Mass Extinctions : The Causes Of Deforestation?

The difference of Captain John Smith in “The General History of Virginia” and William Bradford in “Of Plymouth Plantation.” Captain John Smith was an english soldier, explorer, and author. William Bradford was an english separatist leader in Leiden, Holland, and in the Plymouth Colony. The Plymouth Colony was in Massachusetts and Jamestown was in Virginia. The Plymouth Colony was formed for the purpose of having religious freedom, while Jamestown Colony was formed by adventures looking to make a profit in the New World. At Plymouth, the pilgrims did well living with their Native Americans neighbors while at Jamestown they did not do very well at living peacefully with the Native Americans.

We are slowly killing our planet and our co-habitants at such a high rate that some say we are responsible for the sixth mass extinction. In the book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History author Elizabeth Kolbert an American journalist and professor at Williams College travels to different parts of the world to search for evidence that the sixth extinction is in fact happening now. In The Sixth Extinction Kolbert demonstrates the many ways in which humans are speeding up the loss of so many species. The question is, is it possible to stop or even slow down the loss of other species due to human actions? When we think about extinction we tend to think of cataclysmic events such as the meteor that struck Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

In The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert discusses past mass-extinction events and argues that we are currently in the midst of another—this time caused by anthropogenic activity. Each chapter focuses on a different species and analyzes how they serve as evidence of this extinction. Kolbert explores both extinct and living species in an effort to show how the past provides an indication of what may occur in the future if humans continue to conduct “business as usual”. In doing this she also describes how science changes over time: as we discover new scientific evidence, old ideas become obsolete. Kolbert ends the book by saying that while humans are responsible for the destruction of biodiversity, they also have the ability to facilitate positive change.

The scientific community applauds Elizabeth Kolbert for her recently published The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, as it exceeds scientific and literary standards. Elizabeth Kolbert, born in 1961, is a American journalist and author and has won more than ten awards since 2005. In fact, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History recently won her the Pulitzer prize for general nonfiction writing. For a scientific overview of her book, it discusses quite exactly what the title states. There have been five mass extinctions throughout the history of this earth, and the sixth is currently happening and being driven by humans. Kolbert discusses several different species that have become extinct or are on the brink of extinction. She includes history of mankind discovering the concept of extinction as they gradually began to wrap their brains around the idea in the early eighteen hundreds. Lastly, Kolbert masterfully describes her own experiences face to face. She

By following the understanding of extinctions up to the present day, Kolbert addresses that extinctions are not strictly catastrophic or uniformitarian. Rather, by citing the major and minor extinctions such as the disappearance of the great auk the End-Cretaceous extinction Kolbert proves that extinctions have a wide variety of causes. Finally, with the grim depiction past and present day extinctions, Kolbert moves on to discuss the title topic: The Sixth Extinction. The term Anthropocene refers to the height of human alteration of the planet earth, which is thought to have begun during the Industrial Revolution. As humans dramatically alter the earth and its ecosystems, it is predicted that humans will eventually cause the sixth extinction if the current environmental trends continue. A combination of accelerated climate change, overhunting, deforestation, and natural ecosystem patterns have begun wiping out entire species at alarming rates. Truly, Kolbert emphasizes that all of humanity’s understanding of extinction is pointing to a devastating mass-extinction which could eventually affect the same beings which catalyzed

Five mass extinctions have occurred throughout the history of planet Earth. It is predicted by Author Elizabeth Kolbert, that a sixth extinction may be underway. The Sixth Extinction is a book in the viewpoint of Kolbert and narrates her travels around the globe while she studies numerous wildlife species. Kolbert claims that ¨Those of us alive today not only are witnessing one of the rarest events in life's history, we are also causing it,” (Kolbert, Page 8). Throughout her work, Kolbert claims that numerous species are decreasing in population due to harmful human activities, which could lead to a global disaster.

List examples of human activities that are suggested to be key triggers for the sixth mass extinction.

