Upstream | February 22, 2013 | 41 comments

Could Humans Go Extinct?

source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/animal_forecast/2013/02/human_extinction_co...

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coolplanet
A surge in atmospheric carbon is a prime suspect for the Permian extinction, the biggest die-off in the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth.

By Fred Guterl | Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, at 10:57 AM


To see the apocalypse firsthand, start at McKittrick Creek in Texas and hike up switchbacks, through juniper trees, along the Permian Reef trail. About 1,200 feet up are huge blocks of limestone formed from the discarded shells of an impressive variety of sea creatures—rice-like foraminifera, elaborate brachiopods that filtered seawater for bits of dead flesh, hundreds of varieties of snails. Hardly noticeable among this cornucopia of forms was Claraia, a dull scallop-like clam that wasn’t at all charismatic.

A couple hundred miles away, in Green River, Utah, the sediment corresponds to a few million years later in time. Here the incredible variety of forms is gone, replaced with a post-apocalyptic sameness. One particular kind of clam is abundant. Claraia had inherited the Earth.

What could have caused this crisis? It’s an open question. Figuring out what happened 251 million years ago—at the end of the Permian Period, when reptiles had come into their own on the giant continent of Pangea—and in what sequence, and with what cause and effect, is exceedingly difficult. The fossil record paints with a thick brush. But it seems that volcanoes in what are now the Siberian steppes were spewing lava, which was in turn vaporizing vast deposits of coal. Carbon concentrations went through the roof—much as they are doing now from human industrial activity. A surge in atmospheric carbon is a prime suspect for the Permian extinction, the biggest die-off in the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth. What does this bode for us?

Mass extinctions have happened five or six times (depending on how you count). It’s a kind of wiping the slate clean and starting anew. The death of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammals came from such an event 66 million years ago, when a meteorite fell in what is now the Yucatan. Many scientists believe that there may now be a new mass extinction event under way, caused by Homo sapiens.

Ever since humans fanned out from Africa and began to take over the world, many species have disappeared. The mammals that inhabited the Pleistocene until about 11,700 years ago—the wooly mammoths and the saber-toothed tigers—died most likely at the hands of human hunters. The carrier pigeon, which once numbered in the billions, is gone. The rhino’s days appear to be numbered, as do the bluefin tuna’s, and so forth. The current rate of species loss, by some estimates, is 200 a day, but nobody knows with any precision. Whether this trajectory takes us to mass extinction is not something science can answer definitively at the moment.

If a mass extinction is happening, climate change would not have had much time to factor into it. Most of the species loss has so far has had little to do with pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Humans as a species have ravaged the Earth in many other ways. Fishing the waters with factory trawlers, clearing forests for wood and palm oil plantations, carrying strange flora and fauna in the bilge of ships from port to port—all these things, and more, have contributed.

In the near future, many potential triggers could lead to a cataclysm. The 20th century gave us nuclear bombs and weaponized smallpox. The 21st will surely deliver a greater variety of bioweapons. The prospect of a natural killer like the influenza virus adapting to a globalized world of 7 billion people is worrisome. The machines we have built our civilization upon—computers, software, networks—contain the seeds of destruction for the simple fact that we have come to depend on them, and they are vulnerable to manipulation. We are always figuring out new ways of bringing apocalypse on our heads.

Even climate, which we tend to think of as a slowly unfolding crisis, could conceivably bite us sooner than we think. Some researchers think that weather patterns such as the ones that bring monsoons to India and sustain glaciers in Antarctica could behave like dynamical systems, prone to sudden, unpredictable, and dangerous changes.

It’s possible—perhaps likely—that any of these factors, or several acting at the same time, could cause a plunge in the human population in this century or the next. United Nations estimates have the world population, now 7 billion, rising to 10 billion by the end of the century and then leveling off. When we consider such estimates, we tend to make a questionable assumption: that the human population will behave like no other—that, after rising with breakneck speed, it will assume a steady state precisely at its peak. Ecologists will tell you that that is not usually the way it goes. Yeast cells that rapidly fill up their culture dish generally die off suddenly and in great numbers.

But extinction? That is a high bar. As bad as viruses or a revolt of the machines could be, surely some hardy remnant would survive and carry on. For Homo sapiens to go extinct—for every last man, woman, and child on the planet die, once and for all—it seems that something fundamental would have to give. The foundation of life on the planet is its geochemistry—its atmospheres, oceans, the elements that comprise them, the ground beneath them, and the relationship of this vast system to the sun. This is the stage upon which life plays out.

