The Anthropocene extinction

155 thoughts to “The Anthropocene extinction”

1. Well, at least we have been able to stave off cannibalism, so far. Though, beware of those selling Soylent Green.

2. Ron,

   Human population will peak and decline. That’s not a “green” solution, but it will solve the problem.

   For Japan we have the following from,

   JonMcDonald – Own work based on Japan Statistical Yearbook,, Chapter 2: Population and Households, table 2-7 (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Statistics Bureau, retrieved 13 January 2016) and Population Projections for Japan (January 2012): 2011 to 2060, table 1-1 (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, retrieved 13 January 2016).

   

   1. Yes, I have read numerous projections on that, but it’s unlikely to happen before most of the wild animal demise. The last part of the population growth is expected to be where most of the wild animals exist now.

      1. Nonsense. Large wild animals, sure. But we are a hell of a long way from wiping out the mice, squirrels, canaries, and sparrows. If humans stabilize population and survive, lots and lots of wild animals will survive.

   2. Dennis, the chart you show is for Japan. A chart for the USA or Europe would look similar. But it does not resemble what such a chart for Asia would look like, and it does not remotely resemble what a chart for Africa would show. Africa is is the last refuge for wild animals and the population in Africa is expected to almost quadruple by 2100.

      but it will solve the problem.

      No, no, a thousand times no, it will not solve the problem. By 2100 all the megafauna on earth will be gone, as well as most of the lesser fauna. Rats, mice, and insects such as cockroaches will survive, no problem for them. You must have heard the old proverb about locking the barn door after the horse has already been stolen. Well, you can’t solve an extinction problem after the fact. Extinction is forever.

      1. Wildlife is dying out due to habitat destruction, over hunting, toxic pollution, invasion by alien species and climate change — making room for more people. The population of the world today is about 200,000 people larger than yesterday. Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the US by 2050. The UN projects world population to reach 10 billion in the year 2056. Dennis can’t see any problem with this so why do you?

         1. You are correct Doug, only people matter. Animals are just dumb animals. We can do without them, especially the wild kind. After all, what good are they anyway? Put a few in zoos so we can remember what used to populate the territory that we humans now occupy. That was the late Julian Simon’s solution.
            /sarc

            1. A geologist’s (my) perspective: If Earth’s history is compared to a calendar year, modern human life has existed for 23 minutes. Meanwhile, we have used one third of Earth’s natural resources in the last 0.2 seconds. Simultaneously, the size of the “global middle class” increases — from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and, baring disaster(s), 4.9 billion by 2030, consuming even more-and-more resources.

         2. Ron and Doug,

            I am not saying there is no problem, yes population is still climbing, just like oil output. In both cases this will not continue forever.

            The only difference with Africa relative to Japan is the peak will occur later.

            The demographic transition can occur rapidly, as was the case in Iran and South Korea.

            I agree there is little that can be done to reduce the extinction rate in the mean time.

            1. The only difference with Africa relative to Japan is the peak will occur later.

               No, that is not the only difference. Sub-Sahara Africa is a desperately poor place, with the exception of part of South Africa. Nigeria will never see a demographic transition and neither will the DRC, nor Niger nor any of the other desperately poor countries of Sub-Sahara Africa.

               Also, a demographic transition requires a massive increase in energy consumption. Take a look at my African population chart below. Africa will have 4 billion people in 2100. South Korea has 51 million. Just imagine for one minute, if you can, what it would take for 4 billion people to live like the 51 million in South Korea. Imagine the energy that they would consume. Imagine the resources they would consume. It will never happen.

               1. The demographic transition is already happening in Nigeria and this is proven by data.

                  So stop bullshitting about things you do not understand.

                  Zero respect, Ron, zero. You are allowing your biases to prevent you from seeing the data.

               2. No, you are the bullshitter, Nathanael. The article I posted stated that the demographic transition had stalled in Nigeria. The article is my source, my data. Read the article then tell the author of the article at the Wilson Center thinktank that he is a lying bullshitter.

                  Where the fuck is your data? Either post it or shut the fuck up.

                  Why Has the Demographic Transition Stalled in Sub-Saharan Africa?

                  Only two-thirds of married women in Niger and Nigeria have knowledge of modern contraception.

               3. Ron, FWIW, I expect a major pandemica in Africa in the not so distant future. Just about every 6 months there is a serious outbreak of deadly disease. Sooner or later one of these outbreaks will go pandemic and cull 10% to 30% of the population in Africa. I think it will happen when the next energy crisis unfolds as food shortages lead to mal-nutriention making a pandemic easier to spread.

                  But I think your right about the remaining large wildlife disappearing. I always hoped that the USA would set up a African Wildlife park in the CONUS, and start bringing over endangered African animals here. At least there would have been a chance for avoiding extinction.

                  Sadly, I still strongly believe we are heading into a global nuclear war. When the Debt Demographic, & Resources crisis’ merge their will be World War 3. Once a nuclear war occurs, extinction losses will easily surpass KT. Not only will industrial nations use nuclear weapons, they likely will also use biological weapons too.

                  If by some miracle Nuclear war is avoided. Than it likely human population will be capped in the next 20 years as energy resources become constrained, and as old diseases that were treatable with anti-biotics because difficult, or impossible to treat again. Much like Oil discovery has dropped off the map, so has development of new anti-biotics. Already some of the most common diseases now have untreatable strains: TB, Gonorrhea, typhoid, etc.

            2. Africa is a continent and I don’t know that it can be treated as a whole like that. Having said that, one thing all the countries have in common is a history of colonialism that has left, in most, deep seated tribal, religious and class conflicts, which I think militate against achieving the sort of peace needed to get prosperity and population control. In many places property rights, especially for women, are rudimentary at best.

               I think, without exception, countries that have seen big drops in birth rates have it happen two generations after equally big drops in death rates, and those come as a result of improved medicine, education, democracy (including relaxation of religious dogma) and security.

      2. Japan has almost no immigration, Europe has a lot, but with the populist parties taking over that might reverse and go negative, or even just a continuing economic slow down might see people leaving anyway, assuming there’s somewhere to go. All of which are the sort of things that would be predicted for the early stages of a collapse.

         1. George — Japan is a relatively unique country and it is disingenuous to use it as a model for population projections in other countries.

            “A central tenet of Nihonjinron — a popular genre of writing on national identity — is that the Japanese are a homogeneous people (tanitsu minzoku) who constitute a racially unified nation. While Nihonjinron has been thoroughly discredited in academic writing, it remains deeply rooted in popular discourse. The official report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, for example, described a disaster that was “made in Japan,” and identified its major causes as groupism, insularity and a reluctance to question authority…

            The no-immigration principle is an institutionalization of the homogeneous-people discourse. The principle basically states that Japan does not accept migrants. Indeed, the M-word (imin in Japanese) is markedly absent in legal, media and popular discourse, where it is replaced by euphemisms such as “entrants” and “foreign workers.” On the policy side, this means that it is necessary to do as much as possible to prevent foreigners in general from staying long or settling down. Tessa Morris-Suzuki argues that this principle has remained relatively unchanged since the first Nationality Law of 1899, which aimed to a) prevent an influx of unskilled labor, and b) restrict access to Japanese nationality.”

            https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/18/voices/japans-immigration-principle-looking-solid-ever/

            1. Doug Wrote:
               “The principle basically states that Japan does not accept migrants.”

               I think its also because no one wants to immigrate to Japan. Learning Japanese is very difficult, the cost of living is extremely high, and the quality of life there isn’t great.

      3. You have a very strange and biased definition of “wild animals”. Ecologically, the wild frogs are important; the wild tigers not so much.

         1. Nathanael, you have to be a fucking blooming idiot. There are about 4,740 different species of known frogs in the  world. There is one species of tiger, only one. There are 9 subspecies, but three of those are already extinct, leaving only six.

            All subspecies of tigers are capable of interbreeding, meaning they are all the same species.

            There are more species of frogs left in the wild than actual tigers left in the wild. However there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild. That should tell us something about how endangered they are.

            1. Losing one species of big cat is a shame but losing hundreds of species of frogs is a mass extinction in progress.

               Frogs Are on the Verge of Mass Extinction, Scientists Say
               “Extinction rates are now four orders-of-magnitude higher than background, and at least another 6.9 percent of all frog species may be lost within the next century, even if there is no acceleration in the growth of environmental threats.” That means that reptiles and amphibians are going extinct at 10,000 times the rate of other organisms.
               “Thus, the data suggest that a runaway train of extinction is now likely to produce what would be seen as a global mass extinction on the ultimately more important landscape of geological time,” Alroy writes in the paper. It’s not surprising that frogs are especially vulnerable, though. “They’re seen as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ group because they seem to suffer large population losses more easily than other groups,” Alroy said. “What was surprising was the geographic pattern of frog extinctions.”
               

               https://www.ecowatch.com/frogs-are-on-the-verge-of-mass-extinction-scientists-say-1882106675.html

               1. I know Fish, but he was not speaking of all species of frogs. And your article is not either.

                  at least another 6.9 percent of all frog species may be lost within the next century,

                  Yes, that is bad, very bad, but it is no better in the rest of the natural world.

                  Current Extinction Rate 10 Times Worse Than Previously Thought

                  Life on earth is remarkably diverse. Globally, it is estimated that there are 8.7 million species living on our planet, excluding bacteria. Unfortunately, human activities are wiping out many species and it’s been known for some time that we are increasing the rate of species extinction. But just how dire is the situation? According to a new study, it’s 10 times worse than scientists previously thought with current extinction rates 1,000 times higher than natural background rates. The work has been published in Conservation Biology.

