Sam Jandwich, your post-modern view that no-one can know the truth about Science while concurrently accepting internet opinion as factual and a book you read as prophetic, reflects society's real disaster. That is that now, people cannot separate opinion from fact and real experts have no greater standing than amateur, untrained people with fertile imaginations. That is truly a disaster.

Atman: the answer is EO Wilson and Niles Eldrige, who probably know a heck of sight more biology than you do. Some remdial info here: http://www.whole-systems.org/extinctions.html

>>If you really want to learn from history go back about 4000 years ago when all but a few were wiped out by a flood.<<

4000 years ago Egypt was in it's 'Middle Kingdom' period. Funny how the flood didn't seem to affect them. I suppose they were just very good at holding their breaths.

Cheers,

Tony

Atman,

The proliferation of deep-sea oil rigs, tar sands mining, the explosion of the international gas trade, the embracing of 'fracking' and suspension of regard for clean air and clean water security, the conversion of food cropping to ethanol and bio-fuel production, and the ever-increasing destruction of habitats and ecosystems in the name of progress, all should give you some idea of the desperation of the developed and developing world to avoid addressing the inevitable downward spiral on which we are so fully, illogically, unconscionably and insanely engaged.

There is only one conclusion and only one outcome. We are currently fully engaged on the manic pursuit of that which we fear most, Armageddon. (Or the birth of a new Red Planet.)

Hopefully the world will retreat from this course before it is too late, but the time to start is now!

The writing is on the wall for all to see, and it is in bold, unmistakeable, irrefutable type, such that only the willfully blind could not comprehend. Time to wake up, world. 'Curiosity' exploring Mars and maintenance of international space stations may be great science, but at home 'Rome' is burning.

Talk about shades of 'Nero', the three 'Wise Monkeys' seem to be running rampant in the halls of power, busy checking their stash of nuts or gazing at the stars. 'Sapiens Incongruita'.

TL,

That is silly, really, holding their breaths for many months!? Not possible. A far better explanation is they used the power from alien constructed Pyramids to keep the 30,000 feet high wall of water on their borders. That’s a far more sensible explanation.

Maybe runner should have a look at this video. I know it may be the work of the Devil or made by a conspiracy of scientists who are fools in their hearts, but it is still interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1m4mATYoig

David

JulianC - Yes E O Wilson is an eminent biologist but these numbers are high end estimates only. He is an activist environmentalist like his co estimator Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich has been astronomically incorrect on numerous occasions so its bad company to be in. Again, I ask, how can anyone estimate these numbers accurately when we don't even know how many species actually exist?

There is no evidence for species loss in addition to known species loss other than theories and estimates. They are based on mathematical models and we know how flawed they can be.