Greenies, supported tirelessly by the BBC, never give up in their efforts to persuade us that we are all going to hell in a handcart. The UN, of course is the revered cheerleader, and today – as their ‘climate change’ fascism seems to have stalled a tad after Copenhagen – this corrupt Hydra has turned its attention to the need for ‘biodiversity’. There’s a special year devoted to it. So seriously does the BBC take this threat that it has sent Richard Black on a jolly to Berlin to watch the revered secretary-general deliver his hellfire sermon that we must stop our wicked ways. To him, there is no doubt what’s wrong:
The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is (sic) the main reason. Dignitaries including UN chief Ban Ki-moon…will speak at the launch in Berlin. Mr Ban is due to say that human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate, and that “business as usual is not an option”.
As usual, Mr Black – in pursuit of his greenie zealotry – obviously thinks the science is totally settled and the words of Mr Ban are the Holy Writ. It’s the Wicked West to blame, as always. Shame that he could not do a little journalism and look for alternative views – this, for example from the Watt’s Up With That? blog. It points out that despite all the hot air about extinction:
Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone. No continental forest bird or mammal is recorded as having gone extinct from any cause. Since the species-area relationship predicts that there should have been a very large number of recorded bird and mammal extinctions from habitat reduction over the last half millennium, I show that the species-area relationship gives erroneous answers to the question of extinction rates.
Complex stuff, but it shows just how deeply, deeply one-sided the BBC always is in its science coverage.
‘The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is (sic) the main reason’.
KILL 90% OF HUMANITY TO SAVE THE PLANET!
[I’m just being sarcastic but I have actually read some people making the sugestion in all seriousness]
Putting aside thoughts on Global Warming, that article from ‘What’s up..’ is a joke. He introduces so many caveats to prove his point (ignoring all data from Australia for example) that any conclusions he reaches are completely divorced from reality. He also states that he is not counting ‘estimated or predicted extinctions’ presumably knowing full well that proving beyond doubt the extinction of small mammal and bird species is nigh on impossible.
I know many people on this blog take issue with scientific studies which reach conclusions that match the author’s bias. This faux scientific study is possibly the worst example of that which I have ever seen.
We need to stop cutting down rainforests. Just at a cursory glance, i see no mention of the extinction of plant species, which is just as important as animal species. Yes I think ‘biodiversity’ is very important.
Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone.
And yet, here’s a figure from “scientists” that always sticks in my brain…
Since the formation of the Earth 4 billion years ago, 99% of all the species that have ever crawled from the primordial ooze, evolved and thrived .. had “gone extinct” before the emergence of homo sapien sapien.
Why? Because they couldn’t adapt to the circumstances in which they existed. Maybe they were dinosaur food, and the dinosaurs hunted them down to extinction.
Isn’t that called evolution?
I saw the eco mentalist fascists given a very suitable handle
“WATERMELONS”
green on the outside,but red on the inside 😉
i like this bit best from dick black the eco twats article:
“The big opportunity during the International Year of Biodiversity is for governments to do for biodiversity what they failed to do for climate change in Copenhagen,” said Simon Stuart, a senior science advisor to Conservation International and chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.
it would appear that the greenie eco fascist moonbats have admitted defeat in their quest to convert us into followers of the teachings of the goreacle (peace be upon him)
maybe it was the snow that was the final nail in the eco friendly coffin that made the moonbats give up on MMGW
Yes but are you seriously saying that humans do not have to look after the earth’s ecosystem – that we can continually cut down rainforests etc without affecting the environment as a whole?
all im bothered about is the global warming propaganda. It appears to me that the moonbats have admitted defeat over MMGW and are now targeting other less contentious areas like biodiversity, save the rain forest etc what everyone will support
i do my part for the rainforests. i buy fair trade coffee from columbia so farmers do not chop the rainforests down and grow cocoa plants to make cocaine. This stops the beeboid drug of choice flooding our streets, killing our kids and funding terrorism
but lets face some facts here, trees have never had it so good. We dont chop them down to use as fuel, or to build homes with or build entire navies. Instead of wooden carts we now have metal cars. the list goes on
Thanks for clarifying Beebinator. I agree with most of what you wrote but don’t think trees wood agree they “never had it so good”.
I hope not. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace and now a MMGW sceptic is on record as saying. The whole climate hysteria came about because by the mid 80’s the basic claims of environmentalists had been accepted and some people had to adopt more and more extreme positions to remain ‘anti Establishment’.
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No, but firstly Marky you need to get the planets population reduced by educating women, making contraception free andpunishing Countries that allow their populations to increase out of control.
Oh and stop immigration into the UK.
One of our resident BBC apologists, Paulo, in his attempt to rubbish anything contrary to the warmist (and related) religions, notes the (in his view) faux-scientific study of extinctions on WUWT and – as a killer fact – instances the exclusion from the study of extinctions in Australia. What Paulo omits to tell us is that Australia was omitted (together with what Willis Eschenbach terms other “island extinctions”) because the extinctions Eschenbach wished to analyse are NOT those “where species were (and still are) easily driven to extinction by the depredations of imported dogs, foxes, mongoose, rats, human hunters, goats, pigs, snails, cats, sparrows, frogs, starlings, and various plants, as well as the usual assortment of imported human, animal, and plant diseases” which comprise the vast majority of Australian extinctions.
