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marmar (67,292 posts) Mass Extinction: It's the End of the World as We Know It Mass Extinction: It's the End of the World as We Know It Monday, 06 July 2015 09:35 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Interview Guy McPherson is a professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources and ecology at the University of Arizona, and has been a climate change expert for 30 years. He has also become a controversial figure, due to the fact that he does not shy away from talking about the possibility of near-term human extinction. While McPherson's perspective might sound like the stuff of science fiction, there is historical precedent for his predictions. Fifty-five million years ago, a 5-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures seems to have occurred in just 13 years, according to a study published in the October 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A report in the August 2013 issue of Science revealed that in the near term, earth's climate will change 10 times faster than during any other moment in the last 65 million years. Prior to that, the Permian mass extinction that occurred 250 million years ago, also known as the "Great Dying," was triggered by a massive lava flow in an area of Siberia that led to an increase in global temperatures of 6 degrees Celsius. That, in turn, caused the melting of frozen methane deposits under the seas. Released into the atmosphere, those gases caused temperatures to skyrocket further. All of this occurred over a period of approximately 80,000 years. The change in climate is thought to be the key to what caused the extinction of most species on the planet. In that extinction episode, it is estimated that 95 percent of all species were wiped out. Today's current scientific and observable evidence strongly suggests we are in the midst of the same process - only this time it is anthropogenic, and happening exponentially faster than even the Permian mass extinction did. ..............(more) http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31661-mass-extinction-it-s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it
Erich Bloodaxe BSN (9,090 posts) 1. We had an ok run.I just wish there was some way to be able to store our knowledge as a species in a way that the next species along that rises to sentience in a few hundred million years could find it and use it without having to relearn it the hard way. I dunno, maybe bunkers scattered across the moon with libraries in them? Of course, any species that could get offplanet to find them might already have passed us up in many ways.
luvspeas (1,481 posts) 4. What would we store?How to make endless horrible war and genocide? How to make one group of humans with a certain lack of melanin gain all the resources and power while the rest suffer? How to coerce humans into believing that an invisible deity is more important than the welfare of the humans that they see in front of their faces? How to make humans willingly give up every right and freedom they possess to collect pieces of metal and paper. How to make humans believe that the ones with the most paper and metal are better and more deserving than humans without? How to make the humans who do not carry children believe that they possess the ones who do. I think a clean slate would be much better.
jeff47 (17,634 posts) 11. We won't be dying out.These big brains mean our species won't be going extinct from climate change. Let's say it's worse than all of the worst-case scenarios, and 5 billion humans die from starvation, wars, drought, and similar climate effects. That leaves 2.5 billion humans alive. It would be chaos, and very unpleasant to live through. But our species would still be here.
SidDithers (36,701 posts) 5. Truth Out ranks down there with HuffPo on their science writing...They published Joseph Mercola, as if he was credible, while questioning the credibility of Dr. Paul Offit. Any publication with an eye toward accuracy would know that situation should be reversed. Edit: rationalwiki on Guy McPherson http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Guy_McPherson Sid
jeff47 (17,634 posts) 12. TruthOut: We find the most unsupportable but exciting claims, and publish them! Humans won't be dying out. These big brains mean we can adapt quickly enough to survive as a species. Every other species? Well, they might be in trouble.
Ted Kennedy is the only person with an actual confirmed kill in the war on women.
What happens if the EBT card database gets erased by a solar flare?
If you're talking about the knowledge of the DU species you could just write it all down on a single index card.
Fifty-five million years ago, a 5-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures seems to have occurred in just 13 years,
