Over the course of its 4.5-billion-year history, the Earth has seen the rise and fall of many populations of organisms. However, in Earth’s history, there have been five big mass extinction events, characterized as “periods in Earth's history when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a limited time frame.” (BBC) These events are cataclysmic enough to wipeout at least 50% of all organisms living during that period. The causes of mass extinction are many from the asteroids that sealed the fate of the dinosaurs to the volcanoes that choked out air to 96% of the organismic population during the Permian extinction, however one of the most recent yet potent mechanisms of bringing upon a mass extinction are humans. …show more content…
Unlike mass extinctions before this, “Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us — humans.” The earth is currently experiencing its sixth mass extinction caused by human behaviour and this can be seen by assessing modern extinction rates due to human activity, human overpopulation and man-made climate …show more content…
In the span of 50 years, the population of humans on this planet have reached all-time highs and continue to rise and with this rise comes the effects of overpopulation. The planet cannot sustain so many people during such a short span of time. Not only is there a loss of space for new generations of humans to live on, but there has been an excessive use of natural resources before there is a chance to replenish them such as food, natural gases, and water. The problem of overpopulation seems to truly encompasses all other aspects of the factors leading to the sixth mass extinction such as habitat loss and global warming. The population must be feed and because of this, million upon millions of acres of land once inhabited by a whole ecosystem have been converted to farmland to provide food for the growing population. In addition, the increase in leads to an increase in waste and therein arises a problem: where to put the waste. In the United States alone, “4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person” Landfills seemed to be the perfect solution for this problem, however, over the years, “landfill managers have been emphasizing just how quickly they are running out of space. The more people there are on the planet, the more waste is being produced. Some of this waste is quite toxic, and even landfills which are
The reading by Paul S. Martin, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America, explores the idea that extinction is a phenomenon that could be explained by human arrival. Humankind has an impact on animal extinction. He says: “based on the concept that animal populations could have sustained some additional predation, but not as much as took place after human arrival, this explanation has come to be known as overkill “(Martin, 48). In this passage Martin is explaining that humans are predators and upon their arrival many animals died. Martin also goes on to say that meteor strikes and climatic
The Permian mass extinction occurred 251Ma and is recognised as having the largest volcanic eruption as one of the main antagonists to the event, it is also responsible for ~96% of all species to be wiped out. The main theories for the Permian event are the Siberian traps and the possibility of an impact event but the latter is widely disregarded.
The scale and pace of change is dramatic; for example, the extinction of species is occurring at around 100-fold pre-human rates4. The population sizes of vertebrate species have, on average, declined by half over the last 45 years5. More than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest has been felled since 20006. About
There have been five major mass extinction on earth triggered by a distinguishable event, but in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert writes of the narrative of the sixth extinction caused directly by human impact. The book identifies the effects of human activity on how, over humans history on earth, the natural world has been affected. Every environmental impact stems into three basic groups of global problems to nature: Pollution, Habitat loss and Invasive Species. Kolbert explains that each impact can be traced back to one source, human industrial development. With each impact various types of life in the natural world are affected. Deforestation, urbanization, and sea level rise contribute to habitat loss worldwide. When humans began to travel they also brought invasive species and disease along with them; as boats only became bigger more and more invasive species travel. This reverse engineering of the planet species, brings new species that don’t have any natural predators, thus having an easier time driving native species out to endangerment or extinction. The different outcomes that come from human pollution is separated throughout the book, but the idea remains constant; with the development of human culture, pollution has drastically impacted a vast extent of species habitats and their environment.
In the book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert there are a lot of examples that are going on in the world today and also examples of things that started when the first human being was around. This book talks about how we are in the sixth mass extinction, and that is caused by humans. Overall the book goes chapter by chapter and talks about the different mass extinctions there have been, and how they were caused, but also the book talks about different species that have gone extinct and the reasons why. For example the book talks about golden frogs that are located in Panama and how they were seen everywhere located in El Valle de Anton, but they suddenly started disappearing. They were disappearing because of a chytrid fungis cause by humans, when humans travel they were bring this fungis to different places, this ended up killing the frogs (Chapter 1, Kolbert). That is just one example, but throughout the book Kolbert talks about different extinctions like this and what caused them.
