Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I keep reading about how we’re already well into the “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”. Now, I’ve studied this question extensively. I started back in 2010 with a post called “Where Are The Corpses“, in which I looked at the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and found that contrary to the “Sixth Wave” hype, 95% of mammal and bird extinctions occurred on islands and in Australia, where they were due to humans introducing new “alien” species after millennia of isolation.
Craig Loehle got in touch with me and proposed that we turn it into a paper for the journals. He did the writing and I did the numbers, because I feel like I have to give myself a lobotomy to write in the dense boring style favored by the journals. He did an excellent job and shepherded it through the publication process, for which he has my eternal gratitude. It’s published in Diversity and Distributions as “Historical bird and terrestrial mammal extinction rates and causes“, and it’s gotten over 150 citations in the journals.
But of course, the alarmism continued. Folks said things like ‘But Willis, you only looked at mammals and birds. The Living Planet Index says there’s been a 70% reduction in the numbers of vertebrate species since 1970’.
Now, I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working outdoors, and I live in the forest and watch the local wildlife. That claim set my bad number detector ringing like the school lunch bell. I researched it and a few weeks ago I wrote another analysis called “E Pur Si Muove“, in which I showed that the LPI claims were strongly contradicted by the Red List data.
But the claims continued. This time it’s ‘But Willis, the LPI only shows fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. What about all the rest of life.’
As Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”. So, once more into the breach, dear friends …
Let me start with some numbers from the IUCN Red List. It’s the official list of threatened, non-threatened, and extinct members of four great kingdoms of life—animals, plants, fungi, and chromista. And what are chromista when they’re at home? I asked that myself. Turns out they’re a group of mostly single-celled and also some larger life forms that include diatoms, mildews, and sea kelp.
The Red List has data on some 157,190 species of all kinds in all habitats around the planet. I do love it that the first two on the list are the “Black Emo Skink” and the “Viper Moray” … great band names for 2024. Gotta love our most mysterious planet. Here are Red List results.
Figure 1. Red List results showing the number of species that they have analyzed.
Of these 157,190 species, 909 species are listed as extinct, with the earliest extinctions happening in the 1400s. The graph below shows the count of extinct and extant species.
Figure 2. All extinct and extant species with data in the Red List
Mmmm … gotta say, I’m not seeing the “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”.
Moving on, I find claims like these:
“Drastically increased rates of species extinctions … are well documented.”
and
“Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating.”
So I thought I’d look at extinction rates over time to see if “the rate of species extinctions is accelerating”.
Now, as my studies have indicated, a disproportionate number of extinctions occurred on islands and Australia when melanin-deficient folks first stumbled upon them and introduced new, alien species. (I’m told by the usually reliable sources that it’s not politically correct to say “melanin-deficient”. According to the best authorities, the proper term to use is “melanin-challenged”, so all the white folks don’t get triggered by being called “deficient” … but I digress.)
However, these island species are only a small percentage of the total number of species—as you’d expect, there are far, far more species on the giant continents and in the ocean than on the small islands. And there are no more undiscovered islands to face the full onslaught of introduced species. However, the islands contain a large percentage of all extinctions.
So setting those extinctions aside for the moment, here is the history of all of the continental and marine Red List extinctions for which the Red List has a date for the extinction. The early data is sparse and as a result, contains few extinctions per year, so I’ve shown the period 1850-on when far more extinctions were occurring per year, and for which we have much better data.
Figure 3. All extinctions of continental and marine species, 1850 to Jan 2024. These are grouped into 5-year bins. The red line is the trend from 1850 to 2000 rather than to the present, to avoid distorting the trend because it can take a couple of decades for an extinction to be verified.
And to close the circle, here’s the same analysis including all of the known extinctions which have a date for the extinction.
Figure 4. All known extinctions of all species, 1850 to Jan 2024. Details as in Figure 3. Note that with the inclusion of island extinctions, the average extinction rate is double that of Figure 3.
As you can see, there’s been no significant trend in the rate of extinctions over the last 150 years, either just including the continental and marine species, or including all species.