One of the interesting things about past mass extinctions is that they seem to happen over many millions of years. The exception, of course, is the one that doomed the dinosaurs, which basically occurred during one bad weekend with an asteroid. But some paleobiologists have recently whittled the Permian extinction down to a few tens of thousands of years, give or take. That puts it squarely on a human timescale. If we are indeed in the midst of a new mass extinction, one started by our own hand, when did the clock start ticking? Just under 200,000 years ago, when modern humans left Africa? Ten thousand years ago, when we started agriculture? And how much time do we have left?
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41 comments // Could Humans Go Extinct?

  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +1
      MarshainFlorida  

    • Fire and Ice -

      Some say the world will end in fire,
      Some say in ice.
      From what I've tasted of desire
      I hold with those who favor fire.
      But if it had to perish twice,
      I think I know enough of hate
      To say that for destruction ice
      Is also great
      And would suffice.

      Robert Frost
      March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963 / San Francisco)

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • MarshainFlorida
  • alexandrekBack
  • Vortices
  • MSII
    • +3
      MSII  

    • Well a major constituency of the right-wingers are all about their precious "end-of-days" so this isn't a "bad" thing by their "standards"! Little things like "science", and "facts" don't come into their calculations...

    • 3 months ago
  • YourTaxes_MyPaycheck
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +1
      MarshainFlorida  
    • YourTaxes_MyPaycheck:

      actually, 235 years down was a slight slope. I think the really biggest down-slope came in the days of Edison, Ford, The Rockefellers, the Goodyears & Firestones - 125 years go began a change from a slope to a cliff. Every day we keep looking for the bottom, and every day we get closer to hitting it.

    • 3 months ago
  • Leen61
    • +2
      Leen61  

    • In many Red states, large swaths of humans are already extinct. But seriously, there refusal to understand the consequences of our existence, will eventually bring extinction to us all.

    • 3 months ago
  • warman1138
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +1
      MarshainFlorida  
    • warman1138:

      There are other ways to keep air conditioning and heating for that matter operational without polluting. Solar energy is real, if only those who could invest in it would. There are large buildings operational today on solar energy alone. Retro-fitting existing industries and homes would definitely put a huge hole in Big Oil's importance. And a further huge hole could be drilled by eliminating wherever possible dependence on plastics.

    • 3 months ago
  • Debra_
  • jackhole
  • mastroiannic
    • +2
      mastroiannic  
    • jackhole:

      She is most certainly NOT progressive as her profile states. She is a depressed, man hating (and child and apparently human hating) blog troll or perhaps one of those people who's job is to go onto forums as if their from one political mantra but actually turn out to be from the opposite. No I don't actually believe that last possibility, doesn't add up. However Deb clearly has a built up animosity towards men and really anyone but herself specifically. "always looking forward to the future," she states... yeah as long as that future is misery and the suffering of others so she won't truly be alone.

      Debra you consistently offer only the most out of touch, disappointing, useless and negative comments. While I don't agree with many posts by some of the more conservative posters like Dugdog or Paratus, I at least feel like I need to read what they state for a variety of sensible reasons and would not try and nudge them off this site by any means (not that I post much anyway, but a number of us read almost all the posts).

      You need to reread your Virginia Woolf.

      As for the original post. Let's try not to go extinct or let any more animals die. It's unfortunate to me when the rich will spend vast amounts of money on art and aesthetics that represent nature (which btw, to state the obvious, nature keeps us around for now), however won't invest in supporting the real thing.

    • 3 months ago
  • Debra_
  • Debra_
    • 0
      Debra_  
    • mastroiannic:

      Earth was once beautiful. I am poetic at heart. I remember looking on TV seeing lovely green rainforests when I was younger outside a yellow golden sun, Blue skies.

      There was a nice grass lot I would picnic at when I was a little girl. Now it is a cheap strip mall. And the blight in the city is getting toxic.

      Open your eyes, humanity is a cancer on mother earth. . The squirrels and minks live in perfect harmony with nature and the earth, but the cancer known as humanity does not. Humanity isn't special, it's a disease.
      I am progressive. And I believe for progress we need to radically reduce the amount of cancerous cells causing sicknesses to the earth. Then we can evolve and live in a more enlightened society.

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • dugdog47
    • +1
      dugdog47  

    • Well, there is life deep in the ocean living in super-heated water that mankind can never kill, even if he tried. After we're gone (not if but when) some new species will eventually rise out of the ocean. We are a part of a cycle that will keep repeating until the sun supernovas.

      And just to make it interesting, perhaps our sun's supernova will be the star of Bethlaham on some alien world. (why not?, I'm feeling deep tonight.)

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +5
      coolplanet  
    • dugdog47:

      Is it down to survival of the fittest?
      Oh well, at least a few hardy creatures will survive?
      Do we even grasp that we are talking about THIS CENTURY???
      We have at least another billion years before our Sun goes supernova.
      Why not make the most of it instead of going down in a ball of flames?