The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years . Creatures across the land, rivers, and the seas are destroyed as humans killed them for food in unsuitable numbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats.

However, recent speculation has lead many scientists to believe that we are currently in a mass extinction period, one that could not only be bigger than any previous extinction event, but that actually points a finger towards humans as being the main cause. This extinction event is known as The Holocene Extinction, the Sixth Extinction or the Anthropocene Extinction, and whether we like it or not, there is definitely a considerable amount of evidence to prove that this mass extinction is happening, and that the cause is largely due to human activity. Specific research indicates that deforestation, hunting, pollution, the introduction of non-native species into various regions, destruction of vast tracts of land, river systems, and habitats, and the widespread transmission of infectious diseases spread through livestock and crops are having the most drastic effects on most species. Current studies even show that the present rate of extinction may be up to 140,000 species per year, making it the greatest loss of biodiversity since the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction. Edward Osborne Wilson, an American biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist and author, calculated that if the current rate of human disruption of the biosphere continues, one-half of

There have been five major mass extinction on earth triggered by a distinguishable event, but in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert writes of the narrative of the sixth extinction caused directly by human impact. The book identifies the effects of human activity on how, over humans history on earth, the natural world has been affected. Every environmental impact stems into three basic groups of global problems to nature: Pollution, Habitat loss and Invasive Species. Kolbert explains that each impact can be traced back to one source, human industrial development. With each impact various types of life in the natural world are affected. Deforestation, urbanization, and sea level rise contribute to habitat loss worldwide. When humans began to travel they also brought invasive species and disease along with them; as boats only became bigger more and more invasive species travel. This reverse engineering of the planet species, brings new species that don’t have any natural predators, thus having an easier time driving native species out to endangerment or extinction. The different outcomes that come from human pollution is separated throughout the book, but the idea remains constant; with the development of human culture, pollution has drastically impacted a vast extent of species habitats and their environment.

Our planet is extremely diverse. There are about 8.7 million species worldwide and that's excluding bacteria. Unfortunately, scientist say we are currently living through the sixth mass extinction, the last one being sixty-five million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. But what is causing this mass extinction? One word: humans.

The sixth mass extinction is on the way and could be as massive as the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs (Kolbert, 2014). Before learning more about the sixth mass extinction, you’ll have to first understand what biodiversity is and what will happen when you tamper with it. According to Anup Shah, author of Why is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares, biodiversity means the variety of life on Earth or in an ecosystem. Every species plays an important role in the ecosystem or in the world, no matter how big or small. A way to incorporate this into easier terms is the food chain or food web. Without a certain species in the cycle, you’ll be losing another species and so forth (Shah, 2014).

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most time-honored narratives in the Bible. I have attended many different denominational churches throughout my life and this passage has always been an important part of each denomination; much like the Ten Commandments. Jesus asserted that He was not trying to “destroy the law of the prophets, but to fulfill” them (Van 289).

Mass extinctions events have been going on for more than 443 million years. So far there have been five big events. Although the notion of mass extinctions has always been present, the usage of statistical methods to efficiently backup extinction data did not start until the 1900s. For the scientific community, mass extinction is the combined term that designates the extinction of a wide number of species disappearing in a relatively short period of time, although it does not account for its precision. Previous mass extinctions have been analyzed taking into consideration the protic and aprotic factors that had led to them. Nevertheless, there is a wide concern that modern human lifestyles could very likely lead to a sixth mass extinction with

While volcanic eruptions, polar shifts, meteor impacts, and other natural events are the causes of the “Big Five,” recent evidence has revealed that a sixth mass extinction is presently transpiring, caused by quasi-natural causes: a hairless species in the Hominidae family known as Homo sapiens. Since the Industrial Revolution, a plethora of biota have met an untimely demise due to overfishing, increased carbon emissions, and decayed oceanic pH levels; while extinction rates soar above the background norm, scientists seek for a way to solve the deadly problem with technology, a go-to scapegoat for skeptics, in order to save not only the environment, but humanity as