Posted on 03/06/2007 8:56:51 AM PST by presidio9
While global warming continues to gain widespread public awareness, a potentially more devastating environmental threat is only beginning to get noticed, reports Tony Russomanno with KPIX-TV, the CBS station in San Francisco.
The threat is mass extinction, and scientists are taking it very seriously.
There is widespread belief among scientists that current species of life are becoming extinct at a rate more than 1,000 times higher than normal.
"We are at the precipice of the end of the world," said Chera Van Burg of Species Alliance.
An asteroid caused the last mass extinction when it wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Some believe that if a meteor were to strike the Earth again today, the effect on life would be little different that what may already be underway.
"According to a consensus of the world's biologists, a mass extinction is unfolding or about to unfold on planet Earth," said David Ulansey of Massextinction.net.
The Yangtze River dolphin was only the latest example when it disappeared just last month.
While doomsayers are at the extreme end of scientific opinion, some biologists believe a worst-case mass-extinction scenario would wipe out 50 percent of existing species.
Humans, and species associated with humans, are not threatened with extinction, but if it occurs, mass extinction would break the interconnected web of life and lead to a substantial decrease in human populations.
And some scientists believe humans are to blame for mass extinction.
"If our influence on Earth continues to expand, we're likely to lose half or more of the species on Earth," said Stanford University ecologist Peter Vitousek.
The theories on mass extinction are laid out in the documentary "Call of Life," to be released later this year.
Some have already heard the call.
"If we continue at the present rate, virtually all the species of fish in the ocean will be extinct in the next 50 years," said former Vice President Al Gore in a recent visit to Silicon Valley.
And that's something that professional fishermen say worries them every day.
"Only now are people starting to acknowledge that, whoa, all these greenhouse gases that we've been putting in the atmosphere are having an impact that could basically threaten life on this planet," said Zeke Grader, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen.
Biologists say climate change is only one of the causes of extinction. The problem goes much deeper.
"It's not like global warming," said Ulansey. "The problem cannot be defined as CO2. You can't put it in a box. The problem is the way we live. It is every aspect of our lifestyle."
And every aspect of our lifestyle has consequences. For example, there are billions and billions of cell phones in the world, and every single one of them uses a metal called coltan. Of the very few places on Earth where coltan is mined, almost all of it comes from the Republic of Congo - right square in the middle of the habitat of the Mountain gorilla.
A United Nations agency said the gorilla population has declined 90 percent over just the past five years, partly as the result of land being cleared for coltan mining.
And that's only one species. Experts estimate more than 15,000 species today are threatened. And those are only the ones they know about from surveys.
Biologists believe the six major causes of the present mass extinction are habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, human overpopulation, human overconsumption, and climate change.
The good news is that there is still time to turn it around. The bad news - some believe - time is short, perhaps only five to 10 years to make significant changes in how we live our lives.
Some times I swear some of these "scientists" just disregard known history and just say things off the cuff. The biological sphere is in constant flux. The rate of extinction is extremely hard to estimate and many of the criteria for what constitutes a species is very flimsy. While I'm all for being a good steward of the environment and the animals and plants that live in it there is one simple fact that will not change no matter how much we wish for environmental and biological stasis and that is that the biosphere is constantly changing just as the climate is. Mass extinctions have occurred and what is interesting is that after such events explosions of biodiversity occur to replace those creatures that are lost. This is something that is still not understood.
The rate of species replenishment, if the fossil record is to be accepted, is much higher than should be expected given standard models of evolution but of course there are few willing to discuss this. Instead we hear more hysteria, hand wringing, and gnashing of teeth. What has led so many otherwise rational people to so need to overstate and search for an apocalypse?
The world would be a much better place if all the attention focused on these surreal catastrophic human contributed crisis on the natural world was channelled to solve problems like the starving people in the world - but why do that when if less humans were alive, the world will be a better place for animals.
My family who is not into the news as much as I am is so afraid of global warming, and I'm sure it won't be long before they are worried about all the animals dying. Then, of couse they will be resigned to agree to eat cloned meat. The left has created such a depressive fear that is totally unwarranted and unhealthy for this world.
I believe you are correct.
Freepers will predictably crack jokes and write it off as leftist hysteria. The fact that leftist environmentalists can be hysterical and fascist does not mean that conservatives should completely ignore everything they have to say or accept as perfectly normal and tolerable the harm humanity is wreaking on global ecology.
Well, that's a relief!
I was wavering at the lastest bombshells about the Gore Dacha debacle and his carbon credits" company scam, and needed a new a new devil to haunt my sleep and a new set of apocalyptic priests to worship...
I don't want to guess, but it may be single digits...
I'll believe them when they spend all day walking around with sandwich signs... :)
In the 70s, that's how long we had before the population explosion and mass starvation would save Gaia...
I think I need a ride in my SUV... and look for some "endangered" species.
For those of you with good memories, my Prius bumper sticker reads, "My Other Car Is An SUV..."
It's a pleasure to see that we have dcided to stop demonizing Ann Coulter and get down to some serious business...
Anybody got thoughts on massextinctions.net and the half-dozen nutcases that run it?
Who funds them?
Which groups are they crosslinked to? ( prozac.net? )
Sweet! Guess I'd better open me up a few more credit cards...
Well, I remember a hysterical DU type a few years ago announcing that 1000 species are going extinct every year.
15 more years and our troubles are over...
OK.
Mass extinctions an't it.
Can you be more specific?
Last time I checked, homo sapiens sapiens is part of the global ecology, and has been so for over 5 million years...
wacky!
That still doesn't explain what the hell you are doing driving a Prius.
I really liked that bumper sticker and needed an appropriate place to stick it...
: )
As a side benefit, I can counter all the crap the Prius worshipers dish out... with authority, dammit!
So what kind of mileage do you get?
Careful...
People see you asking that question and you'll be shunned.
commuting in the San Joaquin Valley, typically 47; female driver, 32; 100 mile trip to San Francisco, 52...
"massextinction.net" redirects you to "http://www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html" .
Seems to be a lone nutcase, who was featured in a national magazine 7 years ago.
From the redirected site:
About the webmaster of this site:
David Ulansey is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. He is the author of a book published by Oxford University Press (and is now completing a second book which will also be published by Oxford), and has published articles in Scientific American and numerous other scholarly journals. He is the Executive Producer of a new documentary film on the extinction crisis-- "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction"-- forthcoming from the Species Alliance, where he is Project Director.
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