It's a shame with American TV that hosts like Brian Cox and David Attenborough don't have mainstream appeal. I understand that Cosmos is aimed at an introductory level, but during the long special effects shots and the stretched out re-enactments I'm just missing the more indepth explanations. This latest episode was great for giving some indisputable examples of evolution, however it paled in comparison to a series like Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life or First Life. It's interesting how much better those shows rate in the UK as well.
I could be wrong, but he seemed to foreshadow that pretty much with the "that's for another day" line referring to the unlabeled extinction part of the fake bulding he was in.
"The Simpsons" has been irrelevant for at least a decade. [edit: And it doesn't surprise me that Diacanu is content to be told what he already knows by someone who agrees with him.]
Saying you find it irrelevant just proves the point. I don't care for modern Simpsons either, but it still gets made.
The extinction of a species that's only been around a couple hundred thousand years would be pretty typical as far as large mammals go; I don't think humans alone going extinct would count as 'mass' extinction or would cause mass extinctions of a significant amount of other organisms - at least nowhere near the scale of the five mass extinctions.
He may be referring to our next encounter with Admiral Asteroid, deciding to take a tour of the grounds.
But I didn't interpret it as meaning that badly behaving humans were going to cause it. As heavy-handed as the show is against 'intelligent design' I'd think they'd've thrown in a line about pollution or anthropogenic global warming if they'd meant to do so.
We are causing the next great mass extinction, it's called the Holocene mass extinction. Some estimates say species are becoming extinct faster than previous mass extinctions
That's why I am volunteering to do my part to prevent it by beefing up our numbers. I submitted a plan to maroon me on an island with hot wimmens of my choice! That's how much I love our species.
And some studies show greater biodiversity and numners of species than ever before, even after invasive species move in to an area. The idea that humans are causing disasters on the scale of the great extinctions is just the latest fire 'n brimstone sermon.
I know i'm late to the conversation, but I wanted to chime in anyway. That's a great question and right now, scientist don't know the answers to what you're asking. The Big Bang isn't actually a theory on how the universe came into existence, but it's a point at which we know the universe went through a change and the laws of physics began to apply. What happened at the point of the singularity or before that, we don't know.... as far as I understand, but that doesn't mean we should just start to make shit up to fill in the gaps.
right now, approximately 7% of members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in a God of some sort. This is an elite group of scientist who have been taught the the way to uncover truth is to set aside one's own personal biases and beliefs and collect empirical evidence. In the larger society, that number is almost recipricol. 93% of people believe in some creator of some sort (I'm lumping in the agnostic fence sitters). I can understand the need that one might have for a God of some sort and I've been there myself, but... extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I look at this fact and I think, "I wonder why 100% of these elite scientist aren't atheist. Someone should do a study."
This isn't about libertrianism. It's about wrapping your mind around the sheer scale of these timelines and extinctions, and realizing that human action just isn't that impressive.