Question: Will their be another mass extinction event?

Oli Wilson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

Nina’s right, some scientists think we’re actually in the early stages of Earth’s sixth mass extinction event at the moment, caused (at least in part) by our own stupidity, greed and carelessness – this summer, a group of scientists released a paper that warned of ‘biological annihilation’…
That said, there’s a bit of a debate about whether the current rate of extinction – which is much higher than what you’d expect – is the same as in previous events. We only know about those from fossils (which mostly reflect sea creatures; most organisms don’t leave fossils at all) so our estimates of how much life went extinct then might be quite inaccurate. Then again, all those other events happened over millions of years, and this is happening over – at most – 10,000 years, and maybe in as little as a few centuries.
Whether or not it fits the technical definition of a mass extinction event, what we’re experiencing now is certainly an absolute disaster the likes of which probably hasn’t happened since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. Woohoo.