Guess which article was written by a BBC journalist:
One statement… claims: “We are indeed experiencing the greatest wave of extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs.” While that may (or may not) be true, the next sentence is spuriously precise: “Every hour three species disappear. Every day up to 150 species are lost’”… The International Union for Conservation in Nature (IUCN) has listed 801 animals and plant species (mostly animal) known to have gone extinct since 1500. But if it is really true that up to 150 species are being lost every day, shouldn’t we expect to be able to name more than 801 extinct species in 512 years.
Nearly one third of all species are now endangered due to human activities… the extinction of species is now happening between 1,000 and 10,000 times quicker than scientists would expect to see… more than 142,000 species have been assessed [by the IUCN] and 29% are considered endangered, which means they have a very high risk of extinction… it is hoped that an agreement can be reached to stop what scientists are calling the ‘sixth mass extinction’ event.
Correct, whichever one you chose – both articles were produced by BBC writers. But what a difference a decade makes. The first quote came from an article written in April 2012, while the second appeared a few days ago. The first article by Richard Knight reports the statement about a great wave of extinction. But it correctly shows it as a claim, and the author then goes on to examine whether it has any validity. The evidence suggests that it does not.
The second article, from Esme Stallard, takes a different tack. The now-familiar klaxon of ecological Armageddon is sounded, with hair-raising claims simply repeated without any attempt made to question them. The claim that species are going extinct 1,000 to 10,000 times quicker is linked to a blog called Global Forest Watch. The extinction quote on the first page of the blog does not attribute it to scientists – that appears to be the addition of Stallard. Far from querying the figures, it seems an attempt is made to give them added provenance.
Meanwhile, the idea that we are suffering a sixth mass extinction is little more than the invention of climate activists, led in this case by agitprop operations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The claim certainly isn’t backed up by dead bodies. The mass extinction scare was debunked about five years ago, at a time when it was starting to gain popular traction, by the Smithsonian palaeontologist Doug Erwin, who dismissed it as junk science. Erwin is one of the leading experts on the End-Permian mass extinction, 252 million years ago. “Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were,” he said. He went on to note that people who claim we are in a sixth mass extinction do not understand the logical flaw in their arguments. It is a “way of frightening people” since if it was actually true, “then there’s no point in conservation biology”.
The number of widespread, durably skeletonised marine species that have gone extinct, notes Erwin, is close to zero.
So how did the BBC, and most other mainstream media, move so quickly from a ‘mission to explain’ to outright green activism and, by default, the promotion of the political control-and-command Net Zero project? As with the Covid experience, we see a marked recent shift in the acceptance of alarmist official messaging and, hand-in-hand, a push for even harsher enforcement measures for the political agenda of the day. ‘Follow the science’ seems only to apply to the work of approved scientists. Social media companies are only too happy to go along with restrictions on permissible speech, while opponents are routinely traduced with terms such as covidiots, anti-vaxxers and climate deniers.
To your correspondent’s way of thinking, the true climate denial lies with the acceptance that the science is settled. Green alarmism has a long and continuing history of failed predictions, but the activists struck gold in the 1980s and 90s when temperatures rose after a fall from the 1940s. Global cooling was quickly substituted by global warming. It had a good run, but the writing was on the wall when the temperature stopped rising from around 1998 to 2010. And the slowdown continues with a current pause lasting another 91 months. Surface datasets can be adjusted, in many cases quietly upwards by 30%, pauses massaged away and record hot years proclaimed, but the jig is looking up. Bad weather can be rebranded as ‘extreme’, and mass extinctions declared to be underway, but their value is limited over time since the claims are easily debunked.
But the show can be kept on the road if the science surrounding carbon dioxide and its precise warming effect in the atmosphere is deemed settled and beyond dispute or debate. Despite 50 years of scientific work, nobody knows what happens to the global temperature if the levels of CO2 double in the atmosphere. Wild guesses that temperatures will rise by 6°C are fed into climate models, which use the politically correct data to produce constantly wrong forecasts. Many scientists suggest natural variations are far more important in determining climate, but their views are ruthlessly ignored under the ‘settled science’ mantra. Again, we see something similar over Covid. Despite being signed by many eminent medics, the lockdown sceptical Great Barrington Declaration was widely ignored in the mainstream media.
The BBC started to shutdown climate science debate early in 2006 when an internal conference, partly led by the environment analyst Roger Harrabin, attempted to redefine the editorial balance between competing scientific hypotheses. Natural forces were to be downplayed in favour of the unproven suggestion that warming is caused mostly by humans burning fossil fuel. This, despite the fact that it is generally known that humans only produce 4% of all CO2 that enters the atmosphere every year. The editorial rot started slowly at first – we can see that in 2012, work was still being published that questioned some of the extreme environmental claims being made. But by 2018, the Director of News and Current Affairs Fran Unsworth demanded that interviewees sceptical about man-made climate change “were no longer to be invited regularly”. In fact, we can read that as never.
Ten years ago the BBC was still questioning exaggerated or false climate claims. These days it is making them. As I noted on Wednesday, Justin Rowlatt claimed in his “Wild Weather” programme that deaths from warmer global weather were rising. In fact they are falling. His Panorama producer justified the statement on the grounds the deaths were “cumulative” – as though a running total of deaths would ever go down.
