Watching a documentary that says we are headed for a 6th mass extinction event.

preview: https://curiositystream.com/video/3238

I wasn't aware there has been 5. I know the one that wiped out the dinosaurs which was the last one:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/mass-extinction/

I don't know when this mass extinction will happen but I know for sure if it's not a World War Nuclear War, I won't be around to see it.

The MOOC free resource Future Learn,offer an 'Extinction' course from time to time compiled and hosted by Cape Town University, well worth participating in if you have the time!

We;re not headed for a mass extinction, were're in it.

Well, I see no evidence that we are IN a mass extinction. But I can easily believe that one can, and will, happen. Take the AIDS virus. Mankind is very lucky that it wasn't an airborne disease. We would have been gone already. We are hanging on to existence by that close a margin.

It’s ok. Elon Musk is going to get humanity on Mars well before the next extinction event is complete!

I think the bigger question is can something be considered a "mass extinction" if it affects only one species? For that species, obviously, but on a grand scale?

The biggest extinction event was one that occurred after a volcanic eruption caused sulphurous rock/ground to smoulder. It filled the atmosphere with toxic levels of Co2 and sulphuric compounds (Acid etc) that nearly completely annihilated all life on earth.

Life as we know it may have taken a very different form had that event not occurred, and life on the planet would be significantly further ahead than it is now.

I think the view that we're headed for extinction is a bit extreme. If things get that bad on the earth, we already have the ability to raise the planet's albedo which would reduce temperatures until humanity can smarten up and stop polluting the hell out of the atmosphere and ground.

Renewable energy is a logical choice for humanity - it's basically free - why the hell wouldn't you use it. I am glad to see it becoming more and more common.

99% of all species that ever lived on earth are extinct.

I go look now. Thank you.



If roaches, mosquitoes, flies, rats, mice, go extinct, it would be fantastic.

No, it isn't. That's like saying oil and coal are basically free because it's just lying there in the ground waiting for us to use it.

According to the documentary, we all came from the dominant surviving creatures after the dinosaurs were wiped out: the rat. Birds, other mammals on land and in the ocean, all evolved from the rat.

That explains a lot of people I know

What? Surely it is proven that birds are evolved dinosaurs of the Theropod subgroup. Having kept hens I know.........nasty vicious little bastards.

How is renewable energy not free?

Solar panels are free? Windmills are free?

No wonder we eat too much chicken in this house.

" Solar panels are free? Windmills are free?"

sigh... agree on solar panels that we currently produce. NASTY metals with even nastier by products with our current extraction methods...as are smart phones, lots of our computer parts etc.

Pretty sure we could build a free windmill.

Not super efficient, but "free". No power generator though...those nasty rare metals again.

Longbow I don’t get your logic at all. In order to harness and store any kind of renewable energy you need money to manufacture batteries, solar panels, etc. And besides, you don’t think national governments are going to tax the consumption of renewable energy once tax revenue from stuff like coal and oil gas has ended? Renewable energy is most certainly NOT free.

Individual renewable energy sources don't require a monthly payment once the installation fee is covered. But that option is only available to people who own or rent homes. Even a modest apartment building would require too large a system to be onsite. To power a city you'd definitely need some huge farm somewhere remote. And that entails a business or government agency to run it. And the business or government agency is going to need to charge for the service. So to make a blanket statement that "renewable energy is basically free" is, at the very least, unrealistic.

It's not one species, it's many. Obviously species go extinct naturally over time, as part of a general process. The non-obvious part (for us) is the scale at which those events happen across timescales we can't really visualise.



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