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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D.B. Stealey says: “So I am curious where trafamadore would draw the line, if species are all equal. Banana slugs?”
How long have banana slugs been around? You should research it a bit. It would be terrible if they have been around for more than 3 million years?
Apologies for being off topic but I thought you might like this:
http://hurryupharry.org/2013/01/25/the-sexist-workers-party-crisis-continues/
It’s the reference to Socialist Workers Party members at the UAE. Why am I not surprised.
S. Meyer says:
January 25, 2013 at 7:10 pm
I’ve been over all of this in the previous post and the paper, S. Meyer. You should do your homework first. Google is not the scientific arbiter, nor was Wikipedia the source of my data. That would be CREO and the Red List. Let me take one example, the Saudi Gazelle. The CREO data says it is “Currently extant under valid species name”. If you want to argue with CREO about whether the “Saudi Gazelle” is a valid species or not, be my guest. All I can do is take their word for it, they are the highest authority I can find.
I have not downplayed the seriousness of anything. To the contrary, I’m doing my best to point out the threats to extinction that actually are serious, so people can focus on them and pay less attention to the minor threats like habitat reduction.
I couldn’t agree more, although I would describe myself as an awed guest in this world rather than a steward. Certainly corridors are good, connections are always good.
In terms of what concerns me, for me the real threat is not extinction, it is the local reduction in biodiversity. For example, when a coral reef around an atoll loses all of its parrotfish, the reef’s health immediately declines because it is not being grazed. In addition, the thousands of tons of beach sand provided by the parrotfish are lost.
Now, does it matter that the parrotfish is not extinct, that it exists on the next island over? Other than the chances of repopulating the atoll with parrotfish, it doesn’t matter a bit. For the people living on that atoll, local extinction of the parrotfish has the same effect as total extinction. The damage to the atoll and to the reef is the same in either case.
My conclusion from this study is that extinctions are the wrong metric to look at, because species are so darned tenacious. The right metric is local biodiversity, particularly of whatever are the key species.
w.
Great post, Willis.
@Stephen Fisher Rasey, 12:00pm and John West, 10:39 Challenger Disaster
Perhaps it was the knowledge that President Regan wanted to mention the teacher in space during his second inaugural address that led both NASA management and Contractor management to override their technical experts.
Willis, I am very disappointed by your combative tone. My comments were addressing what you wrote in this article, not everything you may have written in other posts. I don’t have time to address all your points, but the reason I brought up birds and mammals is that you challenge E. O. Wilson on the whole set of biological species, not just birds and mammals. So even if your point was valid about birds and mammals, you have not spoken to the issue of overall extinctions. What about land snails, ants etc.? Unless you can show E. O. Wilson is wrong here too you have not defeated his point, that was what I was trying to convey. You also implied that you thought island extinctions were waning, which is why I brought up the recent examples. Also, it is too much of a generalization to say habitat loss is not a big cause of extinctions. It depends on the type of organism, the place, the degree of habit change, etc. For plants, habitat loss is a significant cause of extinction.
I think E. O. Wilson exaggerated the problem but you in my view are going too far the other way. E. O. Wilson deserves some credit for alerting people to the tragedy of extinctions, although of course many others did this as well. You and I both agree that climate change is not a significant cause of extinctions.
John Game.
The human species is the only species capable of saving the rest of the earths species from extinction. Our ability to divert the next comet/bolide from intersecting earth’s orbit, if possible, renders this discussion mute.
trafamadore says:
January 25, 2013 at 7:35 pm
If that was your major point, I certainly did miss it. Thanks for re-stating it.
As I clearly explained in my original post, I chose to study birds and mammals for several reasons. Let me go over them, so we can get past this question.
Wilson’s claim is that when habitat is reduced, all families of creatures living in that habitat will increase their rate of extinction. He made no distinction as to the kind of species. Instead, he just figured out the percentage, applied it to the total number of species, and said there would be that many extinctions.