No need for an increase in the licence fee, then. The BBC’s income is always going up, cumulatively.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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Just remembered this review article on insect extinction. “Worth reading in full,” as they say.
Mass extinction yes, but not due to climate change… but due to HAARP & CHEMTRAILS.
Keep fighting the good fight Chris. Your articles are always excellent.
They could have said ”more quickerer”.
The only Dinosaur about to go extinct is the poor BBC in this article.
We should get it clear. While there is every reason to be sceptical about species loss being caused by climate change, and about climate change being largely caused by human activity, and while some of the more alarming extinction figures are clearly tosh, nonetheless there is significant species loss caused by human activity – deforestation, urbanisation, agro-chemicals etc. – but NOT by climate change. It would be good if The Sceptic’s Environmental Correspondent could become a little less shrill and a bit more balanced. Or are balance and scepticism not in tune? I admit, having been an enthusiastic supporter in the pandemic, I’m becoming more and more disenchanted at the narrow agenda of things the Sceptic obsesses with these days.
The sooner the Beeb goes extinct, the better.
Yes as is mentioned (above), the main extinction event in the BBC, in their critical thinking and lack thereof. As the unreasoned pursue the unedifying and as per off gallops the truth into the dinosaur graveyards.
Of course we’ve had variations on the doomladen massed die in scenarios, bleaching of the Great Barrier reef is not a mass die out but enso caused spate – riverine pollution, a natural process do note. Icecap melt ain’t going to cause SL inundation anytime soon, Obama’s $12 million island retreat unfortunately will not be flooded, quite yet.
As the likes of rowlatt emissions, a political agitator first and foremost become ever more hysterical boom broadcasts get ever more hyperbolic, it’s no exaggeration.
Will the BBC implode of its own self induced climate pandemonium, we can only beg it and earnestly hope.
Coming to a Cinema close to you soon.
Described clearly in Patrick Moore’s ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”. As are the ”predicaments” of the polar bears and walruses…….
Regardless of how many people on here deny the climate change issue, or complain about broadcasts on the subject, it is happening and should be addressed.
Your contrary views are not backed up by anything serious and are not well argued.
Why have governments since 1997 imported millions of people, mainly from countries with lower, often much lower, per capita emissions, if getting UK emissions down is vital in order to avoid a climate catastrophe?
Every immigrant adds to UK emissions.
Every immigrant from lower emission countries adds to global emissions.
So it is immigrant s that you hate then?
With global warming, you will see many more of them.
Of course it’s happening, it been going on for millions of years.
What do you suggest we do? Reduce the 3% – 4% of CO2 mankind produces that will take 25,000 years to warm the planet by 2ºC?
Good luck.
Nice use of made up numbers.
All nonsense of course.
Accepted by scientists on both sides of the debate.
Why don’t you provide something to disprove them?
But you won’t.
It’s been shown that there is no correlation between the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and heating/cooling of the planet.
”… should be addressed…” How? By making sacrifices to the Sun God, perhaps?
the extinction of species is now happening between 1,000 and 10,000 times quicker than scientists would expect to see
That’s already a complete giveaway. It’s claimed that some people here referred to as scientists would expect something wildly unrealistic and that they can’t even tell if this wildly unrealistic expectation is off by three or four orders of magnitude. In other words, they’re using a completely unsuitable theory to try to explain something and have no friggin’ clue as to what’s actually going on.
Sounds reliable and trustworthy. Not.
We have both made the same point. The whole thing is nonsense.
Most of your points are nonsense.
You don’t make any points worth calling nonsense.
The best you manage is puerile sniping.
Low Rat’s still at it, then.
The simple fact is throughout the evolution of life, species have gone extinct … because if species didn’t go extinct, there would never have been evolution. So, yet again, the Biased Brainwashing Cult are just regurgitating a form of creationism. (The other one being that the only thing that can explain what happened is some “being” … god for creation and Humanity for natural climate change)
Silly to believe in gods.
Silly to deny reality when faced with it.
Climate change is a really serious issue.
If we carry on and accelerate the change, the planet will support a much smaller Human population, who will need to live in smaller and smaller areas. Before the equilibrium is reached, there will be mass migration from the inhospitable zones. You really won’t like it, or those following you won’t.
How much land does the human race occupy?
Well you could do some maths if you are up for it.
Surface area of a sphere. Proportion that is land?
Population.
Little bit of thinking and you will have density.
Then correct for areas that are naturally uninhabitable. Antarctica, serious mountainous regions.
After all this, consider what is the point of your question.
Around 15% dummy.
With climate change (sorry crisis) and now extinction of species due to humans, isn’t the blindingly obvious solution to it, is reduce the global human population by mass contraception. After all a global pandemic so deadly that the population of humans went up by 80 million last year, so isn’t having an impact. It’s now time for self intervention.
Assuming we make any meaningful difference to species extinction other than hunting.
When shooting of Polar Bears and hunting of Hump Back Whales was outlawed their numbers flourished.
There are now so many Minky whales in the Oceans the Japanese are calling for them to be hunted once again.
Weak argument. How long did you work on this?
You don’t provide any arguments, so however weak mine are, they are far robust than anything you post.