                  Okay, 6.9 percent of frogs in the next century is very bad. However, I would suggest that extinction of 1000 times the natural background rate in the rest of wild species is ????

               2. You jump back and forth on this Ron. I thought your main premise was the loss of large mammalian species. Losing over 400 species of frogs this century (which I think will be low) compared to how many species of large wild mammals? Then there are the other amphibians and reptiles too.

                  If we lose the frogs, part of the reason is loss of insects which is very bad. Mostly it’s due to pesticides and herbicides along with other pollution.

                  I am getting a personal view of what future extinction will look like.
                  In may locale there is a dearth of insects compared to just a decade ago, most species gone. One frog species came back this year after having none for several years, making for a total of one compared to a previous 12. I did find one toad. Snakes are down to one species and rare. Of course with the loss of insects, the bird population falls and species leave with a few others moving in that are more omnivorous and common.
                  Mostly some ants,flies and a few mosquitos, a couple of bee types and even wasps are getting rare. The spider population this year is minimal.
                  Comparatively, we have lost only one large mammal species (considering anything from possum size up), the black bear. No tracks or bear sightings this year so far.
                  With the lower insect population, the fish are not as abundant.
                  No crickets or grasshoppers, zero. I must admit the Katydids and carpenter bees are tough and hanging in there.
                  So how do you measure extinction, from the bottom up or the top down? Just the animals or the plants too?

               3. So how do you measure extinction, from the bottom up or the top down? Just the animals or the plants too?

                  Simple! You look at entire ecosystems.

                  Loss of insects, frogs, birds, corals, tropical rain forests, coastal mangroves, etc… means you you have disruption of formerly stable complex non linear interlinked webs of life.

                  Generally speaking, these ecosystem disruptions affect the long term survivability of apex megafauna such as tigers that depend on the stability of said ecosystems.

                  So IMHO loss of hundreds of insect and frogs species on relatively short time scales, are much more disruptive and significant in terms of consequences than the loss of tigers.

                  The Loss of tigers is a species exctinction event, but in conjunction with massive losses of insect bird and frog species it is what a mass exctinction event begins to like!

               4. I agree with Fred. The large megafauna are just what we notice first. But they are a very important indicator. Loss of habitat destroys everything that previously occupied that habitat.

                  By 2050 the total wild terrestrial vertebrate biomass will be less than one percent of what it was 10,000 years ago. Most of the megafauna will be completely extinct, gone forever!

                  But that is the way it has always happened in all major extinctions. That is not a way of measuring it, as you implied, that’s just the way it is. The big animals always go first. To imply that big animals are not all that important, as Nathanael did, is just down in the dirt stupid.

                  And I am not jumping back and forth, I have consistently and simply stated it as it is.

               5. Look at the major deltas and bays of the world. Pick ones you can imagine. These places had been teaming with a vast diversity of life before humans had metal, and fossil fuel.
                  Millions of birds of all sorts, amphibians in the billions, crustaceans and mollusks, massive schools of fish, land and sea mammals. Life thick and vibrant. Nature as abundant and as abrupt in life and death as it can be.
                  Sure there were times when algae blooms got toxic, or cyclones thrashed the region, or the rivers carried suffocating silt loads from upstream geologic upheaval. But by and large these places were just incredible concentrations of life.
                  Now go there. There is still life. It is generally a mere shadow of the prior vibrant self. By most measures the web of life is tattered in these places. The mass of animal life, the concentration of heavy metals in the cytoplasm, the level of dissolved oxygen in the waters, the number of species, the clarity of the water, the diminished extent of the estuaries, are all indicators of extremely poor health of these ecosystems.
                  In healthy habitats that we leave alone, life will thrive. We have severely degraded the available habitat of the planet. The only chance for a healthy web of life is for us to back off. Not just from the scrubby, frozen, rocky marginal paces, but also from the lush places, like river deltas, marshes, and thick forests that grow on deep soils.
                  The primary way to move in that direction is to downsize the population. Intentionally.
                  Secondary measures, like living more simply, are also important, but less so. IMO (not so humble)

                  btw- I read Limits to Growth in 9th grade science class, and intentionally have had no children ( despite lots of practice in the method).

               6. In reply to Hickory:

                  The only chance for a healthy web of life is for us to back off. Not just from the scrubby, frozen, rocky marginal paces, but also from the lush places, like river deltas, marshes, and thick forests that grow on deep soils.

                  Really now, do you think there is a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening? No, we will continue to behave like we have always behaved in the past, simply because it is our nature to do so.

                  We evolved to compete with other species for territory and resources. You may see the problem and even a solution Hickory, but populations do not.

               7. Ron-“Really now, do you think there is a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening? ”

                  Unfortunately, like you I do not.

               8. The Little Things That Run the World.
                  http://faculty.washington.edu/timbillo/Readings%20and%20documents/ABRIDGED%20READINGS%20for%20PERU/Wilson_1987_Little_things_that_run.pdf

                  
                  Future of Conservation
                  Why Small Animals Are Huge for Conservation

                  The tiniest of creatures keep the fabric of our world together, but are often overlooked

                  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/small-animals-are-huge-conservation-180962740/

               9. Let me try to make my position a bit clearer. There are only one species of land animal as large as the elephant, the elephant. There are only a very few species as large as a rhino, the rhino, the hippo and perhaps a couple of more.

                  If you plotted species according to size it would look like a pyramid, with one species as large as an elephant, perhaps a thousand as large as a dog, and millions as large as an ant and perhaps a billion the size of bacteria.

                  But plotting the number of species according to size, the plot would look like a pyramid. That’s why the total terrestrial vertebrate biomass in 2050 will be less than one percent of what it was 10,000 years ago. Only a few hundred megafauna species will be gone, but that will be all of them except one species of great ape, while thousands of smaller species will also be extinct.

                  But it will be the megafauna that will suffer the most. We will drive all of them into extinction while we may drive only 10% of the much smaller species into extinction.

                  All species are important, but what I am explaining is just the way it is happening and the way it has happened in all past major extinctions. In the last great extinction, all the dinosaurs, except a few species of tiny feathered ones, went extinct. But most of the tiny mammalian species survived, thank goodness. Well, I am not sure how many of the mammalian species survived, but at least one did. And it survived because it was small and could likely burrow into the ground for protection… and perhaps live on grubs and/or roots.

               10. Most of the large mammals were long gone by the time the pyramids were built. By the time the industrial revolution occurred the large animal species were highly reduced in numbers and range.
                   Now they are even more so, but I guess the window of experience trumps the window of time and knowledge.

               11. Ron P,

                   I agree with your point but we rejoice in three species of elephant, not one: Africa has two, the savanna elephant and the forest elephant, and they aren’t particularly closely related; Asia has the Indian elephant of south and southeast Asia.

               12. Synapsid, though the African elephant and the Asian Elephant are often regarded as separate species, other taxonomists disagree and regard them as simply different subspecies. That is, they would be very capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. I agree with the latter but it is not really a point worth arguing over.

                   At any rate, no one argues there are three, only two, the African elephant and the Asian elephant. Or one, the elephant.

                   Thanks for the comment.

               13. 1) Different species may be able to cross breed but are unlikely to do so in normal situations. Physical separation or physical appearance can produce species that would not normally interbreed but are, technically, able to do so.
                   2) Yes, 3 elephant species, more correctly species and sub species, though the work on this is fairly recent.

                   NAOM

               14. 1) Different species may be able to cross breed but are unlikely to do so in normal situations.

                   No, different species cannot crossbreed and produce fertile offspring. If they do manage to produce offspring, like a horse and a jackass, they produce an infertile offspring, a mule.

                   Species: A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction.

                   I understand that the meaning of the word “species” is not fully agreed upon by most taxonomists. They have argued about it for ages. I am not about to join that argument.

               15. I wonder if Neanderthal gals were pretty?

               16. You’re welcome, Ron.

                   The research I’m referring to was published in PLoS Biology in December 2010 and has been widely accepted. It’s genomic work on nuclear DNA and carries our understanding beyond earlier mitochondrial-DNA work.

                   There’s a comment and summary in Nature News for 21 December 2010; it includes some quotes from David Reich on the research.

   3. Dennis

      The destruction of our environment is already upon us.

      The poor are affected now but as food production falls people like you will be affected and sooner than you think.

      https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2017/02/ocean-fish-stocks-on-verge-collapse-irin-report/

      water scarcity, soil erosion and fish depletion will impact us all.

3. But, but, don’t all the world’s religions agree on at least one major point? Human beings are the top of the of the pay grade on this planet.
   You know, it wouldn’t surprise this reader if members of the local ‘House of Worship’ weren’t complicit in the road side supply chain shown above, in any case we know for damned sure the House of Worship pirate ship officer corps are up to their collective hips in Fracking, Deforestation and pretty much everything else to denude this little stellar space ship of its once glorious beauty.
   But wait, there’s more as the adverts say: One of the major House of Worship franchises is so enamored of the Human Beings are Tops meme that they will not allow either contraception or abortions of said humans
   Me? I’m fully on the side of the poor little innocent buggers dangling on those poles.
   Humans disgust me, they really do! Actually the HoW’s disgust me even more.

