Just when you thought 2016 couldn’t reach any greater depths, a new study has gone and said that the Earth could face its sixth mass extinction of animal lifet in as little as 50 years. Great stuff.
Leading evolutionary biologist, Professor John Wiens, found that local extinction linked to climate change had ravaged through 47% of nearly 1000 species. He says that the alarming implication from his discoveries, is that half of the planet’s species and plants are already drastically struggling to survive in the relatively small levels of global warming so far.
He wrote, “This is stuff that’s already happened with just a small change to the climate. We’re looking at a two to five-fold increase [in warming over the next century].
“What it shows is species cannot change fast enough to keep up with a small change in climate. That’s the big implication – even a small change in temperature and they cannot handle it.”
He also suggested that Donald Trump’s appointment as President of the United States as a “global disaster”, given that he denies climate change even exists. Wiens jokingly directed at Trump, “Kill yourself immediately.”
Global extinction of animals and plants current rate is believed to be faster than some of the five great extinction events in the Earth’s history, although we’re not quite reaching the levels the dinosaurs went thought just yet.