Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach, title from a Paula Abdul quote
The backstory for today’s adventure is that this is the first scientific question I seriously researched. It is also the reason I don’t trust the “experts” or the “consensus”. In 1988, E. O. Wilson, an ant expert with little knowledge of extinction, made a startling claim that extinction rates were through the roof. He claimed there was a “Sixth Wave” of extinctions going on, and that we were losing a huge amount, 2.7% of all the species per year. This claim quickly went viral and soon was believed by everyone. So back in 2003, a decade ago now, I researched the question, found that Wilson was wrong by orders of magnitude, wrote it up, sent it around to the journals to see if they would publish it, and … well, let me just say that I was not received kindly. I was a voice crying in the wilderness. They didn’t give me a look-in, I was challenging the consensus. As far as I know, I was the only one saying that Emperor Wilson had no clothes … and as a result, I was not encouraged to continue publicizing my views.
But the world goes on, and three years ago I simplified and streamlined my work and published it as a post on WUWT entitled “Where Are The Corpses“. In it, I argued that there was no “Sixth Wave” of extinctions, that Wilson’s numbers were wildly exaggerated, and that current extinction rates (except in isolated islands and Australia) are not unusual in any way. Dr. Craig Loehle rewrote and developed the ideas, and he got it peer-reviewed and published in Diversity and Distributions, available here. Craig wrote about it in a post entitled “New paper from Loehle & Eschenbach shows extinction data has been wrongly blamed on climate change due to island species sensitivity“. Title says it all …
Figure 1. Stacked graph of total historical bird and mammal extinctions by year. This charts of the spread of European species (foxes, cats, rabbits, dogs, humans, weeds, diseases, etc.) to Australia and the islands. The earliest extinctions are from the time Europeans arrived in the Caribbean. There is a second wave of exploration and settlement in the 1700s. Finally, the spread of empires in the 1800’s led to the peak rates around the turn of the last century. Since then, the rates have dropped.
Having written so early and so extensively to try to debunk the claims of massive extinction rates and the bogus “sixth wave of extinction” hyped by the alarmists, I was pleased to receive a note from Anthony pointing out the publication of a new study in Science magazine (paywalled, naturally) entitled Can We Name Earth’s Species Before They Go Extinct? It’s gotten lots of media attention, mostly due to the fact that in the Abstract, they say that estimates of extinction rates are way overblown. My emphasis:
Some people despair that most species will go extinct before they are discovered. However, such worries result from overestimates of how many species may exist, beliefs that the expertise to describe species is decreasing, and alarmist estimates of extinction rates.
I must say, seeing that phrase “alarmist estimates of extinction rates” in Science made me smile, it was a huge vindication. However, I fear that they still have not grasped the nettle. I say that because at the end of the paper they say:
Conclusion
The estimates of how many species are on Earth (5 ± 3 million) are now more accurate than the moderate predictions of extinction rates (0.01 to 1% per decade). The latter suggest 500 to 50,000 extinctions per decade if there are 5 million species on Earth.
Why do I think that their conclusion is so badly flawed?
Like many modern scientists, rather than trying to find the most probable, they simply assume the worst. So they give their calculations assuming a 1% decadal extinction rate. Here’s the problem. That’s no more believable than Wilson’s 2.7% per decade rate. There are about 3,300 mammal species living on the continents (excluding Australia). If we assume that one percent of them go extinct per decade, that would mean that we should be seeing about 33 continental mammal extinctions per decade. It’s worse for birds, a 1% extinction rate for birds would be about 80 continental birds per decade. We have seen absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling that. That’s only slightly below Wilson’s estimate of a 2.7% extinction rate, and is still ridiculously high.
Instead of 33 mammals and 80 birds going extinct on the continents per decade, in the last 500 years on the great continental landmasses of the world, we’ve only seen three mammals and six birds go extinct. Only nine continental mammal and bird species are known to have gone extinct in 500 years. Three mammals and six birds in 500 years, that’s less than one continental mammal extinction per century, and these highly scientific folks are claiming that 30 mammals and 80 birds are going extinct per decade? … once again I’m forced to ask, where are the corpses?