Assess the different hypotheses put forward for the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian and Cretaceous (KT) Periods.
In a world that we, as humans, have begun to destroy and shape for the worse, there is still so much that we are oblivious to. From the illegal endangered animal trade to harmful CO2 and methane, Racing Extinction has revealed to both myself and society the constantly ticking clock that is Earth.
Just the fact that the Pope has ignored the warnings of Catholic presidential candidates and is trying to fight climate change is monumental. Global warming is a global issue. No matter what religion or ethnicity global warming will affect everyone. Earth is the only known planet capable of supporting life. How embarrassing will it be for our generation if we wipe out life because of our ignorance. Earth has a marvelous ability to rebuild and return to a healthy state. After each of the five mass extinction events Earth was resilient enough to survive and so did life. After the most notorious, the Permian Mass Extinction, less than 4% of life survived. Miraculously Earth rebuilt its ecosystems and was able to sustain life. The causes of the
The first thing to know about this particular mass extinction is the species that inhibited the earth
With all of the speculation over CO2 some people have been overlooking methane. “In 2006, the scientists who monitor methane, a greenhouse gas about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, thought that concentrations of the gas, which had sharply risen in the 1980s, had plateaued.” (Ogburn, Stephanie Paige) “Since then, researchers have seen a “sudden growth” of about 6 parts per billion per year, noted in the journal Science, that has pushed methane levels in the atmosphere to the highest they’ve ever been.” (Koebler, Jason) Could methane, the same chemical that heats your home, strike a second time? The Permian Mass Extinction was about 248 million years ago and the most recent mass extinction, K/T, was 65 million years ago. Will the rising
In all Earth’s history there have been five known mass extinctions, 415, 322, 300, 145, and 33 million years ago (Crawford et al. 2013). The oldest mass extinction happening over 415 million years ago is thought to be caused by a short, but severe ice age while the second oldest, occurring over 322 million years ago almost wiped out the trilobites. The mass extinction is believed to have been caused by the newly evolved plants on the land which released nutrients into the sea, that may have caused algal blooms which used oxygen out of the ocean, suffocating the trilobites and other bottom dwellers. About 300 million years ago, another mass extinction, known as “the Great Dying”, because it was the worst extinction ever. this extreme mass extinction set
There have been five well known extinctions on this earth. The one most well known is the mass extinction that ended the dinosaurs. Mass extinction is often described as the elimination of a large number of species in a short period of time. Despite what many think, the elimination of species is almost commonplace at this point. The Earth is currently in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and it’s been caused by the human race.
Scientists calculate that without humans about one to five species would die a year, which is considered the background rate of extinction. But in our current society human activities are destroying many of the chances these animals need to survive. We as a planet are killing species at
Over 98% of all organisms that have lived on Earth are now extinct. A mass extinction event occurs when a large number of species die out within a small time frame (relative to the age of Earth). Mass extinctions are intensively studied for both cause and effect, as there is usually room for debate regarding catalysts that precede the extinction and the massive influx of new biological species that follows. There have been five major mass extinctions, dubbed the “Big Five,” that have wiped out at least 50% of the species living at those times. The most well known mass extinction of the Big Five, with the decimation of every species of non-avian dinosaur, is the Cretaceous-Paleogene
Since before the industrial evolutions humans have been pumping green house gasses—carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons— into the atmosphere however, it wasn’t until recently that the amounts being produced are shoving the Earth into a sixth extinction. While the causes of this upcoming extinction are constantly debated on it has earned itself the name Holocene extinction. This name is derived from the theory that humans are the main contributors to this extinction. To investigate the cause Elizabeth Kolbert, and American journalist and professor at Williams College, took the world on a wild and saddening journey on the human contribution to this looming extinction in her novel, The Sixth Extinction; An Unnatural History. Not only does Kolbert’s book explain how humans have contributed to global warming and its effects on life on land but also ocean acidification and how life under the sea has changed over the years.