The first five global extinctions have had an irreversible impact on the planet, so whether the sixth global mass extinction has been quietly carried out today is what many scientists think. The journal Biology Review recently published a new study showing that Earth's sixth global mass extinction has begun, and the main cause of this change is not volcanic eruptions or asteroids hitting the Earth, but a warming climate, which is actually mainly caused by humans.
Since the birth of life on Earth, a total of 5 billion species of organisms have evolved, including various phyla, but there are only 10 million species left on Earth today, and some of these remaining organisms are still going extinct. Moreover, the increasingly wide range of human activities, especially the environmental pollution caused by industrial production and climate change, has led to the extinction rate of species 10 to 100 times faster than normal.
Human beings, especially after entering the industrial age, the rapid development of industry has promoted the progress of human beings, but at the same time it has also caused great damage to the natural environment, and human beings' desire to conquer nature has been expanding, and they have more and more destroyed nature to satisfy their ambitions. The three wastes of industry, the expansion of the scope of human life, and the use of nuclear weapons and atomic bombs in war have caused the direct death of many species, and climate warming is gradually increasing.
In the midst of the third global mass extinction, studies have shown that an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to a continuous warming of the earth, and as the oceans warm, the metabolism of life living in the oceans accelerates, and they need more oxygen, but warmer oceans with less oxygen in warm seas not only push organisms away from the tropics, but also force most organisms that are difficult to adapt to the environment.
This is very similar to today's warming, and Payne, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Washington, believes that if the current state of carbon dioxide emissions is followed, by 2100, the upper warming of the oceans will be close to 20% of the warming of the third global mass extinction, and closer to 35% to 50% by 2300. Such a judgment emphasizes that warming caused by human activities will lead to the same mass extinction of organisms as in the Permian.
Therefore, the judgment of the sixth mass extinction is not empty, and its impact is also huge, and the German branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature recently pointed out that more than 1 million species will go extinct in the next 10 years. According to Deutsche Welle, a study released by the German chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Germany indicates that about 142,500 species of plants and animals have been listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This shows the large number and speed of species extinction on the earth.