In addition, Wilson said that among the groups, some of the highest extinction rates would be found among birds and mammals. So what better groups on which to test his theory? Here’s my description from my previous post, which I guess you didn’t read, despite it being cited in the head post … but I digress. Here’s the quote:
In other words, Wilson’s extinctions are supposed to apply to all species, and especially to birds and mammals. So determining if the extinctions actually occurred to birds and mammals allows us to test and to falsify Wilson’s claim.
There was another reason I chose birds and mammals to study—they are far and away the best known of all of the families of creatures on this amazing planet. Again, I discussed this in my original post, saying:
If I had studied say insects, people could reasonably say “But there could be thousands and thousands of insects that have gone extinct with nobody noticing.” But there’s no way that thousands and thousands, or even dozens and dozens, of birds and mammals have gone extinct with no one noticing. People notice birds and mammals, so extinction data for them is better than for any other groups.
In other words, rather than “ignoring” species as you claim, I chose to study these two groups for quite logical reasons, reasons which I explained in the papers I cited.
Finally, your accusation that I am a “fraud” is … what. Boring. Unpleasant. Unimaginative. Nasty. Unsupported. Uncited. Pathetic. Childish. Vindictive. I don’t know what to call it, I just know that when you get into that kind of puerile insults, you’re no fun to discuss things with …
w.
Hi Willis, I really love your posts, always a treat! And I would agree with most you wrote above, in response to my post. I also agree that Wiki is not always reliable, but the one I quoted has links for everything, and the links I followed lead back to places like the Red List or US Wildlife Service.
Here is the link for the Saudi Gazelle at the Red List:
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/8974/0
But I don’t want to argue about individual species. Primarily, my concern is this: Please don’t let people read your post as meaning that the eradication of biodiversity is somehow no big deal.
And an awed guest in this world, I am, too. Where do you find those words….?
I’m entering this after reading only a few of the comments. Apologies if it has been covered by others. Take a look at Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science by Aynsley J. Kellow. He covers the species extinction scare in detail. It was published late in 2007. If is expensive. There are two fairly detailed favorable reviews at Amazon, and one attack review with lots of reply comments.
Bob says: “are you aware that 99.9999% of all species that ever existed on planet earth have gone extinct.”
I understand your broader point, but have to call out this particular statement. You’re going to have an awful hard time coming up with concrete evidence for the 99.9999% number. The fossil record certainly does not support anything even close to that kind of percentage. (Hint: the 99.9% number is an assumption/extrapolation used by some folks to support their particular viewpoint on what they think must have occurred in the history of life on Earth.)
You are missing the point. Willis studied mammals and birds because they were the only animals for which reliable data existed. E.O. Wilson claimed a very high rate of extinction due to habitat reduction, and stated that mammals and birds were most vulnerable. Willis showed that only a very small number of mammals and birds went extinct due to habitat reduction.
Your listing of a bunch of frogs does not answer the request for several reasons:
1. The discussion was about mammals and birds.
2. The alleged frogs were native to an island, and island extinctions are not evidence of extinction due to habitat loss.
3. There is scant evidence that the frog species you listed EVER existed.
4. The question asked for a list of animals that have gone extinct the last ten years. If those frogs actually ever did exist, they went extinct a long time ago.
Um, why is the peregrine falcon different? Cause it flies high, fast and nests in inaccessible places?
So you’ve never seen a predator that has just caught a critter, say a chicken? The falcon/hawk/eagle or even the buzzard will spread their wings and try and bluff away other predators; makes it easy for a shotgun used by the chicken’s owner to end the falcon’s time. Sure it looks cool when a falcon takes a bird on the wing, there isn’t always a dumb pigeon flying around when falcons need food.
Nowadays when one can head down to the store and buy a roast chicken every day if desired, it is hard to imagine times that were/are harder. If you are eking out an existence and once a month or once a week, if your chickens are bountiful, you get to eat fresh chicken. Most of the time you’re eating food you’ve preserved; salt pork, summer sausages, ham (a version of salt pork), dried meat (beef, buffalo, venison, sparrow…). Just because life is easy for some people now, doesn’t mean it will always be easy nor does it mean everyone’s life is easy. It isn’t so long ago that a Presidential slogan was “A chicken for every pot…” Even if Hoover didn’t say it, it was still part of the ad campaign for Hoover.
Anyway, as you’ve might have guessed by now; people eking out their existence don’t like to share their food with thieves, which is how they view predators stealing some portions. Plus the thieves were rarely choosy and nesting hens were as likely to get caught as tough scrawny old roosters.
Today’s politically correct scruples are useless when viewing the past or even for prognosticating the future. Willis has laid down the challenge. Where are the bodies? Not just names, where are the bodies. Plus why are they dead? Exactly why? AGW makes a nice for a nice bum rap, but it lacks causality with true chance for redemption. If we don’t have a clue exactly why the critter/plant is in trouble there’s no chance we can man can help.
The family tree is composed of trunks and branches, all related. species quickly adjust to fit ecological niches. It’s man’s folly to believe any niche is exclusively for certain species.
Two old men, one a Caucasian and the other a Negro operated remote lighthouses on tiny islands. When they retired to the mainland both stations were automated.
The Red Book recorded the Local Extinction of two sub-species of humans.
I am beginning to understand how it works. Thanks Willis.
The main point is that E. O. Wilson’s claims are absolutely absurd.
A sophist knowing that to be true attempts to shift the argument to some detail and vigorously argues about that detail — hoping thereby to bury the central claim under a deluge of obscurantism (deliberate avoidance of clarity or explanation).
i repeat again the main point is that E. O. Wilson’s claims are absolutely absurd. Willis demonstates that by comparing actual data with Wilson’s claims. It is that simple comparison that the sophist wants at all costs to prevent people from centering on — therefore the deluge of obscurantism.Talk about ANYTHING but the central point that Willis is making — that E. O. Wilson’s claim’s are absolutely absurd.
Eugene WR Gallun
I am rather surprised that no-one has mentioned the work of that great statistician, Bjorn Lomborg. His Skeptical Environmentalist was, I think, one of the first to really attack Wilson’s ridiculous claims, and he then analysed the IUCN’s data, which showed an annual rate of loss of animal species of about four per annum, and which was unchanged in the last 400 years. The Great Exaggerators rose up en masse, and in a really shameful episode, Scientific American published a counterview and then essentially denied Lomborg the opportunity of rebuttal. Scientific American even threatened to sue Lomborg for infringement of copyright when he quoted long passages of the critical articles in his rebuttal! My personal view is that the whole treatment of the Skeptical Environmentalist by the environmental community was far more shameful than the events leading to the Hockey Stick and Climategate.
S. Meyer says:
January 25, 2013 at 8:24 pm
All that confirms is that you didn’t read my original paper. In it I said (emphasis mine)
Since the “Eastern Couger” is a sub-species, and according to some cougar experts, perhaps not even that (some say all cougars are one single species), it is not even considered in my analysis … you see the problem with getting your information from Wikipedia?
Next, could cougars use protection? Not around here, that’s for sure. We have plenty. You want some, we can loan you a pile of them. Should cougars be encouraged to move back into New York? I’d say sure … but there’s lot’s of New Yorkers that might disagree.
Finally, should we protect cougars because the sub-species is “blinking in and out of existence”? The fact that a species might be at the edge of extinction has always seemed to be a poor reason to protect it. If you have a species that only exists within one area the size of a football field, it may be that nature is trying to tell you something … as Carl Sagan remarked, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” If you’re gonna oppose all extinctions, you’re gonna have to work lots of overtime and you still won’t succeed.
w.
thunderloon says:
January 25, 2013 at 8:03 pm
“I’d like a T-shirt with “Intellectuals go with what sounds good, Engineers go with what works. Don’t think: test.” on the front and “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” on the back.”
Very good !
Or perhaps
““Intellectuals go with what feels good, Engineers go with what works” on the front,
and
“Don’t excpect, Inspect” on the back ?