   1. This 104 yr old man had to travel from Australia to Europe at the end of his life, because religious dogma has decreed that self-determination at the end of your life is not a part of your personal freedom. Somehow, it is ‘moral’ to have 7.5 B people pile up, even if they want to get of the train.

      https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/10/david-goodall-australias-oldest-scientist-ends-his-own-life-at-104

4. A study by Yale University: Africa’s Population Growth Could Undermine Sustainability Goals

   

   1. Ron,

      Iran has total fertility ratio of 1.75 in 2015 and per capita GDP of about 5800 US$ in 2015, Nigeria has a TFR of 5.74 with a GDP per capita of 2500 US$ in 2015. The demographic transition is mostly a matter of education for women and access to birth control, though certainly higher income helps, it need not be US levels of GDP per capita (56,000 US$ in 2015), it can be 10 times smaller than US levels of income per capita.

      1. The fertility rate in Nigeria is not falling at all:
         Why Has the Demographic Transition Stalled in Sub-Saharan Africa?
         Less Than Half of Sub-Saharan Africa Shows Significant Fertility Decline
         In some places in Sub-Sahara Africa, the fertility rate is actually increasing. At any rate at the current fertility decline rate in Sub-Sahara Africa, it will take one to two hundred years to reach zero. But the population growth rate will eventually reach zero when the death rate increases to match the birth rate. And the death rate will eventually increase because of famine and the political unrest famine brings with it.

         1. Yes, it is dropping in Nigeria. Two data points is not a trend. Yes, it remains high in other, war-torn countries. No doubt it is higher in the war-torn parts of Nigeria.

5. Excellent write up Ron.
   I concur with all of your analysis.

   The second chart [Terrestrial Vert Biomass] is a new one to me, and I was initially surprised by the large growth in total biomass over the last 10K yrs.
   But thinking it through, we didn’t just replace the American Bison with an equivalent biomass of cattle, hogs and chicken. Rather we supercharged the biomass production of places like the American midwest with fossil fuel enabled fertilization, irrigation, land manipulation (leveling, plowing, draining, clearing), resulting in a temporary escalation in the production capacity.
   Additionally we funneled animal and plants products from every corner and crack and puddle on the planet into the mouths of one big primate- us. The harvest from the oceans has added to the terrestrial biomass to some degree.
   I went to the lush delta near Hanoi once, and upon return the city I was thinking how very few animals I had seen along the trip to a temple in the hills above. In the city the food markets had little animals and plants of all sorts for sale. Even baskets full of little tiny snails. These snails were part of the food chain the normally existed outside the city. The millions of people gather up all the creatures and bring them to their cooking pots. Repeat this story in tens of thousands of versions from every delta, prairie, valley, bay, and sea of the planet.
   And people want to plant corn in the place where a lush forest or diverse grassland once flourished, in order to grow corn to convert into biofuel so they can fly a jet to disneyland, or deliver a bomb.
   My only solace is that in 50 million yrs it will appear as just another blip on the graph.
   Nature has always been a cruel force, and we are among its cruelest actors.

   1. Yup, our SHOPPING ADDICTION — On and on it goes

      “The rise of the Kazakh capital — From an international expo centre to a massive indoor beach, Astana, the capital of the world’s largest landlocked country, is entering the limelight. Oil wealth has transformed Astana’s dusty steppes into a landscape punctuated by gleaming, futuristic architecture. Since Astana’s inception, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has been determined that his vision for the capital would reflect his ambitions for the country. Since 2005, more than $300 billion in foreign direct investment has flowed into Kazakhstan’s economy, with the vast majority coming from the extractive industries.”

      http://www.bbc.com/capital/gallery/20180510-the-rise-of-the-kazakh-capital

6. Apropos to Ron’s post is probably one of the most important peer-reviewed papers to appear in 2017: “Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signalled by vertebrate population losses and declines,” by Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

   Conservatively, about 200 vertebrate species have become extinct over the past century. This rate of about two annually is well above the long-term–deep time–background rate of extinction. Based on the last 2 million years, it would have taken about 10,000 years for the loss of 200 vertebrate species worldwide–so two orders-of-magnitude more frequent in the modern era. Extinctions are very important because they are more-or-less irreversible. However, focus on extinctions does not even begin to reveal the level of crisis that is underway today. In fact, a rate of 2 a year might make one feel like there is still much time in which to act.

   It turns out a critical metric is the rate and magnitude of population loss within species. This makes sense—species tend not to just disappear in an instant. There is a gradual reduction in numbers of individuals, a key symptom of potential extinction (Ron touched on this above). Biodiversity and ecosystem health is as much about the numbers of species as it is the size of the populations for each species relative to each other and, of course, other important factors like interactions. While a species may be present on the globe, said species may nevertheless be experiencing rapid declines in numbers and also local extinctions—regions where that species has been extirpated.

   When species populations are examined in detail, the ongoing crisis becomes much more clear. The Ceballos et al. study reveals that, world-wide, about a third of all land vertebrate species are in decline, including high-magnitude local population losses. Different taxonomic groups (e.g. mammals, birds, amphibians) show varying rates, but the range is around 15-30% for each. One of the more interesting outcomes of the research is that high latitude areas—the temperate regions away from the much-focused-on tropics—are experiencing similar or even higher proportions of within-species population reduction (termed “decreasing species”) to the tropics. In the tropics, of course, the numbers of decreasing species is quite high in part due to a large number of species, many with limited ranges.

   Moving away from summarizing the paper, I note that this information should not come as a major surprise—especially the fact of strong within-species population declines in the temperate regions. The Earth has a limited carrying capacity, and this is in part based on available land area. There are, of course, many things that contribute to biodiversity loss in this modern era, including transportation of invasive species, road building, city expansion, poaching, climate change and so forth. As humans continue to grow in population, with a corresponding expansion of the limited number of species that are pets and/or husbanded for various resources (namely food), appropriating ever more of the available resources to meet the demands of all, other species are effectively forced into decline. Useful resources on this planet are finite. This transition can be seen in the amount of human/husbanded-animal biomass relative to that available in the remaining natural ecosystems (summarized nicely in Ron’s post). The human side of the equation is growing rampantly, sort of like Alan Dean Foster’s Vom, while the natural ecosystems steadily decline in response—are being appropriated. What is “natural” can be debated, but I think most will get my point.

   A perturbation to an ecosystem can have long-lasting and nonlinear effects, in part because there are many, many different interactions possible within said ecosystem. For example, the era of forest fire suppression resulted in the accumulation of a large amount of highly flammable biomass over decades. These forests in turn became even more vulnerable to fire as pathogens began to run rampant in senescing trees, and also with these outbreaks apparently supported a warming climate—further perturbations. Due to these changes, an era of extreme wildfires has arrived. We humans sewed those seeds. And, after much of this land has burned, and things “settle down” for a time, the perturbations will continue as large areas of forest regenerate—vast even-aged stand that could very well suffer the same big-fire fate when the trees mature. It will take millennia for this to settle out—to turn homogenous forests into more fire-resilient heterogeneous stands. And this is just one example. If a species becomes extinct—either completely, or regionally—this is a perturbation to the ecosystem, one that can have many knock-on effects over the long-term. The number of human-linked perturbations to the world’s ecosystems is large and an ever-growing. The interactions of these changes are likely to be nonlinear and difficult to forecast–and are likely to create problems for the continuation of the business-of-civilization.

   Of related note, there is a growing realization that many of the big, ancient trees that are alive today are showing increasing signs of stress. They are beginning to die off. Climate change is likely a player—the trees are stuck in the spot where they began, and the favourable climate that had been in place when the big trees got their start may now be a long ways away. Other forms of ecological disturbance is almost certainly another contributor, including road building and trail building as these are key routes for the transportation of invasive species–including pathogens. Each perturbation adds new stressors, and mature, less vigorous trees will only be able to acclimate to so many. As our species continues to work on eliminating the last remaining megafauna (e.g. Elephants), it appears that the decimation of the remaining megaflora is also running apace.

   -best

   1. Agreed! I read that paper and thought I had posted a link to it a previous thread. Well worth the trouble to read it more than once!

   2. You comment is better by far than Ron’s article. In some ways things are better than Ron thinks; in other ways worse.

   3. Some perturbations are worse than others – i.e. if a keystone species is lost. In the past a lot of these were identified as alpha predators, we’ve maybe replaced them all with humans now but do we know for sure which the others ones are? I’d guess some of the insects and smaller marine organisms that are getting taken out might turn out to be more important than previously thought, but possibly only after they’ve gone.

7. Ron
   I think its worth giving the PETM extinction a mention. Very high CO2; hypoxia in the deep ocean 55 My ago. Lasted perhaps 100k years; ; big extinctions. I read a year or two ago in one paper there is evidence of a storm somewhere lasted perhaps a 1000 years. (Must try to find that reference again.)
   Anyway https://www.britannica.com/science/Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum

   best
   Phil

   1. An updated discussion / comparison of PETM, KT and present VIth exinction is here
      https://geoweb.princeton.edu/research/keller/pubs/Keller-et-al-2018-Gondwana.pdf
      Our ongoing extinction event could be worse than PETM and more like KT. Hmm…

   2. Agreed PETM is quite pertinent to co2 level impacts on climate, even though the rate of change was much slower than it is in the anthropocene.

      1. The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 Mil yrs ago (PETM)

         
         Human greenhouse gas emissions will alter conditions on earth for thousands of years. The past event that best mirrors current warming occurred 56 million years ago & is called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM.
         Dr. Wing will explain what we know about the causes of PETM, and what we have learned about its effects on ecosystems. The lessons of deep time have great relevance as we rapidly mold our planet in the ongoing geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
         

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Zb0pJa3Hg&t=17s

      2. Ocean acidification extinctions are the biggest and scariest. There are low odds of humanity surviving one. And we are causing one.