One has to understand the inverted Christianism behind this: The people who drench the world with ever-repeating[*] stories of the imminent apocalypse grew up on a diet of Christian teachings they chose to reject and Hollywood disaster movies. While they don’t want to believe in God, presumably, because all of these morals are too cumbersome, they’ve nevertheless internalized that man is very special and different (instead of just another species of primates). As God’s likeness cannot be, it must therefore be the polar opposite: An inherently unnatural evil harbinger of senseless destruction elsewhere (these people are much more concerned with insects in Brazil than with the concreting over of ever larger areas of the countryside at home to support use of cars).
[*] Ironically, in the 1970s, this started with We have to stop burning oil because we’ll soon run out of it! Fast-forward 50 years, it’s now We have to stop burning oild because we won’t run out of it!
Something must have gone wrong in the space/time continuum. You and I are agreeing! 🤣
I’m not religious but I have a great deal of respect for those who are. Many notable scientists were/are religious. Even Darwin was agnostic.
Religious people are just gullible.
Perhaps they are, but the Christian religion has provided a moral framework to which we can all aspire.
What moral framework has science given us?
What on earth are you talking about?
Do nothing about climates change and the population will reduce radically.
Meanwhile, the idea that we are suffering a sixth mass extinction is little more than the invention of climate activists…
I can’t follow this.
Assuming that you believe in the general tenets of Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, which is the current leading theory explaining the existence of species, life forms are meant to be going extinct ALL THE TIME while new forms come along to replace them. Something going extinct is perfectly natural – indeed it is essential for the continued development of evolutionary life on this planet.
So it boils down to this (for the activists):
Extinction by natural selection – good.
Extinction by anthropogenic action – bad.
So, according to this argument, extinction per se is neither good nor bad.
As man is natural, anthropogenic action is one way of natural selection.
This is too much. What have you done with the real RW? 🤣
This is fine, so long as you don’t mind humans heading towards extinction.
Once the numbers and activity is down, the climate will be rid of the influence and it will recover in say 2000 years.
Won’t help your great grandchildren though.
Cult nonsense.
Wasn’t it the Attenborough person who pointed out some years ago that 99% of species that had existed over Earth’s history were no longer alive?
And… since extinction of one species provides opportunities for others to emerge (like bye bye dinosaurs hello mammals), there is continual replacement, which is why despite the 99% no longer with us, the Earth seethes with life, most of which we don’t even know about.
There is a tremendous amount of ignorance among ‘environmentalists’ but then if you have religion you don’t need knowledge or evidence, just blind faith and zeal… being stupid helps too.
And Attenborough is really, really stupid. As well as maliciously duplicitous.
Walruses.
That figure, too, (much used by Neodarwinians with an ideological bent) is only a model: it assumes gradualist evolution, which is barely observed in the fossil record. The actual number of fossil species ever described is in the order of 150K (or a little more now), only 1-10% of the number of living species, let alone the 100 million+ that claim assumes.
Darwin’s explanation (with far less problematic numbers) was that most species don’t fossilize, but we find often thousands of specimens of the same species, and even most dinosaur species have numbers of fossils, often widely dispersed geographically.
So a better explanation is that the “99% extinct” figure is an massive overestimate… which actually returns us to the importance of stewarding those we have well, but does suggest that species are quite resilient to change.
There’s a group of people where I live who constantly hand out leaflets about climate change and the ice caps melting. One day, I spoke with one and said I don’t believe what you are saying. I told him to put some ice cubes in a glass of water and watch them melt and see what happens. Nothing! This planet is doomed because of these idiots!
Print off the calculation I posted earlier and hand it to them.
And ice that is on land that melts? Where does that go?
Ice that is floating on water and reflecting sunlight, when it so a smaller area, what happens?
If you want to meet an idiot, look in the mirror.
The Antarctic is a land mass. It functions, at best, at temperatures well below -20ºC.
How is CO2 going to raise that sufficiently to make it melt?
The Arctic is mostly sea ice. No SLR there dopey.
Western civilization had a good but brief run of genuine scientific inquiry during the Enlightenment but ever since then the herd’s need for religion and its craving for a priesthood has taken us back to pre-Enlightenment values.
Ironically it is those most loudly pledging their allegiance to “The Science” who don’t have the first idea what science actually is.
A few years ago the editor of the Lancet announced that up to 50% of peer reviewed medical publications were rubbish.
Climate science doesn’t approach medical science in its rigour. I suspect it would be generous to concede that 5% were worth the paper they are written on.
Mass extinction of the poor in the UK…
BBC nature programmes tell us that nature changes through the ‘good’ of evolution, but that now it is ‘good’ to try and stop nature from changing. They tell us that mankind is a product of evolution, but then draw a distinction between human beings and the rest of nature. It is incoherent clap trap, enough to make one a creationist :).
Totally agree.
If we are just animals, evolved from previous mammals just as every creature today on earth, why are our actions in exploiting the natural environment “wrong”?
We don’t pass moral judgement on the lion for hunting an antelope, so what is so special about us tool using primates?
Surely our activities are, by definition, natural?
“The Science” prostituted as global swarming and convid.
I have posted it before, and I’ll continue to do so to help people understand that climate science is no more complicated than basic Arithmetic. When I first did it I used 3%, not 4% which shows you how old it is, you could use 10% if you wanted and it makes no meaningful difference.
The calculation uses internationally recognised data, nothing fancy, no hidden agenda, just something even Greta can do by taking her socks and shoes off.
Assuming increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing the planet to warm:
Atmospheric CO2 levels in 1850 (beginning of the Industrial Revolution): ~280ppm (parts per million atmospheric content) (Vostok Ice Core).
Atmospheric CO2 level in 2021: ~410ppm. (Mauna Loa)
410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm of which man is responsible for ~3% = ~0.02ppm.
That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adding ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average. At that rate mankind’s CO2 contribution would take ~25,000 years to double which, the IPCC states, would cause around 2°C of temperature rise. That’s ~0.0001°C increase per year for ~25,000 years.
One hundred (100) generations from now (assuming ~25 years per generation)… Read more »
Water is a condensing gas.
Correct. Go to the top of the class.
And according to Tyndall, and every credible physicist, it’s the most prolific and powerful of all greenhouse gases.
“He [Tyndall] concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small.” (Wikipedia – referred to from Tyndall’s page at The Royal Institution).
Make your puerile arguments with him.
Record immigration into the UK in 2021, overwhelmingly from countries with lower, often much, much lower per capita emissions of Devil Gas.
But we’re facing a climate catastrophe due to Devil Gas emissions, according to the government responsible for that immigration.
Ah racism..
Ah stupidity….
No need for an increase in the licence fee, then. The BBC’s income is always going up, cumulatively.
I think that in these hard times we should be freezing the licence fee. At its current cumulative level.
I can remember reading Willis Eschenbach’s blog post on this very subject on Watts Up With That a few years back. To quote:
“He discovered that the number of birds and animals that had gone extinct in the last 500 years was actually 190, sixty-one mammals and 129 birds. He also found that, from these 190 species, many island species had gone extinct from “introduced species.” When he excluded those species, to his surprise, in the last 500 years there had been only 9 species that had disappeared, 3 mammals and 6 birds”.
More details can be found here:
https://investortimes.com/freedomoutpost/willis-eschenbach-and-the-myth-of-the-sixth-wave-of-extinction/
Entirely consistent with Matt Ridley, a Zoologist.
From back in 2010 but still a classic …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/where-are-the-corpses/
Meanwhile, the idea that we are suffering a sixth mass extinction is little more than the invention of climate activists,
You don’t have to spend long on Google Scholar to find there is a lot more substance to the idea than that e.g. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12816
Actually you only have to live in the UK countryside with a little awareness of the natural world to know there is a big problem. When did you last hear a turtle dove?
Can’t say I’ve ever heard a turtle dove, but why is that definitely a climate problem and not one related to farming methods and/or countryside management?
I didn’t say it was a climate problem. It is much more likely to be down to farming methods/countryside management.
Agreed. In which case the statement
Meanwhile, the idea that we are suffering a sixth mass extinction is little more than the invention of climate activists
is pretty well correct. It would be better if it explicitly said due to climate change but that is pretty well implied.
t would be better if it explicitly said due to climate change but that is pretty well implied.
That would be a totally different statement and I don’t see it is implied at all.
Neither did I, hence my initial reply.
So you agree that there is a problem with mass extinction – it is just not down to climate change and is not an invention of climate activists?
I don’t see where I wrote (or implied) that I agree about mass extinction.
You didn’t. But you didn’t disagree either- that’s why I asked the question.
Population fluctuation is not the same as extinction. The onset of the Little Ice Age no doubt saw many heat-loving species decline or disappear from Britain, but they were fine further south. Now we see them returning, whilst the more arctic species move north.
In your imagination, yes.
And puddycats
Introduced predators are the biggest reason for extinction of indigenous species. Cats are not native to the UK.
And yet skylark’s, a species that lives cheek by jowl with farming, flourish.
In the UK, the population halved during the 1990s, and is still declining. In the preferred habitat of farmland, skylarks declined by 75% between 1972 and 1996.
It is OK – you don’t have to tell me that in your opinion the RSPB is a wildly left-wing agitprop group bordering on terrorism.
It’s an opinion it seems.
Which is what I meant earlier about you rushing off to gather evidence to ‘prove’ your personal hypothesis. It’s scientifically abhorrent.
Skylarks don’t only exist in farmed fields. They are adaptable and are just as home in uncultivated fields.
And, of course, it’s in the RSPB’s interest to be alarmist about anything to do with birds. Or hadn’t you noticed that anything with even a tenuous link to climate is a crisis?
However, it’s not until relatively recently the RSPB paid any attention to windfarms thanks to pressure from climate sceptics, at least in part.
But they do have Dolphinwatch and Myclimateaction, so that’s OK.
And you have an opinion that Skylarks flourish. I don’t see any attempts by you prove or test this scientific hypothesis.
Let’s be clear about the process I went through – a common one in internet debate. I have over the years read many articles from various sources about the decline in Skylarks. However, I didn’t keep track of them. So rather than simply assert something without any references I googled “skylark protected species uk”. I got a whole raft of links about how it was declining and none to the contrary but I thought the RSPB was clear and a respected organisation. If you think that is scientifically abhorrent I invite you to subject your hypothesis that skylarks are flourishing to a more scientifically rigorous process.
I repeat:
“Be suspicious of a theory if more and more hypotheses are needed to support it as new facts become available, or as new considerations are brought to bear.” — Sir Fred Hoyle
It’s not specific to the subject, is it?
And are you not aware that Google is suppressing information which contradicts various narratives including climate change, covid and many others?
They have announced it so it’s no secret.
I am struggling to see the significance of any of this comment.
“Be suspicious of a theory if more and more hypotheses are needed to support it as new facts become available, or as new considerations are brought to bear.” — Sir Fred Hoyle
I agree with this – so what?
It’s not specific to the subject, is it?
Fairly specific. The species is protected so there is a good chance this would provide articles about whether it was declining. I could have tried something like “skylarks declining UK” but I thought that might be too generic. Anyhow so what? What matters is the validity and relevance of the articles the search produced.
And are you not aware that Google is suppressing information which contradicts various narratives including climate change, covid and many others?
Yes. So what?
Meanwhile I repeat my challenge:
“I invite you to subject your hypothesis that skylarks are flourishing to a more scientifically rigorous process.”
I have seen zero evidence for this from you so far.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Duh….you don’t get any alternative to a narrative?
Blimey, I thought even you might get that.
£50 for that bit of education please.
You first.
The scientific significance of this please.
Keep going though. Some of us are familiar with the left’s distraction/manipulation/divergence tactics you use to discuss anything and find it amusing.
You first.
To summarise.
I propose that skylarks are declining and provide a reference to support it. You criticise my process of being scientifically abhorrent (although you also claim in another comment that science cannot prove any proposition to be correct – so you have to wonder, in your world, why you care if it is scientifically abhorrent). Meanwhile you have offered zilch to support your hypothesis that skylarks are flourishing and when asked to provide support you respond “you first”.
I have been first. I have done what I can. Show me how it should be done!
Just to add a serious information provider into this mix, my Goggle search offered ‘London’s skylark population under threat ‘due to covid’.
The BBC, of course.
Classic.
I don’t think it is very important but actually the story is quite reasonable and quite interesting. Whether you think it was justified or not, lockdown clearly lead to more use of the parks which affected the skylark population.
Sadly, you are correct, it’s a “story”. And that’s what the BBC does, tells stories.
Judging by your approach, Jackanory was a scientific journal.
Worth its weight in gold to MTF.
Where is the serious information?
You made the initial claim, prove it before demanding anything from others.
Your reference was an opinion. Appeals to authority are worthless.
Science can’t prove anything. That’s not a “claim”.
Distorting the Scientific Method so you can prove a point is abhorrent, that was my point.
But you don’t understand the first thing about science so will argue the toss, and demonstrate your muppetry.
Doing “what you can” has fallen short.
When you start handing over cold, hard cash for my time educating you, I’m happy to show you.
In other words you have no evidence.
Do you?
You can find daily sceptic on Google.
What does that prove?
I recommend people read the article in the May 2022 ‘The Light’ paper, p. 21. Insect numbers started their now obvious decline not in the 1940s but 45 years after industrial farming began. Something else seems to be responsible for the fact that we no longer have such vast clouds of flying insects on summer nights.
The problem began in the 1990s, I’d say in hindsight. But I didn’t keep records. I rather doubt that temperatures are the reason for a spectacular decline in the past 25-30 years. Is it due to something else that TPTB don’t want to admit?
I rather doubt that temperatures are the reason for a spectacular decline in the past 25-30 years. Is it due to something else that TPTB don’t want to admit?
Same point I made elsewhere – very few people are claiming that temperature/climate change is the main cause of the decline. So there is nothing for TPTB to admit.
LOL. Open your eyes.
eejit.
Humans have modified approximately 15% of the earths land mass.
Approximately twice the area of mainland USA.
NASA tells us that the planet has enjoyed Virgin greening of some 14% over 35 years of satellite observation. Also twice the area of mainland USA.
70% of that Virgin greening i.e. untouched by humans, is directly attributed to increased atmospheric CO2.
Whilst it might be argued that humans do have a measurable effect on the 14% of land we occupy, if increasing atmospheric CO2 is of our doing (humans are responsible for 3% of CO2 emissions, but forget that for a moment) we are increasing the biodiversity of the planet by almost the same amount.
It also seems a bit of a stretch of logic to imagine that we are affecting 85% of the land, flora, and fauna we don’t touch by any meaningful degree.
“When did you last hear a turtle dove?”
A long time ago. On the other hand, collared doves are abundant now though virtually unknown then.
I don’t think I ever saw a bird of prey till I was in my 20s: now red kites seem to be breeding hereabouts for the first time in centuries, whilst I know of two pairs of peregrines within a few miles, and the sky is thick with buzzards. Storks are back breeding in the UK for the first time in 600 years. I’m still awaiting the Dalmatian pelicans that were the most common food-birds on the Somerset levels in Roman times – when it was a lot warmer than now.
HMG says “37% of species increased, 37% showed little change and 26% declined” from 1970-2019. I think populations have always boomed and busted, sometimes from natural fluctuations, sometimes from specific causes such as land use change. How many farmland birds do we think there were before the Neolithic forest clearances?
Animals will breed until there is too much competition for food. My understanding is they are inclined to have a natural, mass cull from which it takes years to recover.
Birds of prey are considered harmful by some, especially over the grouse shooting moors of Scotland, so are shot and poisoned.
I believe this was the fate of the red kite in the UK until they were protected, at which point these harmless, carrion birds flourished.
Gamekeepers (or rather, their landlords since the 18th century) have a lot to answer for, though it’s worth pointing out the kites were unpopular originally because they proliferated in towns and scoffed rubbish and food alike – they were the inland herring gulls of mediaeval times: maybe they’ll be successful enough to become that again. A good read on that is Lovegrove’s Silent Fields.
