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Earth is on brink of mass extinction

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arirish View Drop Down
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    Posted: June 23 2015 at 7:11am
Earth is on brink of a sixth mass extinction, scientists say, and it’s humans’ fault

A vast chunk of space rock crashes into the Yucatan Peninsula, darkening the sky with debris and condemning three-quarters of Earth’s species to extinction. A convergence of continents disrupts the circulation of the oceans, rendering them stagnant and toxic to everything that lives there. Vast volcanic plateaus erupt, filling the air with poisonous gas. Glaciers subsume the land and lock up the oceans in acres of ice.

Five times in the past, the Earth has been struck by these kinds of cataclysmic events, ones so severe and swift (in geological terms) they obliterated most kinds of living things before they ever had a chance to adapt.

Now, scientists say, the Earth is on the brink of a sixth such “mass extinction event.” Only this time, the culprit isn’t a massive asteroid impact or volcanic explosions or the inexorable drifting of continents. It’s us.


For full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/22/the-earth-is-on-the-brink-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction-scientists-say-and-its-humans-fault/
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Dutch Josh View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 29 2015 at 1:59am
http://www.globalresearch.ca/doomsday-scenarios-climate-change-and-world-war-iii/5458764

 In my presentations, and I’ve delivered a few so far, I focus on the time-line within which, I believe, habitat will be gone for humans, and not too long after the habitat is gone, there won’t be any humans left on the planet anymore. The general idea is how long do we have with habitat on this planet for our own species, homo sapiens.

 GR: Now I know that…when I first spoke to you, you were saying that it looked as if we had maybe up until about the year 2030, which isn’t too far away. Is there any reason to to change that calculation? Might we be losing habitat sooner, or possibly later?

 GM: It’s difficult for me to imagine we have that long. Depending upon the various events that occur in the near future, we could reach 4 degrees Celsius above base-line in as little as 18 months. Even at the relatively slow rate of overall planetary warming we have observed so far, we are losing the ability of plants and animals to keep up. They can’t keep up with the slow rate of climate change that has happened so far by a factor of 10,000 times!

So, now that we’ve entered the abrupt phase of climate change with, it appears likely that we’ll reach that 4 degrees Celsius mark in a short period of time. I don’t see that we could possibly make it to 2030. But it’s pretty difficult to predict the future, obviously. I just don’t see habitat being around for nearly that long.

 GR: You talk about that 4 degrees Centigrade above uh base-line as being critical because that’s, is it generally accepted among the scientific community that at 4 degrees above base-line that habitat for human habitation is just not there?

GM: Interestingly, Oliver Tickell wrote a paper in the Guardian on the 10th of August 2008, so now nearly 7 years ago, and the article is headlined “On a Planet 4C Hotter, All We Can Prepare for is Extinction,” and he was writing specifically about human extinction.

 I think that’s pretty conservative. It represented the viewpoint at the time, the scientific viewpoint. I think it’s conservative because we’ve had no humans on earth at 3.3 degrees Celsius above base-line in the past, base-line meaning the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or about 1750. However, it’s become clear that 4C is locked in now, and in the very near term there’s no way to avoid it.

And so, most climate scientists I know are back-pedalling terribly or moving the goal posts as it were in claiming that 4C won’t be a problem. Considering that the ability of plants and native animals to keep up with the slow rate of change, and they lag by a factor of 10,000 times, I don’t see how accellerating the process is going to help it.

“So, now that we’ve entered the abrupt phase of climate change with, it appears likely that we’ll reach that 4 degrees Celsius mark in a short period of time. I don’t see that we could possibly make it to 2030.”


We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 29 2015 at 2:00am
GM: Yes, and here is a relatively minor example. From about a week ago, in personal context in 2007 and 2012 when the arctic ice mass fell precipitously over short periods of time, um the term ‘century event’ was coined to describe what happens when a hundred thousand square kilometres of ice are lost in a day. From one day to the next a hundred thousand square kilometres of ice just disappear from the Arctic Ocean.

 Well, between I believe it was June 16th and 17th of this year as reported at Cryosphere Today, there was a three century event. Three hundred and twenty thousand square kilometres of ice disappeared from the Arctic in one 24 hour period. That’s an area the size of New Mexico, one of the larger states, the one I occupy in the southwestern United States. That is absolutely huge and completely ignored within the media and of course by the governments who, in my eyes, ought to be telling us about things like this.