This kind of world-blindness astounds me. I’ve heard of living in an ivory tower, but if you were making the claim that it’s raining, wouldn’t you at least look out the ivory windows to see if water were actually falling from the sky? How can you seriously claim that we’re losing dozens and dozens of species per year when there is absolutely no sign of that in the records?
Because the reality is that despite humans cutting down the forests of the world at a rate of knots for hundreds and hundreds of years, despite clearcutting for lumber, despite slash-and-burn, despite conversions to cropland, despite building hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and fences, despite everything … only nine continental mammal and bird species have gone extinct.
That gives us actual, not theoretical but actual, estimates of the historical extinction rates for continental birds and animals. For continental mammals that works out to 3 extinctions per 3,300 continental mammal species per 50 decades equals 0.002% per decade, somewhat below their low estimate of 0.01% per decade. For birds, it’s 6 extinctions per 8000 continental species per 50 decades, which is only slightly lower. If we assume that we’ve missed four out of five of the historical extinctions, very unlikely but I suppose possible, it still works out to only about 0.01%.
So their very lowest estimate, that of an extinction rate of 0.01% per decade, turns out to be a maximum estimate of what we’ve seen on the continents over the last five centuries.
Now, this does not include the islands and Australia. Rates there have historically been quite high. But the high historical rates there, as shown above in Figure 1, are the result of what might be called “First Contact”—the first introduction of numbers of European plants, animals, and diseases to previously isolated areas. But in 2013, there are few islands on the planet that haven’t seen First Contact. As a result, the extinction rates on the islands and in Australia, while still higher than on the continents, are extremely unlikely to have another peak such as they had at First Contact.
Finally, let me say that the low extinction rates should not be any cause for complacency. What my studies have shown is that the real threat to mammal and bird species is not habitat reduction, as incorrectly claimed for the last couple decades. The real extinction threat to birds and mammals is now and always has been predation, either by humans, or by imported “alien” species, particularly on islands. Hunting by humans threatens bonobo chimpanzees and other primates, as well as tigers, rhinoceros, and other mammal and bird species. Hunting is the extinction threat, not habitat destruction, and always has been, whether the hunters were animals or humans.
CODA
People are always giving me grief about how I’m not getting with the picture, I’m not following the herd, I’m not kowtowing to the consensus. I have no problem doing that, particularly given my experience regarding extinctions. For years I was the only person I knew of who was making the claim that E. O. Wilson should have stuck to his ants and left extinctions alone. Wherever I looked scientists disagreed with my findings. I didn’t have one person I knew, or one person I read, who thought I was right. Heck, even now, a decade later, the nettle still hasn’t been grasped, people are just beginning to realize that they were fools to blindly believe Wilson, and to try to manage a graceful climb down from the positions they took.
What I learned in that episode was that my bad number detector works quite well, that I should stick to my guns if I think I’m right, and that I should never, ever, ever place any faith in the opinions of the experts. They were all wrong, every single last swingin’ Richard of them, and I was right. Doesn’t mean I’ll be right next time, I’ve been wrong plenty both before and since … but it has given me the courage to hold on to some extremely minority positions.
It is my strong belief that I will also be vindicated in my claim that the earth’s temperature is regulated, not by CO2, but by a host of interlocking and mutually supportive homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the temperature within a fairly narrow range … time will tell. In my opinion, the experts in the climate field have shown that they don’t know a whole lot more about the real underpinnings of the climate than E. O. Wilson knew about extinctions … but that’s just me, and YMMV.
The very finest of a lovely day to you all,
w.
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milodonharlani says:
January 27, 2013 at 1:47 pm
This is a pet peeve of mine. I hold that there are no “ecological niches” in the absence of a creature which has figured out how to live there.
For example, consider the area hundreds of feet underground … is this an “ecological niche”? It turns out that certain parts of it are indeed an ecological niche, because thermophilic bacteria have figured out how to live there, and other parts are not. What’s the difference between the niche and the not-niche? One thing and one thing only … someone figured out how to live there.
As another example, is a smooth rock sitting on the surface an ecological niche? Well, not in the absence of lichens … but for lichens it is a very comfy ecological niche, thank you very much.
So here’s the question. If if every lichen were driven extinct, is the rock still an ecological niche? I say no. I hold that ecological niches are not created, limned, or defined by natural processes. They do not exist separate from life. They are only a niche if there is an animal capable of living there. Because until an animal evolves that can live way underneath the surface and subsist on sulfur and iron, it’s just a barren dead section of earth 500 feet underground that is not an ecological niche for anything.
w.
Mr. Eschenbach:
The Red List reevaluation of the Bogota Sunangel was before the 2009 discovery of its valid species status, so data are now less insufficient, regardless of the precise provenance of the species. We know to which birds it is most closely related, & it has not been observed in the area of their habitats.
Relying on the Red List is objective & systematic, but necessarily undercounts extinctions, probably by an insignificant amount within the range of your argument.
Many islands, like Cozumel & the breeding places of great auks, are islands during interglacials, but are simply high places on dry land during the much longer glacial phases. As your study dealt with the past 500 years, this is less of a problem. Species like Bachman’s warbler, which breed on islands (Cuba in its case) but feed & spend more time on continents also constitute a grey area.
However, while I think that your distinction between island/Australian & continental species is useful, advocates of human-induced mass extinction often include the late Pleistocene/early Holocene loss of megafauna & other groups, arguably from paleolithic hunter predation (“overkill hypothesis” to explain the Quaternary extinction event). There was however a continental “island” effect, since Australia & the Americas, where humans had been absent or rare previously, suffered relatively more wipe-out than did Europe & Asia, but especially Africa, during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.
Lichen are fungal-photosynthetic organism symbionts, not animals, as I’m sure you are aware. Fungi are however more closely related to animals than to plants. Potential niches exist awaiting exploitation by life, which often requires evolution of other organisms first. Food & energy sources eventually are exploited.
I feel that life is inevitable in certain chemical & physical environments, in order to solve mass & energy equations under the natural laws ruling our universe. Saturn’s moon Titan offers a good test of this hypothesis.
Time is short…
=========
“You know, if I could have my time again, I think I would be a microbial ecologist. I would spend my time studying micro-organisms in their natural environment. I’d cut my way through forests of bacteria on a grain of sand. I would imagine myself in a submarine in a drop of water that seemed as large as a lake, and for one more turn around, I would be an explorer naturalist in a new world.”
–
Edward O. Wilson
=============
..and curiosity killed the cat.
Some estimate that microbial biomass in the Earth’s crust may exceed that of all life forms on its surface, in the oceans & atmosphere. Decades ago Gold hypothesized that petroleum may in effect be a quasi-renewable resource, created from organic matter biological in origin in the crust, not buried surface life such as gives rise to coal & peat (while still possibly requiring hundreds of millions of years to pressure-cook).
Some of the “continental” extinctions occurred in isolated island-like environments, whether an actual island on the continental shelf, a tropical mountaintop or lake. Even the passenger pigeon was dependent on the eastern woodland environment, large though that was. While hunting finished it off, cutting & burning the hardwood forests to plant corn stressed its once enormous population.
Some Pleistocene megafauna species had survived the Eemian & prior interglacials, but died off at the start of our current interglacial (the Holocene) under the added pressure of human predation.
milodonharlani says:
January 27, 2013 at 3:33 pm
Perhaps, although I would suspect that it overcounts extinctions. I say that because the CREO list, which has clear guidelines for inclusion, counts less mammal extinctions than does the Red List.
Regarding the Sunangel … so what? The Red List 2012 clearly thinks it is a species, so your argument is wrong. The reason it is listed as “Data Deficient” is that we don’t know where it lived. Read the damn Red List page, which says:
It is “Data Deficient”, not because of its species status, because they obviously agree with its “recognition as a valid taxon.” It is data deficient because we cannot mount a search for it without knowing where it came from. It might be Ecuador, it might be Peru, might be colombia, might be Venezuela …
See, this kind of BS, where you don’t read the Red List and you want to hassle me about some bird known only from one single hundred year old skin of unknown origin, is why I said I gave the clear criteria and left it at that. I don’t care about your damn species, I gave you my criteria. You even admit that the criteria are objective and systematic, and you STILL want to yammer on about your stupid Sunangel. Move on past that one, it’s toast.
No, they don’t constitute a “grey area”. I have given my criteria (where the birds breed) and my reasoning (because they are most vulnerable while breeding). I don’t care about your interpretation, save it for when you are writing your own paper.
Indeed, the “First Contact” hypothesis I have propounded explains the overwhelming majority of all extinctions in the last while.
If you are sure I am aware of that … so what? Even if I wasn’t aware of the details of lichen, so what? That is totally extraneous to the discussion. I don’t care how much you know, please display it somewhere else. What difference to my example of lichens does your erudite quibble make? None.
That makes no sense, unless you claim that most parts of the known universe are a “potential niche” for which the occupying life-form just hasn’t been invented.
And no, energy source are not “eventually exploited”. Put some long-lived gamma ray source out there in the wild and see how many bacteria cozy up to it.
Great. Please don’t bother me with further wild speculation until the results of the test are posted …
w.
Mr. Eschenbach:
Wherever the sunangel hummingbird came from, it probably wasn’t an island, but somewhere in the Andean NW of the South American continent, as indicated by its nearest relatives. Mountaintops can in effect serve as isolated islands, from an evolutionary standpoint.
The point is that precisely six “continental” bird extinctions in the past 500 years passes the gut check no better than Wilson’s dubious numbers. We haven’t even found all the bird species, extinct or extant, living during that period. Ditto mammals.
Breeding on offshore islands is ecologically no different from breeding in isolated habitats on continents. Remote oceanic islands & an island continent are I would agree special cases justifying a valid distinction, as with St. Helena, Indian Ocean islands like Reunion & Madagascar, the Indonesian archipelago on both sides of the Wallace Line, Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific chains & Hawaii..
Getting far off topic here, but there actually already is evidence suggestive of life processes on Titan. At least that hypothesis could explain observed phenomena there.. Or maybe NASA just wants justification for missions to the big moon.
milodonharlani says:
January 27, 2013 at 6:45 pm
SO WHAT???? What part of “It’s not extinct so it is not of interest to me” is unclear to you? How many ways do I need to say that your pathetic example of the Sunbird has nothing to do with my study? Let me say it real slow so you can pick up on it. You ready? I don’t want to start too soon … OK, here we go. Pay attention, I don’t want to have to repeat it again.
Your. Meaningless. Example. Is. Not. Extinct. So. Stop. Bothering. Me. About. It.
Got it? My study is about extinct birds. There’s thousands of birds that didn’t make the cut because they’re not listed on the Red List as being extinct. I don’t care about them. Get used to it.
My numbers might be off by one or two, as I have said. Wilson’s numbers are off by several orders of magnitude. If you think mine “pass the gut check no better than Wilson’s”, then your gut needs to study grade school arithmetic. It is BECAUSE my numbers are better than Wilson’s that my research got published.
If that were so, we would see equal extinction rates. Instead, we see lots of birds living on offshore islands going extinct, while those that breed on the land don’t go extinct. Who knew? Well, actually, I knew … and you didn’t. You are determined to parade your ignorance as though you were proud of it. You started out here on this thread by proving that you had not done your homework. You still haven’t done it, and that is getting real, real old.
This is a perfect example. If you want to make a claim about extinction rates on offshore islands, you need data. Evidence. Records of extinctions.
Instead, you show up with nothing but your big mouth full and your hands empty. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Your mouth is not enough here, this is a science site.
Agreed.
