In 2007, the IPCC predicted that rising global temperatures would kill off many species. But in its new report, part of which will be presented next Monday, the UN climate change body backtracks. There is a shortage of evidence, a draft version claims.
…
Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years.
But the UN climate body now says it is no longer so certain. The second part of the IPCC’s new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a further “increased extinction risk for a substantial number of species during and beyond the 21st century” is to be expected. On the other hand, the IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.
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Sunshine hours writes of another about-face from the IPCC:
Everytime I argue with members of the AGW Cult they claim we are in the midst of a “great extinction”. I ask them to name 10 species. When they can’t name any, I ask for 5. They usually come up with one animal that has been hunted to extinction (which is horrible, but not AGW)
Old Prediction:
“Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years.”
New Confession:
“ IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.”
Polar Bears Are Doing Fine:
“At most, the draft report says, climate change may have played a role in the disappearance of a few amphibians, fresh water fish and mollusks. Yet even the icons of catastrophic global warming, the polar bears, are doing surprisingly well. Their population has remained stable despite the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap.”
Models Suck at predicting extinctions:
“”There is very little confidence that models currently predict extinction risk accurately,” the report notes. Very low extinction rates despite considerable climate variability during past hundreds of thousands of years have led to concern that “forecasts for very high extinction rates due entirely to climate change may be overestimated.””
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As Willis has said: Where are the corpses?
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“ IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.”
….that’s because the climate has not changed
re: dodo and passenger pigeon
I realize you are being ironic, but as mentioned, these were hunted to extinction. As were the sabre-toothed cat, and I am quite happy admitting that I’m glad I don’t need to dodge these on my way to the subway in the morning.
BTW, the book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” by Charles C Mann posits the idea that the passenger pigeon, whose flocks apparently numbered hundreds of millions (at least), were allowed to propagate to such immense numbers because the native Americans were decimated by, as Jared Diamond would have it, “Guns, Germs and Steel”. The myth that the forest was verdant and untouched by hunters and gatherers before 1492 persists, but his hypothesis is that by burning and harvesting (not to mention hunting) the birds, they kept the population down. Without them, the resultant overpopulation darkened the skies.
“burning and harvesting (not to mention hunting) the birds”
please make that:
“burning and harvesting (not to mention hunting), the birds”
Just the ol’ copy editor in me…
Reply: OMG, all that for a comma? I don’t know whether to admire or be,,,,horrified.~y’all know who. back fer a guest mod moment
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Well, this is going to cause anguish among the faithful of the Cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nah. They’ll just ignore like they do all other empirical evidence showing their beloved faith is probably hooey. Who’s in “denial,” again?
Global warming is making bats and birds extinct, oh sorry it’s there flaming windmills doing that!
Excellent job, prior commenters!
No species extinctions from AGW, but serious risk from the alarmists, by promoting bird slicers, irresponsible biologists blaming all threats on AGW, and the economic crash caused by all the attacks on energy.
One mentioned soil organisms. By distracting people from what is happening agriculturally, real damage is being done, including reduced water-holding capacity of enormous swaths of land. Since water hold a lot of heat, drying the land out does lead to climate change, including both hot and cold extremes, and both droughts and flooding.
Col Mosby says:
March 28, 2014 at 11:23 am
Looks to me lke the only species in immediate danger is the Whooping Crane – but from wind turbines designed to fight global warming. Ironic that global warming fears and actions are what is leading to the only species extinctions.
——————-
Can someone point to actual data to show this. People keep blaiming the California wind farms. However, Whooping Cranes do not go near California. So, what is the actual deal? I need to see numbers!
i doubt if homo sapien climaticum hystericus will be extinct anytime soon.
The key is that these predictions NEVER say “this will be the end of the world.” They say “this will be the end of the world AS WE KNOW IT.”
The last four words are critical. It’s patently obvious that the world has not ended because the temperature changed, though it’s looking like it didn’t change enough to notice. What these yahoos are worried about isn’t that the planet will catch fire or boil or something, but that their vacation spot might have to change, or they won’t be able to hop a jet to Cacun. (Because they can’t afford it — Cancun is still there and just fine.)
