Humans // Current TV

Ethos (Director's Cut) - Hosted by Woody Harrelson

Ethos, a powerful new documentary hosted by Woody Harrelson, is an investigation into... more

JRBarilla
added this
13 days ago
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0 comments

Changing Education Paradigms

Amazing explanation of what has happened to education and where it needs to go to get... more

Novek
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Journey Of The Universe: a cosmic, Earth, human transformation

This film and book project is a collaboration of evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas... more

JanforGore
added this
2 months ago
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11 comments

Article: Humans Caused $6.6 Trillion in Environmental Damage in 2008

the numbers are staggering a real mind opening on the damage being done

frankpatton
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3 months ago
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A Very Scary Halloween 2011

{{{I wanted to blog something REALLY scary and frightening this year for Halloween. I... more

thinkingblue
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3 months ago
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Happiness a Key to Long Life for Humans and Orangutans

Past research suggested that happy people live longer. To see if this also held true... more

remyric
added this
8 months ago
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1 comment

Bad Taste - cult Peter Jackson SF comedy horror film - watch

Bad Taste is a 1987 cult science fiction comedy horror film. Produced on a low budget,... more

worrg
added this
9 months ago
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0 comments

Nature's wrath, tornadoes and floods

How much longer before we get serious about what is exacerbating this?

JanforGore
added this
10 months ago
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12 comments

Gut Bacteria Divide People Into 3 Types, Scientists Report

n the early 1900s, scientists discovered that each person belonged to one of four... more

Vierotchka
added this
10 months ago
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1 comment

The Planet Strikes Back

Why We Underestimate the Earth and Overestimate Ourselves

joeeddy
added this
10 months ago
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0 comments

40 Easy Ways to Eat More Ethically

Generally, ethical eating focuses on putting thought into where your food comes from... more

sunnyspeaks
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11 months ago
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10 Things We Couldn’t Do Without Robots

Since the advent of robots, work has been shared between man and machine. But, as... more

sunnyspeaks
added this
12 months ago
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0 comments

Animals Make Friends, Too

As Valentine's Day cards attest, humans value love and friendship that... more

suzane
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

American Adults Flunk Basic Science

According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:... more

Ian_Judge_Lord
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1 year ago
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0 comments

John Zerzan - Future Primitive interview + Dead Society exp. movie

John Zerzan first shot into celebrity philosopher status in 1995 after the New York... more

worrg
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

Human race to be extinct in 200 years

Yikes, did you know the “Brain of Britain” Stephen Hawking has said that... more

ForgetTheBox
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

Humans Can Only Walk In Circles and We Don't Know Why

"If you walk, drive or sail blindfolded, in the middle of the fog or at night,... more

lookatmypix
added this
1 year ago
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62 comments

Revolutionary stem cells treatment that could cure blindness to be tested on humans for the first time

A revolutionary technique that could restore sight to the blind and prevent others... more

GoldenHeart
added this
1 year ago
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2 comments

Green Float: The futuristic concept that sees humans live in giant skyscrapers on floating water lilies in the middle of the Pacific

Humans in the future could live in mini floating cities that drift across the Pacific... more

GoldenHeart
added this
1 year ago
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0 comments

Mass Extinction Threat: Earth on Verge of Huge Reset Button?

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans — from hunting to climate change — are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch, marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain.

Scientists had once thought species diversity could help buffer a group of animals from such die-offs, either keeping them from heading toward extinction or helping them to bounce back. But having many diverse species also proved no guarantee of future success for any one group of animals, given that mass extinctions more or less wiped the slate clean, according to studies such as the latest one.

Looking back in time, the diversity of large taxonomic groups (which include lots of species), such as snails or corals, mostly hovered around a certain equilibrium point that represented a diversity limit of species' numbers. But that diversity limit also appears to have changed spontaneously throughout Earth's history about every 200 million years.

How today's extinction crisis — species today go extinct at a rate that may range from 10 to 100 times the so-called background extinction rate — may change the face of the planet and its species goes beyond what humans can predict, the researchers say.

"The main implication is that we're really rolling the dice," said John Alroy, a paleobiologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. "We don't know which groups will suffer the most, which groups will rebound the most quickly, or which ones will end up with higher or lower long-term equilibrium diversity levels."

What seems certain is that the fate of each animal group will differ greatly, Alroy said.

His analysis, detailed in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science, is based on almost 100,000 fossil collections in the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB).

The findings revealed various examples of diversity shifts, including one that took place in a group of ocean bottom-dwelling bivalves called brachiopods, which are similar to clams and oysters. They dominated the Paleozoic era from 540 million to 250 million years ago, and branched out into new species during two huge adaptive spurts of growth in diversity – each time followed by a big crash.

The brachiopods then reached a low, but steady, equilibrium over the past 250 million years in which there wasn't a surge or a crash in species' numbers, and still live on today as a rare group of marine animals.

cont.Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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42 comments

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