The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?

[mapuc]

I thought this could be an interesting discussion-
Are we the human behind the 6th mass extinction ?
As claimed by some in the following article

There have been five Mass Extinction events in the history of Earth's biodiversity, all caused by dramatic but natural phenomena. It has been claimed that the Sixth Mass Extinction may be underway, this time caused entirely by humans.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12816

I personally wish that the text wasn't so compact.

Markus

[Platapus]

According to their own cited definition, a mass extinction event has not occurred, but may occur in a century or so in the future. Given that, I question Elizabeth Kolbert's assertion that we are experiencing a mass extinction event that is "caused entirely by humans".



While a claim can be made that human activities have done little to help the environment and the planet's species, it is hubris to think that humans and only humans could cause a mass extinction event without the wide spread of nuclear weapons.



The earth and the species on this earth will be here long after humans are a forgotten extinct species. The earth will not be the same and neither will the surviving species. That's evolution.



According to some sources, about 95% of all the species that have lived on the Earth are already extinct.



"Extinction is the norm, survival the exception" -- Dr. Carl Sagan.

[MaDef]

Are we the human behind the 6th mass extinction No, but Homo Sapiens will become a victim of extinction, if the species doesn't learn to colonize space in the not to distant future.

World population was 3.3 Billion when I was born, it is now at almost 8 Billion, you guys do the math.

[Rockstar]

Ask yourself what the consensus is when the earliest forms of writing and evidence of modern man is? And I’d wager a so called extinction event occurred just before that.

In other words it may have not been so long ago that man was nearly wiped off the face of earth.

Eye of the Sahara.

Who knows for sure but something to think about. But I’m sure we could mandate ourselves out the next event LOL

[Catfish]

The eye of the Sahara is most probably a geologic dome, entirely earth-made, and it appeared before there was any life on earth. Its contemporary appearance is due to erosion.
https://geologyscience.com/gallery/eye-of-the-sahara-or-richat-structure/

Which does not mean that some exterior impact event could not wipe out the better part of life on earth anytime, as well as some supervolcano could, from the Phlegraean Fields to Yellowstone.
Or a nuclear war, or a biological one, or a plague. We have a lot to choose from :D

[Skybird]

This 6th mass extinction has not yet occured, but is running right now. We live in the midst of it.

There are many species who profoundly change their environment and that way effect its ecology. Ants. Bibers. Some are predatory and have an influence due to annihilating other life forms, others are builders and constructors and form their environment that way.

No other species has brought this trait to such heights, like humans have. From winning sand for making concrete to mass agriculture and monocultural farming, from mining to oil drilling, or metropole building and cretaign tnheir owjhn local micro climate zones and condensing the underground or tunneling it. And these are only local things. If you add their second-line systemic consequences, you cannot get around that humans are the cause for this global mass extinction.

Gen 1, 26-28:

"28 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The perfect recipe for desaster. Ecospheres cannot survice with such a management doctrine. The bible's call is for hierarchic order - but ecospheres are systemic. Not dominion, but symbiosis is the word we must watch out for.