" · · · greatest loss of biodiversity since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event." I still refer to it as being marked by the K-T boundary. Funny how an asteroid excavates Chicxulub Crater providing geological layer while, in the future (many millennia) our decedents will have no such indicator as Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos tend not to leave many clearcut geological markers. The biosphere is such a delicate (diaphanus) thin shell, "Too bad our ancestors cared so little" reads (will read) our epitaph.

Supporting NGO's that are lobbying for environmental sanity is probably as productive as anything else.

It's depressing to realize that the two candidates for president would do nothing meaningful to ward off biodestruction. Perhaps it can't be warded off. The oceanic and permafrost methane bombs are in their early stages of going off.

Publicizing the nations that are taking the crisis seriously and exposing our fellow humans to these efforts is important.

          buy doing something to enhance there agricultural output my life will be fundamentally altered. If Swainson's hawk do not survive their time in Argentina they will not return to here during the Sandhill Crane festival season.

We live in the time of the end.

From Bruno Latour and can't find the reference right now.

Here is another article. First, Critical Zones

This is why I became immediately attentive when I met scientists who, to define themselves, were using a label designed to prick up the ear of a philosopher: critical zones. The network of critical zone observatories or CZOs in the US and now many other countries is, in effect, a reinvention of the soil sciences, except that it is greatly extended, first in space — from the top of tree canopies to the deep undisturbed rock beneath — but also in time — from the nanoseconds of biochemical reactions to the millions of years of geomorphology —, and finally, in the number of disciplines being mobilized — from hydrology to geobiochemistry. Having always been interested in the questions of instruments and standardization of data, I was fascinated by the way this CZO network equips watersheds and how it begins to fathom the complexity of sites that I thought geography had already thoroughly studied. What is surprising to me is that, in the study I begin to make of this critical zones network, the scientists I follow seem literally to discover a new planet, each locality having its own idiosyncrasy.

Of great importance to me, the CZO offers a handle on the key question of how to interpret Lynn Margulis’ and James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Because it is not directly concerned with life forms per se — by contrast with the other networks such as the Long Term Ecological Research or LTER, but foregrounds first rock weathering, plate tectonics, volcanic and seismic activity, as well as hydrology, and grasps the forces of life essentially sideways through the course of biochemical cycles, it offers many local points of entry into the vast question of Gaia’s behavior. While Earth system science is difficult to embrace because of its vast proportion and its reliance on models, each critical zone offers a smaller but 150 Cornell 5 just as complicated a scale model of the question as to how living organisms elaborate their own environment and hold it together.

He later gives examples of critical zones. After that ..

If we were told that the planet as we know it was going to be devastated soon and that we have to quickly vacate the premises so as to be transported to another one, there is no doubt that the whole institutional apparatus — civil, military, religious, intellectual, scientific, technical — would be on something of a war footing. A frenzied activity, as is known only in periods of war, will mobilize everybody, triggering passions as well as innovations and panic. If you have followed me until now, this is indeed a realistic description of where we stand today: collectively, at the time of the New Climatic Regime, we are contemplating a hard landing on a planet — the critical zone — that in recent times we thought we could escape from or at least ignore altogether.

Lots in this article. I may have posted this link before. I had to read it several times as well as some books.

Is Geo-logy the new umbrella for all the sciences? Hints for a neo-Humboldtian university Cornell University, 25th October 2016 Bruno Latour

          This is actually a doable thing, except for the lack of political will just like the building of the SSC project (No, I am not still bitter.) in Texas.

a new subspecies HOMO SAPIEN HORRENDUS.

We are projected to reach 9 Billion by 2050 and 10 Billion by 2100. We are at 7 Billion presently. I think that those projections are way to conservative. We were at 1.6 Billion in 1900 and 6 Billion in 2000, that's an increase of 3.75. If we project that from 2000 to 2100 we get 22,500,000,000, 22.5 Billion people people.

With current agricultural technology it looks like we could squeak out enough food for about 10B. The problem, of course, is that the carrying capacity of the Planet without global ecological and climate consequences is extremely small. The most likely scenario is that the population expands and then we have multiple years of global harvest failures. This will be catastrophic and will result in a die-back of billions of people and total global instability. At that point we will be ready to do something, but what is that? Culling of the population? You could write all sorts of morbid science fiction stories about this.

The existing sustainability projects are proof of concept, not solutions. Projecting their growth into the future gives us a solution of failure of the population. Sustainability progress can't compete with the added pollution every year as more and more people join the modern lifestyle. There is no political solution to this as people want to improve their conditions, everywhere. If we had a single global dictatorship and the dictator decided that this problem needed to be solved above all else, then it might happen. People aren't going to be moved by species extinction, or sea rise, or higher frequency of more severe storms.

And just to complete this, the planet was a sustainable biosphere before technological H. Sapiens (maybe we need a totally new classification for modern man, H Destructus?). There is no proof that the planet is sustaiable in any other fashion. Man competes with other species for habitat and thus destroys the foundation that is necessary for a self-sustaining planet. Sometimes I imagine a mega-bulldozer plowing through suburbia destroying every man made structure in its path. We would have to reduce our footprint to a tiny fraction of the globe's surface and return most of it to a pre-modern man era. We would have to design small-footprint high-density cities fed by hydroponics grown food in huge, tall buildings. The ownership of land would be forbidden and pioneering would be illegal. More stuff for a science fiction story.

Well, back to worrying about Putin stealing the US election!

It is situated between the sea and lake (Spanish is Mar a Lago, no hyphens) on a narrow strip of the Florida coast.

What a pity and he won't even see it coming because he doesn't believe the science of climate change and rising sea levels.

there's a reaction. We wantonly strip natural resources for our profit; we destroy vast landscapes with our wars and use the ocean as a garbage dump. Whew, how long did we think we could get away with it. Children in elementary schools where I live are being taught the connectedness of all life. I hope it's not too late.

The guy that wrote the piece you linked about the ice melt. Is that the same Richard Seymour who posts regularly on Lenin's Tomb? I'm guessing it is.

Anyway, all the denial agenda means is that Trump won't do anything serious about climate change, which is all we've been getting so far. But we'll get to oppose him, which is what we couldn't do when the Snake-Oil-Salesman-In-Chief First Black President was in office. Ten more days -- are we planning a party yet?