Now, is the post-1850 rate of extinctions greater than the geological rate? Absolutely. It’s an order of magnitude or so greater.
But is it a “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”?
Let’s consider it this way. The 1850-2000 average is 3.6 extinctions of continental and marine species per year, with a peak value of about 8 extinctions per year. The Red List contains 157,190 continental and marine species, of which 909 are extinct.
So if the rate of extinctions continues at the current level, by the year 2100 we’d see an additional 3.6 extinctions/year * 76 years = 274 extinctions.
But heck, let’s get radical—let’s use ten times that current extinction rate, or 36 extinctions per year. It’s extremely unlikely, it’s never happened in the Red List record, but for this analysis, let’s use that extinction rate to be very conservative on the safe side.
That would give us 3,645 total extinctions by the year 2100. Here’s how that would look, shown to the same scale as Figure 2.
Sorry, friends, but I gotta say that even if extinctions increased to an unbelievable ten times the current extinction rate, I’m still not seeing the fabled “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”
Now, does this mean we shouldn’t care about extinctions?
Absolutely not. We need to be aware of all of the results of our human actions, and wherever possible and practical, make allowances for the creatures that we share the planet with. I worked a good chunk of my life as a commercial fisherman. I’d love for my two-year-old grandson to be able to do the same … and the only way to do that is to be sensitive to our effects on the ocean.
However, we also need to maintain a sense of proportion. Extinctions are a part of how nature works. Fun fact: ~99.9% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct.
And if some given species, after millions of years of evolution, only exists in a tiny area of the planet, its odds of extinction are very high no matter what we do. It obviously cannot adapt to even the smallest change in its surroundings—if it could, it would be found in a far larger range. Here’s a Red List description of one such extinct species:
“Stypodon signifer [Stumptooth Minnow]: This species is only known from 6 specimens collected in 1880 and 1903, so its biology is mostly unknown. It occurred in springs on the floor of the Parras Valley [in Guanajuato, Mexico].”
Sorry to be so blunt, but that joker is one of nature’s losers circling the drain. And fighting to prevent its extinction would have been a waste of time.
TL;DR Version? The “Sixth Wave” ain’t waving, so if someone starts telling you about the “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions”, feel free to laugh and refer them to this analysis.
w.
My Usual: When you comment, please quote the exact words you’re discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings.
The estimates of how many species currently exist has quite a wide range, and the method of counting species is rather baroque.
IMO much of the method of counting species is a crock.
I believe there are far fewer actual species than claimed.
BUT I do not want the current count to be corrected since the left would show the number above and the new reduced numbers side by side and claim a Mass Extinction due to Climate Change, and the MSM would parrot whatever was said with NO investigation.
Cynical much, yep.
Matt Ridley has been writing about this for years. As Willis illustrates, it’s all nonsense on a stick.
https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/invasive-species-are-the-greatest-cause-of-extinction/
There probably are far fewer species than advertised – people will split a species for the flimsiest of reasons just to get their name in a book. It’s not science, it’s self promotion.
If it isn’t baroque, don’t fix it.
Thanks Willis. That fun fact of species extinctions is a shock, not something I remember from my paleontology classes.
I remember my paleontology classes well.
The Permian/Triassic extinction event wiped out over 80% of the documented genera, and over 50% of the documented FAMILIES.
The scientific illiterates talking about a current extinction wave clearly know nothing about historical extinction events.
(Of course, I haven’t yet observed ANY branch of science in which the alarmists are knowledgeable.)
Yes, I do remember mass extinctions did occur. I don’t remember a professor saying “only one in one thousand species that have lived, are still alive”. It would have been a something I’d remember.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/daily/is-it-true-that-99-9-of-all-species-are-extinct/
What if?….What if humans had arisen during the age of dinosaurs? Those dinos would have been exterminated or nearly exterminated….maybe a few dinos in some zoos?
“maybe a few dinos in some zoos?”
They could call that zoo, something like, maybe, Jurassic Park 🙂
Or, given the size of the bigger ones, Homo sap. could more probably have been exterminated.
More likely. I think antigtiff is assuming we just ‘arose’ complete with elephant guns, HMG’s and attack helicopters.
