Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Trailer

Trailer for BBC landmark series "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" episode 3: Life and Death presented by Andrew Marr. Watch it on BBC2 and BBC HD (in the UK) on Thursday March 19th 2100hrs

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• andrew
• marr
• darwin
• evolution
• natural
• selection
• extinction
• life
• death
• darwin's
• dangerous
• idea
• creation
• god
• coral
• rainforest
• carson
• ddt
• elton
• myers
• mass
• 6th
• down
• house
• charles

[DaveODrisc]

Well ultimately we are all gonna die out unless we colonise space!Hopefully technology will buy us some time but extinction looks pretty inevitable one way or the other!

Mind you we had best sort this planet out before we rocket off for new ones to ruin................

[andywaggott]

I think, but frankly no-one knows, that if the rate of die off is at a similar rate to that of previous extictions then its far too early to predict mass extinction.

The rate of extinctions is falling if anything. More bird and mammal species have been discovered in the past 100 years than have been made extinct (about 5 mammal species in the past 50 years).

Ok, these are more "obvious" than the other orders, but surely its an indicator that all the doom and gloom isn't justified?

[Doomint980WillNotDie]

I reckon we are probably in the midst of a mass extinction. They generally happen over thousands of years so we can't know the full scale between how much life will be destroyed. Certainly though, the rate of species extinction does seem relatively similar to the other mass extictions on earth.

[andywaggott]

I look forward to this in full! i still disagree with the global mass extinction crisis being at the level that everyone always quotes. There's so little evidence to back this up, apart from some rather flawed scientific logic. Still, keeps environmentalists in grants!