We've Entered the Age of Mass Extinction: Goodbye Fish and a Whole Lot More

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Scott Thill

We've Entered the Age of Mass Extinction: Goodbye Fish and a Whole Lot More
Paleontologist Peter Ward talks about the threats from global warming, rising population and our own plain stupidity.

August 8, 2011 |


Mass extinction is finally fighting its way back into the news cycle, thanks to recent scary reports on climate change from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the United Nations Environment Program and the July issue of Science. But University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has been there, done that, and he's still depressed as hell.

"I wrote a book in 1994 called The End of Evolution: A Journey in Search of Clues to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Earth that said, within in a decade or two, we'd be seeing these monumental destructions, and people laughed at it," Ward explained by phone from Seattle. "I wrote a book just last year about sea-level rise called The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps, saying that things look pretty desperate for the next 60 to 80 years and got almost no reviews. Luckily, I'm not going to be alive to see the worst of it. But the sad thing is that it's horrible to be right, just horrible. Somebody gave me the foresight to see what's coming, and I don't like it."

Ward's work has been consistently ahead of the curve and has transformed him from a rigorous scientist with no shortage of data to a climate-change Cassandra who scares the shit out of the status quo. At least initially, Our Flooded Earth was too hot, pardon the pun, to handle in 2010, but the National Geographic Channel has based this year's series, Earth Under Water, on its fearsome predictions of the significant sea-level rise that global warming has already priced into the environmental picture. Ward also appeared in every episode of Animal Planet's 2009 series Animal Armageddon, a CGI-rich program examining how different species succumbed or survived the various extinction events in Earth's extensive history. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/151886/we%27ve_entered_the_age_of_mass_extinction%3A_goodbye_fish_and_a_whole_lot_more/

[frebrd]

1. With any luck........

it will include humans!

[femrap]

3. Sometimes I think

that Mother Nature is our only solution to the mess that greedy humans have created. With a shrug of her shoulder and a tilt on her axis, we could find the human population decreased dramatically. May she shake the fleas and greedy leeches from her body and leave some who want to work together in a cooperative fashion.

[rpannier]

10. With any luck...

The world will end for (most if not all) humans in 2012

[FirstLight]

2. That's what makes me think

that all the 'news' about banks, money, riots, wars, etc. is just an illusion...the REAL shit hitting the fan is how the EARTH is changing right under our feet and before our eyes.

THAT is going to be the real news over time... :scared:

[bhikkhu]

4. and much malaise here that we can't get 3-5% economic growth

...blind to the notion that rapid economic growth drives all the waste, resource depletion, habitat loss, etc that fuels the fire. I hope this year, will be the one where more people become aware.

[PonyJon]

16. "Growth" is always the political mantra.

Raping the earth so brain dead construction workers can have jobs so they can afford to spew their spawn is what drives the whole system. The so called american "work ethic" is bullshit propaganda from capitalists to get the masses to work overtime for free. All Americans should walk off the job at 2pm everyday and beat the shit out of any work ethic mother fuck scabs. A return to quality rather than quantity would benefit the whole world. Fuck production for consumption. http://october2011.org/welcome STOP THE MACHINE be in Washington DC October 6 !!!

[tex-wyo-dem]

5. You got that right, FL...

I've been saying for years that the environment and climate change should be at the top of the list of important issues, outweighing everything else.

I'm often met by crickets.

[chervilant]

15. You...

Me... and a growing number of other concerned individuals.

Given our species' narcissism and unfettered hedonism, we're much too late.

[Hydra]

8. It's not an illusion, per se

The people who know this is coming are making big plans to survive it.

Those plans don't include us. In their minds, we're not "worthy" enough to continue to live, and they are.

So they're going to rob us blind and then retreat into their shelters. Welcome to the new reality.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. Now imagine Scary Perry's "EPA" and "Drill, Baby, Drill" attitude in the WH:

:nuke:

[Hydra]

9. We have that already

Or did you forget about the mass die off in the Gulf due to BP and an ineffectual Gov't response?

[cyberpj]

7. ......." Thanks for all the fish ! "

[xchrom]

11. recommend

[AlbertCat]

12. I wrote a book in 1994 called The End of Evolution:

I wrote a book in 1994 called The End of Evolution: A Journey in Search of Clues to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Earth


Well, What a crappy title. Mass extinctions do not end evolution. In fact, they stimulate it, leaving niches open to be filled by new species. And it's like the 5th mass extinction on Earth, not the 3rd.


Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (the dinosaur's demise)

The Triassic–Jurassic extinction event marks the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods, 199.6 million years ago,

The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying, was an extinction event that occurred 251.4 Ma (million years ago) Earth's largest extinction

The Late Devonian extinction It lasted from 374.5 ± 2.6 million years ago to 359.2 ± 2.5 million years ago.

The Ordovician–Silurian extinction event, or quite commonly the Ordovician extinction, was the third-largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history. Between about 450 Ma to 440 Ma,


So this will be the 6th.