Homo Sap sounds about right.
Creationists, of course, actually think humans were around with the dinos. There’s a museum down in bible land showing that.
Well, if they are serious and open about what the text actually says, “And the Earth BECAME …”; the next place that form of the Hebrew word is used is Genesis 2:7, “And Man BECAME a living soul”
I have never met a Jewish Creationist, and it’s their book.
Ever watch Ben Stein’s “Expelled”?
If you are talking about the Creation museum in Glen Rose, Texas (just south of me), I would hardly call this area bible land. But hey, do not let me get in the way of your assumptions and ignorance.
I googled it and found it, so Mr. Cracker, don’t let me get in the way of your arrogance. Maybe you should go there and see Adam and Eve play with the dinosaurs.
Not created, but ‘became” fossils.
Well there are currently over 13 creationist museums in different parts of the United States, not sure how many have adam, eve and dinosaur exhibits but most seem to be pushing the same narrative!
So, Mr. Premium – is Texas no longer within the US Bible Belt, then?
The IPCC WG2 has been particularly pernicious about perpetuating the myth of climate related extinctions. AR4, the worst, had two grossly misleading charts. The first illustrated ‘likely soon extinctions’ and of course incorrectly featured polar bears. The second listed ‘scholarly sources’. It was a mess, since I tracked them all down. One AR4 WG2 cited source does not in fact exist, and many others expressed qualitative rather than quantitative concerns, such as the global spread of cytridiomycosis (fungal infection) affecting amphibians—which actually caused Costa Rica’s very limited range (only on Brilliante Ridge in their national park) golden toad to go extinct despite AR4 WG2 claiming it was climate change.
The single paper cited with quantifications (across 6 ‘carefully selected’ ecosystems Including Australia’s Atherton Tablelands and South Africa’s feynbos) was deeply methodologically flawed in three different ways. Wrote it all up in illustrated essay ‘No Bodies’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Again, Rud’s ebook Blowing Smoke is a must read and its FREE!
Paid for my copy. Still worth it.
Great to have Rud along for the Ride!
Thanks as always, Rud. Your comments are always both interesting and informative.
Best to you and yours,
w.
Likewise.
There is an ongoing effort to resurrect the extinct Dodo bird (pictured in the head posting) which was extant to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They went extinct after the arrival of Europeans on the island in the 17th century (hunting, introduction of invasive species, etc.)
The dodo: Scientists plot the resurrection of a bird that’s been extinct since the 17th century | CNN
“Now, a team of scientists wants to bring back the dodo in a bold initiative that will incorporate advances in ancient DNA sequencing, gene editing technology and synthetic biology. They hope the project will open up new techniques for bird conservation.”
Unfortunately, one of the scientists involved in project (Shapiro) makes the claim of a species extinction crisis that Willis has debunked here (see the CNN link above). They have however claimed that they successfully sequenced the Dodo’s genome from ancient DNA as a first step. Whether their efforts will bring back the Dodo remains to be seen. Even if they succeed in the resurrection, how will the Dodos learn to be Dodo when they have no living 17th century parents or models to learn from?
There is also talk of resurrecting the extinct Tasmanian tiger and the Woolly Mammoth. I will believe all of this when I actually see living examples of these efforts. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
If the dodo can be brought back, then there’s hope for the human-extincted great auk, passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet. We might not have Atlantic grey whale DNA, but they couldn’t have differed much from Pacific grey whales.
These resurrected species would not be exact copies, as mitochondrial DNA would differ. Ditto woolly mammoths.
Also don’t know if there’s any Caribbean monk seal DNA.
I wonder if there are any Caribbean monks left… they were a bit of a curse.
And bring back some Neanderthals and Homo Erectus.
Bringing back the passenger pigeon would be a curse upon modern farmers and those that own convertible sports cars. Descriptions of them describe how a flock would darken the skies as they passed overhead for hours. They would consume everything edible, like feathered locusts, and break the branches of trees they roosted in at night.
OK, that made me laugh. We have lots of ravens in our neighborhood, the poop bombs make a splat 4″ across.
