While the global impact of 8 billion people and growing is severe, the chances of a full-on human extinction in the foreseeable future are tiny—or so I’ve often argued. But a new study by a mathematician comes with a less than cheerful forecast about mass extinction events in general:
In a paper published in Science Advances, he proposes that mass extinction occurs if one of two thresholds are crossed: For changes in the carbon cycle that occur over long timescales, extinctions will follow if those changes occur at rates faster than global ecosystems can adapt. For carbon perturbations that take place over shorter timescales ... the size or magnitude of the change will determine the likelihood of an extinction event. Rothman predicts that, given the recent rise in carbon dioxide emissions over a relatively short timescale, a sixth extinction will depend on whether a critical amount of carbon is added to the oceans. That amount, he calculates, is about 310 gigatons ...
Under a business-as-usual scenario, we hit that 310 gig threshold around the turn of this century. Mark your calendars: 2100 could be the start of an environmental singularity.
- You’ve heard about eye walls, eye wall replacement cycles, the Coriolis effect that sets storms spinning, and lots of other storm lingo lately. But have you ever heard of another key feature in hurricane intensification called hot towers?
- Two big quakes and dozens of aftershocks in Mexico killed and injured hundreds over the last few weeks, dwarfing the casualties from Hurricanes Irma and Maria combined. Part of the reason is because Mexico City sits on the worst kind of geological foundation for quakes:
The downtown of Mexico City is notoriously vulnerable to earthquakes because of the very soft and wet ground underneath. Its soil amplifies shaking like Jell-O on a plate, and is prone to liquefaction, which is the ability to transform dirt into a dense liquid when sufficiently churned
- Some friends and colleagues in Austin at the non-profit Texas Freedom Network, which does some great progressive work in the Lone Star State preserving science/edu standards and among many other important issues, are looking to bring on a full time deputy development director. Check the job description here if you or someone you know is interested.
- First there was Hubble, and soon there will be the James Webb Space Telescope. But one day, hopefully soon, there may be LUVOIR:
With a coronagraph ... coupled with its one-of-a-kind size and location in space, it should be able to find and image hundreds of star systems for candidate exoplanets with the potential for life on them. With the spectra it will obtain, LUVOIR can do what no other current or planned observatory will be able to: search for molecular biosignatures around hundreds of Earth-sized, potentially habitable worlds.