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Top Story: “The Sixth Extinction?”

Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest for the New Yorker (May 24, 2009) is not for the faint of heart.

The piece, “The Sixth Extinction?” is about a conclusion that biologists around the world are coming to that we are in the midst of “the sixth great extinction event,” also called by some, “The Holocene Extinction Event” (the Holocene is a geological epoch which began approximately 11,700 years ago).

The article is not available online, but the abstract is here.

Kolbert’s piece was also featured on the New Yorker podcast.

The earth has already witnessed five great extinction events, stretched over millions and millions of years (biologists estimate that 99% of all life on earth has gone extinct) and the scholarship on why those events have occurred is still developing and not all together settled. Until the 1980s, scientists believed that all the major extinctions were caused by climate change (on the scale of thousands or millions of years).

In the 1980, Luis Alvarez and Walter Alvarez proposed that an asteroid hit about 65 million years ago caused one of the great extinctions, the latest one. This controversial idea was accepted by the early 1990s, leading paleontologists to search for other “kill mechanisms” for the other great extinctions. That search continues with few results.

Theories have this sixth and current extinction starting about 10,000 years ago as humans began spreading around the globe and the first of the “megafauna” — the great mammals, think mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, polar bears — began dying off.

The extinctions seem to have picked up a lot of steam in the 20th century, with estimates ranging from 20,000 and 2 million species extinctions in the past 100 years alone. Some scientists are predicting that by the end of the 21st century, 50% of the plants, animals, fungi and algae living on the planet now will be extinct.

In the New Yorker Podcast, the interviewer cities Kolbert’s three children and asks her how she can remain optimistic about their future.

Kolbert replies: “I’m not. I’m not optimistic. How can you be optimistic after you look at all this data. I do have kids. We’re evolutionarily programmed to believe in the future and I hope the future for my kids is not as bleak as what some of these figures seem to be pointing toward. But when you just look at all the data, it’s hard to be optimistic.”

Other stories of note:

Guardian: ‘Why don’t we stop hurting the planet?’
“I was forever troubled by a central question: what is the right age to tell a child about climate change? And, furthermore, how do you go about discussing a subject that will be an increasingly impactful and predominantly negative presence in their lives? If there had been enough room on the insides of my eyelids to write it, I would probably have squeezed in another pertinent quote: “War is never so ugly as when you explain it to children.””

LATimes: Dust storms speed snowmelt in the West
“The storms leave a dark film on snow that melts it faster by hastening its absorption of the sun’s energy. That, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures, has sped up the runoff here, swelling rivers to near flood stage, threatening to make reservoirs overflow and fueling fears that there will not be enough water left for late-summer crops.”

Reuters: Big business says needs cash to cut CO2 emissions
“”This is not about capability, it’s about cost,” said Tony Hayward, chief executive of British oil company BP. “The issue is the gap between the energy that is provided today and the energy that we’re talking about and which today is more expensive.””

NYTimes: Hippies, Hollywood and the Flush Factor
“The “yellow mellow” adage is hardly new , and was purportedly coined by hippies in the early days of the environmental movement. “It’s a reasonable conservation measure that has no negative health impacts,” said Mr. Hershkowitz. “The Colorado River is at the lowest levels ever recorded. Lake Mead is half empty. To take drinking water and use it in our toilets doesn’t make sense.””

Scientific American: Carbon capture success in Wisconsin
“Capturing the carbon dioxide that wafts up the smokestack after burning coal (or any other fossil fuel) is a critical technology to help keep the lights on while combating climate change. And now there has been a successful demonstration that the technology to capture that CO2 from flue gas might actually work.”

Science Daily: Rapid Climate Change Forces Scientists To Evaluate ‘Extreme’ Conservation Strategies
Humans as Planetary Gardiners: “Among these radical strategies currently being considered is so-called “managed relocation.” Managed relocation, which is also known as “assisted migration,” involves manually moving species into more accommodating habitats where they are not currently found.”

And because it wouldn’t be a weekly update without some very bad news about Australia:

The Australian: Cost of water tipped to rise by 100%
“Although recent rains have raised southeast Queensland’s dams to 73%, and Sydney’s are currently at 58% capacity, southern Australia remains very dry. Melbourne’s dam level is just 26.6% …  Perth’s dams are at 29 per cent, and its desalination plant now supplies 17 per cent of the city’s water needs. Mr Young said Perth was actually planning for a future that did not rely on dam-water supplies.”

The Telegraph: Australia’s east coast a disaster zone after severe floods
“The floods follow a once-in-a-century heatwave in southeastern Australia, in which more than 2,000 homes were razed by major wildfires and 173 people died. Meteorologists have warned the extreme temperatures and downpours – a common feature of Australian summers – would only increase as a result of climate change.”