A YouTube video on the dodo’s extinction blames it on invasive species (mostly pigs) introduced to the island by the Dutch. Pigs that escaped into the forest led to their extinction. The bird’s meat (as it turned out) was unpalatable according to the video.
Feral pigs and goats are pretty bad, but it was more likely rats that did the dodo. Likely rats caused much of the later issues on Easter Island, too.
Rats extinction would be a big plus, IMHO!!
They are the filthy, heavy cockroaches of the rodent family.
“.. how will the Dodos learn to be Dodo when they have no living 17th century parents or models to learn from?”
Produce 1,000 of them and let them loose. Some will figure it out. Of course let them out in the right kind of environment- where they originated from or a similar environment.
This is “Schientific” hubris, and exactly why Michael Crichton made at least part of his fortune recapitulating Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” The thing to fear is that these frauds might not actually throw away the grant money on hookers and parties, and try to make it work.
After all, they’ve done so well with MRNA, how hard could direct manipulation of DNA be?
If we’re going to “bring back” anything, first make sure it is really gone, then try to do it with something useful.
They could try to “bring back” all the old meteorological data that they have “adjusted”, “homogeonised” and plain old “fiddled”, on an industrial scale, for the last 40 years.
Quite frankly, “But why bother?” What would it contribute?
So we could all have a pet dodo?
Plenty of them in DC if you really want one.
It would cause the extinction of the phrase “as dead as a dodo”.
cute!
Quite frankly, “But why bother?” What would it contribute?
Don’t you ever listen to the Greens atticman? Biodiversity.
Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD do something. One of the big take-aways from the Jurassic Park books and films is that scientists do like to play God but ignore any possible consequences.
This analysis by brute research of facts, mathematics and logic is obviously triggering to some terribly sensitive cohort of shrinking violets. Therefore it must be purged, banished, incinerated and, of course, unpublished. Sorta like Twitter before Musk.
Recommended subtitle “An Aukward Truth”
Seems to tie into the claim that CO2 supports plant increase, therefore habitat growth.
Recommend a search on any engine for the phrase “thought to be extinct.” I did one just now and found multiple lists of “rediscovered” species, some compiled as recently as two months ago. Also interesting is the term “Lazarus taxon,” not only in its definition, but that there has to be a real term for living species that were declared as gone from the earth forever.
Would love for someone to have a go at the claim “Drastically increased rates of species extinctions … are well documented.” Seems that there may be better documentation for the ones that ain’t ded yit.
There are people who believe that the Tasmanian Tiger isn’t extinct. Their evidence is tantalizing, though far from conclusive.
😎
I grew up hearing that that critter was called the “Tasmanian Wolf”.
(I think there’s a short video clip out of the last one in captivity.)
It hasn’t seemed to dawn on even the Darwin evangelists that a species threatened by humans could evolve behavior to become effectively invisible to biologists, naturalists, and hunters.
Coelecanth was extinct until Western naturalists “discovered” them as trash fish in deepwater fishing nets.
If there is a breeding population of Tasmanian wolf/tigers, then unlike felines or canines they don’t like people and don’t eat people food, and the last captured example died at near the same time people became interested in preserving “natural” environments.
Willis has done a great job debunking another bit of end-of-times dogma. A few minor points worth remembering:
“all of which will disappear at some time in the future”
some could live until the end of the Earth
And, humans will probably leave the planet someday and take many species with them.
A lot of the alarmist ‘extinctions’ are in reality ‘only’ extirpations. The Pacific Islands blue skink is an example where the head of the US FWS got it wrong. Gone from Hawaii, but not from the Pacific islands.
I thought of the Scioto Madtom. Maybe all gone or at least very few left.
But there are tons of other “Madtoms” in surrounding streams throughout the Midwest.
(The “Scioto” is the name of a relatively small stream in Ohio.)
Broken record BUT, call all the US “scientists” and others under subpoena to testify to the US House Special Committee on Global Warming. Swear them under oath to the congress AND a special grand jury of the West Virginia county of 85% Republican voter registration.
Ask them questions about these and other claims they have made.
