After humans change the ecological environment

If you were lucky enough to visit the American Museum of Natural History, you would see a passage in the Species Diversity exhibit that says we are now in the midst of the sixth great biological extinction, caused entirely by human alteration of the ecology. what?

In addition to the purposeful hunting and killing of certain species, there are two other ways that humans have changed the ecological environment, one way is that human activities have changed the atmospheric and water environments.

At this stage, the mainstream opinion of the physics community is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has increased due to human industrial production activities, because carbon dioxide dissolves in water to produce carbonic acid, so the acidity of seawater is also rising, the pH value of seawater will drop from 8.2 in 1800 to 7.8 in 2100, so scientists predict that by 2100 about 300,000 marine species will meet the end of the world, which stands to about 30% of the total number of marine species.

Another way humans are changing the ecosystem is by randomly moving species, bringing species that belonged to another ecosystem to a new environment, resulting in the disappearance of species in that environment.

For example, this Panamanian golden frog, originally there are no natural predators, living a very comfortable and comfortable life, it is because they have a very poisonous body, no other animals dare to provoke them. But now they are facing extinction, because people introduced African frogs to do experiments, and brought in a deadly fungus, which is harmless to African frogs but is a deadly disease to Panamanian golden frogs.

In addition to these two less conspicuous ways, there are also super volcanoes, a great killer that is understood at first glance, that are also threatening humanity and have put the planet on track for the sixth biological extinction.

In the current written history of mankind, super volcanoes have not erupted, but scientists have found traces of 45 to 60 super volcanoes erupted.

One of the more recent ones was 75,000 years ago, and it was this now quiet-looking volcano, Mount Toba in Indonesia. Its crater was submerged under Lake Toba, about 500 meters above the lake. Seventy-five thousand years ago, it burst into a roar, spewing out 13,500 cubic kilometers of volcanic material.

Scientists believe it was this eruption that created a thousand-year-long ice age. American climatologist Alan Robock used computer simulations to show that the Toba volcano threw fifty-four billion tons of SO2 into the Earth's atmosphere, directly causing a 115-degree celsius cooling. This is equivalent to a city, you are located in the subtropical zone, instantly became temperate, and this is still the average cooling, some areas of the minimum temperature decline are likely to be more intense.

The low-temperature environment has been maintained for decades, causing the extinction of many plants and animals, so the danger of a super-volcanic eruption is at a devastating level, which could directly lead to the extinction of species.

The Earth has suffered five biological extinctions in the past, the fifth time, which is 6,000,000 years ago, was the dinosaurs that time, so how far away are we from the sixth round of biological extinction?

Is there a volcano that is strong enough to cause this effect and keep us on our toes?

At this stage, scientists are most worried about the super volcano eruption in the United States Yellowstone volcano, this is because geologists have detected continuous earthquakes and surface elevation in the last 20 years, scientists speculate that because the pressure of the magma accumulation under the Yellowstone Park is rising, which means it is building up strength for the next super eruption it.

The reason Yellowstone National Park is so worrying is that its caldera is super large, with a diameter of about 56 kilometers wide and a total area of roughly 2,400 square kilometers, just this caldera is six times the total area of Chicago, USA.

This volcano if the full load online, roars up, that is the level of destruction, any Hollywood special effects are child's play. Although scientists are watching this big guy every minute, the current human technology is not enough to predict exactly when it will erupt.

Super volcanoes do not yet belong to human beings to be able to predict and prevent and control the object, the asteroid from the sky, human beings can prevent and control is also very limited. But there is one thing we can do actively, which is to change the way of life, the way of nature, to achieve harmonious coexistence with the environment. Neither arbitrary migration of species, but also strict control of human activities of waste discharge into the environment, so that the ecology of the spontaneous return to a state of balance, which is the North American Hopi ancient prophecy stone pointed out the road.