re: Global Warming Expedition Stuck in Ice

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You may be right but that doesn't answer the question as to the how. I hate seeing any living thing just "go" but it's kind of inevitable isn't it?

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Well, yes, if there were no humans on the planet there would still be extinctions, if that's what you mean. The earth is a dynamic biosphere in which environmental conditions change regularly and sometimes dramatically.

Let's say, for example, that humans had never evolved and that North America was still the home of huge animals such as the mammoth, the flat-faced bear and saber toothed tiger. Also imagine hundreds of millions of bison roaming the plains and a sky darkened by a billion passenger pigeons passing overhead.

We could say an idyllic environmental balance had settled over the continent. Suddenly, however, the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupts. The equilibrium is thrown into chaos over the span of a few days.

Every ecosystem on the continent, even around the world, is affected by the monster volcanic eruption. Some species are completely wiped out. Others are severely impaired as even the climate is changed for a long period of time.

However, once the eruption stops, the earth and its flora and fauna begin again to move towards a new environmental equilibrium. This has happened repeatedly over earth's history. It's very natural, one could say.

Now look at our world today. Humans did evolve. Plants and animals are being pushed to extinction by our activities.

We are using the earth's resources without consideration for the welfare of other species. We don't even seem mindful of the dangers to the continued existence of our own kind.

Unregulated population growth and a free-for-all rush to exploit and use natural resources are having dramatically negative effects on the environment that sustains us. We are disrupting ecosystems that took millennia to be established naturally.

This wholesale upheaval of the environment is, of course, causing casualties amongst our fellow species of earth. We are living in the Anthropocence Age. Many biologists are labeling our time as the "Sixth Great Extinction Event" of life in earth's history.

There have been five others caused by asteroids, volcanoes and other natural calamities. This is the first mass extinction of life caused by another lifeform.

So, is it inevitable that extinctions will occur when one species eats up habitat and resources at a phenomenal rate? Yes, we're living proof.

We're not like a Supervolcano or other natural disaster, however. Their runs and subsequent effects are limited and natural systems can rebound or start over.

The eruption of humans on earth is affecting every other species, even viruses and bacteria. Mostly in a negative way. Whether life on earth will survive its sixth great extinction event is to be seen.