The largest losses of living creatures are expected in the oceans
The Earth is in the stage of the next - sixth - mass extinction of living beings. More and more scientists are coming to such a nightmarish conclusion. Recently, a large group of American scientists from Stanford, California, Hawaiian Universities and the University of Connecticut joined those concerned about the future of the planet. They outlined in the journal Science the fate of the oceans, in which mankind shits beyond measure.
Extinction rates are increasing year by year
- The first to die out are the large inhabitants of the oceans - whales, sharks, dolphins, - frightens one of the authors of the study, Jonathan L. Payne. - They risk more than others simply because of their size. This is followed by smaller individuals - all kinds of fish. The corals will also disappear.
Fish, by the way, will be replaced by plastic. Now its share in the seas and oceans reaches 30 percent, and by 2050, as scientists assure, they - shares - will be equal. That is, the weight of plastic waste will be the same as marine life.
Plastic in the oceans - hundreds of billions of tons
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In the Pacific Ocean, various plastic filth that does not sink, but stays close to the surface, has already formed several so-called garbage islands. Although in fact they are close in size to the continents. These "continents" are growing from year to year.
"Garbage continents" have already formed in the ocean
Terrestrial inhabitants feel no better. According to environmental professor Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, 320 species of vertebrates have irrevocably left our world since 1500. This is, of course, bad. But something else is worse. Before, once every 100 years, two species of mammals died out by force, but now the rate of extinction has increased almost 100 times. And it is approaching the one with which the species became extinct 65 million years ago, when the Earth parted with the dinosaurs.
Researchers have no doubt: the current extinction is organized by humanity itself - the conquerors of nature. And the point is that people will disappear among other already doomed species.
British ecologist David Auerbach believes that we are unlikely to last 100 years. We will be ruined by hellish heat, overpopulation and depletion of natural resources. But firstly, the heat, which will intensify as a result of global warming. And it - warming - will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, which industrialized countries do not agree to reduce.
Auerbach fears that in 100 years the average temperature on Earth could rise by 5 degrees. That will cause a climatic apocalypse, which by 2116 will literally burn out humanity. Some, however, will drown.
The process is already underway - people are dying from both prolonged heat waves and catastrophic floods.
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And the whole world is not enough
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) regularly informs about the state of the Earth's biological resources. According to his data, they - these resources - have decreased by about a third over the past 40 years. That is, we have already "used" a third of our planet for our needs - we ate and digested, burned, cut down, poisoned. And they did it twice as fast as before.
Experts have named the countries that live the most wasteful. That is, they consume an unacceptable amount per capita.
Here are the top ten countries that are most dangerous for the Earth: Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, USA, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Netherlands and Ireland.
If the whole world lived so wastefully as in ecological anti-leaders, then for the further existence of mankind would need five more such planets as ours.
Russia, by the way, treats its home planet very carefully (in comparison with many others) - it takes 33rd place in the list of pests.
Along the way, experts noted that biodiversity is rapidly decreasing. And life on the planet is getting poorer. Every year 25 thousand species of animals and plants disappear from it.
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Too many people
Sir David Attenborough, a renowned naturalist and TV presenter from Great Britain, became the patron of the Optimum Population Foundation, promoting its goals and objectives. And it calls to limit the number of people on the planet.
Attenborough is convinced that the main impact on wildlife is not the technological advances of mankind, but the increase in the number of people as such. Humanity is multiplying at an alarming rate.
There are really a lot of us
Optimum Population Foundation was established in 1991. Its activists urge married couples not to have more than two children. So that the population of the Earth does not grow, but decreases by about 0.25 percent per year. Then it seems that there will be chances to avoid disastrous consequences for the planet and for humanity itself.
In the meantime, scientists see only one way to somehow preserve the living and plant world. They call for the creation of protected areas of the largest possible area, into which access to people will be limited.
REFERENCE
There are no others …
Scientists identify 5 mass extinctions.
1. Ordovician-Silurian: 450 million years ago, 60 percent of then inhabited invertebrates disappeared. The presumable reason is the movement of the supercontinent Gondwana, which led to a cooling and a drop in the water level in the world's oceans.
2. Devonian extinction: 370 million years ago, half of the marine animals died. The presumable reason is water poisoning by volcanic products.
3. Permian (great) extinction: 250 million years ago, 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial species died.
Probable reason: the eruption of a huge number of volcanoes at once.
4. Triassic extinction: 200 million years ago, in just 10 thousand years, half of the animals died, including most of the archosaurs - the predecessors of dinosaurs. The likely cause is some mysterious climatic change.
5. Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction: 65 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct. Who killed them is not known exactly. Maybe all the same volcanoes. Although it is generally believed that a huge asteroid hit the lizards.
Fortunately, the five "major" extinctions did not end life on Earth. For example, if you believe some hypotheses, could have happened on Mars or on Venus. Our living creatures turned out to be tenacious and in some mysterious way gradually revived. It took millions of years, but the planet remained inhabited, although the "population" sometimes changed beyond recognition.
What will be the result of the current - "Sixth Extinction"? There is a fear that we will not know the answer to this question. But maybe people will be replaced by some other species - more intelligent? And he will begin to take care of what surrounds him.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY
