Boston Globe, Nov. 13, 2017: Of the more than 15,000 scientists who signed a letter Monday warning people about the environmental threats the Earth faces, about 70 of them were professors, researchers, or PhD candidates at Massachusetts universities.

This letter, spearheaded by Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple, serves as a “second notice,” the authors say: “Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory.”

“World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” published today in the international journal BioScience, charts the progress — or lack thereof — on the issues highlighted in the original document and renews the call for urgent action. Lead author William J. Ripple, a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University, said he was astounded by the level of support he and his seven co-authors received for their manuscript.

"Knowing how animal body size correlates with the likelihood of a species being threatened provides us with a tool to assess extinction risk for the many species we know very little about," says William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University (OSU) and lead author of the study, in a statement.