By Scott K. Johnson1 March 2012 Some like to point to cycles when dismissing climate change, brushing off warming as simply being the thing that happens right before cooling. In this view, concern about climate change is akin to the naïve worry that half of schools are performing below average. This is why we need […]
Media Contacts: Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734, cdybas@nsf.gov Greg Hand, University of Cincinnati, (513) 556-1822, handgl@ucmail.uc.edu 3 February 2012 The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report. It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden […]
Tamino poses the question: What’s the chance that if we continue with business-as-usual, man-made global warming will lead to disastrous climate change? It isn’t zero. It isn’t one. What is epsilon? Although one could quibble with the assumption that it isn’t 1 – why wouldn’t it be? – here’s what Des wrote in comments: Assumptions […]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy December 30 (MSNBC) – Jim Maceda travels to Siberia to interview Sergei Zimov, who has published a series of scientific papers exposing the importance of permafrost and high-latitude carbon dioxide and methane emissions in the global carbon cycle. Zimov initiated the Pleistocene Park […]
By Morgan Kelly17 November 2011 A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton University reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused […]
20 November 2011 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s Desdemona giving a presentation on the accelerating destruction of the oceans by various human activities. It’s basically Graph of the Day with narration. Download the slide deck: http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pdf http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pptx State of the Oceans 2011 Technorati Tags: ocean acidification,global warming,climate change,phenology,overfishing,ocean overexploitation,fish decline,mass extinction,extinction,coral,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,dead zone,ocean anoxia,phosphorus,nitrogen,carbon,carbon dioxide,overpopulation,doom
By Camila Ruz, www.guardian.co.uk 16 November 2011 If the current rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the “sixth mass extinction”, then it is the amphibian branch of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning. In research described as “terrifying” by an independent expert, scientists predict the future […]
By Brandon Keim 26 October 2011 When searching for causes of Earth’s mass extinctions, scientists instinctively turn to geophysical calamities: erupting volcanoes, methane bursts, asteroid strikes, and other obvious dooms. But in the most massive extinction of all, when most of everything that lived died out some 250 million years ago, a more subtle form […]
Here’s a lovely essay on doom from killing Mother, via Gail. The whole thing is worth a read and makes a nice bookend with Gail’s recent post, “Coping With Our Demise”. […] Being the scientist and avid student of human behavior that I am, in reality, sadly, I do not hold out much hope for […]
Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892 11 October 2011 KINGSTON, R.I. – While the cause of the mass extinction that occurred between the Permian and Triassic periods is still uncertain, two University of Rhode Island researchers collected data that show that terrestrial biodiversity recovered much faster than previously thought, potentially contradicting several theories for the cause […]