 GR: And do you have any intuition about why that might be?

 GM: Um, sure. The corporations that control the media, and there are only a handful that control more than 90% of the media in the United States, and a similar trend applies for the world obviously. The same corporations that own the media outlets have significant influence over the government, I would say, to put it mildly. It used to be one citizen one vote. I would argue at this point that it’s a lot closer to one dollar one vote, or to be more pragmatic about it, one million dollars one vote.

When you control the message through the media and you more directly control the decisions made within the governments, you can exert considerable influence over what kind of message is coming out.

“Three hundred and twenty thousand square kilometres of ice disappeared from the Arctic in one 24 hour period. That’s an area the size of New Mexico, one of the larger states, the one I occupy in the southwestern United States.

That is absolutely huge and completely ignored within the media and of course by the governments who, in my eyes, ought to be telling us about things like this.”

GR: Now, um, there’s been considerable criticsm on this program about uh geo-engineering efforts, that uh the solar radiation management, including from yourself, and I’m wondering if you’re seeing any signs that uh these sorts of geo-engineering efforts maybe already being put into place or contemplated. I know you’re citing the literature you’ve been, you’re saying that this is just not the way to go. But do you have any intuition about whether that’s being put into practice right now?

 GM: That’s a good question and occasionally I see some bit of writing suggesting quite strongly that the IPCC projections assume geo-engineering is either going on or soon will be, and primarily that’s with solar radiation management.

 Add onto that the notion that global dimming is already cooling the planet more than it otherwise would be, and the loss of reflective particulates from the atmosphere would cause the planet to warm up very, very considerably in a short period of time and it could very well be that there is a concerted effort to either now be implementing or considering implementing solar radiation management or some other form of geo-engineering. Even though you know the synopsis of the journal literature came in February of this year, February 10 from the National Academy of Sciences in the United States when they conclude that geo-engineering is not a viable solution for the Climate Predicament. And I love that they put it that way: ‘Climate Predicament’ not ‘a problem,’ as we’re frequently told it is. Problems can be solved. Predicaments can’t even be addressed. And they point out that geo-engineering is not a viable solution for the climate predicament.

 So, that said, desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve little doubt that even if all the evidence indicates something will not work, that the people pulling the levers of industry will still give those things a try.

“Add onto that the notion that global dimming is already cooling the planet more than it otherwise would be, and the loss of reflective particulates from the atmosphere would cause the planet to warm up very, very considerably in a short period of time and it could very well be that there is a concerted effort to either now be implementing or considering implementing solar radiation management or some other form of geo-engineering.”

GR: So, now when you are looking at the way we can potentially respond as the body politic, are you seeing any optimistic signs, I mean whether it’s from policy makers or from your fellow scientists or from the wider public. You just mentioned you are on your tour and you’re getting some positive responses there, or at least interest. But I’m wondering if you’ve been seeing significant changes in terms of the way that we are responding to the kinds of warnings that you’ve been put out compared to you know three or four years ago.

 GM: Yes, absolutely. For one thing, the count now of scientists, pundits, public figures who will admit that we’re in the midst of an extinction event that is almost certain to take out our species early on, that list has grown quite large in the last three years. It includes folks like Randy Malamud, Regents’ Professor at Georgia State University, who wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in December of last year, which includes this line: “It’s time to accept our impending demise.” Robert Burroughs (sp?) added his voice in the mainstream media outlets. Paul Ehrlich does the same with an interview with MSNBC in January of this year. So the list is growing.

 Perhaps most importantly, among these people is a writer for a United States television program broadcast on HBO, a program called The News Room. Aaron Sorkin, who’s always been really cutting-edge with his writing and with his understanding of reality wrote a piece that addresses our climate predicament and in this fictional program makes it quite clear that we don’t have long, and he’s only taking into account carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The program talks about several things that will occur in the future that are already occurring right now. Food and water shortages, extremely large storms, spread of deadly disease those kinds of things. So, when it makes it onto the television in the United States that’s when it starts to have some impact and reach the public consciousness.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 29 2015 at 2:02am
Climate change is related to the spread of disease, rising earthquakes, drying up rivers etc. And things are moving fast....
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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