows that all well educated and economically stable countries are actually shrinking and not increasing. If you have education and a purpose then you won't pop out offspring left, right and centre.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant, honestly. Unless it was applied to everyone, riots / fighting / wars would break out within a year... and rightly so, in that case.
 
Erase Asia, South East Asia and parts of Africa. Problem solved. Nobody should be allowed to breed like that. It's inhumane, immoral, suicidal - plain stupid.
 
Please let me know when the species "politicus corruptus" become extinct, so I can pour one for them... ;-)
 
M76 said:
To be honest TLDR
Anyhow I already explained why is it bullshit even if we restrict it to a few classes of animals. Species go extinct all the time. The number of species that are still present are a fraction of all the species that have gone extinct trough earth's history. I don't see anything that would suggest we're in a natural mass extinction period. Mass extinction is an ice age, or a meteor. This to me just seems business as usual coupled with human expansion.
Click to expand...
"Business as usual" is what's going to ravage our environment. Of course species go extinct, but if it's the direct result of massive overdevelopment on our part, that impacts us. I mean look at the comparison of old growth forest in the USA:

image006.jpg


You don't think that has an adverse effect on the ecosystem and species that depend on those environments? Sure, nature adapts, but it may not adapt in a way that is conducive to supporting so many of us either. But like you said, insects will win either way.


westrock2000 said:
If you have a solid logical justification for telling people in Brazil why they are not allowed to follow self determination while Americans are, we're all ears. I'm sure they would love to hear your reasoning.

Obama did kind of have the right idea, he told a bunch of Africans that the world would boil over if the quality of life on this planet improved to the point that even Africans had big houses, air conditioning and cars. He might be right.

Click to expand...
It's more like they're doing it wrong AND we're doing it wrong, our way of life is not sustainable for the population we have, that's all there is to it. The only thing resembling a solution is to scale down the amount of resources we use, which simply isn't how we're operating. Most of the advances we've made come at the cost of resources that are consumed faster than they're replenished. You can look at much of our prosperity over the past 150 years or as essentially borrowing from our future. Nature requires us to use some resources and preserve others, so it's sustainable. Our economic system requires us to have endless growth and profit as much as possible from all available resources. These views can't co-exist, so nature tends to lose. Unfortunately the concept of imposing limits on our way of life for our long-term survival is viewed as very un-American, so we're on a collision course one way or another.
 
I just got started fishing again. Looking at how few places are left where people catch fish, the less diversity of the fish, and the much, much smaller size of fish caught...it's pretty sad.

Then the fish you do catch have a bunch of toxins in them.

But yeah, it's all science behind some nefarious plot to have clean air and water and shit, those bastards.
 
Said it before, I'll say it again. Eugenics is taboo now, but it won't be in ~100-200 years when the world is massively overpopulated. People with bad genes shouldn't be breeding if we are going to progress as a species. Be it susceptibility to disease, intelligence, or a number of other measures; we'll have to choose who doesn't cut it. In turn, we'll solve a huge number of societies current problems, which new ones we create are unknown.
 
tetris42 said:
FTFA:

"Earth is now in a period of mass global species extinction for vertebrate animals,"

So yeah, that would exclude insects. We HAVE lost a tremendous amount of species in the past 150 years or so. For everyone saying "bullshit" as a kneejerk reaction, just look up how much deforestation we've had over that amount of time. It's equivalent to a natural disaster, you think that doesn't affect the ecosystem? Our way of life is not even remotely sustainable.
Click to expand...


Soylent Green dude, Soylent Green
 
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