8. One thing that is usually mentioned is that the animals that go extinct are already stressed through climate change (or maybe disease though I don’t think that has been completely demonstrated) and humans come along and finish the job off. But I think all species are going to face some kind of stress given enough time, and that maybe only need to be a thousand years or so, and if humans are around at the same time then the animal will be gone – and can’t come back again once the stressor goes away, so it only has to happen once.

   Another interesting comment on one video was that the megafauna breed so slowly that it is easy to wipe them out over a few generations, e.g. for Australia it was estimated that each human would need to kill one juvenile of a prey species per decade and the species would be gone in a thousand years (there really aren’t enough fossils to differentiate the rate of decline better than that granularity in most cases), and as the prey goes so do their non-human predators, actually probably a lot earlier.

   1. One thing geological study allows you to understand is that existing on this planet is a privilege, not a right. All species are essentially predetermined to go extinct eventually, even if the causes vary drastically from one species to another. The human’s turn will come in time no matter if climate change or global warming is real or not.

      1. Sorry Dan, changes happening now are not happening on a geological time scale. Atmospheric CO2 is rising at unprecedented rates with profound consequences for earth’s temperatures, climates, ecosystems and species — both on land and in the oceans.

      2. Climate change is real and continuous, I was not referring specifically to anthropogenic climate change, though that is certainly a factor now and more so in the future.

      3. All species are essentially predetermined to go extinct eventually, even if the causes vary drastically from one species to another. The human’s turn will come in time no matter if climate change or global warming is real or not.

         Total Bullshit! Excluding megadisasters like a six-mile-wide asteroid slamming into the earth, species do not just go extinct, species are driven to extinction when they are out-competed, for food and territory, by another species.

         For instance, rats and mice are in no danger of going extinct. No other species is even close to outcompeting them for food and territory. They are all over the world, there is just no chance rats or mice are, or will be in the foreseeable future, in danger of extinction. So it is just silly to say that all species are predetermined to go extinct. What predetermines a species for extinction? I mean other than the demise of the earth of course?

         The case for human survival is almost as good as that of rats and mice. We are everywhere, on every livable niche on earth. And humans are extremely adaptable. They will adapt to climate change and just about anything else. Of course, that is not to say that our numbers may be decimated, or worse. Even if 99 people out of every 100 suffer die-off during the collapse, that would still leave 76,000,000 people alive.

         Yes, I believe that sometime in the next 100 years civilization as we know it will collapse. But humans will survive.

         1. The predetermined part comes from how the natural instincts of all species are to breed, eat, consume, fight predators, and so on until they have used up all their natural resources. Then they either move on to another suitable location (so far as any are still available) or go extinct.

            1. That explains nothing. You said “All species” are predetermined to go extinct. How are rats predetermined to go extinct? How are humans predetermined to go extinct? After all, we are a species and you did say “all species”.

               1. Because natural instincts drive species to eventually use up all the resources of their habitat.

               2. I never heard about or read about that premise before. It does not fit reality. Do you have any modern scientific studies or sources to back that assertion?

               3. You are blowing smoke Dan. Most species occupy an entire continent. Some species, like rabbits, occupy many continents. An increase in their numbers means an increase in their predator’s numbers. Which means a decrease in their numbers then a corresponding decrease in predators.

                  They don’t normally use up the resources in their habitat. It does happen occasionally but does not usually lead to extinction because there are more of their species located elsewhere. Anyway, that is not the normal cause of extinction. You haven’t a fucking clue as to what you are talking about.

               4. Well,

                  I suppose one could look at it this way. What species has existed for the entirely of life on earth?

                  To my knowledge, it’s none. There are some very long lived species to be sure (ceolacanths come to mind off the top of my head), but none that have been around for 3.5 billion years.

                  As such, the evidence does support the position that all species go extinct or are predetermined to go extinct. If they weren’t, some species that lasted for the entirety of life on Earth should be identifiable. Some bacterium may fit the bill, but if so, I have not yet heard of it.

                  Anyone know of such a creature?

                  Also, is the logic I’m using flawed? If so, how?

               5. Yes, your logic is flawed in several ways. First, only cyanobacteria have been around for billions of years, and it is still around. The same bacteria that created the stromatolites is still around today, and is still creating stromatolites.

                  But the biggest problem is with you word “predetermined”. Just who or what made the decision that a certain species was predetermined to go extinct? Just because a species went extinct does not mean they were predetermined to go extinct.

                  Predeterminism
                  Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance. Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present, and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions.

                  Of course, the sun will one day burn out, or engulf the earth and everything will die. If that’s what you mean by predetermined, then I agree. But I don’t really think that’s what you meant. Extinction is not predetermined, it just happens.

                  Curious but are you religious? Do you believe in predestination? It sure sounds like that is what you are talking about.

               6. Funny enough cyanobacteria were responsible for possibly the first and one of the most significant mass extinctions called the great oxygenation event. Which again funny enough was vital for complex life to evolve.

               7. No. I’m not religious.

                  Now that you’ve zeroed in on the problem identified, namely the concept of “predetermination,” I think I understand your objection better.

                  I’m understanding “predetermined” more along the lines of the Sun dying and taking all life on Earth with it. Also the fact that the overwhelming majority of all species that have ever existed are presently extinct. Not predetermination on the basis that thing have already been decided.

                  Cyanobacteria. Forgot about that group of critters. So there are some species that have been around for billions of years. All the rest though, again, so far as I’m aware, are extinct, save for those existing today, almost all of which weren’t around billions of years ago.

                  It’s not a certainty that species will go extinct, which was not the point that I was trying to make, but that on average, statistically speaking, a billion years from now, ALMOST all extant species today will have gone extinct. That’s a really, really, really safe bet. I won’t be around to collect (nor will just about anything else living that we recognize), but perhaps the cyanobacteria will still be around. They have a pretty good track record.

                  Cheers!

9. Below the WWF population reduction chart.
   “52% of the world’s wildlife species disappeared in just 40 years. Source: World Wildlife Fund. And this does not include the animals that were wiped out before 1970 or those that have been killed or died off since 2010.”

   How do you go from population decrease to species loss?

   1. How do you go from population decrease to species loss?

      Sorry, bad wording on my part. I have made the correction in the text. Thanks for the heads up.

10. Great post Ron. I think anyone with a bit of logic will reach the same conclusion that, humans are solely to blame for the sixth great mass extinction.
    And also anyone with a bit of logic would know every up has a down. Human populations will not continue to grow ad nauseam. It will probably crash with the same varied exponential growth rate.
    It is kind of hard to deny the fact that agent smith said in the matrix.

    “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.”

    In saying that though, from a geological perspective, the earth has been through much worse and when humans become extinct, there will be a huge environmental niche for other animals that survive to fill.

11. I think we have all tried sometime or another for a term other than ‘climate change’. But nothing has seemed more adequate. Just in case it could give a more accurate impression I am giving ‘climate forcing’ a whirl.

    But Ron’s post is about extinction already in full swing. We have barely seen the climate kick-in yet. Just one of the factors we have already brought into play by global trading is the spread of organisms including parasites and diseases from distant ecological zones. I am thinking for example of tree diseases and the current example of the fungus that is killing the frog populations world-wide.

    1. “I think we have all tried sometime or another for a term other than ‘climate change’. But nothing has seemed more adequate.”
       The actual term is global warming in this case, caused by increased GHG. Climate change is a result but also results from other factors than GHG so although it is in vogue now for some reason, does not describe the problem or initial action. Climate change or climate forcing (radiative forcing) can be cooler or warmer, global warming is only getting warmer, which initiates changes in both the geophysical world as well as the biological.
       The diseases are due mostly to other causes such as human transport of disease as well as use of pesticides, herbicides and pollution. Probably many changes due to development also.

       1. Not quite an extinction event yet but we are having some very strange weather in my neck of the woods. Sort of a tropical depression in the Gulf but I don’t remember ever seeing clouds like these just rolling in from the west and bringing torrential downpours and high winds. Quite beautiful but rather ominous to see them rolling in like giant breakers hitting the beach.
          Took this picture with my phone and it doesn’t quite do them justice…
          .

          

          1. Amazing. Enjoy the show.

          2. Fred
             Call it a portent! A few years ago JM Greer collected and published a series of short stories under the heading ‘After Oil’. Bill Blondeau in the last of the series, ‘After Oil 4’, had a wonderful description in his yarn ‘Flotsam’ of equatorial seas
             a thousand or so years hence unlike anything we know now. A phenomenon in Bill’s future sky is known by sailors as ‘Iffr’s finger bones’ – tubes of high altitude wind that they prayed would not descend. That gets the yarn going!

             Hard to imagine stuff we have never known, eh? Your picture is one for the record I guess. Thanks.
             Phil

       2. “Climate change or climate forcing (radiative forcing) can be cooler or warmer, global warming is only getting warmer, which initiates changes in both the geophysical world as well as the biological.”

          This is a good point to bring up considering it wasn’t all that long ago (back in the ’70s) when schoolchildren and adults were getting warned the direction the world was headed was toward global cooling with new ice ages. In any case the results were predicted to be almost the same as later on with global warming theory, that is both geophysical and biological changes due to an altered climate. Wisely the term climate change then got applied. Which as you say can be colder or warmer depending on what the data shows. As it goes the name change eliminated a good deal of confusion, giving the general population a much better sense of the burdens the planet faces at present.