If a species of fish has to swim 50 miles further north to have EXACTLY the temperature water it likes to breed in, SO WHAT? A thousand years ago, they might well have had to swim 100 miles SOUTH for the same thing. Again, SO WHAT? The AGW wonks are really concerned that their lovely status quo will be disturbed, and they might not be able to get the same brand of organic fair-trade Sumatran coffee for the same price anymore. (OMG! The end of life AS WE KNOW IT! It’s DIFFERENT now! AAAAUUGHHHH!)
if co2 is just being used by eco anarchist utopians as the ‘tin opener’ to dismantle western capitalist industrialisation then a few points like facts won’t stop them using it.
however you would have thought people would have got used to the trojans leaving wooden horses outside the city by now. The latest one looks like ocean ‘acidification’ as its still linked to co2 ie the gas of ‘industrialisation’.
re: dodo
The dodo went extinct in the seventeenth century probably by the introduction of pigs, dogs, and rats in its habitat on Mauritius. The bird was not very tasty for humans who called him Disgusting Bird (Walgvogel in Dutch). A better example of direct anthropogenic extinction is the smallpox virus.
Jeff in Calgary says:
March 28, 2014 at 1:27 pm
. People keep blaiming the California wind farms.
====
Then someone is confused….it’s the wind farms in the great plains
Did they consider college mascots? I thought some of them were supposed to die off.
All species have finite life spans, as do we as individuals. Is it logical to place such a moral burden on the extinction of a species? Who among us can say with certainty when the time has come for a species, or for an individual human being? Is that not presumptious?
Jauntycyclist: Please define for me an eco anarchist utopian. J. R. R. Tolkein was an anarchist, but certainly not a utopian. After seriously pondering the inherent danger in giving flawed human beings power over other human beings, I can find no logical or moral alternative to opposing all forms of centralized power regardless of the labels one chooses to give them; republican, communist, socialist, fascist, democratic, monarchist, all result in the benefiting of a few at the expense of the many, and in mass murder and imprisonment of people who have done harm to no one. I don’t believe that there is some utopian existence awaiting us, but a world without the evil that is government would be a vast improvement over what we currently have.
Just think, who is it that has empowered the warmists to push their hysterical fantasies as fact on innocent school children? Who has taken your hard earned money and squandered it on this fiasco? Without the coercive power wielded by the state, there could not be an IPCC, or world wars or genocides. So please, don’t confuse the totalitarian aims of the UN and all it’s sycophants in the Climate Change world with anarchists. It is illogical and gives us anarchists a bad name.
This has been a big beef of mine for a long time. I think the guy who said models of species extinction are off by 160% is off by more than 160%. I have seen admitted in nature articles that the rates are at least 1/10th or 1000% different from what they predict. I think even that is an underestimate of the error.
In order to calculate species extinction rates one needs to know species creation rates and species extinction rates somewhat accurately. This is because there are estimated to be 37 million species on the earth. The number being created and destroyed naturally for any number of reasons is not known. Therefore it is impossible to estimate if extinctions are happening more or less. Only some 3 million species are documented, so it is estimated 90% of species are not even catalogued yet. Since 90% are not even catalogued we cannot even venture a guess as to how many are created or destroyed normally because we have zero data to back up any such estimate.
The models for extinction generally rely on primitive ideas that if an area the species lives in is reduced that the species will fail. However, species are far more resilient than that. It has been shown repeatedly that species that were thought extinct actually weren’t. This is a bugaboo that has been tried on every environmentalist cause. This will cause mass extinction, that will cause mass extinction. Yet when you look for the actual numbers of extinct species it is surprisingly small or even zero. We had the amazon rainforest being destroyed, the use of DDT, pesticides in general, air pollution, … it never ends. Everything is going to cause extinctions but nobody follows up to find out nothing actually went extinct.
