Earth has entered its sixth great mass extinction event, it's our fault, and we might not survive, s - Polidicks

Well, we do consider ourselves a pretty potent civilization, lets see if we can do anything about this.

i'm pessimistic as fuck, but i don't think we're gonna die lol, more like most of the third world will suffer HORRIBLY(especially africa/middle-east/south asia), so basically, the poor are fucked, as always. i remember reading in the news a couple of years ago, how the pentagon released a report that predicted up to 1 billion deaths due to climate change in the current century, due to crop failures and conflicts arising from climate change and hunger(it was a report on how climate change could affect US national security). here is a newer one [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-warming-presents-immediate-security-threat.html?_r=0[/url]

[QUOTE=Wizards Court;48009490]more like most of the third world will suffer HORRIBLY(especially africa/middle-east/south asia)[/QUOTE] NO

[QUOTE=Megadave;48009005]I don't know, this seems a little bit [I]sensationalist[/I].[/QUOTE] Skimming the paper now (even though obviously I'm a layman, just interested in this) and not really. Paper's written pretty ominously.

We'll get to be in some alien civilization's history books, guys!

[QUOTE=Megadave;48009005]I don't know, this seems a little bit [I]sensationalist[/I].[/QUOTE] Except is isn't. We have been steadily and completely fucking ourselves and everyone (animals/plants) and everything surrounding (support systems for the former) for over three hundred years, and over the last 90, we've upped the scale by a literal order of magnitude. While these are certainly cyclic, we have hastened this cycle vastly, on a scale and scope which most don't yet realize encompasses their entire future generations for the foreseeable future. We have completely fucked the atmosphere and the ocean, and we haven't even begun to reap the consequences of those actions. Humans, pound-to-size, are now one of the largest animals on the planet, when shit goes down, the big ones go first, and all the wishing in the world won't do a fucking thing to change that.

Why don't we just export the pollution to Mars?

[QUOTE=Trogdon;48009184]lets pump some volcanic ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight[/QUOTE] When yellowstone goes off again there'll be enough ash for everyone.

[QUOTE=OvB;48009302]A lot of republican candidates/republicans are half way through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, [B]bargaining[/B], depression and acceptance. They've gone from flat out denying it's a thing, to blaming the liberals/Gore, to (if you look at a few current candidates) "oh well if I'm president I'm going to let the science decide."[/QUOTE] I still see plenty of deniers. The guy dropping a snowball on the senate floor isn't the only guy.

How can we fix this?

[QUOTE=Havolis;48009513]NO[/QUOTE] what you mean no, one of the main catalysts for the arab spring and increased conflict in the area was precisely the rise in food prices, caused by issues brought by climate change. its already happening.

[QUOTE=Zambies!;48008972]Although this is depressing, I'm sure that our hands in science are working as hard as they can to reverse the greatest sections of damage. Never count humanity out.[/QUOTE] Yes, they have actually worked it out ages ago. Decrease energy expenditures and stop drawing energy from fossil fuels, halt deforestation and overfishing and stop erosion of arable land. It's THE fucking answer. There is no ultra convenient science magic that will effortlessly make all our problems disappear. These admittedly very painful changes that WILL absolutely destroy economy if they ever happen are the only way. Scientists have done all they could have. From here, it will be a downward pride helmed by arrogance and ignorance until people start actively dying in considerable numbers, and by then, it might be too late. [editline]20th June 2015[/editline] I don't believe humans will go outright extinct, but unless some really massive [B]social[/B] changes take place, a LOT of humans will die of unnatural causes before this starts getting better. It gonna get helluva lot worse before it gets better again.

Well, looks like I'll at least have a stable career throughout all of this. When people start to die off, the rest are going to want to hear about it. Nothing sells like disaster journalism. :downs:

We're at a crossroads. We can each make small sacrifices to save the integrity of our ecosystem in the future, or we can keep living as we do and end up all making the largest sacrifice in the end.