          1. That is incorrect. There was some discussion about cooling, but far more scientists were worried about warming even then. The main excitement came from a single cover story, I think on Time, but it wasn’t representative of the actual state of research. In fact there was a short term cooling trend caused by aerosol pollution from coal plants and has taken time to understand (for example aerosols from Europe moving over the Sahara were probably the reason hurricane activity dropped off for a couple of decades).

          2. This is a good point to bring up considering it wasn’t all that long ago (back in the ’70s) when schoolchildren and adults were getting warned the direction the world was headed was toward global cooling with new ice ages.

             Perry Dumb Houston Troll, you guys really need to stop spreading your bullshit! As George says, you are wrong! We have known since the end of the 19th century about the relationship between CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and global warming. Welcome to the 21st century and our almost instantaneous capability to access knowledge. Try it, you never know, you might actually learn something!

             http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

             On the Influence of Carbonic Acid
             in the Air upon the Temperature of
             the Ground
             Svante Arrhenius
             Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science
             Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pages 237-276.

          3. “Wisely the term climate change then got applied”

             That was Republican spin to make global warming more user-friendly.

             Memo exposes Bush’s new green strategy

             The US Republican party is changing tactics on the environment, avoiding “frightening” phrases such as global warming, after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.

             The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

             “The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.

             “Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.

             “Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

             The phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as “conservationist” instead of “environmentalist”, because “most people” think environmentalists are “extremists” who indulge in “some pretty bizarre behaviour… that turns off many voters”.

             https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

          4. “when schoolchildren and adults were getting warned the direction the world was headed was toward global cooling with new ice ages”
             Nice example of the crap fed to the children and adults by the right wing media grasping onto a few outlier scientists misinterpreting the effects of massive pollution on our globe. We cleaned up the air in the 70’s and voila the heating recommenced faster than ever!
             One has to be careful of the information one latches onto, no matter how much “fun” it is for the conspiracy theorists and other nutcases. Also, there are highly motivated corporate interests who feel their profits are at risk and will promote anything to reduce the facts about global warming and the burning of fossil fuels.

             1. BTW, speaking of further dim views. After a partial brightening of the atmosphere we have entered a new period of dimming so if the temperature keeps rising we are in severe trouble. Just one more anthropocentric wobble along the road to extinction.

    2. This current extinction event that we are in the midst of is in full progression even without the effects of climate change, and will proceed regardless of what happens with climate.
       The physical and chemical destruction of habitat, the shredding of the complex web of life , the extreme level of harvest [gather it and eat it and dissolve it] of particular species, the wholesale capture and degradation of the biologically diverse and productive ecosystems, in combination, is the driver of this event. Climate change will only serve as an accelerator to the process that is already inevitable.

       1. Hickory — I agree, Earth’s environmental degradation is primarily a result of population overshoot (with 200,000 souls currently added every day). Climate change is primarily a function of too many people and their consumptive lifestyles. Pumping a few fewer tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere to decrease disruption to humans while allowing them to to propagate (unhindered) and consume ever increasing quantities diminishing resources is a form of blindness. This nonsense of pretending we can add a few billion to the heap, make a few adjustments to our life styles and all will well — total crap, IMHO.

          1. True Doug, and I think this is something that Ron has pointed out many times. Our attempts to ‘live sustainably’, recycle, buy local, eat further down the food chain, improve energy efficiency, and deploy renewable are all nice gestures, but will do little to blunt the destructive effects of overshoot.
             Nonetheless I go through the motions along with millions of my ‘tribe’.
             Other than having few or no children, and perhaps intentionally not living beyond a functional age (?), we don’t have any other magic bullet to stop this train[wreck].
             Many people spend time trying to figure out how more people can live on the planet. That may be nice for people, but not for the rest of life.

             1. Science, medicine,engineering and technology growth have provided the major means of population rise. They removed the natural curbs and greatly amplified our ability to farm and change the landscape and “protect” ourselves. They also allowed a tremendous increase in consumption well beyond what is required to live, for billions of people.

                By taking up the machine, fossil energy, and the advancement of knowledge we and much of the species of the world are facing deep population falls or extinction. All within a few hundred years.

                Now we try to figure out how to have high technology and a living world too. Will we succeed?

12. It’s hard to become a fossil. Being populous and widespread, dying on the right type of surface, being buried by later action and then miraculously found millions of years later is all part of becoming an observed fossil. One in a billion chance.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y59JYU5REks

    Also, beyond the fossil record being heavily skewed toward marine creatures the land animal system is also skewed toward certain types. Combine that with a skew toward certain species in modern times.

    Integrating data from palaeontological databases with information on IUCN status, ecology and life history characteristics of contemporary mammals, we demonstrate that only a small and biased fraction of threatened species (< 9%) have a fossil record, compared with 20% of non‐threatened species. We find strong taphonomic biases related to body size and geographic range. Modern species with a fossil record tend to be large and widespread and were described in the 19th century. The expected magnitude of the current extinction based only on species with a fossil record is about half of that of one based on all modern species; values for genera are similar.
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ele.12589

13. There is a place in our solar system without any human presence that has a high potential for possibly harboring complex multicellular life, Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Who knows we may one day even find fossils of extinct life forms on it and be able to better understand how life manages to evolve and go on despite all the extinctions.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0450-z

    Evidence of a plume on Europa from Galileo magnetic and plasma wave signatures

    Abstract
    The icy surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is thought to lie on top of a global ocean1,2,3,4. Signatures in some Hubble Space Telescope images have been associated with putative water plumes rising above Europa’s surface5,6, providing support for the ocean theory. However, all telescopic detections reported were made at the limit of sensitivity of the data5,6,7, thereby calling for a search for plume signatures in in-situ measurements. Here, we report in-situ evidence of a plume on Europa from the magnetic field and plasma wave observations acquired on Galileo’s closest encounter with the moon. During this flyby, which dropped below 400 km altitude, the magnetometer8 recorded an approximately 1,000-kilometre-scale field rotation and a decrease of over 200 nT in field magnitude, and the Plasma Wave Spectrometer9 registered intense localized wave emissions indicative of a brief but substantial increase in plasma density. We show that the location, duration and variations of the magnetic field and plasma wave measurements are consistent with the interaction of Jupiter’s corotating plasma with Europa if a plume with characteristics inferred from Hubble images were erupting from the region of Europa’s thermal anomalies. These results provide strong independent evidence of the presence of plumes at Europa.

    If Europa has a salty liquid ocean under a protective layer of ice, that does lead to some very tantalizing possibilities to say the least. I wouldn’t mind doing my last dive ever in a place like that 😉

    1. Ironically despite being much smaller than earth it actually has more liquid water than earth does.
       .

       

    2. Forget the snow plowing service in Florida, start an ice fishing resort system on Europa. There are millions of “sports” enthusiasts who would line up for that experience. You could also rent them spacesuits and air packs. Also fees for drilling holes through the ice and taking video of them being pulled down the holes by large European sea creatures for their families and YouTubers to cherish. Make sure you get the money up front and have them sign a bunch of waivers.

       

       1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxU1VSSka4M

          Searching for Life on Europa? Going Under the Ice

          1. Esteemed FredM,

             Monolith: “Except for Europa. Attempt no landings there.”

             1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b75EpoF1W88
                2001: Space Odyssey Best Scenes – The Monolith At The Moon

                1. Great scene, masterpiece movie.

       2. GoneFishing Wrote:
          ” start an ice fishing resort system on Europa”

          Unlikely. Jupiter’s radiation will kill anyone before they even get near Europa.

          1. Thanks for the analysis of my joke. You are the life of the party.

14. Anthropocene Extinction News

    I can understand the devisive nature of China and Southeast Asia in promoting further growth of coal burning, but the US has no excuse for this action. However it is one of the premier mandates of the current Administration. The Department of Energy is being used to further develop coal burning in the US under the guise of keeping coal mining economically viable. At the same time efforts by NASA to monitor CO2 have been slashed. Welcome to just one more action to promote the Anthropocene extinction, unnecessarily. Myself, I find it hard to comprehend the level of stupidity and gangsterism that has invaded the US government.

    “The objective of this RFI is to support DOE’s mission to lead research and technology development that promotes the advancement of coal-fired power plants that provide stable power generation with operational flexibility, high efficiency, and low emissions,” according to the announcement.

    These small modular coal plants are expected to be lower-cost than traditional facilities, capable of performing load-following to meet the evolving demands of the power grid, and with efficiency greater than 40 percent. Stakeholder submissions are due June 8.

    A DOE official told news outlets earlier this year that the agency plans to establish competitive funding opportunities for small and modular coal-fired power plants, framing it as a “paradigm shift” for the embattled coal industry. President Trump has made shoring up the coal sector a strategic priority for his administration.

    The idea of building small and responsive coal units theoretically complements a power grid with a significant amount of renewables and/or gas price volatility. But while the coal industry may consider this a laudable effort, it’s an undertaking beset with difficulty.

    Small power plants lose the benefits of economies of scale, …
    

    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/doe-seeks-info-on-small-modular-coal-based-power-plants-of-the-future#gs._Ku=A90

    You can find this news all over the media.

    1. Yes, I cannot understand the murder/suicide fanaticism of the US Republicans.

    2. GoneFishing Wrote:

       “At the same time efforts by NASA to monitor CO2 have been slashed. Welcome to just one more action to promote the Anthropocene extinction, unnecessarily. Myself, I find it hard to comprehend the level of stupidity and gangsterism that has invaded the US government.”

       The extinction event will happen when the global nuclear war begins. We are heading into a three headed crisis: Resource Depletion, Debt, & demographics. When all three merge, its almost certainly going to trigger a global war. Worry less about CO2 emissions, and worry about the return of the Cold wars been the USA, Russia & China. Extinction by Nuclear war is much closer than extinction by CO2!