As I said before. We don’t know what the species creation rate is, what the normal extinction rate is. It seems to be assumed by environmentalists that nothing ever went extinct until late 20th century man started producing pollution and expanding. The fact is that most known extinctions are tied to primitive human activities or activities of humans in Europe and the US before the mid-20th century when we would wipe out large quantities of creatures without the slightest concern. Since mid-20th century America has led the way to more awareness and to much more active protection of species. Maybe there are fewer of some species, maybe there are species on the verge of collapse. However, the number that actually disappear is close to zero out of 37 million or more accurately we really have no idea.
Lets not forget all the NEW SPECIES being all the time, as well some now extinct.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/series/new-to-nature
http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/plants_animals/new_species/
And let’s not forget all those supposedly extinct species that came back from the dead! They are called Lazarus taxon.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/year-rediscovered-species
So it seems things are better than we thought! Someone call the IPCC.
Ohhhhhh!
“Lets not forget all the NEW SPECIES being found all the time,…”
Why am I, who doesn’t have a penny to gain in the scam, correct yet again?
Maybe it's because you don't have a penny to gain in the scam?
Jeff in Calgary says: “Can someone point to actual data to show this.” Re Whooping Cranes and Wind Turbines
March 28, 2014 at 1:27 pm
Hi Jeff – I’ve searched the primary literature and cannot find any records of Whooping Cranes having been killed by wind turbines. Power transmission lines are considered a source of mortality, especially for fledgelings, and do kill quite a few Sandhill Cranes, but nada on wind turbines. Drought in WC overwintering sites in Texas, disease and shooting are also important. Whooping Cranes fly pretty high when migrating, but do come down to rest every night, so there is the potential for collisions, but no verified reports that I could find.
Whooping Crane females don’t start reproducing until they are 3-7 years old. That’s a lot of trips back and forth between Texas and Alberta, so it is reasonable to be worried about collisions. New wind farms will also bring more power lines. So, I think it is a valid worry, but so far all I can find are wild claims by excitable types.
There’s another BOGUS factor in the extinction debate that has always annoyed me no end.
The “species-area” paradigm leads to statements similar to: “The xxxx critter is currently restricted to less than 5% of its historic range”, implying that the poor dears are teetering on the brink of EXTINCTION.
HORSE-PUCKEY.
Prairie dogs (for example, the beloved keystone-species of the enviros here in Colorado) are so described and are pampered and protected through all manner of lawsuits and court actions. HOWEVER, the little buggers are migratory and have always consumed a habitat until it was spent AND THEN MOVED ON. They have migrated across the plains of middle America like viral infections or ringworm or plagues of locusts since time immemorial.
THEY NEVER OCCUPIED ALL OF THE RANGE [SIMULTANEOUSLY] WHERE EVIDENCE IS FOUND FOR THEIR PRESENCE.
So, the entire construct behind species-area is bullsh*t. There’s no relationship between population and area, unless the area is defined at the same time as the population census.
Biologists who believe that populations are static/stable/in balance should be decertified/ignored.
Life is chaotic and never, EVER, in balance
All this evidence will be countered by a photoshopped image of Leo Decaprio on an ice flow with a polar bear cub.
The only species I can think of, that went extinct due to Global Warming, is the Unicorn. How could you all forget about them?
(sarc.)
Hangtown Bob says:
March 28, 2014 at 11:31 am
‘no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct’
“I strongly disagree with this. I am certain that global warming led to the ultimate extinction of both mastodons and wooly mammoths”
Probably from the heat of many campfires. But what about the American lion, cheetah, camel, early horse, and who knows how many others that preferred a warmer climate? Plus, the bison herds seemed to cope well no matter what the climate. Warmists point to the Dire wolf as a victim of warming, but other wolves survived and thrived. I am more inclined to think an overabundance of stone points played a larger part than a few degrees of warming.
“I am more inclined to think an overabundance of stone points played a larger part than a few degrees of warming.”
Truly