Either they claim the 5th, refuse to appear OR they answer the questions with the truth. If they answer with typical lies, prosecute them for perjury.
Unfortunately it would be the US DoJ that would do the prosecuting. Or much more likely, declining to prosecute, or wait until after the statute of limitations expires before deciding to prosecute.
Gov. prosecution ?
Like Canada ?
NEWS TIP
https://tnc.news/2024/01/23/federal-court-declares-trudeaus-emergencies-act-unconstitutional/
BUT lying to a Grand Jury will be prosecuted by the county prosecutor, the reason for swearing the oath for BOTH.
Now under a Republican POTUS, they could be prosecuted by BOTH. All the better because a federal conviction puts them out of any job paid by the US government.
Unless Trump fires every last member of the DOJ it will still be the same DOJ that worked with the Biden campaign to hide all evidence of Hunter’s laptop and all that money that went to the “big guy”.
That.
There is great danger is playing with the data from the IUCN. That danger is thinking that the data, and the numbers, in that database accurately represents anything in the real world.
There are many examples. An animal declared extinct, but it was only known from a single stuffed specimen found in a museum. Not a single other specimen has ever been seen or discovered so they finally declare it “extinct” decades later.
w. is correct, it takes decades for the IUCN to declare a species extinct. But it took naturalists a month and a single specimens to declare a species to exist and fought for the naming rights, calling all sort of things a new species when they were just minor variations of a another species.
180 of the 909 extinct species were last seen sometime before 1900 — and may have never actually existed as viable species — that’s 20% of the list.
The other problem is that the definition of “species” is not strict today, and was looser in the past, so many taxonomists created species out of tiny visible differences — imagine if all the modern domestic dogs had been classified as species.
So interesting — and the broad exposure of the “island effect” in extinctions was and is important — but we have to be careful not to reify the IUCN database — it is just a rather random collection of data and not really definitive (or real) in many senses.
Pity the poor Jackalope….
I saw one once in a saloon in Oregon – proof – up on the wall…..
Now, Gone as gone can git.
Catastrophizing about extinctions, climate, or anything is destructive mental state. It leads to inability to act in all domains of life.
Could this trend be why such a high percentage of gen Z is reputed to be useless employees?
I can see that a passenger pigeon level extinction would be a big deal.
But how many of the 3.6 extinctions per year are more on the level of the “Sisero Valley 3 lined jumping mouse” extinction, when all of the rest of the Sisero Valley jumping mice with 2 lines are doing just fine?
(Sisero Valley is a made up name, there’s been plenty of news about extinct jumping mice)
You’re onto something, Willis. As a Geologist (with several Paleontology classes) as I walk through the geologic record, I am impressed by the fossilized remains of once living creatures. From jelly fish at about 600 million to dinosaurs to fish to invertebrates like clams and ammonites, to mastodons, I have seen all of these. Sixth Mass Extinction? Forgetaboutit!
One of my favorite extinction alarms was the Desert Pupfish, a small fish about an inch long, living in the springs on the western edge of Death Valley. The Enviros wanted all water pumping within a hundred miles stopped so the springs wouldn’t dry up. Driving through Bishop, California, I saw many bumper stickers that said “It Takes a Thousand Pupfish to Make a Sandwich”.
You ever see that bumper sticker?
“Earth First! We can mine the other planets later”
Or something like that, I’ve not seen one in 30 years.
Gotta get one of them for the right side of my diesel 4X4
– LEFT side sticker: EARTH FIRST! We will Log the others later!
Mann on the stand NOW.
The pompous @ss.
“… the dense boring style favored by the journals…”
Why on Earth do they have to be sooooo boring. Most such authors seem to take pride in it- like, as if they get the most points and respect the more boring it is.
My impression is that academics write turgid, boring prose to disguise the thinness of their ideas.
nailed it!
And mostly to impress their colleagues and journals with their erudition in useless locutions.
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$h!t! W.C.Fields; climate scientist
No one writes a scientific journal article to be entertaining. They’re written to be methodical, detailed and informative. As they should be.