15. Anthropocene Life support Systems – author of Dodging Extinction Power Food Money and the Future of Life on Earth as presented by a vertebrate paleontologist/ paleoecologist
    Presented by Anthony Barnosky, University of California, Berkeley
    Human impacts define the Anthropocene as a unique time in Earth’s history & these impacts are likely to increase as the population grows to 9 billion by the year 2050. Studies show that some of these impacts pose serious risks for maintaining the quality of life.
    Despite the ‘gloom-and-doom’ scenarios these global problems often engender, solutions are not only possible, as indicated by past achievements, but are beginning to gain momentum.
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKxkacvztCA&t=162s

16. GLOBAL TOURISM CARBON FOOTPRINT QUANTIFIED IN WORLD FIRST

    “The world’s tourism footprint has been quantified across the supply chain, with the carbon-intensive industry revealed as a significant and growing contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Small islands attract a disproportionate share of GHG emissions per capita, through international arrivals, while the US is responsible for the majority of tourism-generated emissions overall. The research fills a gap noted by United Nations bodies and notes that carbon-intensive air-travel is not included in international climate commitments.

    “We found the per-capita carbon footprint increases strongly with increased affluence and does not appear to satiate as incomes grow,” Professor Lenzen said.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180507111914.htm

17. More people, more fishing:

    437 MILLION TONS OF FISH, $560 BILLION WASTED DUE TO DESTRUCTIVE FISHING OPERATIONS

    “They threw away fish that– even though are not the most valuable– are perfectly good for human consumption,” said Deng Palomares, co-author of the study and Sea Around Us project manager. “The worst part is that, in general, bottom trawlers are so expensive to operate that the only way to keep them afloat is by giving them government subsidies. Ironically, had they landed that catch, they would have made $560 billion according to our dataset of prices.”

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/uobc-4mt051518.php

    1. As I have suspected for a long time, we harvest a large abundance of food. The US produces three times what is needed to feed it’s population and wastes about 1/3 of it’s food. There is no need for world hunger and no need for such massive killing of fish/marine life.

       1. No worries! Once the earth is doomed and our colony on Mars is in full swing, I can export the by catch from my European ice fishing business to the new Martian immigrants… ?

          1. That’s a whale of an idea Fred!

18. Honey bees, who needs ’em?

    NEONIC HARMS GO WELL BEYOND BEES

    Neonicotinoids have been in the news a lot in recent months and are now widely recognized as a class of insecticides contributing to the dramatic declines in honey bee populations. Last week, a researcher out of the University of Stirling in the UK released a new study examining other ways “neonics” are impacting the environment. It turns out that the harmful effects of these insecticides are widespread — from birds to earthworms, mammals to aquatic insects. Neonics now comprise about 1/4 of all insecticide use, and are commonly used in the US as a seed coating to protect seeds from pest damage. Professor Dave Goulson’s review confirms that neonic dust released during sowing can be harmful to foraging honey bees.

    http://www.panna.org/blog/neonic-harms-go-well-beyond-bees

    1. Role call for the poisoners of the world:
       Bayer CropScience
       Syngenta
       Sumitomo Chemical
       Nippon Soda
       Mitsui Chemicals

       Another set of products from human ingenuity. Aren’t you proud?

    2. Just happened to meet to an entomologist and professional bee keeper at the feed mill today and in conversation asked about neonics. The insight that stuck with me is that the neonic ban in Europe has backfired somewhat thanks to farmers now using other insecticides instead.

19. Are we allowed the odd bit of astronomic trivia as respite from the doom-and-gloom focus (of which I plead: “Guilty as Charged” ?

    ASTRONOMERS FIND FASTEST-GROWING BLACK HOLE KNOWN IN SPACE

    “If we had this monster sitting at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, it would appear 10 times brighter than a full moon. It would appear as an incredibly bright pin-point star that would almost wash out all of the stars in the sky.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-astronomers-fastest-growing-black-hole-space.html#jCp

    1. We don’t need it, we have invented light bulbs, power generation and pollution so that most cannot see the stars at night. Plus we kill and confuse billions of insects and millions of birds with them. Using so much less energy, are we not very efficient?

       You can run, but you cannot hide from the Anthropocene monsters!!!

    2. Great point Doug Astronomy and extinction events. Asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. How many other extinction events were caused by extraterrestrial influences? So that only 1% of all life forms are still extant today. And all of these not caused by techno advanced humans; had to have been some crazy stuff happening at times.

       Whats the count of Impact craters found on earth to date? 100 plus? If its anything close to the density of craters on the moon then it would be thousands likely?

       This one only 50,000 years ago in Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater would have been 3 times as big an explosion as the total energy of all explosives used in World War II, including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs. I would Imagine with the blast and the thousands of square miles burned would have caused at least several extinctions.

20. No, I don’t only post doom-and- gloom stuff. 🙂

    CANADA PROTECTS LARGEST CONIFEROUS FOREST IN THE WORLD

    Canada will soon have the largest protected boreal forest – an area twice the size of Belgium – on the planet. The region makes up about a third of a band of green that extends across northern North America and into Asia. It is also a nursery for billions of songbirds that migrate north in the summer from wintering grounds in the US and beyond. “It’s not just forest, it’s really the matrix of forest and wetlands and waters – and we can protect those at a scale that is an opportunity lost in the rest of the world,” said Dan Kraus, a conservation biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44091169

    1. Meanwhile, a potential birthday present for Monsanto?

       SWITZERLAND TO VOTE ON PESTICIDE BAN ‘IN 3 YEARS’

       “Swiss citizens will get the chance to vote on a complete ban on the use of synthetic pesticides after campaigners secured enough signatures to force a referendum.”

       http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44130493

21. I don’t remember if anyone posted a link to this paper in a previous thread. I thought it might add a bit of fodder for the chewing…

    Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and co-director of MIT’s Lorenz Center published a paper in Science Advances last year:
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609599/are-we-headed-toward-a-sixth-extinction/

    Where he proposes that mass extinction occurs under two conditions. For changes in the carbon cycle that occur over long time scales, extinctions will follow if those changes occur faster than global ecosystems can adapt. For perturbations that take place over shorter time scales, the pace of change will not matter; instead, the size or magnitude of the change will determine the likelihood of an extinction event.

    Here’s a link to the full paper:
    http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/9/e1700906.full

    Thresholds of catastrophe in the Earth system
    Daniel H. Rothman

    Abstract:
    The history of the Earth system is a story of change. Some changes are gradual and benign, but others, especially those associated with catastrophic mass extinction, are relatively abrupt and destructive. What sets one group apart from the other? Here, I hypothesize that perturbations of Earth’s carbon cycle lead to mass extinction if they exceed either a critical rate at long time scales or a critical size at short time scales. By analyzing 31 carbon isotopic events during the past 542 million years, I identify the critical rate with a limit imposed by mass conservation. Identification of the crossover time scale separating fast from slow events then yields the critical size. The modern critical size for the marine carbon cycle is roughly similar to the mass of carbon that human activities will likely have added to the oceans by the year 2100.

    Geologic history, suggests that adding large amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere and the oceans, especially at a fast rate, is probably a really bad idea…

    1. Good paper.

22. I searched and searched and finally found something to correct in Ron’s post. “The first two charts below were created by Paul Chefurka from data published by Vaclav Smile in…” Make that Smil, darn spell check :).

23. COULD RECENT SUPERNOVAE BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MASS EXTINCTIONS?

    Two nearby supernovae that exploded about 2.5 and eight million years ago could have resulted in a staggered depletion of Earth’s ozone layer, leading to a variety of repercussions for life on Earth. In particular, two-and-a-half million years ago the Earth was changing dramatically. The Pliocene, which was a hot and balmy epoch, was ending and the Pleistocene, an era of repeated glaciation known as the Ice Age, was beginning. Natural variations in Earth’s orbit and wobble likely accounted for the change in climate, but the simultaneous event of a supernova could provide insight on the diversification of life during this epoch. This supernova is thought to have occurred between 163 and 326 light years away (50–100 parsecs) from Earth. For perspective, our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away.

    Looking at the fossil record during the Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary (2.5 million years ago), we see a dramatic change in the fossil record and in land cover globally. Thomas tells Astrobiology Magazine that “there were changes, especially in Africa, which went from being more forested to more grassland.” During this time the geologic record shows an elevated global concentration of iron-60 (60Fe), which is a radioactive isotope produced during a supernova.

