#massextinction — Public Fediverse posts

💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: ☄️🔥 A recent study from #Purdue suggests fine dust from the #Chicxulub impact trapped heat in the upper #atmosphere, effectively charbroiling exposed organisms within hours.

Post-impact dust would have delivered 17 times the lethal #radiation dose for #humans, igniting #grass and #lichen across the #planet.

👉 https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/dust-cloud-from-dino-killing-asteroid-charbroiled-the-earth/

#dinosaurs #asteroid #massextinction #cretaceous #science #paleontology #earthscience #wildfires #astronomy

Every mammal alive today, including you, is a descendant of the small, scared creatures that somehow clawed through those years of darkness. The cataclysm that ended the dinosaurs is, in the most literal sense, the reason you exist.

https://dino-world.com/the-day-the-earth-changed-new-evidence-on-the-cataclysm-that-ended-the-dinosaurs-2-53715/

#dinosaurs #Chicxulub #asteroid #massextinction #lifeonEarth #science

Are we in a sixth #massextinction?

We’re in a #biodiversity crisis, but it's tough to compare it to past periods of #massdeath

https://www.popsci.com/environment/are-we-in-a-sixth-mass-extinction/

Human use of fire has produced an era of uncontrolled burning: Welcome to the #Pyrocene

by Stephen Pyne, The Conversation, January 22, 2025

"#LosAngeles is burning, but it isn't alone. In recent years, fires have blasted through cities in #Colorado, the southern #Appalachians and the island of #Maui, along with #Canada, #Australia, #Portugal and #Greece. What wasn't burned was smoked in.

"Is this another case of a future not only dire but strange, without a narrative to join past to present or an analog for what is to come?

"I'm a historian of fire, and my reply is that we have both a narrative and an analog. The narrative is the unbroken saga of humanity and fire, a companionship that extends through all our existence as a species. The analog is that humanity's fire practices have become so vast, especially in recent centuries, that we are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age."

[...]

Welcome to the Pyrocene

"Widen the aperture a bit, and we can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions and sea-level changes. It's an epoch in which fire is both prime mover and principal expression.

"Humanity's firepower underpins the #Anthropocene, which is the outcome not just of #anthropogenic meddling but of a particular kind of meddling, made possible by humans' species monopoly over fire. Even climate history has become a subset of fire history.

"Fires in living landscapes, fires burning lithic landscapes—the interaction of these two realms of fire has not been much studied. It's been enough of a stretch to fully include human fire practices within traditional ecology. Yet humans—the keystone species for fire on Earth—are merging the two arenas of earthly burning with a give and take that is reshaping the planet in what resembles a slow-motion #Ragnarok.

"Add up all the effects, direct and indirect: the ice driven off by fire, the areas burning, the biogeographical #migrations as biotas move to accommodate changed conditions, the collateral impacts with damaged #watersheds and #airsheds, the unraveling of #ecosystems, the pervasive power of #ClimateChange, #RisingSeaLevels, a #MassExtinction, the disruption of human life and habitats. The result is a #pyrogeography that looks eerily like an ice age for fire. You have a maturing Pyrocene.

"If you doubt it, just ask California."

Full article (it's a good read):
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-human-era-uncontrolled-pyrocene.html
#Wildfires #UncontrolledFires #HistoryOfFire #PyroceneEra #ControlledBurning #ClimateCrisis

This #EarthDay, here's a reminder that environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening*.

*Nothing against gardening, but we're currently facing global ecological collapse within our lifetimes.

article 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe

article 2: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

#environment #ecology #ecological #greensocialism #green #greensocialist #ecocide #ecosocialism #ecosocialist #earthday2024 #happyearthday #happyearthday2024 #environmental #environmentalist #environmentalism #gardening #biosphere #foodweb #ecologicalcollapse #extinction #massextinction #earth #motherearth

#ThackerPass #Protectors File First-Ever '#BiodiversityNecessityDefense' in #Nevada Court

While pursuing a '#ClimateNecessityDefense,' and making allegations that #mining company has violated their rights, their attorney said, 'They’re not criminals; they’re heroes.'

Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu: “#LithiumNevada is a #greedy #corporation on the wrong side of history when it comes to #EnvironmentalRacism and desecration of #SacredSites. It’s ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved.”

By #ProtectThackerPass, #CensoredNews, March 26, 2024

"In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for six people sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation for protesting the Thacker Pass mine are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’

"The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.
.
"This week’s filing states: 'Defendants possessed an actual belief that their acts of protest were necessary to prevent the present, continuing harms and evils of #ecocide and irreversible #ClimateChange.'

"'We’re in the midst of the 6th #MassExtinction of life on Earth, and it’s being caused by human activities like mining,' said attorney Terry Lodge, who is representing the #protesters. 'Our lives are made possible by #biodiversity and #ecosystems. Protecting our children from pollution and biodiversity collapse isn’t criminal, it’s heroic.'

"Currently Earth is experiencing one of the most rapid and widespread extinction events in the planet’s 4-billion-year history.

"Biologists report that habitat destruction, like the bulldozing of nearly 6,000 acres of biodiverse #sagebrush steppe for the Thacker Pass mine, is the main cause of this '#6thMassExtinction.'"

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/03/thacker-pass-protectors-file-first-ever.html

#ThackerPassProtectors #SLAPPs #SaveThackerPass #PeeheeMuhuh #Pauite #Shoshone #NoMining #LithiumMining #EarthDefenders

What #Supernova Distance Would Trigger A #MassExtinction?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrRvJUZaswo&ab_channel=PBSSpaceTime

#PBS #SpaceTime #PBSSpaceTime #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Star #Stars #Supernovae #CoreCollapseSupernova #CoreCollapseSupernovae #Betelgeuse #GammaRays #GammaRadiation #MattODowd