Thanks, Pat. And of course, you’re right. My main problem with journal style are the endlessly long paragraphs that cover a half-dozen topics. Obviously, the style was dictated by wanting to put as much information as possible on a page, due to the costs of printing and distributing. Fair enough.
I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just saying that it’s hard for me to write in that manner, so I’m most appreciative of guys like you and Craig Loehle that can do it so well.
My best to you, as always,
w.
The reviewers don’t help. Trying to be brief/brisk will always get “needs more explanation, missing analysis, etc etc”.
“So I thought I’d look at extinction rates over time to see if “the rate of species extinctions is accelerating”.”
Apparently, very few people comprehend the meaning of “accelerating”. I suspect, many think that if a trend is continuing- more or less at the same rate- that it’s accelerating.
Many people don’t know the difference between a first and second derivative. Rate of change is the first, and change in rate of change is the second.
“Many people …etc. …” Not at all surprising.
We lowly servants would be presumptuous to take credit for all those extinctions when in fact, our masters, Felis catus, are proud to claim most as their achievements.
If that were true, it would be rival small predators, mustelids, raptors etc, heading for extinction. no?
Of course there are other reasons why such creatures are not doing all well as they could be.
At least we were too late to North America to be blamed for offing these cuties (ref: Wacky and Packy) :
https://www.nps.gov/chis/learn/historyculture/pygmymammoth.htm
The early Holocene single large island of Santarosea must have been an amazing place. Home to two recent removals from the endangered species list.
Are we also retroactively responsible for Petrified Forest National Park?
Did a pretty good job on the Bison, though !!
The American Bison is not extinct, nor even threatened anymore. There are 31,000 wild bison, which is much reduced in numbers and range from the 60 million that are estimated to have existed 250 years ago, but far more than enough to sustain the species. There are far more semidomesticated bison, raised on ranches for meat and hides – Canada alone counted 195,728 in 2006.
Wikipedia has a page on ‘The “Big Five” mass extinctions’ listed as: Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, Late Devonian extinctions, Permian–Triassic extinction event, Triassic–Jurassic extinction event and Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event the last being 66 million years ago.
There is a section on a sixth mass extinction, the ‘Holocene extinction’ currently “ongoing due to human activities”, presumably those “melanin-deficient folks”.
But there was an extinction period that preceded the Holocene that is studiously avoided viz. Late Pleistocene extinctions when many species of megafauna disappeared due to non-melanin-deficient folks, although of course some try to acquit them by blaming … climate change.
Climate change? Nah…
A wise man, that Gary Larsen…
I remember my comment when this first appeared: Dinosaurs wouldn’t be extinct until Senator Robert Byrd (D, WV, KKK) was. Also, he probably taught them to smoke.
Not if you are installing wind turbines and solar panels to save the planet and supplying all the raw materials they consume.
Trees and other oxygenators have created an atmosphere conducive to animal life. Removing oxygenators is the fastest way to wiping out animal life on earth.
There has to be at least a 4-fold increase from current mining rate in the next decade to support the transition to “renewable” energy by 2050. Trees get little support when it comes to clearing them for mining activities then building the wind and solar farms as well as the clearways for all the new electrical interconnectors.
Mining and oil companies are strong supporters of “renewable” energy for sound business reasons. The balance of economic power is shifting back to these suppliers of commodities. They are telling government that to get to NutZero, the governments must remove the road blocks to land and ocean access.
Very nice Willis.
According to this article there are more species found every year than lost. There is an unknown number to find.
https://www.nathab.com/blog/new-animal-species/
Great article as usual, Willis!
You failed to mention one of the most critical extinctions currently occurring however; that of Homo sapiens! There are obviously other species of genus Homo that will survive the Neocene Warming, but it seems doubtful that sapient ones will be among them if present trends continue!
Then there is the mass extinction looming in the next few interglacials when CO2 drops below 150ppm, and most plant species start to die out! Without an intelligent life form to counteract this natural process, virtually all life on Earth will die as the food chain collapses! Once again, if present trends continue, there won’t be enough intelligent life left in a few million years to prevent it!
Thanks for bucking the trends!
Willis,
It is not just the topic of extinctions for these fairy tale reports so loved and authoured by deep greens.