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-supernovae-responsible-mass-extinctions.html#jCp

    1. Meanwhile,

       ‘SHOCKING’ HUMAN IMPACT REPORTED ON WORLD’S PROTECTED AREAS

       “One third of the world’s protected lands are being degraded by human activities and are not fit for purpose, according to a new study. Six million sq. km of forests, parks and conservation areas are under “intense human pressure” from mining, logging and farming. Countries rich and poor, are quick to designate protected areas but fail to follow up with funding and enforcement. This is why biodiversity is still in catastrophic decline, the authors say.”

       http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44155592

       1. And,

          HALF OF AFRICAN SPECIES ‘FACE EXTINCTION’

          “The actions of mankind could lead to the extinction of half of African birds and mammals by the end of 2100, a UN-backed study has said. The report conducted by 550 experts from around the world said reduced biodiversity could affect people’s quality of life. It also found 42% of land-based animal and plant species in Europe and Central Asia have declined in the last decade. The findings come after the death of the last male northern white rhino.”

          http://www.bbc.com/news/world-43516211

24. If you find yourself in a position to donate money, consider
    The Nature Conservancy-
    ‘Protecting the Lands and Waters on Which all Life Depends’
    https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.ourwork

    You can dig into their website to see the hundreds of kinds of projects they have/are working on. Here is an example- https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/california/placesweprotect/lassen-foothills.xml

    One planet is all there is. [for all practical purposes]

25. Invertabrate extinctions in Great Britain during the last century
    Dates of “extinction” for well-studied invertebrates in Britain

    http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-2103-theme=textonly

26. THE EXTINCTION CRISIS
    In the past 500 years, we know of approximately 1,000 species that have gone extinct, from the woodland bison of West Virginia and Arizona’s Merriam’s elk to the Rocky Mountain grasshopper, passenger pigeon and Puerto Rico’s Culebra parrot — but this doesn’t account for thousands of species that disappeared before scientists had a chance to describe them [4]. Nobody really knows how many species are in danger of becoming extinct. Noted conservation scientist David Wilcove estimates that there are 14,000 to 35,000 endangered species in the United States, which is 7 to 18 percent of U.S. flora and fauna. The IUCN has assessed roughly 3 percent of described species and identified 16,928 species worldwide as being threatened with extinction, or roughly 38 percent of those assessed. In its latest four-year endangered species assessment, the IUCN reports that the world won’t meet a goal of reversing the extinction trend toward species depletion by 2010 [5].

    What’s clear is that many thousands of species are at risk of disappearing forever in the coming decades.

    AMPHIBIANS

    No group of animals has a higher rate of endangerment than amphibians. Scientists estimate that a third or more of all the roughly 6,300 known species of amphibians are at risk of extinction [6]. The current amphibian extinction rate may range from 25,039 to 45,474 times the background extinction rate [7].

    Frogs, toads, and salamanders are disappearing because of habitat loss, water and air pollution, climate change, ultraviolet light exposure, introduced exotic species, and disease. Because of their sensitivity to environmental changes, vanishing amphibians should be viewed as the canary in the global coal mine, signaling subtle yet radical ecosystem changes that could ultimately claim many other species, including humans.

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

27. Food for thought:

    A couple of weeks back my Daughter come over from Italy for a holiday. She wanted to visit the world famous Butchart Gardens located near, Victoria, B.C., so off we went, or she went, because I’m not into gardens, preferring used book stores which Victoria is also famous for. Butchart advertise: 55 acres of gardens, 900 bedding plant varieties, 26 greenhouses, 50 full-time gardeners, and over one million visitors each year. When asked how it went she said, “Unbelievable, not one single insect in the entire place. No beetles, butterflies, honey bees, bumble bees, ants, spiders, bugs of any shape or form.” After, I thought about this, sanitized gardens? Is this our future? What is a garden without bugs or a planet without bugs – a fucking disaster of unimaginable proportions, IMHO.

    1. It’s already in progress across much of the landscape. A lonely, quiet and stupid world in the making. Does anyone like the idea of a cemetery world? If not then stop screwing it up.

       Dead bug on my windshield is a novelty in my area. Dirt, grime, chemical coatings yes. Bugs hardly ever now.

       Where have all the insects gone?
       Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. “If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen,” says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. “I’m a very data-driven person,” says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. “But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don’t see that mess anymore.”

       Some people argue that cars today are more aerodynamic and therefore less deadly to insects. But Black says his pride and joy as a teenager in Nebraska was his 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1—with some pretty sleek lines. “I used to have to wash my car all the time. It was always covered with insects.” Lately, Martin Sorg, an entomologist here, has seen the opposite: “I drive a Land Rover, with the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, and these days it stays clean.”

       Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls “the little things that run the world” is worthwhile, Sorg says. “We won’t exterminate all insects. That’s nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us.”
       
       http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

    2. There’s a liability issue if a visitor has an allergic reaction to getting bitten or stung by an insect in the gardens. Better to spray insecticides to eliminate risks.

       1. Better to spray insecticides to eliminate risks.

          Nah, just give everyone a gun!

          1. Might be better to feed the insecticides to the lawyers. BTW, mo brooks is a lawyer, as are many of our political critters. Might just help us in several problem areas.

       2. This is absolutely ridiculous. Show me a single case in any country where naturally occurring insects caused a lawsuit. By your example, homeowners would be equally liable.

          1. Google “bee sting lawsuit”

    3. Yair,

       Recently my wife and I toured the North Island of New Zealand with Kiwi friends. They proudly showed us their ‘pristine’ landscape but everywhere I looked I saw systems in decline . . . and this from an Australian.

       I quickly became tired of endless green hills, lush with pasture nourished by superphosphate flown on by plane. The hills, once covered in forest are terraced by generations of grazing sheep working the contour of the slopes.

       https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=1587&ei=X5QAW_u5DITY0gTXvZboBA&q=terraced+hills+in+new+zealand&oq=terraced+hills+in+new+zealand&gs_l=img.12…2398.18738.0.32005.29.13.0.16.16.0.987.3445.6-4.4.0….0…1ac.1.64.img..9.5.3461…0.0.0hSdpyqXLMk#imgrc=O8OK-FCbvFBc8M:&spf=1526764671916

       We had some heavy rain and the scars of landslips on the slopes became more prevalent every day. The tiny creeks in the hills once green with algae and slime (presumably from fertilizer and manure run-off) quickly became damaging muddy torrents.

       What disturbed me most though was the absence of insects or wild life.

       In many places we went on walking tracks to view waterfalls or large trees in remnant scraps of forest and the silence was eerie and complete. An occasional bird call, but that’s all and when I turned over a handfuls of detritus on the forest floor there was nothing, no spiders, ants, or crawling things. It was as though a pest exterminator had just come through and sprayed the place.

       My friends viewed this as “normal” and one of the benefits of living in New Zealand. To me It seemed sterile and unnatural and it was a pleasure to get back to the noisy, spidery, antyfied environment of the Australian bush on my forty five acres . . . although all around us here, things are in decline.

       Just some Sunday morning observations.

       1. My friends viewed this as “normal” and one of the benefits of living in New Zealand. To me It seemed sterile and unnatural and it was a pleasure to get back to the noisy, spidery, antyfied environment of the Australian bush on my forty five acres . . . although all around us here, things are in decline.

          While growing up in Brazil I remember spending an inordinate amount of time fighting family, friends and foes alike, trying to stop them from exterminating all the insects, ants, wasps, spiders, scorpions snakes and other creatures deemed unwelcome by civilization. I found it to be an unwinable battle. Seems that now we are being faced with a massive extinction of all those slimy creepy crawling critters. Trust me folks, NO BUGS is NOT a feature it is a BUG! Though my pun rings quite hollow.

          On the other hand I hear there are more sheep than people in Kiwi Land.

          An Australian ventriloquist visiting New Zealand walks into a small village and sees a local sitting on his porch patting his dog.

          He figures he’ll have a little fun, so he says to the Kiwi:
          “G’day, mind if I talk to your dog?”
          Villager: “The dog doesn’t talk, you stupid Aussie.”
          Ventriloquist: “Hello dog, how’s it going mate?”
          Dog: “Yeah, doin’ all right.”
          Kiwi: (look of extreme shock)
          Ventriloquist: “Is this villager your owner?” (pointing at the villager)
          Dog: “Yep”
          Ventriloquist: “How does he treat you?”
          Dog: “Yeah, real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food
          and takes me to the lake once a week to play.”
          Kiwi: (look of utter disbelief)
          Ventriloquist: “Mind if I talk to your horse?”
          Kiwi: “Uh, the horse doesn’t talk either….I think.”
          Ventriloquist: “Hey horse, how’s it going?”
          Horse: “Cool”
          Kiwi: (absolutely dumbfounded)
          Ventriloquist: “Is this your owner?” (Pointing at the villager)
          Horse: “Yep”
          Ventriloquist: How does he treat you?
          Horse: “Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly, brushes me down often and
          keeps me in the barn to protect me from the elements.”
          Kiwi: (total look of amazement)
          Ventriloquist: “Mind if I talk to your sheep?”
          Kiwi: (in a panic) ” Don’t believe a word he says, that sheep’s a bloody liar..”

          1. Fred — You know why God created women? It’s because sheep can’t cook.

             On another note: My Dad, a highly intelligent (otherwise) man used to walk around the house with a spay can of insecticide killing insects, especially spiders. I bought him a book called Spiders are our Friends. Didn’t help.

             1. At least when I was a kid at home it sort of became my job to catch and release all the strange looking insects, scorpions and large spiders that occasionally found their way into our house. I had quite a collection of little boxes, jars and nets that I used for that purpose. Everyone else seemed to use the broom or the bug spray…

                BTW, speaking of spiders the beautiful and previously plentiful orb weavers that I used see on my walks through the local parks seem to have totally disappeared. I haven’t seen one of their webs in well over a year.

                Maybe they have all moved to South Carolina because it is too hot for them in South Florida…/sarc

                http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article120211088.html

                Voracious spiders and their huge, prey-catching webs invade a national park

                COLUMBIA, S.C.
                Voracious spiders first documented on South Carolina’s coast have drifted into the state’s interior and settled at Congaree National Park, in what federal officials say is a result of the Earth’s changing climate.

                Golden silk orb weavers, large spiders that spin huge webs to catch prey, are among a number of exotic species now living in South Carolina’s only national park.

                It’s not clear how climate change has affected all nonnative species in the park, but the presence of orb weavers appears tied to rising Earth temperatures, Congaree officials say.

    4. DougL,

       Did you go to Munro’s Books?

