14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, the number of scientists warning people that we may be heading towards a new global extinction event has been steadily growing. In a new comprehensive study, experts look at the state of affairs in the world today, and provide predictions for the future.
An extinction event is when three quarters or more of all species on Earth are killed off in a single fell swoop, by natural factors. Some of these factors may include the eruption of a supervolcano, an asteroid impact, exposure to energetic cosmic radiation, tremendous earthquakes and so on.
Over the past 540 million years, the Earth experienced five extinction events, at one time losing more than 90 percent of its species. This may be the future in store for us as well, experts warn.
In the new report, they look at how mammals and other species of animals survive in today's world. Based on that data, the research team extrapolates a possible future for the planet.
The new paper, which was published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature, does not provide any encouragement. The rate at which we are losing species today is far above what you would call normal, natural rates.
“If you look only at the critically endangered mammals – those where the risk of extinction is at least 50 percent within three of their generations – and assume that their time will run out and they will be extinct in 1,000 years, that puts us clearly outside any range of normal and tells us that we are moving into the mass extinction realm,” explains Anthony Barnosky.
The expert holds an appointment as an integrative biologist at the University of California in Berkeley (UCB), and is also the curator of the Museum of Paleontology at the university.
He is also based at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where he is a paleontologist. Barnosky is the first author of the Nature paper. The investigation was funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
“A modern global mass extinction is a largely unaddressed hazard of climate change and human activities. Its continued progression, as this paper shows, could result in unforeseen--and irreversible--consequences to the environment and to humanity,” H. Richard Lane adds.
The expert is a program director at the NSF Division of Earth Sciences (DES). He agrees with Barnosky's assessment that the current rate of species and biodiversity loss could lead to the sixth global extinction event in as little as 3 to 22 centuries.
But there is also a silver lining to these conclusions, the team adds. “So far, only 1 to 2 percent of all species have gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly, so by those numbers it looks like we are not far down the road to extinction,” Barnosky reveals.
“We still have a lot of Earth's biota to save,” he concludes.