A concerned citizen’s thought on the end of the World.

A Chinese space war debris hit a Russian satellite!
http://www.space.com/20146-russian-satellite-space-junk-threat.html

Which coming on the heels of North Korea getting into its worse ever teenage angst fit yet …
Kim-Jong Un’s  personal concentration camp developed nukes? The data seems to confirm that. That they had a try-out bare days back, same. That the U.N.’s Security Council answered with a new set of sanctions that not even their Chinese ally vetoed or defended? Still true. But from that attempt at limiting their arsenal below world destruction weapons level to react by official mistrust of thy brother as the country ended the non-agression pact it had with half-ling South Korea and treathening the US of nuclear strikes ( which quite seriously would have to be sent by boat considering the state of North Korea’s program )? Who do they think they are?
The N.R.A.? [ Sorry, dear gun nuts, the parallel was just inescapable, bigger weapons, won’t accept limitations, reacts by mistrust and gun-brandishing??? ]
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/08/world/asia/north-korea-sanctions/index.html
Jokes apart, even this rational blogger that keeps warning  ( As yesterday 😎 ) his readers against luck and predictions understands if they call logic the link by which they simply can’t discard Dennis Rodman’s presence as a coincidence. If anyone wants a free James Bond scenario, there you go : facade Un / Hyde Rodman, the pawn and the mover?
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/09/173839660/how-credible-are-north-koreas-threats

Anyway, the idea became that with our December Mayan scare and now Asteroids and Chinese junk attacking Russia ( Come to an American dumpster and see the real Chinese junk invasion, dear Popov. ), on top of Global Warming and the couple millions of unnecessary daily dead people and as Un’s Korea waves intently a nuclear pebble in a slingshot, I could not help compare to Life’s past submissions to an End-of-the-World event.

65 Millions years ago ( MYA ) one of those wiped out the dinosaurs and left birds and mammals as new dominant groups. The most likely cause is an asteroid impact at Chicxulub crater in the peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico. A second hypothesis based on sismic/volcanic activity in the Deccan region in India which happened for nearly a million years also in that period, a bit earlier. I profess a liking for the multiple causes one myself. Being nearer to us, this limit may represent the real reason for mass extinctions. Yes, a major event has to be ultimately invoked but I wonder if those are not in general much more “survivable” than we think and “only” work when coming to an already weakened bio-environment. Keep that in mind, please. As a result, 50 % of genera and 75% of species vanished.*

200 MYA Amphibians and old-school therapsids and archeosaurs had suffered the same fate to the dinosaurs’ ancestors. Well, guess what, again multiple hypotheses : asteroids, volcanoes in throes and … climate change. Same results or about but speciation may have played a role. That means that under a harsh environment, species adapt solely to need and not in as diverse or creative manner as usual. Keep that in mind too.

252-3 MYA Permian extinction, the biggy! An astounding ( up to ) 95% of marine species were wiped out along with 70% of terrestrial vertebrates ( anything from an axolotl or a newt to a crocodile ). Just to give you an idea, that was the only certain mass extinction of insects!! This one was not only ultra-massive an extinction but also a long one. It was in fact on that one that the idea of multiple causes for such events was proposed for that reason. My two favorites from that lovely period would be climate change induced by ocean currents alteration ( or shift ) and methane release from the tearing sea floors. You see, for that time, Earth’s crust was getting ready to split up the unique continent known as Pangea into more or less its present day constituents. You can guess that for hundreds and thousands of years, things had been hectic. First swelling below the crust in the mantle, then a multitude of cracks with their accompanying eruptions, sea levels fluctuations of importance and seismic activity and then major movement, currents awry and climate change as a result? As a reference to today’s world, there was no coal before it? Keep that in mind again if you will.

374 MYA That is when the last of a series of extinctions submerged ( sic ) marine life. Was it only speciation that separated the already declining Agnathans from jawed-vertebrates and why did it take just about until modern era for the corals to recover is unclear. The ferns and bony fish survived and that ultimately meant a Type-4 atmosphere and us so let’s be thankful. It was the tipping point for land living creatures. Of these, plants may be in both the victims’ and benefactors’ camps. The duration points to a process in any case. Glaciation, not warming but still a climate change in there, somewhere. It registers along the lines of the Cretaceous-Paleogene one that zapped the Tyrannosaurus Rex and its mates.

440 some MYA is when the first recorded of such major mass extinctions occurred and although the second in numbers of disappearances, the diversity was also quite high back then. It is so far away and imprecise that gamma-rays bursts have been advanced as a cause. Being careful, I’ll simply mention the fall in CO2 content it mirrored which comes back to climate change, does it not?

Hum?

80% of the planet’s major evolutionary shifts are related if but in part to climate change but ALL of them may have had more than a single process involved.

Chemical changes, full-fledged crust modifications, species variations, atmospheric tweaks, outside influences …

Scientifically, it may not offer enough certainty but as casual observations applied to the current state of things …

If extinctions are brought about by cumulated changes, let us review the state of things. We have a climate change upon us; ask you local scientist. Auto-inflicted, most likely. We have a speciation diminution too, courtesy of the ubiquitous Non-Sapiens Sapiens wannabe, humans; ask your local World Wildlife Fund representative. I won’t bet on volcanism as of now but since there are scary predictions on the fate of seismic frenzy around Southern California, you may as well ask your local geologist just to be sure. Last comes South Korea, China’s fray spacefaring metal shavings and Russia. So that, if these got schizoid enough as the Pyongyang Masters now, enough for the Cold War to REALLY come to an END, who knows?

Maybe it’s time to open the bets in Vegas and Ladbrokes or Coral ( coral? ( sic  ) )? Not will another mass extinction occur which is fearfully likely nor even will it have many causes as I hold true but rather : will we play that role? On top of the essential climate change already under way ( ours or coincidence ), will we provide the impact-like conditions of  permanent winter due to an opacified atmosphere and raging continuous fires with our shiny missiles and blinding stupidity?

‘Cause just in case then, I’d have an admission to make. I’m a work in progress? I mean that, as a human being, I am still heavily perfectible?

What’s that you say? How does it relate to the subject at hand? Well, see, it goes like this : not being a saint, being an admitted fan of the Earth and evolution and also a knucklehead, oh, so stubborn …

if we do provide ourselves the needed push to tip into a mega-mass extinction, I won’t forgive you! I’d like to but hey, Gnothi Seauton, so No way, Jose!

And you see what that entails, do you not? Trading between a possible eternity in hell or just in purgatory, depending on if I mostly hate you or myself?

Because really, if we auto-destroy, I’m gonna be unbearably pissed. Be kind of Earth ( heart too 😉 ) one and all, help me out here?

For our general well-being in this life or the next, as my little sister would have said : Noo be nice to mee!

TYVM, Tay.

P.S. And I can’t help wondering if we will become coal to the next rulers of our poor planet and if so, what will they use us for?

* genera / species = Felis catus or domestic cat. The Lion is Panthera leo, different genus / different species but same Family : the Felidae.