       It was started by Alice Munro and her then husband, long ago. In an old bank or something that looks like one.

       1. Synapsid — Howdy man. Yes, Munro’s Books, my first stop and hours of browsing. BTW the Munro family retired a few years back and sold the business and building to their employees on ridiculously generous terms.

          1. DougL,

             And meanwhile Alice Munro won the Nobel prize for literature in 2013.

             There’s something likable about Canadians in my book.

28. SONGBIRDS ‘DISAPPEARING’ FROM FRANCE

    A study has found that France has lost a third of its songbirds over the past 15 years.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-44167690/songbirds-disappearing-from-france

    1. When will humanity realize the real treasure is the one they walked away from and helped to destroy?

29. Ventures

    “We will drive all of them into extinction while we may drive only 10% of the much smaller species into extinction.” ~ Ron Patterson

    We can drive species into extinction with awesome speed, acceleration and style in our brand-spanky-new EV’s. (Now available in the all-new limited-edition colors, Maritime Frog and Amazon Canopy.) And we can clobber the ones that got away with some sleek and shimmering PV’s and battery packs.

    John Michael Greer: False Promises
    15-minute video

    “The Toba eruption almost wiped out the human population leaving, by some estimates, less than 10,000 humans alive.” ~ Ron Patterson

    Those humans, by contrast, knew how to live on the land, make their own shelters and clothing, and hunt and gather for their own food, etc.. That’s a big difference with humans of today, many of whom know how to, say, drive a car to a grocery store.

    Some niches can close abruptly, while others can open up just as abruptly. Naturally, whether new niches represent opportunity or not can largely depend on the kinds of skills and knowledge one has and one lacks.

    Wipeout (The Ventures, 1966)

    1. Some niches can close abruptly, while others can open up just as abruptly.

       The niches that close abruptly are the wild areas that are now palm oil plantations, or corn fields, or grazing land for cows, or paved streets. But you are right, these are also niches that open just as abruptly. They were once wild animal niches and now they are brand new human niches.

    2. We can drive species into extinction with awesome speed, acceleration and style in our brand-spanky-new EV’s. (Now available in the all-new limited-edition colors, Maritime Frog and Amazon Canopy.) And we can clobber the ones that got away with some sleek and shimmering PV’s and battery packs.

       Come on Caelan, you really need to up your game a couple of notches! You keep focusing on the comon ordinary poor people. EVs and PV?! Seriously?! That stuff barely even moves the needle on species extinction…

       You need to at least look at what the lowly middle class is aspiring to nowadays! If you ain’t supporting the Kochs by burning lot’s of that good ole jet fuel, then you’re not even on the extinction radar.(pun not intended). You aren’t going to set any speed records for mass extinction events by driving a cheap $100,000 Tesla. or by putting solar panels or battery storage in your home, Here is what you really need to get the ball rolling!

       http://www.businessinsider.com/cirrus-vision-jet-test-flight-review-pictures-2018-5

       For most of us, jet ownership is something that is more fantasy than reality. After all, few have millions to burn on a private jet.

       However, Cirrus is trying to bring that dream closer to reality for more people with the new Vision Jet.

       At around $2 million, it’s the most affordable private jet on sale today. In fact, it’s roughly half the price of its closest jet-powered competitors.

       Now in case you are wondering, the totally destitute like the villagers in Africa, who can barely even afford an ebike… used to light their homes with kerosene, which is basically jet fuel. Nobody in their right mind would ever want them to transition to PV, battery storage and LED lighting. Next thing you know they’d be charging their pseudosmartphones with solar and then accessing the internet and running businesses on mobile banking apps.
       The Koch Bros would certaily suffer deep emotional trauma just thinking about all them poor little Africuns without kerosene. .

       http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/12/08/africa-goes-grid-bring-power-rural-villages

       But you go right ahead and keep supporting those Kochs, who after all, are in no way shape or form part of that capitalist plutarchy you keep telling us about. The Kochs and their affiliates are all really just sentimental closet greenies, deeply concerned about wildlife and mass extinctions. And they really really appreciate all your support!
       God Bless, and Make America Great Again!

       1. PV’s and EV’s don’t seem to be pushing the FF and ecocide needles down while they dance to the tune of the ecocidal crony-capitalist plutarchy (CCP)– rather like your lame Koch brothers, or poor-people-need-savior-CCP-technology, ‘devices’ and/or mindless MSM-style mouthpiece formats.

          1. PV’s and EV’s don’t seem to be pushing the FF and ecocide needles down while they dance to the tune of the ecocidal crony-capitalist plutarchy (CCP)

             ‘Ecocidal crony-capitalist plutarchy (CCP)’ Blah, blah, blah! So now you’ve made it into an acronym, how cute!

             What the fuck does that even mean? So what do suggest?! Just keep the status quo, subsidizing and selling more kerosene in places like Africa and India? Given the projected populations of those two places alone in 2050 that would be a huge increase in the global carbon footprint, which the planet can ill afford. Which will also certainly increase the rate of ecocide. Or are you counting on an Ebola epidemic or something worse to counter the future population growth?!

             Your argument that PV’s and EV’s don’t seem to be pushing the FF and ecocide needles down is just plain stupid. It’s like someone claiming that using a bucket to bail water out of a sinking boat is a bad idea because the boat is still sinking.

             Well guess what, it would be nice if the people in the sinking boat had a working electric bilge pump but if they don’t, then what you need is more people with buckets bailing faster and someone to plug up the leaks, not more holes in the hull and some asshat lounging in the shade in a deck chair with a cold drink saying: “SEE! The bucket isn’t working!”

             If you were on my boat and all you could do is criticize the people using the buckets, you’d be the first one I’d throw overboard! With apologies to the sharks for the lousy quality of the bait.

             https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/building-market-off-grid-solar-lighting.pdf

             Building a Market for
             Off-Grid Solar Lighting
             Introduction
             This policy brief looks at the current market situation for off-grid solar technologies in India and the current barriers to an enabling business environment for solar.
             This paper is the second in a series of three policy briefs examining the links between the use of kerosene fuel and ff-grid solar applications for lighting in rural India. Policy Brief 1 examines the existing system of kerosene subsidies
             in India, the key issues facing this system and the implications of kerosene subsidies for the dissemination of clean, alternative off-grid solar lighting (Garg, Sharma, Clarke, & Bridle, 2017). Policy Brief 3 analyzes the current policy
             environment governing kerosene and off-grid solar use and sets out a suite of detailed policy interventions that, if implemented, could achieve a systemic transition from kerosene use to solar for lighting (Bridle & Clarke, 2017).
             These papers jointly suggest initial policy solutions to enhance off-grid solar penetration. They address the barriers to an enabling market and make a case for kerosene subsidy reform.

             1. See here.

    3. Wipeout?
       Original was The Surfaris– they went to my High School (Glendora).
       Went from playing in the gym, to the number one hit on Earth.
       Didn’t do much beyond that——-

30. FAR FROM SPECIAL: HUMANITY’S TINY DNA DIFFERENCES ARE ‘AVERAGE’ IN ANIMAL KINGDOM

    Paper offers new insights into evolution; as with humans, over 90 percent of animal species today likely originated 100,000-200,000 years ago.

    “At a time when humans place so much emphasis on individual and group differences, maybe we should spend more time on the ways in which we resemble one another and the rest of the animal kingdom.”

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/tca-ffs051418.php

    1. OOPS Anatomically modern humans 300,000 years ago. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/morocco-early-human-fossils-anthropology-science/

       1. Not quite: The residents of the Moroccan site weren’t quite the Homo sapiens of today; their skulls were less rounded and more elongated than ours, perhaps signaling differences between our brains and theirs.

31. Humans are great at self-delusion and using fantasy to achieve advantage and control. Being “special” is a justification for the most heinous acts upon each other and the world at large.

    1. “The good Earth—we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.” — Kurt Vonnegut

    2. Yep! Donald Trump and his supporters call immigrants animals, that’s actually true because all humans are Great Apes, that includes Trump!

32. Just some thoughts from a farmers perspective. We as farmers are a significant part of the war on insects. One is the widespread use of insecticides on crops (example; enough neonics used on each corn seed one millions of acres to kill 4,000 bees) GMOs such as BT crops, Tillage which destroys their homes, Vast Mono culture crops, Use of anthelminthics in livestock that kill the 100s of species of insects that eat the manure pats.
    The reality is very little of this is necessary or even profitable for the farmer but all these practices are taught by the Ag programs in our universities and reinforced by the subsidy programs and funded by the banks. Our Ag programs in academia are owned by the pesticide manufacturers and until that changes we should not expect any real changes in their recommendations.
    Many of these practices are not that problematic to the crop pest insects but way more devastating to the spiders and other predator insects as well as pollinators due to their more complex and longer life cycles.

    I highly recommend Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren from the Ecdysis Foundation, a crowdfunded research center dedicated to helping farmers embrace their insects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqXt_We7Gk4

    1. Yep!
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHsLO4rHdMg
       DIF Leontino Balbo Jr. ERA Sustainable Agriculture System
       Presented by Leontino Balbo Jr. an inovative Agriculture production System named ERA. Ecosystem Revitalized Agriculture.
       http://www.agrosfortis.com
       .

       

       1. Fred thanks Great example of why it’s not necessary to destroy the ecosystem to grow food. even if its sugar haha.

33. https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.mx/2018/05/sustainability-boils-down-to-scale.html Another reason why our governance system is so dysfunctional and why its so hard to change. Why our world order will collapse before it makes real changes which affects the level of this extinction event.

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