In a recent article, Thomas suggested that it would be useful to place these numbers “in a geological context.” Climate change alone “is unlikely to generate a mass extinction as large as one of the Big Five,” he wrote. However, there’s a “high likelihood that climate change on its own could generate a level of extinction on par with, or exceeding, the slightly ‘lesser’ extinction events” of the past. “The potential impacts,” he concluded, “support the notion that we have recently entered the Anthropocene.”