How about we make a standing list for the margins of WUWT, of topics of gross distortion, so that more people will read about them and disbelieve as appropriate?
Here are some for a start:
Heatwaves are becoming longer, hotter and more frequent (from global warming). This is not supported when simple definitions of heatwave are used and when cherry picking of start and end dates is abolished.The metal Lead Pb is a dangerous toxin capable of being involved in 412,000 US deaths a year. (The “show the corpses” count is about 15 per year in the US).The global temperature rate of change is about 1.4 deg C over the last Century. We are mostly aware of problems like UHI, instrument changes, adjusted data, invented data, excluded valid data and unrealistic uncertainty estimates. Substantial rebuttals are in progress, but the dedicated green fantasy is retained, even doubled down on.Benevolent NGOs tinted green are acting in the best interests of ideal global conservation. Bollocks. A great deal of money and influence is being peddled by folk like Rockefeller Foundation. Follow the money? The are inventing some issues from which theyexpect to profit.Poisons remain poisons as the dose decreases, so there is no safe lower limit. Usually applied to radioactivity, this insidious piece of no-safe-dose fiction allows bodies like EPA into territory where there is no crisis and no need to regulate.Rising sea levels are accelerating. (Recently covered again on WUWT, yet the myth persists).Heatwaves are the largest killer of climate change candidates. Not so, cold is reported to kill several times the number of heat fatalities.We have reached peak oil.Electric cars will soon replace our present internal combustion autos.”Renewable” electricity is cheaper than hydrocarbon or nuclear fuelled electricity100% renewable energy electricity only systems are possible at national scales.
etc etc – there are many topics that could be listed. It is easy to find them. Simply search green NGO sites for which trendy isssues are claimed to be a danger to Life on Earth. Sensational lies rule, OK?
Geoff S
Thank Willis. Very interesting as always. Our World in Data says the IUCN lists some 1.5 million described species and there are estimates that the total number of extant species could be over 8 million. So the 157,000 on the Red List is a very small subset and obviously includes many species that are not threatened, No doubt a large number of species of bacteria, viruses, insects and other micro organisms come and go without our notice or any obvious ecological consequences.
For those who want to blame us for causing extinctions, consider how difficult it is to actually cause the extinction of disease causing organisms like staphylococcus, Ebola, malaria, etc. Nature is a far more efficient mass killer than we are.
Translate into Danish for Greta?
Thanks Willis, nice post.
“Now, does this mean we shouldn’t care about extinctions?
Absolutely not. We need to …”
A couple of months ago I became aware of a group (Cascades Carnivore Project) working in the Cascade Mountains. The goal is to understand the small carnivores living in the high mountains, namely, Wolverines, Red Fox, and Lynx.
I’ve seen one of the foxes and sent enough money to receive a cute stuffed toy fox. 🙂
I’m so glad you remembered to add “toy” to your last sentence.
Interesting article. Out of the extinctions that have occurred in the last 150 years or so, I wonder how many were caused, directly or indirectly, because of domesticated animals. Although habitat loss isn’t a deliberate attempt to kill off a species, we’re still consciously aware of what we’re doing. But with domestic animals, I don’t think anyone really knows or is aware.
Well done, Willis!
Roaches?
Nice going Fred.. you solved how to rid the Earth of a most annoying thingy, by eliminating THEIR ‘thingy’.
Willis, my favorite example of human-caused extinction that can be officially blamed on humans is the Wake Island rail (Hypotaenidia wakensis). After Pearl Harbor, Japan occupied Wake. As the US moved westward toward victory, the troops occupying Wake lost their supply line. So, starving, they hunted the flightless bird to extinction. I’m pretty sure few cases of extinction can be proven anthropogenic, but that one sure is.
Reminds me of that “Goodies” episode… 😉
There are those extremophile fish that live in a couple of quite hot ponds in Death Valley. IIRC there was a proposal to take a few fish and/or eggs, breed them and plant them in other hot ponds that don’t have fish. Expand the gene pool, the fish version of colonizing another planet to ensure the species will have a better chance of long term survival.