John Game says:
January 25, 2013 at 8:51 pm
John, if you’re not willing to read the other posts, the posts upon which this latest post rests, why should I discuss it with you? Since you insist on your right to pontificate without reading the source documents, why should I not be combative? You ask for references that have already been given. You ask for facts that have already been explained. You ask how this relates to the other animals. Why should I bother holding your hand and wasting my time and everyone else’s time going back to first grade to explain these basics to you? That’s what the posted links are for.
See, the problem is, you’ve come in at Chapter 4 in the story. Chapter 1 was the original post, Chapter 2 was the scientific paper, and Chapter 3 was Craig’s post about getting the paper published. I posted links to all three of these in the head post, so people who came in late wouldn’t ask questions that had already been answered.
But nooooo, you you’re too good to read the first three chapters, you insist on your God-given right to come in during Chapter 4 and start right in giving us the benefit of your extensive wisdom. That’s fine if you know what you are talking about … but in this case you don’t have a clue, because you are unwilling to read the foundation documents.
And now, you’ve gotten your knickers in a twist because I busted you for not reading the first three chapters. Ask me if I care that you are “disappointed” by my “combative tone”. I took that combative tone deliberately, to try to snap you out of your daze, in the hope that you would be disappointed enough to actually do something … you want to play? You want to discuss things with the adults?
Then DO YOUR HOMEWORK and read the first three chapters. I’m not going to spoon-feed you, John. I don’t care in the slightest if you like me or not. I’m not trying to be your friend, I have nothing to prove. I’m not going to tickle your tummy and blow in your ear. If you want to participate here, bring your A game, or don’t bother—science is a blood sport.
w.
No time to read the comments, but as usual, correct Willis!
Even in Australia the extinction rates are overblown with if I recall correctly from my student days many years ago many species were not really different species at all – died out one place called something else elsewhere. Mitchell I think, or one of the then palaeontologist in England described the common wombat from bones in Wellington Caves as extinct, but note the name common! They were and still are everywhere in eastern Australiaia, just not recognised as the same thing back then. Then there is Burramys parvus, and Leadbeaters Possum, possibly the Parma Wallaby (found again in NZ I believe). Probably others. The extinction of the Australian megafauna is in my opinion at least tied to the first invasion of Australian 40-50 thousand years ago.
The other side of the coin is extinction opens up habitat for new species – nobody seems to talk about that. As a geologist I recall marine transgressions open up habitats for new species. My be we should hope for the global warming sea level high to introduce all those new habitats and new species!
Ciao
John in Milano
Oh, and Happy Australia Day to all other expat Aussies!
John in chilly Milano
No where in the biological world do I see any other species attempting to make the world a better place for other species (symbioses is for selfish gain that also benefits another organism). So I have to ask the question: who or what put humans in charge of assuring biodiversity? Does being the top of the food chain demand that we do this? Is it just hubris?
I do not have an answer to these questions and would love ot hear what some of you have to say (maybe trafamadore excluded). However, I also argue it is in our self-interest for species survival to assure biodiverisity and stewardship. Earth’s history is filled with calamaties – droughts, ice ages, meteors, et cetera. In the event of a calamity, the more species there are, the better humans’ chances of survival due to our extraordinary ability to exploit food sources. However, losing an occasional species is no big deal if the numbers are low. Aditionally we now create new “species” in the laboratory especially in the cereal grains. What many do not know is such GM species have the effect of decreasing the amount of land needed for farming and can increase the habitats of potentially endangered species.
S. Meyer says:
January 25, 2013 at 8:59 pm
Thanks, S. For the reasons detailed in my first post (clear criteria, use of DNA, etc.) I used the CREO exclusively for the mammals. I would have used it for the birds as well, but they haven’t done them, just mammals and fish. Red List has drunk the Koolaid.
I couldn’t agree more. Biodiversity is the key. Extinction is a poor metric.
To find the words, I just follow my gut extinct …
w.
Since you insist on your right to pontificate without reading the source documents, why should I not be combative? You ask for references that have already been given.
bookmarked
Not as many extinctions as has been thought.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/26/earths-species-may-not-be-vanishing-as-fast-as-previously-believed/