The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded

[LAOLONG]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33209548

[3bob]

Cobi, I'd suggest that you maybe copy a short paragraph from the article to go with your post, thus more likely people will go into it further.

[Marblehead]

Cobi, I'd suggest that you maybe copy a short paragraph from the article to go with your post, thus more likely people will go into it further.

I agree.   I want to hear Cobi speak.

 

However, from what I have heard from other sources the article is valid and a very possible series of events.

 

Earth's climate is changing.  This will naturally cause the extinction of many species.

 

Humans are destroying the resources we need to exist.

 

Change is coming.

[dust]

Not sure how I feel about it.

 

On the one hand, any extinction is obviously not going to be very much fun for whoever is involved.

 

On the other hand, the future of mankind is of no particular interest to me. I, and everyone I love, and everyone else, is going to die either way. Is there some special reason we need to make our species survive forever? Other than arrogance? And I haven't much more attachment to homo sapiens than any other species. My dog is far better company than most humans.

 

Eventually life will return. And eventually, the planet will be consumed by a black hole (or whatever is supposed to happen). Humans will have died off long before that.

 

I just wish we could learn to do less harm to each other -- and all other life -- while we're here.

[LAOLONG]

on the optimistic side birth rate is dropping all over the world.

on the other side the economic system ENCOURAGE consumption.

and when more then 2000,000,000 Chinese and indians are becoming

middle class, the consumption rise.

[Aetherous]

[SonOfTheGods]

Extinction is part of evolution

 

(the last part)

[vonkrankenhaus]

"The Earth has entered a new period of extinction"

 

Rather than the Earth "entered" - how about "We are right now causing on Earth,,,"

 

Earth did not just stumble upon a "period of extinction" in its travels.

 

Most of what we are seeing in terms of extinction and destruction has been deliberately enacted by human beings - most of them just following a few others whose assumed authority and/or salesmanship they believed.

 

It took a lot of work by many generations of people to attain all this world-scale destruction. The Earth didn't just "enter" a "period" and then all of it just "happened".

 

In fact, most people's working/consuming life efforts have been dedicated to producing this outcome.

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[voidisyinyang]

We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2].

 

Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us — humans.

 

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

 

with humans next  - this means we are raping the ocean of the fish, the coral reefs dying off from acidification and algae "dead zones" and the plastic islands growing - with PCB carcinogenic pollution eaten by birds and fish.

 

Not to mention vast clearcuting deforestation, toxic waste, nuclear radiation, land desertification, using up fresh water, depleting oil causing global warming, etc.

 

The large mammals have stopped evolving since the 1970s.

 

 

these extinctions will precipitate complex chain reactions leading to many other extinctions in all taxa...it is evident that few reserves in the world are NOT large enough to protect many of their mammals and birds from immediate decline in fitness (in the worst of cases) or a long-term erosion of genetic variation and evolutionary potential.

 

p. 132 Conservation and Evolution.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=NDQ4AAAAIAAJ&q=mammals#v=snippet&q=mammals&f=false

 

So essentially Michael Soule, author of the above book, argues that the human species as the most new large mammal species is too naive, ecologically, to have the wisdom not to take down the rest of the species with us.

 

In other words - modern humans are a genetic bottleneck - we are less diverse than chimpanzees are to each other and less diverse than bonobos are to each other (are closest primate cousins).

 

So 70,000 years ago there was a supervolcano and only a few thousand humans survived. We lived ecologically for thousands of years but as we spread around the world 40,000 years ago - and then established agriculture 10,000 years ago we biologically lost contact with our ontological enlightenment roots.

 

Modern white people are from monocultural wheat farming first started 9,000 BC  - wheat farming lacking vitamin D and so is malnutrition, compared to fish diets off the coasts and eating meat organs from hunters.

 

And so the modern wheat diet also causes not just malnutrition but it leads to unhealthy gut-brain interactions and the left brain dominance from phonetic writing shut off the modern human from the ecological balance - the spirituality in tune with ecology.

 

So yeah evolution will continue but only in terms of the 3 billion plus years of life on Earth dominated by bacteria and mushrooms, etc. which can survive nuclear radiation.

 

The evolution "potential" of life on Earth is in dramatic decline right now - probably the worst ever in the 3 billion plus years of life on Earth.

[voidisyinyang]

http://thedaobums.com/topic/25524-the-false-problem-of-species-extinction/page-2a

 

 thread a few years ago on thetaobums claiming species extinction is  a false problem.

 

Hilariously not funny.

[voidisyinyang]

This new Nature episode on the Macque monkeys being eating to extinction...

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-funkiest-monkeys-the-funkiest-monkeys/8625/

 

this is a very heart-opening doc -

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-funkiest-monkeys-the-funkiest-monkeys/8625/

Edited June 20, 2015 by Innersoundqigong

[Geof Nanto]

I have many thoughts on this very complex topic. I'll make a start by quoting a passage from David Cooper's Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective. It's a perspective that reflects much of my actual day to day life as someone who lives surrounded by wildlife in a semi-wilderness area. However, it certainly doesn't encapsulate the entirety of my view. 

 

 

The Daoist contribution  

 

It is because self-cultivation is not focused on the 'inner' rather than the 'outer' that it requires an appropriate attunement and comportment towards the natural world. Engagements with nature of the kinds described in earlier chapters help to secure the moral space – the arena in which to develop virtue – which Daoists hope to occupy. This is why the metaphor of Daoists as gardeners of the world – as cultivators of personal landscapes – is an apt one.

 

While Daoists engage with natural environments, their engagement is also a retreat – not from an 'outer' to an 'inner' world, but from a frenzied world of activity and ambition to a quieter haven. From this haven, they have no illusions about 'saving the planet'. Like one distinguished nature writer, they eschew "plans for reorganisation and reconstruction". But, also like him, they will want "to reduce somewhat the level of suffering where [they] encountered it"" and, more generally, to serve in small, local and undramatic ways to protect and enhance the natural environments with which they engage. In doing so, they live naturally or spontaneously, for their actions are not dictated by principles and plans, but are mindful and pliant responses to the situations and contexts they encounter.

 

Daoists, then, are unlikely to be found among `eco-warriors', but they will be found tending gardens, feeding birds in winter, protecting local wildlife from clumsy combine harvesters, opposing plans for a factory farm near their villages, and encouraging their neighbours to appreciate the useful uselessness of a threatened grove of trees. If this sounds insufficiently radical, one should recall that it is a way of living that is achieved only through a deep transformation of the self.

[gendao]

On 6/20/2015 at 11:44 AM, voidisyinyang said:

We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2]

This staggeringly stark tragedy bears repeating...as I just recently realized the very same thing on my own, as well!

 

7.5 billion humans now are the equivalent of a giant asteroid hitting the planet!

Edited July 28, 2017 by gendao

[voidisyinyang]

yep - the modern civilization mass extinction is an order of magnitude faster than any previous extinction crisis on the planet.

 

https://guymcpherson.com/2017/02/faster-than-expected/