I asked you already to not bother me until you find the life on Titan. Instead, here you are again babbling mindlessly about your fantasies. I’m not interested in the slightest. DO NOT BOTHER ME ABOUT TITAN UNTIL YOU FIND LIFE, because until then it’s just more of your big mouth, and I’m way tired of that.
I can go over that more slowly if you need me to.
w.
Willis, I like to suggest a very down-to-earth explanation why there are no corpses.
We human have grown exponentially, but we are still one and the same species, occupying our own “human niche” in nature, now for say 200.000 years. So the big shift in nature as far as our niche concerns was 200.000 years ago. Not now.
All that has happened lately is population growth, and yes of course, more resources being used. But essentially our niche in nature didn’t change by the high numbers because, evolutionary speaking we didn’t change. So we didn’t push other species out of their niche either. We are mainly causing shifts in quantities within species. So “no corpses”.
For us humans the niche we occupy may seem “everything there is in the world”, but you may expect nature has more to offer to the other creatures than we can see or realize.
A survey of the literature indicates that in the last 100 years we have lost 6 mammal and bird species, none to climate change, In the meantime we have found 15 species that we had thought were extinct. So, we are up 9.
Predictions of species extinctions are based on abused and flawed computer models. In one case a program for estimating the validity of small area sampling relative to the biodiversity of a forest was essentially run backwards and misused to generate extinction predictions. In another case, a program was written that predicted how many species that we have never detected will go extinct before we ever detect them. It’s sort of like they never existed? Just make up any number and use it for input.
Warming does not kill species. Cold kills. The best example is the warming of a mountain. The alarmists like to claim that warming drives species upward and eventually the top species will go extinct. In the real world, however, species do move up, but they also do not abandon where they were, resulting in more overlap in the species present. The result is that with warming biodiversity rises and extinction is even less of a chance than before. Cooling on the other hand, moves all species to the valley floor, increasing competition and increasing the chance of extinctions.
When there is a heat wave in places such as Paris, there is a wave of deaths, followed by a period of fewer deaths as the heat simply killed off a bit earlier people who were already one foot in the grave. In contrast, a cold snap that kills people does not show a following lull in the death rate. Cold kills healthy people.
The meme that everything about warmer climate is bad completely ignores that all previous warm periods have been times of plenty and flourishing civilizations for mankind. So, why would warming be bad now? Because there is a political agenda that needs it to be so to achieve its goals.
Another thought-provoking article, Willis. Thanks. But I have a quibbling logic problem with the headline over this piece. “Trust your gut instinct” in the imperative impels each of us to do something that is plainly unwarranted for many. If you’d have said “Trust MY gut instincts” or even more accurately, “Trust Willis Eschebach’s gut instincts,” that would have been better, IMO. 😉
It’s so amazingly ironic that the would-be managers of sustainability are frequently so terrible at recognizing it, or natural variability in general, in all it’s complex (and sometimes tragic) wonder. But maybe it’s less curious when we consider that their first objective is to gain the appointment.
Because Mickey Reno brought up the issue of Head vs. Gut and which of them we can trust, I can’t help but refer you to a talk by one of my heroes where our predicament is so brilliantly analysed. The first 13 minutes of it are extremely pertinent to this discussion, as well as to a few adjacent threads, but there are also scattered bits of wisdom offered further on, if you are patient.
Douglas Crockford, ladies and gents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EANG8ZZbRs
Mickey Reno says:
January 28, 2013 at 9:40 am
Thanks, Mickey. If we as humans could not trust our gut instincts, we’d have gone extinct long ago. The problem is that far too often we are beguiled by shiny things. How many times have you read about a crime victim who said “I had a feeling that something was wrong, but went ahead anyway …”
So yes, I do encourage everyone to trust their gut instincts. Doesn’t mean they’re right, any more than the “smell test” is right, sometimes it’s gouda cheese, but I definitely pay attention to those things.
The problem, as always, is separating them from the swirl of chaos that passes for our internal processes …
w.