    • 3 months ago
  • dugdog47
    • -1
      dugdog47  
    • coolplanet:

      I kinda doubt that this will happen this century, unless something unforseen like a volcano or asteroid causes it. I'll agree that humans are causing small changes in the atmosphere, but it's nothing the planet can't handle.

      Now the plastic filled oceans? That's a different story.

      Like I said in the other thread, I support my state conservation efforts, that's me doing my part to make the best of it.

      As for the global alarmists, I can't really support all the talk of "the planet's gonna die if we don't act now" hoopla. I can't help but think it's a way for the global elitists trying to control us. Just my opinion.

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • dugdog47:

      The 'warmist' scientists are now projecting a possible 10 degree rise in temperature by the end of this century if we don't reduce our CO2.
      10 degrees, whether C or F, is intolerable for existing life on Earth!
      And not all of the guns on the planet can fix it.
      You are confusing 'elite' with smart.

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +2
      MarshainFlorida  
    • Image
    • MSII:

      Agreed. Here is an article about a die-off of the world's frog and other amphibians written in 7/'06. "
      A strange new fungus disease that kills frogs and toads and every other species of amphibian is spreading around the globe and -- combined with pollution and overdevelopment -- is driving more and more of the creatures to extinction, a coalition of the world's top biologists warns.

      At least one-third of the world's known amphibians are threatened by the combination of attacks, and up to 122 species have become extinct within the past 25 years, the international team of specialists is reporting in today's edition of the journal Science."
      http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/EXTINCTION-CRISIS-FOR-AMPHIBIANS-Frogs-toads...

      And fast-forward to 2012. This you need to see for yourselves. You don't even need to read all the text. Just scroll down to the charts and figures. http://sapiens.revues.org/1406

      Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/EXTINCTION-CRISIS-FOR-AMPHIBIANS-Frogs-toads...

      We are all interconnected. If the amphibians are allowed to die off, what follows? But then if the ocean levels keep rising, we may not even need to worry about it, will we?

      Even in the jungle, animals don't take more than they need. However, should we humans be allowed to keep destroying those very habitats that used to provide food for the jungle? Or should we be allowed to keep poaching to extinction such animals as elephants and rhinos so Asians can keep getting their aphrodisiacs and wealthy Americans can keep buying hand-carved ivory? That's not survival of the jungle as it was supposed to survive. It's the version created by man.

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • MSII
  • coolplanet
  • treewolf39
  • coolplanet
  • northernexpat
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • northernexpat:

      I stopped wondering that when I became so cynical.
      Short term profit drives our world into the ground.
      It's an evolutionary flaw that could well cause us to go extinct.
      'Live for the moment' is the mantra of our age.

    • 3 months ago
  • northernexpat
    • +3
      northernexpat  
    • coolplanet:

      I agree and it's the GenX generation that wants everything yesterday. No one has patience anymore. It's just gimme, gimme, gimme and the hell with everyone and everything else. They could learn from my generation. We weren't called flower children for nothing. We would stop and smell the roses.

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +3
      coolplanet  
    • Image
    • northernexpat:

      'Stop and smell the roses' was my mom's favorite saying.
      She learned that from her mother who actually grew roses.
      Now it's all fast roses bought at the store.
      Our generations need to get back to the garden.

    • 3 months ago
  • northernexpat
    • +2
      northernexpat  
    • coolplanet:

      Aw! That's beautiful, thanks. My favorite flowers are roses, but most don't grow up here. However, I do have a very hardy rose bush in my garden, as well as wild rose bushes along my back fence. I sure hope they survive this winter. Today, the top of my wishing well collapsed with the weight of this season's snow. Everyone in town fears what kind of damages to our bushes and shrubs we are going to find once the snow melts since we've never had such crushing snow before.

    • 3 months ago
  • wolfess
    • +2
      wolfess  
    • northernexpat:

      Well duh :-)!!!!! The thing I don't get is how those elitist mo-Rons think nothing will happen to them. I mean, if there is an extinction event unfolding right now THEY will be just as extinct as we peons!

    • 3 months ago
  • wolfess
    • +1
      wolfess  
    • coolplanet:

      :-) -- We are just now climbing out from under an 8 inch snow and more than ever I am just soooo anxious to get back out and play in the dirt :-)! I've had just enough homegrown tomatoes in the last 2 summers that I seriously cannot eat the tomatoes that come from the store :-(!

    • 3 months ago
  • artemis6
  • wolfess
    • +1
      wolfess  
    • artemis6:

      Exactly! Living in those penthouses a bazillion floors above we peons means they look down their noses at us in all possible ways ... what they don't realize is that in any kind of 'natural' disaster it is those at the highest levels that die first :-)!

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +6
      coolplanet  

    • "Yeast cells that rapidly fill up their culture dish generally die off suddenly and in great numbers."

      Yet the same is not true for cancer cells.....

    • 3 months ago
  • jackhole
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