[bhikkhu]

13. The Permian is the one I've read most about

...and its pretty eye-opening, as far as what can happen. For millions of years, rich strata full of the remains of a huge diversity of plant and animal life were laid down, then suddenly, all over the world, BANG - everything ended. In many places there was nothing after but mushroom or fungus, for tens of thousands of years following "the event". Something like 95% of all life died, including whole types of life.

Lots of theories why, but I don't recall whether a cause was ever settled on.

[Prometheus Bound]

17. Yes, strange how neither writer nor publisher caught the title error.

I'm guessing the two mass extinctions he's referring to are the first and third on your list.

[GliderGuider]

14. Ward's 2007 book "Under a Green Sky" is also worth reading - if you no longer feel like sleeping.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006386.html

Waves slowly lap on the quiet shore, slow-motion waves with the consistency of gelatin. Most of the shoreline is encrusted with rotting organic matter, silk-like swathes of bacterial slick now putrefying under the blazing sun... We look out on the surface of the great sea itself, and as far as the eye can see there is a mirrored flatness, an ocean without whitecaps. Yet that is not the biggest surprise. From shore to the horizon, there is but an unending purple color -- a vast, flat, oily purple. No fish break its surface, no birds or any other kind of flying creatures dip down looking for food. The purple color comes from vast concentrations of floating bacteria, for the oceans of Earth have all become covered with a hundred-foot thick veneer of purple and green bacterial soup. ...There is one final surprise. We look upward, to the sky. ... We are under a pale green sky, and it has the smell of death and poison. We have gone to Nevada of 200 million years ago only to arrive under the transparent atmospheric glass of a greenhouse extinction event, and it is poison, heat and mass death that are found in this greenhouse."

[chervilant]

18. Our species tends to 'kill the messenger' when confronted with our hubris

I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring when I was 12. When I finished Carson's iconic treatise, I made two fundamental decisions: 1) I would not bear children, and 2) I would be an activist for the rest of my life. I am thankful that I've achieved both these goals, considering our species' imminent ecocide.

During my 55 years on this planet, I've witnessed:

~heavy metal pollution of virtually all of our groundwater

~inexplicable declines in honeybee populations

~nutritional deficiencies in almost every fruit or vegetable harvested since the 70s

~vast swaths of soil erosion and silt runoff

~measurable declines in the quality and flavor of most produce

~GLOBAL monopolies on seed stocks

~cross contamination of vegetable foodstuffs from cattle and dairy operations

~inhumane treatment of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, calves, chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks

~Bhopal

~Chernobyl

~Fukushima

~oil spills in the Gulf

~the nationwide existence of 'Superfund Sites' that are so toxic, massive amounts of our tax dollars have been allocated to 'clean up' these abandoned, hazardous areas (visit Superfund websites and you'll find "Superfund for Kids!")

~destruction of the planet's rain forests (actually, widespread deforestation)

~global climate change, resulting in extreme weather conditions worldwide

~a pile of floating garbage--in surface area, twice the size of the state of Texas--in the doldrums of the Pacific Ocean (and another similar carpet of plastic in the Atlantic...)

~a measurable decline in the amount of food fish we pull out of our oceans and lakes (with toxic levels of mercury in tuna and other large fish)

~an exponential increase in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other diseases directly linked to the consumption of refined sugars (let's not even BEGIN to discuss hydrogenated oils...)

~a growing percentage (almost half) of functionally illiterate (thus, easily manipulated) adults in the US

~a now ubiquitous 'message delivery system' (television) that has turned a significant number of humans into distracted, misinformed zombies

~a dangerous economic system that concentrates the wealth of this planet into the hands of a VERY few at the expense of the VERY many

~destructive, endless 'wars' based on lies and profitability (don't get me started about Depleted Uranium)

~a radical shift to exponential growth (read 'change') that few recognize and even fewer discuss.

Sigh...

We are like a plague of locusts on this planet, fouling the air, water, and land while destroying entire ecosystems. AND, in these exponential times, the catastrophic economic 'transformation' we're witnessing in our global economy promises to inflict challenges we have yet to envision.

Did you know that a third of US students surveyed do not expect to live into their old age? (In case you don't remember, for teenagers thirty is old age...)

The 'whining' Obama and his sycophants denigrate is actually the justifiable grumbling of the hoi polloi, as more of us awaken to the reality of the jack boots of the uber wealthy clamping down across our necks. These vile corporatists are daily increasing their stranglehold on our lives and our livelihood. Do they expect us to go quietly into their dark night?!

Our species has reached critical mass. The decisions we make RIGHT NOW will determine whether we continue to evolve into the erudite, peaceful and creative beings we KNOW we can become; or devolve into the ignorant, aggressive, and fearful beings we vociferously deny being now and in much of our past.

At this unavoidable fork in our evolutionary path, which way do YOU think we'll go?