I really hope you are right but I fear not. Absolutely there are some species that have bounced back or even arrived in the last 20 years – like you we have lots of buzzards, kites, and in the last 20 years, egrets. And there are other species that have declined amazingly – kestrels, turtle doves, song thrush. It is hard to pick out a general decline among the normal ebb and flow of species. But when species such as frogs, toads and hedgehogs are declining rapidly you have to think something is fundamentally wrong. Particularly when there are good theoretical reasons to support the case for decline – loss of habitat above all.
I think the only place storks are breeding is Knepp (where I have stayed). It is a truly remarkable place and very different from most English countryside.
Is the HMG article you are quoting from this one? Let’s be clear it is only about birds and it does report very significant declines in some species.
Kestrels are an interesting example, because they seem to have been one of the first successful comebacks of raptors, thanks to the motorways, above which they were seen hovering, and still are to some extent.
Nobody designed motorways to favour them, but they did anyway. I’m not sure if anyone has explained their decline, but you have to wonder if part of it is simply the loss of open embankments as the road system has matured and grown trees.
They’re in fine fettle round here, anyway, making off with the voles under our bird feeder from time to time. So are song thrushes. Greenfinches – still few and far between, though occasional visitors now after years of absence. But as in all these species, how does one decide what the “right” number is? Reasonable bird censuses, like global temperatures or the ozone hole, have only been performed for a few decades.
Up to 50% of peer reviewed medical studies were condemned as rubbish by the editor of the Lancet a few years ago; the replication crisis.
Do you seriously imagine that climate or extinction studies are somehow better than medicine?
I would imagine it would be generous to suggest that 5% of climate/extinction etc. studies are worth the paper they are written on.
The BBC has, of course, long since disappeared down the rabbit-hole. There’s no coming back, so why not defund it and watch something entertaining instead?
Paint drying.
On the question of mass extinction, wile I have come to distrust almost everything official or even recently peer reviewed, I trust the evidence o f my own eyes.
The year I first bought a car was 1982 and during much of the year, I could drive twenty-five miles to the coast and back, and I would have needed to scrape the dead insects of my windscreen. twenty years later it dawned on me that this was no longer the case.
It’s got worse. Back in 2015 the only bee that I came across was one that attacked my cream cake while at a seaside resort. And moths are far more rare than they were forty years ago.
Your current car is far more aerodynamic than cars in the 1980’s. Insects are carried on the airflow around the car, rather than hitting the windscreen. There is usually a reason if you care to look…
The aerodynamic argument is bs and wishful thinking, in my opinion. However, if you can actually come up with some evidence beyond mere statements and declarations, I’d be happy to listen. We should know all about such things after the past two years.
The reason is that something is killing insects.
Even if the argument you propose had validity, it wouldn’t explain the disappearance of moths at night.
The decline in insects is something that should concern us since they are in the lower reaches of the food web. GMOs don’t apply in the UK, but insecticides certainly do.
Well, here’s the thing. There is very little of hard evidence and studies about the number of insects that I can see. I’ve looked for the so called ‘Windscreen Phenomenon’, and really there isn’t a great deal of proper scientific papers or studies. Both the studies I read say there ‘seems’ to be a ‘significant reduction’ in insects over 20 years or so.
However, no-one is quite sure how many there were, we can measure what there is now, but there isn’t enough data, or understanding of whats happening to be sure. So, here we are again with broad conclusions being drawn from narrow and limited data, much of it anecdotal and localised, but the conclusion is that its our standard go-to in any situation like this, ‘Its all down to human activity and that is a potential disaster for mankind’. There really isn’t enough data to say conclusively if that’s true.
We imagine.
Insects are subject to environmental influences we don’t even know exist for them. What influence does climactic conditions on a local scale make to them on a daily, never mind hour by hour basis? What effect does the earths magnetic field have on them?
What about breeding cycles and the natural ebb and flow of populations?
Scientists seem inclined to examine a suburban garden and extrapolate the results to every garden in the country. Or the results for a region and apply it to a continent.
A hypothesis may be simply defined as a guess. A scientific hypothesis is an intelligent guess. — Isaac Asimov
We pay far too much attention to ‘science’, it’s become a religious cult.
I also think we should be honest enough to say that Googling isn’t ‘scientific research’.
Without a doubt.
But but but insects and especially bees love warm weather.
So if you believe the warmists religion and they are getting fewer due this runaway catastrophic man made global warming, then their should be an abundance.
Perhaps you should travel in summer, especially in the evening if you like moths
You’re missing my point by suggesting I travel. The real question is what has happened to them over time?
In my experience, all the moths like warmer weather and have moved to Spain and Portugal, closely followed by their enthusiastic predators, the geckos.
Here in the Dark Peak I get load of bees in my garden, both bumble bees and honey bees. Reports of their extinction are greatly exaggerated.
Ditto in rural Devon.
But of course the issue is not decline in insect numbers – which is amenable to measurement and attribution to causes like insecticides, diseases etc – but the assumption that (a) we are told it is warmer than it was and (b) insects are declining: ergo climate change is killing bees.
Do you think that is a representative sample?
In the case of bee’s, you have lots flying around your garden, you just don’t recognise them as bee’s as they are wild and don’t conform to the cutesy stereotype of Bumble or Honey bees.
The fact is, most honey bees are ‘farmed’, people and corporations making money from bees they concentrate in vast hive concentrations around the world. When was the last time you saw a wild bee colony?
Predictably, much like avian flu invariably emerges from chicken farms, so mites deadly to bees evolved in badly maintained and dirty private, and commercial hives.
The ‘environmentalists’ utterly ignored this, preferring to run around with their hair on fire about the dying bee population. Further ignoring the damage farmed bees to to the wild bee populations.
Today, dead insect contamination of wind turbine blades are measured in tons. They make no distinction between high flying, migrating or low flying insects, they indiscriminately kill them all.
The aerodynamic argument is bs and wishful thinking, in my opinion.
A 1998 VW beetle had a Coefficient of drag of 0.38.
A 2010 Toyota Prius is 0.25.
The difference is enormous and represents the difference in frontal impact the cars have on the environment,… Read more »
This mornings trip to the next town up the coast, an (18 mile A road) saw my flippin windscreen covered in insect smears.
Anecdata – however it may well depend on location& farming practice more than anything else.
The swallows, swifts & sand martens don’t seem to be starving either.
I have noticed a marked decline in swallows/swifts/etc. over the last ten years or so where we are, semi rural Kent. The summer sky’s around us were home to dozens of them during early and mid summer. Now, you’re lucky to see a handful.
Being migratory birds I suspect some are victims of offshore wind turbines. Perhaps not even touched by them, but the wash of a turbine tip travelling at several hundreds of MPH on some occasions might be catastrophic.
How many fall prey to these monsters will never be known as the carcasses either sink, float away, or are predated on. Some, I suspect, will be injured and/or disorientated, make it to shore and become yet more prey for predators.
But greens are interested in only one thing, the hysteric concept of their personal survival. They are not interested in wildlife or the rest of humanity.
Like the Church of the Continuous Coofs, this is a doom cult. These zealots are determined to imagine that they are living through the End Days. And like the Millerites and the Great Disappointment, every day that extinction doesn’t claim them, the stronger their faith becomes that it must happen tomorrow.
You can’t reason with them, you can only mitigate the harm they can do by keeping them far, far away from power and influences.
The fact that our Prime Minister (and by extension, her husband) are fully fledged cultists is truly terrifying.
You do the concept of cultism a great disservice by associating it with Bunter.
The biggest number of species lost in millions of years… but I bet you can’t name a single one, and certainly not because of climate change. As ever, it’s based on (deliberately) faulty modelling. But it’s easily checked because there is a red list of extinct and endangered species, and that tells an entirely different study, as I explored here back in 2019.
I think there is a problem with using red list extinction as a measure of loss of biodiversity. The rules for declaring a species extinct have changed to place the onus on science to prove the species is extinct e.g. by repeated surveys. This in itself will slow down the recorded extinction rate and it means the extinction of species such as insects and molluscs will very rarely be recorded. Perhaps most importantly, maintaining a species via a concentrated conservation programme in a very limited location or in a zoo is almost as bad as losing it altogether.
Imagine that. MTF cites information from the most left wing of outlets he/she/it could possibly find.
By way of example, one article is a hilarious example of the left’s distorted nature.
There is a baby formula shortage in the US because the Biden controlled government shut a major producer down overnight because of contamination. Fair enough.
The second paragraph states:
It’s inevitable that a crisis this important, and one that disproportionately affects those with fewer means (who are more likely to use formula), would become a political football. For the right, it was another thing to pin on Joe Biden.
Well, duh, yea, that’s an indisputable fact.
It goes on to describe Bette Middler’s tweet “TRY BREASTFEEDING! It’s free and available on demand.” as “unfortunate and silly”.
The response to that tweet from Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to President Trump was: “What a profoundly offensive & ignorant statement. There are countless reasons why breastfeeding is not an option for many mothers—too many to get into here. And if you’ve been using formula you can’t just flip a switch. Not to mention millions of babies with milk/food allergies… .”
Entirely reasonable.
However, by some astonishingly clumsy sleight of hand, the final… Read more »
Why have you changed the subject to breastfeeding? I provided that link because I thought it explained clearly some of the problems around classifying a species as extinct (I didn’t actually notice it was from Slate until your comment made me go back and look).
To return to the topic in hand, and avoiding ad hominem arguments, in what respect do you think the article is wrong?
The breastfeeding example demonstrates the wild, left wing bias that site exhibits. It’s not the only article on there that does the same, in fact it’s littered with them.
And if you don’t know by now, the left lie, incessantly.
Sorry, missed a bit.
One don’t prove science correct, dummy. One seeks to disprove science.
What you do is gather a collection of articles and google searches and pronounce your hypothesis correct, when that is the antithesis of science.
“Be suspicious of a theory if more and more hypotheses are needed to support it as new facts become available, or as new considerations are brought to bear.” — Sir Fred Hoyle
Are you trying to claim that science can never be used to prove that some proposition is correct?
I’m not trying to claim anything, I’m telling you it’s 100% certain. Science can never be used to prove that something is correct.
Science is never certain. It can prove nothing, which is why a scientific study results in a theory, not a fact.
The next time you ask me a question like this, kindly include payment for my educational services.
If science can never be used to show a proposition is correct then what is the point of doing science?
To examine the possibilities dimbo.
