This is the title of a remarkable new book by Elizabeth Kolbert. If you are interested in the near and long term fate of our species this is a thought provoking read. And to any (hopefully few) climate change disbelievers, this should be mandatory reading.
To you disbelievers, a few facts. Note, these are facts and cannot be argued - you don't get an opinion any more than you get to have one on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity or Schrodinger's Wave Equation.
Mass extinction? Consider the previous five mass extinction events. Each took tens to hundreds of thousands of years and wiped out roughly half the existing species on earth at those times. The last major one happened to take out the mega-reptiles, tipping the balance in favor of mammals.
If man were not around the background extinction rate for all species would be roughly one every 700 years. We're seeing hundreds per year. Hawaii has roughly one a month. Think white nose syndrome and brown bats (the pathogen introduced by a visitor to Howe Caverns, not far from us). So we're on a course to reduce species diversity by the same amount in just a few human lifetimes. The background and detail on this in the book is simply fascinating.
What's more fascinating to me is our built-in difficulty in seeing events on our planet in the context of geologic time. Are we thus on a path to set the stage for our own extinction? Or are we more clever than that? Will we figure out ways to stay ahead of the curve, adapt and even thrive in our new environment?
And what changes can we foresee for our beloved Adirondacks? Thoughts and comments welcome. And go read the book!!!
To you disbelievers, a few facts. Note, these are facts and cannot be argued - you don't get an opinion any more than you get to have one on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity or Schrodinger's Wave Equation.
- How much Carbon dioxide has been emitted by mankind burning fossil fuels since we came into being? Answer: around 500 billion metric tons, almost all of it since the industrial revolution. The current rate is about 35 billion tons/year.
- Where has all this CO2 gone? Answer: about 1/3 of it has gone into the ocean, forming Carbonic acid and lowering its Ph (note: say goodbye to the world's coral in your kid's lifetimes). Most of the rest remains in the atmosphere. And each CO2 molecule released by burning fossil fuels traps about 100,000 times more heat during its time in the atmosphere than the heat released in creating it.
- So what? Answer: First, the scientific evidence is conclusive that this is the cause of global warming. Despite what you hear on Fox News, there is no debate in the scientific community. In fact, it was Nobel prizewinner Svante Arrhenius who first proposed the idea and cause of global warming, developing the basic equation for it in the 1890's. He thought it would take about 3,000 years (still a blink of the eye in geologic time). His mistake? He simply didn't anticipate the rate at which our species would burn fossil fuels. Second, global warming is one of three major consequences that contribute to mass extinction. The other two are directly killing off species and spreading invasive species into environments where they never existed before.
Mass extinction? Consider the previous five mass extinction events. Each took tens to hundreds of thousands of years and wiped out roughly half the existing species on earth at those times. The last major one happened to take out the mega-reptiles, tipping the balance in favor of mammals.
If man were not around the background extinction rate for all species would be roughly one every 700 years. We're seeing hundreds per year. Hawaii has roughly one a month. Think white nose syndrome and brown bats (the pathogen introduced by a visitor to Howe Caverns, not far from us). So we're on a course to reduce species diversity by the same amount in just a few human lifetimes. The background and detail on this in the book is simply fascinating.
What's more fascinating to me is our built-in difficulty in seeing events on our planet in the context of geologic time. Are we thus on a path to set the stage for our own extinction? Or are we more clever than that? Will we figure out ways to stay ahead of the curve, adapt and even thrive in our new environment?
And what changes can we foresee for our beloved Adirondacks? Thoughts and comments welcome. And go read the book!!!
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