No big surprise, but...

The usual - if humanity decides to act like a sapient life form we can deal with this.  If it acts like it usually does... Oh dear.....

Got the link from an article in Science Daily.  You probably want to go directly to the article; there's a video and stuff.

Stanford Report, June 19, 2015

Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here

Paul Ehrlich and others use highly conservative estimates to prove that species are disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs' demise.

By Rob Jordan
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich calls for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat before the window of opportunity closes.

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence.

That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said.

(more)

And some other interesting stuff

A few more interesting things I found in Science Daily today

1. Some deep sea sharks are buoyant - which surprised the guy who put a camera on one and got a lot of blank frames because it swam higher than he expected most of the time.

2. The incredible shrinking diode. Apparently layering van der Waals materials directly on a molecular scale (instead of stacking them) gets interesting resonant tunnel diode effects.

3. Saharan silver ants use Physics! Well, to quote the summary: Researchers have discovered two strategies that enable Saharan silver ants to stay cool in one of the world's hottest environments. They are the first to demonstrate that the ants use a coat of uniquely shaped hairs to control electromagnetic waves over an extremely broad range from the solar spectrum to the thermal radiation spectrum and that different physical mechanisms are used in different spectral bands to realize the same biological function of reducing body temperature.