Steve P:
I reject your claim about near extinction of piebald eagles from North America. They remained common on the coast of BC and in the interior of BC. I saw one on a railway track near Highway 16 between Prince George and Smithers., for example, and my logging friends saw many.
There’s much nonsense peddled about populations, often failure to look as has been pointed out by Tim Ball among others. For example, the fiasco over the Irawhadhi Dolphin – alarmists didn’t look in the country next door to where they claimed the only ones were, then someone discovered even more further away – instead of a few hundred there really are several thousand or more. Some people say that Spotted Owls – who’ve been used by tree worshippers to stop logging old growth forest west of the Cascade mountains in WA – also live on the east side of the mountains, and have been seen nesting in signs. (Probable reason is availability of food such as feral rabbits and rodents, which wildlife experts say is why Cooper’s Hawks are common in the city of Victoria BC.) Airport people tell of bird control methods failing because the birds figure out there is no actual threat.
Different naming is also a good point. Some idiots in southern Vancouver Island claim Arbutus and Garry Oak trees are unique to southern VI, when a simple bit of research reveals that south of that artificial line on maps the trees can’t read they are called Madrona and Oregon Oak respectively. (People in the Vancouver BC area will be ROFL at the claim about Arbutus, which is common there. I’ve even seen them on VI where alarmists claim they won’t grow – in forests with other trees.)
Pat Moffi, excellent point about new species emerging.
There’s also mixing, known to occur with birds at the interface between areas, I predict will happen with Great Blue Herons. Populations in SE BC and SW BC are considered different by some people due modest differences in size and colouring. However they are mixing (perhaps long have, just more studying recently), some SE BC ones have figured out they don’t have to migrate south – they can come west instead, some SW BC ones have figured out that feeding can be good in SE BC.
And in today’s news in BC that the BC government is shooting barred owls to facilitate introduction of spotted owls raised in captivity, as supposedly there are only 10 left in the wild, is that they’ve been inter-breeding. Gosh, says I, the government should celebrate the diversity of a new species – the Barred-Spotted Owl.
I’ve spouted before about the incompetence and dishonesty of environmentalists, who in referencing a research paper to support their claim that human presence would reduce heron populations ignored that the same paper pointed to nearby examples of herons habituating to humans. (Examples well known to the environmentalists.)
And there’s an “oops” in those claims that salmon from different rivers are distinct – wildlife experts say that salmon sometimes spawn in a different river, notably if water conditions aren’t good in the one they were born in. (Apparently some varieties of salmon are more adaptable than others. Varieties being coho, sockeye, etc. Today’s trick quiz on spawning is: “What type of salmon are kokanee’ and ‘steelhead’?)
Years ago, when “An Inconvenient Truth” appeared, I had this gut feeling it was a fraud. The whole show smelled messy from the start, so I never even looked at it. But in other cases I may be wrong and I would need my “System 2” Kahneman talks about in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (Gene Selkov: thanks for the link).
The wingnut lost me at this: “You are a poor excuse for a living being. Any species is equal to the human species,”
Not if they can’t adapt or survive. Someone was napping during the chapters on evolution.
Keith Sketchley says:
January 28, 2013 at 4:36 pm
I’ve fished salmon commercially off California and in the Bering Sea, and have worked as a sport salmon fishing guide on the mighty Kenai river in Alaska, which looks like this …
Here is how I figure the numbers. In my short foray into silver refining, I learned the term “four nines pure”. This means 99.9999% pure silver. Suppose that salmon do that well. Suppose they are “four nines”, that 99.9999% of them return to the same spot to spawn.
This is how the numbers work out. There’s a kind of salmon (as you know but others might not) called “reds”, or “sockeye salmon” from “sakai”, some local word for “red”. Last year, about two million! sockeye salmon returned to the Kenai river. If those suckers are four nines pure, that means that there are two Kenai salmon off in some other river spawning with some foreign salmon babes and dudes … because one thing’s for sure. Once it’s time to spawn, they head upriver. They won’t stop going upriver just because they find they’re in the wrong one.