It's odd; when the world was confronted with the effect of CFCs, a sense of impending fiery doom came over the world's governments. Just about all nations moved together to ban them because there was solid scientific evidence that we were all going to die an early death or have a miserable life if they didn't. Why is this any different? What fucking evil bastards are paying politicians [i]how much[/i] money to continue bringing about the end of the human world through greed? What's it all for? None of their kids are going to have a stable, safe world in which to spend that money and continue holding it over us if they continue. And yet here we are. The technology exists to try and reduce the damage we're doing, certainly through power generation, but it's 'too expensive'. Am I the only one who finds it absurd that the creatures of the Earth are ultimately going to die because one of those creatures invented currency and became insatiably obsessed with it, to the point that they would reject their chance of survival for a few years of currency? As a species, on balance, we've become a blight on the planet. I used to deny humans' effect on climate change because I knew nothing would change and it was stress over nothing, like worrying about my chances of getting cancer. Now I just have little rants instead and still nothing changes.

[QUOTE] at a rate 114 times faster than normal[/QUOTE] Wondering what is normal then, and how do they gauge that "normal" extinction rate. Also, it's not really clear for me how the humanity, while being a dominant species, "could be among the first casualties". Dominants always change their habitiat, and being as dominant as the mankind means that these changes must be enormous. Of course we should consider the impact of our industry to the enviroment and develop renewable sources of energy, simply because of fossil fuels slowly drawing to a close (yet let's not forget we still have nuclear (and potentially thermonuclear) energy sources), but i don't believe that this can reduce this impact somehow, maybe just make it a little less destructive. It's just a matter of development of the civilization. I don't think we're on the verge of something terrible. Humans are very, very viable beings, we can eat almost anything and use almost everything around to our favor, so i really doubt that even a real new mass extinction could make us perish.

The article is pretty vague

[QUOTE=Jon27;48009837]The technology exists to try and reduce the damage we're doing, certainly through power generation, but it's 'too expensive'. Am I the only one who finds it absurd that the creatures of the Earth are ultimately going to die because one of those creatures invented currency and became insatiably obsessed with it, to the point that they would reject their chance of survival for a few years of currency? A[/QUOTE] Let's do something about the damage we're doing, and then... what exactly? It's not 'too expensive', it's [b]too expensive[/b] as in, not just in monetary value that you deem "arbitrary" (it's really not), but rather a strain on industry. Just because we're capable of doing something right now doesn't necessarily mean we [b]can[/b] do it right now without condemning ourselves to live in literal shit afterwards because the world's economy has gone to fuck and collapsed. That is not even accounting the fact that we don't quite know what exactly to do to revert the situation more efficiently. And figuring that out requires guess what, money, resources, so maintaining the economy at a stable rate. What's with "oh the governments are all stupid and don't understand what I, random person, understand perfectly" attitude? [QUOTE=antianan;48009852]Also, it's not really clear for me how the humanity, while being a dominant species, "could be among the first casualties". [/QUOTE] That's probably meaning not necessarily humanity as a species, but rather as a society.

Create another hole in the ozone layer to let all the hot air out!

[QUOTE=Vipes;48009260]I just realized I did a meme reply on the first page. Nice knowing you guys.[/QUOTE] "so long and thanks for all the fish" isn't really a meme, more like a reference -- i don't think it's anything to worry about, especially since what you're referencing is well liked

[QUOTE=gudman;48009875]What's with "oh the governments are all stupid and don't understand what I, random person, understand perfectly" attitude? [/QUOTE] It's more a complaint of helplessness than anything. I don't believe money is the only issue, but we do put immaterial barriers in the way of our survival and call them 'the economy', and much like the problem of space travel 'too expensive; focus on things here on Earth' it causes everyone to get into a bit of a tizz over something that, compared to the enormity of our extinction, isn't really an issue ie how much cash we have. Apparently blank checks are a childish concept but it would be a step towards fixing what we broke. I'm sorry if I came across as arrogant?

[QUOTE=gudman;48009875] That's probably meaning not necessarily humanity as a species, but rather as a society.[/QUOTE] Society is as viable as humanity is, it may become more violent in times of need, but it can't dissapear completely. Films and and books like to speculate that society is an incredibly fragile thing, but in reality its a really stable and self-sustaining system. I can't really imagine what natural events besides maybe asteroids or massive worldwide natural disasters (which can't really be caused by our actons) can make contemporary society dissapear. The funny thing is that the most dangerous enemy of the mankind is the mankind itself.

