Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet.

If this bothers you, get over it. We now live in the Anthropocene ― a geological epoch in which Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere are shaped primarily by human forces.

Why, in this ecological age of ours, do we need a $500-billion industry telling us thousands of times each day to consume more? In the affluent West (where 80 percent of the global ad dollars are spent), don’t we already consume enough?

MORT GARSON (part 1 of 2)

MORT GARSON

It’s a shocker to me that no other blog has fully tackled the work of electronic music pioneer Mort Garson, so here ya go. Allmusic sez:

“Mort Garson boasts one of the most unique and outright bizarre resumés in popular music, spanning from easy listening to occult-influenced space-age electronic pop — all in the same decade, no less. Born July 20, 1924,

The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful.

Percentage of species assessed

Out of approximately 1.8 million known species more than 1.6 million are acknowledged in the database maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and 44,838 species have been assessed for a conservation status report. The vast bulk of species without an assessment are invertebrates and plants. The data in the following charts can be found in Table 1 of the 2008 Red List statistical summaries.

When guesses about the number of species that go extinct each day come up with high numbers they must be including estimates for unknown exotic insect species in patches of tropical rainforest. That’s where the big numbers come from, because rainforest clearance is going on every day. The numbers are a lot smaller, but much less uncertain, for animals and plants which occupy habitats that expanding human populations want to use for agriculture, reservoirs or urban expansion. There are also changes in habitat boundaries due to global warming which show up year-by-year on satellite images.

Percentage of species threatened

All the mammal and bird species in the database have been assessed and almost 99% of amphibians. Over 20% of mammal species are endangered by habitat loss and poaching. The chart below shows the percentage of species that have been evaluated in each taxonomic group which are threatened with extinction.

Extinctions: Estimates of the extinction rate.