In addition, as you point out, if their spawning site is destroyed by e.g. a landslide, they don’t commit suicide. They search until they either find another suitable spot and spawn, or they die. Life is staggeringly tenacious.
All the best,
w.
Good article Willis. I would guess most species that ever existed are now extinct. Given the depth of time in the past we could probably never catch up to/ exceed the past extinctions. One quibble, why attach significance to grasping the ‘nettle’ or not, ouch.
Willis,
This just in. No mention of global warming.
Keith Sketchley says:
January 28, 2013 at 4:32 pm
Yes Keith, you are correct. I was wrong on that point, and in general, apologies to all for some hurried and rather poorly presented posts of late.
I should have said:
And on this last point about shooting, apparently I have been perhaps more than just a little naive about how much shooting of raptors has occured.
At any rate, Bald Eagles have been protected since the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940, and Endangered Species Act of 1973 (since removed). According to Wikipedia (FWIW), Bald Eagles increased from 417 to 11,040 pairs between 1963 and 2007; removed from list 2007. Peregrine Falcons increased from 324 to 1,700 pairs between 1975 and 2000, and also was removed from list of endangered species in 1999. The Wiki article did not specify to which regions the above numbers apply. The RSPB has estimated that there are 1,402 breeding pairs (of PF) in the UK (Wiki again).
“””””…..The dictionary and the Red List and the CREO all use the same definition that I (and many others here) use. Here you go (emphasis mine):
ex·tinct
/ikˈstiNG(k)t/
Adjective
1. (of a species, family, or other larger group) Having no living members.
2. No longer in existence.
Synonyms
dead – defunct…….”””””””
Well some species are simply immune from extinction !
One very common species, living all over America is totally extinction immune.
If you killed every last one of them on the planet; and also aborted any of them that might be in gestation, so that there are none living or soon to be, that would satisfy the above definition of extinct.
But in ten years, there would be just as many of them as there are today; you can’t get rid of them.
I don’t know the official latin taxonomic name for the species; but the common colloquial generic name is:
” Mule “
Steve Keohane says:
January 29, 2013 at 5:41 am
I put the number at more than 99% extinct.
To “grasp the nettle” is an idiom for fully accepting and coming to terms with some unpleasant fact. I used it to indicate that they don’t want to accept what from their perspective are unpleasant facts, which are:
a) the species-area relationship doesn’t work for beans to predict extinctions, and
b) other than extinctions by introduced “alien” species in historically isolated areas, there’ve been hardly any extinctions at all. They are quite rare. The idea that we’re in a “Sixth Wave” is nothing but hyperbole.
Neither of those ideas, that “species-area” doesn’t work and extinctions are rare absent introduced species, are politically correct or popular in the scientific community … which is why I said that the authors haven’t “grasped the nettle”.
w.
Jimbo says:
January 29, 2013 at 10:38 am
Thanks, Jimbo. Among the introduced species, cats, or what I refer to as “house tigers”, are one of the more deadly … again, however, we come up against island vs. continent. In North America, the ecological niche occupied by the house cat was previously occupied by the bobcat, so the introduction of the house cat didn’t make a huge difference to the lives of say small birdies …
On islands with no historical small feline predators, however, they have wreaked untold damage.
w.
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2013 at 12:53 pm (Edit)
I realize this is at least in part for humor, but there’s a problem. If a mule were a species, you’d be right. You got the definition of “extinct”, now let’s have at least a brief stab at “species”, although there are lots of definitions, but here’s the common one:
Since mules can’t do dat (interbreed or exchange genes), they are not a species, and thus they can’t go extinct … but I liked your puzzle all the same.
Thanks,
w.
PS—DON’T bother me with other more nuanced definitions of species, or with the million exceptions to the general species rule. I know about that stuff, I join in the debate between the lumpers and the splitters as a reasonably knowledgeable participant. I’ve never heard of a rule under which mules count as a species …
Thanks Willis, your definition makes sense, nettles are a nasty plant to deal with. If I recall, Arrhenius was into species population estimates.