Did this just come out today? Early Saturday morning my time? Anyone else?

Elon Musk, save us!

Can anyone explain what does this really mean? I've read it like 4 times and I still don't get, all I know is we're fucked but how, why and how long until?

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;48009539]I still see plenty of deniers. The guy dropping a snowball on the senate floor isn't the only guy.[/QUOTE] There's a lot of downplayers just in this thread. "I'm sure it won't be as bad as they say it will be." "I'm sure we won't go extinct." "I'm sure we'll figure something out to fix this." "We'll be fine in the end." Etc. Downplaying is just as dangerous as denial is when it comes to this issue. I don't think people understand the magnitude to which this destruction is taking place. It's not just an atmospheric problem or a land-based problem, our oceans are rapidly deteriorating too. I also don't think people understand the complexity of these things, never mind the organisms that live within them; there is no easy or quick fix to saving them. Like cancer, we can't just make them better with some single go-to solution. They're enormously complicated, and once we screw them up (which we already have), it's an unbelievably nightmarish task trying to undo the damage that's been done. Not just a scientific nightmare, but a diplomatic/interpersonal one as well-- because we can't expect any significant progress until governments, businesses and industry, and people the world over start working together to try and make a difference. But that's not even happening reliably yet. You're an idiot if you're willing to gamble away your existence on faith by believing everything will inexplicably work out somehow and to be so arrogant to say that Stanford University, Princeton, Berkeley, Duke, and plenty of other prestigious institutions have no idea what they're talking about when they say we could easily face extinction and that we're already in the midst of a new mass extinction event (for the record, since this is the sixth, it's worth mentioning the fifth comparable mass extinction occurred [i][b]440+ million years ago[/b][/i]). Guess what, we can. For all our abilities to innovate and figure out new ways to survive, none of that matters much in the end; we're just as dependent upon nature as ever before for our survival. We're not above it, we live within it. For the present time, and for the foreseeable future, that's the case anyway. It's that same kind of "God Himself Cannot Sink This Ship"/"Too Big To Fail" mentality at work yet again. And it's fucking dangerous. It makes us lazy and optimistic to the point of absurdity that even when faced with mass destruction and devastation, we'll still manage to pull through it just fine. Somehow. Even when everything tells us we won't, we can't bring ourselves to admit it. Real life doesn't work that way. But hey, either we will or we won't. The science says we won't be fine, and that life around us won't be fine either. It doesn't really matter to me anymore because in the end, I've kind of accepted that this is just how people work. And beyond that, more importantly, whatever happens happens; in the long run of things, in the bigger picture, existence doesn't care one way or the other whether or not we survive or we die. If we live, then we're fit to do so, and if we die, then apparently we weren't fit to live.

as long as i get to play dark souls 3 first who cares

the main problem with bee endangerment is that people kill them thinking they're wasps honey bees are nice. they're good guys who don't want to do anything to you, they just help the ecosystem. if the honeybee were a person, they could crash on my couch any time. i respect the honeybee deeply, they're also kinda cute now wasps are demonic creatures bread straight from satan's asshole. they don't contribute anythinf and run around ruining people's days for no reason. if the wasp were a person, they would be lucky to be able to sleep on the sidewalk outside my house on a thursday.

Better question is what new mass "extinction" event? What the hell is going to happen?

[QUOTE=Sand Castle;48009968]the main problem with bee endangerment is that people kill them thinking they're wasps honey bees are nice. they're good guys who don't want to do anything to you, they just help the ecosystem. if the honeybee were a person, they could crash on my couch any time. i respect the honeybee deeply, they're also kinda cute now wasps are demonic creatures bread straight from satan's asshole. they don't contribute anythinf and run around ruining people's days for no reason. if the wasp were a person, they would be lucky to be able to sleep on the sidewalk outside my house on a thursday.[/QUOTE] The global bee population drop has very little to do with people going and smacking bees they see, really. Bees primarily have issues with parasitic plague and generally the health of the swarms seems in bad shape around the world, but it has more of to do with pesticides and other environmental factors than with anyone swatting them.