Oh heck no. Can’t do that! Nope, not gonna do the only thing with the best possibility of ensuring the survival of a species that has evolved itself into a microclimate that could alter at any time and cause it to go extinct.
Another case similar to those fish is a frog that’s only been found living on a cliff within about two feet to either side of a waterfall. The constant water mist is what keeps them alive. If they stray too far away they’ll dry up and die, even in the high jungle humidity. Dunno how they cross the waterfall. Perhaps swim across at the bottom or the water separates from the cliff somewhere and the frogs go behind?
One drought or semi-drought that stops the waterfall or reduces it too much and that frog species is a gonner.
These niche species are like the patterns in Conway’s Game of Life that reduce to a diagonal pair of dots endlessly blipping back and forth, stuck in a tiny 2×2 section of the grid. Sitting there where they can’t grow and expand. Then some bigger pattern comes cruising along, sideswipes the 2×2 spot and odds are when the big pattern has passed on, that 2×2 spot is empty.
Harvard professor E.O. Wilson used an island program to claim that 70,000 to 100,000 species are disappearing every year. Again, there are are no bodies and no tabulations. It’s a complete farce.
Harvard again?
Wilson studied the behavior of ants, then made the most devastating scientific critique of Communism: “Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species”.
The extinction jive is basically the same as the climate jive.
They say that the climate was stable and we made it non stable but of course that’s nonsense.
As WE points out, 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are gone.
To suggest no species should be going extinct today is to state that evolution has stopped.
All nonsense all the time
I like to ask them to name one critter that has gone extinct because of “climate change”
(apart from a rodent variant, that is widespread elsewhere, washed of a tiny atoll by a small wave.)
I never get an answer.
The 7th wave is upon us. What is the most unreliable form of energy? What almost always fails during extreme weather. What are we converting everything to use exclusively by 2050?
2051. The year nature pulled the plug on the human race.
Isn’t the number of newly discovered insect species increasing faster than we can identify them? It stands to reason that insect species must be going extinct at a similar rate, or the earth would have long ago be buried miles deep in new species of insects.
Bill Gates’ grasshoppers are next on the list.
“Newly discovered” does not mean newly evolved. Most of these “new” species have been around for millions of years. For many of them, hundreds of scientists must have looked at them before noticing that they were a _tiny_ bit different from the other species.
It stands to reason that air and sea transport will result in a homogenization of species on the planet
Specialized species will give way to introduced species and hybrid species better able to fill multiple ecosystems.
Sometimes species are declared “extinct” because one hasn’t bothered to look elsewhere.
In Switzerland, bird lovers declared pompously that a certain bird species was extinct. Later this bird was found thriving in Germany and other EU countries. Was this omission … or wishful thinking ?
Let us group modern extinctions into decades of extinction, then we can easily see from the illustration that the “Sixth Wave Of Extinctions” is the only thing going extinct.
There is also a discussion about how many of the extinct species were species or only sub-species. The real numbers could be considerably lower, since we take out numbers from the IUCN, while most of the administration of the IUCN list is done by extremists.
For details, I recommend this blog post from Matt Ridley:
https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/counting-species-out/
Can someone tell me why a massage therapist is viewed as a competent source of science on WUWT?
Especially when the world’s experts in the field contradict him? Wouldn’t one be as well informed listening to a janitor explaining the latest developments in gene sequencing?
Warren, that’s what is called an “ad hominem” argument. It means you are arguing against the man (“ad” for “against”, “hominem” for “man”) because you can’t find any errors in his work.
Or to put it another way, when you start throwing mud, it’s a sure sign that you’re out of scientific ammunition.
You are correct. I have no credentials. What I do have, however, are endless hours and hours of study. If you read my post, you’d have seen that I have a peer-reviewed article about extinctions in a scientific journal that has gotten over 150 citations … so obviously, there are lots of “world experts” who agree with me.
The peer reviewers didn’t ask about qualifications or credentials. Unlike you, they knew that in science, the issue is simple—are my claims true, or are they not?
Anyhow, it’s even worse than you thought—check out my post entitled “It’s Not About Me” for details about just how devoid of credentials I actually am.
Best regards,
w.