Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Endangered? Nope.
An important article by Willis Eschenbach, thoroughly and methodically debunking the idea that "habitat change" or "climate change" leads to extinction of species.
Eschenbach starts with the often quoted fantasy figure that "37% of all species might soon go extinct because of habitat reduction due to global warming" or E. O. Wilson's statement that "The number of species doomed [to extinction] each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3."
He then looks at the real and known extinctions of mammals and birds over the last 400 years, which have been recorded with fair accuracy.
Plain fact: Over the last 400 years, which includes one significant cooling period and one significant warming period, exactly 61 mammal species have become extinct, and exactly 129 bird species.
How many of these resulted from habitat changes? One bird, which was already close to extinction. The "slender billed grackle" lived in one marsh in Mexico; when the marsh was drained to make farmland, the bird went extinct.
Except for this one grackle, all were killed by overhunting or disease, or were crowded out by other species that invaded the same niche.
Conclusion: It's certainly important to prevent overhunting and overfishing, but there is simply no such thing as extinction from climate change; and no such thing as extinction from habitat modification, unless the species is already too rare to preserve anyway. ¶ 5:53 AM
Eschenbach starts with the often quoted fantasy figure that "37% of all species might soon go extinct because of habitat reduction due to global warming" or E. O. Wilson's statement that "The number of species doomed [to extinction] each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3."
He then looks at the real and known extinctions of mammals and birds over the last 400 years, which have been recorded with fair accuracy.
Plain fact: Over the last 400 years, which includes one significant cooling period and one significant warming period, exactly 61 mammal species have become extinct, and exactly 129 bird species.
How many of these resulted from habitat changes? One bird, which was already close to extinction. The "slender billed grackle" lived in one marsh in Mexico; when the marsh was drained to make farmland, the bird went extinct.
Except for this one grackle, all were killed by overhunting or disease, or were crowded out by other species that invaded the same niche.
Conclusion: It's certainly important to prevent overhunting and overfishing, but there is simply no such thing as extinction from climate change; and no such thing as extinction from habitat modification, unless the species is already too rare to preserve anyway. ¶ 5:53 AM