In his post (and as in all genuinely scientific papers) Eschenbach sets up the analysis by stating what he is examining and what he is not examining. Eschenbach – who was apparently as surprised as anybody – establishes that (by excluding the “island extinctions” which he exactly defines as above) there is only a “weak relationship between habitat reduction and bird or mammal extinctions”.
This is not the place – or the blog – for a scientific discussion. OTOH the little we have discovered by this exercise is that Paolo talks the BBC line before engaging his brain: his comments should be assessed accordingly.
Umbongo.
I called the blog posting a faux-scientific study because it has been written in the style of a scientific paper (with abstract, method etc.) in order to imbue the post with an authority it does not have.
The author has set-up a very specific set of criteria in order to produce his conclusions. Why exclude Australia? Those reasons he gives are all clear examples of man’s encroachment into the Australian environment and yet he gives it as reason not to include them. This kind of cherry-picking of data to study is the kind of bad science which normally gets rightly mocked on sites such as this.
In the incredibly rigid set of criteria he has outlined, his findings are correct. But the problem is that people such as Robin in the post above then link to it as a repost to a UN initiative on biodiversity of all species. Surely you can tell the difference between biodiversity of all plant, animal and insect life and the extinction rate of large mammals and birds (not including Australia, any island species, those species not confirmed extinct, those only reproducing in zoos and anything else the author can think of to reduce numbers.).
If you honestly believe that the author was ‘surprised’ by his findings after such a laborious set-up then you are far too gullible to be let loose on the internet.
To quote Eschenbach “I was looking for Wilson’s predicted extinctions, those due to habitat reduction.” He excluded Australia for the reason he discloses: Australia’s extinctions are included in what he defines as “island” extinctions”: he specifically aimed his riposte to Wilson at the predictability of extinction due to habitat reduction. Either he’s dealing with what he says he is (and which might have some usefulness as an indication of predictability) or he’s dealing with all extinctions, including “island” ones, which reduce the usefulness of his paper. He also writes “I don’t know why the species-area relationship doesn’t work to predict extinctions. I would have guessed it would work [my italics]” so, yes, he was surprised.
Of course, unlike those at the CRU and others, Wilson put forward a refutable conjecture which Eschenbach duly appears to refute ie the predictions implied by the theory appear wrong. Gullible I may be but, apparently unlike you and the BBC’s environment faculty, I am sceptical enough to find it difficult believe those who claim to be doing “science” but who, at the same time, refuse to release their raw data or their computer algorithms and have corrupted the idea of transparency or genuine peer review as well as attempting to suppress any criticism of their work.
Eschenbach’s post contains many estimates and errors which which would have it laughed out of the peer-review system you feel is corrupted. This is the wrong place to go into it in detail but in summary:
1) He completely misunderstands the use of the phrase ‘habitat destruction’ and this is why he can cheerfully disregard data from Australia.
2) Island extinctions are easier to quantify because the study areas are so much smaller. This is why it is easy to declare island species extinct whilst many continental species remain ‘presumed extinct’ and again can be ignored by Eschenbach’s study.
3) He concentrates on mammals and bird species because they are seen by Governments and NGOs to be higher priority and therefore in many many cases have been saved from extinction by protection in artificial environments. This distorts the figures for these species completely.
Again, as for what this ‘study’ has to do with the UN initiative on protection of biodiversity of all species I don’t know.
“Eschenbach’s post contains many estimates and errors which which would have it laughed out of the peer-review system you feel is corrupted.”
Surly that could also be levelled at Wilson:
“Finally, let us examine Wilson’s claim that due to forest habitat reduction, “The number of species doomed each year is 27,000.” (Wilson 1992)”
That too must be an “estimate”
“I will consider only species being lost by reduction in forest area … I will not include overharvesting or invasion by alien organisms. I will assume a number of species living in the rain forests, 10 million (on the low side), and I will further suppose that many of the species enjoy wide geographical ranges. Even with these cautious parameters, selected in a biased manner to draw a maximally optimistic conclusion, the number of species doomed each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3.”
E.O. Wilson (1992) ‘The Diversity of Life’ p. 268
I do not know who is right, I am no expert, but with many dubious papers put out by so called “experts” on climate or the environment it has done a great diservice to the name of science.
The problem with using wildlife as indicators of climate change is that it is impossible to separate the effect of the various factors which affect population dynamics.
Warmists tend to take the simplistic view that if a species associated with a warm climate is on the increase, it is due to Global Warming. If on the decrease, it is due to some other factor. Very unscientific, but consistent with their manipulation of temperature statistics.
As has been said before, Global Warming is a religion not a science.
No need for “sic” — “The expansion […] is the main reason” is perfectly well-worded.