
Lonely George has died and now an entire species is extinct - daegloe
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/09/us/lonely-george-the-snail-dies-trnd/index.html
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makerofspoons
> "It's surprisingly devastating," she says. "They've been disappearing in the
> last two, three years. The rate of extinction is just really alarming for
> me." "This is the story that we're seeing in every single species, we had to
> go up to the mountain tops to see them, when they would have been all over
> the island (in the past)."

It's everywhere that the extinction rate is alarming. We are in an era of
profound ecological collapse.

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randyrand
collapse? Or just change? Adaption starts with mass death, even loss of entire
species.

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makerofspoons
Collapse- 60% of animal populations have been destroyed since 1970
([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-
wildlife/wild...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-
wildlife/wildlife-populations-plunge-almost-60-percent-since-1970-wwf-
idUSKCN12R00F)) and unexpected interactions between stressors as well as
positive feedback loops are creating an existential threat for our
civilization
([https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632871...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328717301726)).
Ecosystems like coral reefs are being lost completely- they will simply be
gone, there was no opportunity for change. The ecosystems are changing too
fast for adaptation.

~~~
randyrand
60% of life dying just sounds like adaptation to me. Many species will
survive, and those species will eventually split into new species.

~~~
makerofspoons
Perhaps- but the trend is continuing, what if all complex life is eliminated
by the damage we are causing?

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skilled
NatGeo submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18858100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18858100)

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honkycat
I have been doing a lot of reading about systems thinking and mental models.

The klaxons have been blaring for a long time now. All of these truths are
inconvenient.

I have pretty much lost hope that we are going to fix anything. Let's hope
these flaps of a butterflies wings do not lead to further ecological collapse
and make our planet inhospitable to human survival.

~~~
gregknicholson
For the sake of other species it's probably beneficial for humans to go
extinct.

In practice I think Earth will first become _less_ hospitable to humans. The
ones that survive will be those who can consume fewer resources. Maybe this
partial human extinction will be enough to at least slow climate change.