That’s £100 you owe me so far.
So having examined the possibilities, how do you decide which one is correct or more likely?
Best guess.
A hypothesis may be simply defined as a guess. A scientific hypothesis is an intelligent guess. — Isaac Asimov
What makes one guess better than another?
Experimentation, measurement, to find supporting evidence. Making sure you don’t suffer from confirmation bias and reject the inconvenient contrary evidence.
In other words science. No problem with that – I was just interested to see how RHS was going to dig himself out of the hole he created by pronouncing that “Science can never be used to prove that something is correct.”
Of courser there are different types of proof – mathematical, legal – each with different standards of certainty – but science is one of them.
Science does not exist to support, it exists to falsify.
Science. The process of falsifying a hypothesis.
The mere fact I have to point that out to you demonstrates your ignorance of the subject.
That’s £150 now, thanks.
Science. The process of falsifying a hypothesis.
I am trying to guess what you mean by this.
Possibly you have been reading Popper on falsification (or someone who has described Popper to you). If so, you have misunderstood him. His thesis was that you can’t gather evidence for a hypothesis simply by accumulating examples that conform to it – Galileo would not have strengthened his theory by dropping weights from the tower of Pisa repeatedly – once was enough. Popper claimed you strengthen a hypothesis by attempting to falsify it and failing. This not the same as saying science is the process of falsifying a hypothesis. It is the process of validating a hypothesis by trying to falsify it.
Not all philosophers of science (or scientists) agree with this. If you happen to observe a planet that does not conform to Newton’s laws of motion you don’t ditch the laws – you look for an explanation. However, whatever your opinion, it is not a simple matter.
Or maybe you are simply saying that all scientific hypotheses are wrong at some level. That may be true.
However, neither position implies that science cannot prove a statement to be correct, in… Read more »
More likely is not proof.
Proof is generally impossible, but proof is an absolute concept understood by few.
Science seeks to find evidence to support a theory.
If successful, then the theory is supported by the evidence.
Science cannot prove a theory, since that would require an exhaustive experiment.
Often the study finds that the original theory is not complete and the mechanism is more complex. Augmentation and further research is required to progress.
That’s how it goes.
I think this all hangs on identifying proof with 100% certainty. In that case nothing can be proved – except possibly cogito ergo sum. Even mathematical proofs can have errors we haven’t noticed. If you want to use “proof” to mean 100% certain that is up to you but it makes it a fairly useless concept. It is also irrelevant to the context in which this first came up – proving a species is extinct.
Dummy. Science seeks to challenge a hypothesis.
The essence is to demonstrate the hypothesis is wrong: falsify it.
If it cant be falsified it is then considered a theory which exists itself to be falsified.
Nothing can prove a theory, it can only produce another hypothesis which, if not falsified exists as a theory until it is falsified.
Often it doesn’t. Often the solution is simpler than the original theory.
But all this passes straight over your head because you wouldn’t know what science is if it jumped up and bit you on the ass.
“We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.”
–Richard Feynman, The Value of Science, 1955.
But the most vulnerable species are, and always were, in a limited location: consider the Scilly Islands shrew or the Galapagos finches (the clue is in the name).
If one doesn’t use something like the red list to get actual data on extinctions, then the idea of extinctions is simply an untestable hypothesis, and especially so when the cause is named vaguely as “climate change.” Science needs data.
Loss of habitat – a genuine cause of extinctions – is relatively easy to gauge, and hence to project. Muffit’s millipede only lives in rare boogaloo trees, so if the latter are all replaced with soya farms, it’s reasonable to assume the millipedes are extinct even if you can’t count them. Even so you may find them munching soya down the line: life is adaptable.
But models of mass climate extinctions based only on assumptions and climate projections can never be tested, and so are no more scientific than COVID models were. Furthermore, one can never know if the situation has improved, as it was never actually measured.
But we do know that species are particularly adaptable to climate change, as palaeontologist Donald Prothero discovered from the fossil record:
In four of… Read more »
Jon
You raise two questions – how do you measure extinction rates? And to what extent is climate change responsible for extinction rates?
To take the second one first – I don’t think climate change is an important factor in current extinction. It might be in the future but not at the moment. (the ability of life to adapt over millions of years is hardly relevant). The odd thing is neither do most of the conversation campaigning groups – habit loss and farming practices come way ahead. It hardly gets a mention in the Stallard article that Morrison pans. The idea that concern over mass extinction is a product of climate change activists seems to come from Morrison’s imagination.
As to measuring extinction rates. Sure the IUCN data has its uses, maybe it is vital, but you also have to recognise its weaknesses. If the method of classifying species as extinct changes then it is very dicey using to track trends over that change. Like so many things that are hard to measure, what is needed is multiple methods of assessment which can be compared and contrasted.
“habit[at] loss and farming practices come way ahead.”
I’m fully with you that we owe a duty of care and stewardship to our world. For example, if pesticides are potent enough, and deployed enough, to cause extinctions of all kinds of insects (whether or not beneficial to us), we are acting irresponsibly.
For that reason I’m deeply sceptical about GM crops: our knowledge of genomics is primitive, as the failure to anticipate the incorporation of spike protein genes into DNA through reverse transcriptases shows.
But do we have a duty to the ecosystem to maintain old farming practices, etc, in order to preserve a particular balance of species which came about artificially when those systems were established?