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Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals? (theatlantic.com)
Remember that study which reported humanity had wiped out 60 percent of animal populations since 1970? The researchers' findings "have been widely mischaracterized," reports the Atlantic's science writer -- while adding that "the actual news is still grim."
The researchers had studied sample population estimates representing 4,000 of 63,000 known vertebrate species -- or 6.4 percent -- then performed a scientific extrapolation: Ultimately, they found that from 1970 to 2014, the size of vertebrate populations has declined by 60 percent on average. That is absolutely not the same as saying that humans have culled 60 percent of animals -- a distinction that the report's technical supplement explicitly states. "It is not a census of all wildlife but reports how wildlife populations have changed in size," the authors write. To understand the distinction, imagine you have three populations: 5,000 lions, 500 tigers, and 50 bears. Four decades later, you have just 4,500 lions, 100 tigers, and five bears (oh my). Those three populations have declined by 10 percent, 80 percent, and 90 percent, respectively -- which means an average decline of 60 percent. But the total number of actual animals has gone down from 5,550 to 4,605, which is a decline of just 17 percent.
For similar reasons, it's also not right that we have "killed more than half the world's wildlife populations" or that we can be blamed for "wiping out 60 percent of animal species" or that "global wildlife population shrank by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014." All of these things might well be true, but they're all making claims about metrics that were not assessed in the Living Planet Index... The average 60 percent decline across populations also obscures the fates of individual species. In the hypothetical scenario above, lions are still mostly fine, the tigers are in trouble, and the bears are on the brink of extinction. And of the species covered in the actual Living Planet Index, half are increasing in number, while only half are decreasing. This means that for those that are actually in decline, the outlook is even worse than it first appears.
The science writer also points out that vertebrates studied are vastly outnumbered by the millions of species of invertebrate, "which make up the majority of animal life..."
"None of this is to let humanity off the hook... At least a third of amphibians face extinction, thanks to climate change, habitat loss, and an apocalyptic killer fungus. "
The researchers had studied sample population estimates representing 4,000 of 63,000 known vertebrate species -- or 6.4 percent -- then performed a scientific extrapolation: Ultimately, they found that from 1970 to 2014, the size of vertebrate populations has declined by 60 percent on average. That is absolutely not the same as saying that humans have culled 60 percent of animals -- a distinction that the report's technical supplement explicitly states. "It is not a census of all wildlife but reports how wildlife populations have changed in size," the authors write. To understand the distinction, imagine you have three populations: 5,000 lions, 500 tigers, and 50 bears. Four decades later, you have just 4,500 lions, 100 tigers, and five bears (oh my). Those three populations have declined by 10 percent, 80 percent, and 90 percent, respectively -- which means an average decline of 60 percent. But the total number of actual animals has gone down from 5,550 to 4,605, which is a decline of just 17 percent.
For similar reasons, it's also not right that we have "killed more than half the world's wildlife populations" or that we can be blamed for "wiping out 60 percent of animal species" or that "global wildlife population shrank by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014." All of these things might well be true, but they're all making claims about metrics that were not assessed in the Living Planet Index... The average 60 percent decline across populations also obscures the fates of individual species. In the hypothetical scenario above, lions are still mostly fine, the tigers are in trouble, and the bears are on the brink of extinction. And of the species covered in the actual Living Planet Index, half are increasing in number, while only half are decreasing. This means that for those that are actually in decline, the outlook is even worse than it first appears.
The science writer also points out that vertebrates studied are vastly outnumbered by the millions of species of invertebrate, "which make up the majority of animal life..."
"None of this is to let humanity off the hook... At least a third of amphibians face extinction, thanks to climate change, habitat loss, and an apocalyptic killer fungus. "
Yes. Most claims in news stories are exaggerated. Exaggerating is a common behavior of attention-seeking individuals like news reporters.
Anyone reading any news story that claims anything interesting or significant would be wise to be very skeptical of the story's claims. There's probably more to the story that the report is not telling you.
Don't let yourself be trolled by news reporters every day of your life.
it softens the fact that we are making the Earth unlivable to humans?
Now repent, you filthy hyoomuns!
Alarmists have a track record of cherry picking data.
Unless there's proof that those 4000 species were not carefully selected as the ones on the brink of extinction anyway, I don't buy it.
And unless there's proof that this rate is any different than what's normal over a much, much longer time period, I still don't buy it.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
...for you.
Much of the numbers here depends on how you classify "hominids".
If you can hurry up and define yourself as an animal or not "for the record", I'd appreciate it.
If have future "staffing" plans to make. Thanks Linnaeus!
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Toss in the fact that the original story closely ties into an agenda and this should be no surprise at all.
Rank it up there with all the things that make the cover of popular science / mechanics that will "revolutionize the world" and are promptly never heard from again
Here's one of my favorites. The Nutcracker VTOL
http://www.jumpingfrog.com/ima...
A "scientific extrapolation" is a lot like a normal extrapolation, but you say 20 hail Darwins between each calculation.
vastly outnumbered by the millions of species of invertebrate, "which make up the majority of animal life..."
That is certainly true here in the United States - those lawyers are spineless bastards indeed.
We certainly havenâ(TM)t wiped out any of us. In fact there will probably be a billion in the US at some point, which blows my mind. We almost have half a billion already. Birth control, people. Come on.
The Death of Objective [Empirical Science] [Reporting] [for the [[willfully] ignorant] masses]
But they were so delicious, and even better served with dabs and a little Chianti.
Perhaps deliberately. The point of the study was that there is less species diversity, not that we killed 60% of the animals.
In the example above we still have a net loss of diversity because we're down to 5 bears, e.g. their population is likely to go extinct.
I could be wrong but I don't think we really know what the effect of such a rapid reduction in such a short period of time is.
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Look at yesterday's article on the subject of lies, damn lies and statistics.
Species die when they lose habitat and their numbers fall below a certain threshold. At that point, they become inbred and lose vitality, then perish. This is happening to the Tasmanian Devil:
and
Alternative Right.
This just in, Slashdot discovers fake news.
Today, I read in a newspaper the following headline (translated from Spanish): "Since today until the end of the current year, European women will be working 'for free' due to the gender gap". Understanding the relationship between this reference, the current article and the title of this post is left as exercise for the reader.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
As long as I can still get monkey brain in a can I'm cool with this.
...why righties doubt your global warming/cooling/whatever stuff.
Not a single graph in that article.
I might expect to see a graph of species count vs. year or total number of endangered animals vs. year So I could draw my own conclusions
That lie just won't stop getting repeated no matter how many times it's debunked.
There's no point to correction stories like this. No one is reading the original tripe.
Even libbies don't read their own media. They're just happy for all the headlines. They don't care that its garbage, as long as their worldview forever dominates the headlines.
Fear mongering stories about environment, extinctions, etc. are every couple days, and everyone has stopped reading them. We all know the agendas, the deliberate blind spots and the rest. It's mostly just wealthy, comfortable people trying to shape opinion from inside their bubble.
I do trust in humanity as a whole and in the long run. Errors and non-ideal behaviours (perhaps having the best intentions and being quite reasonable at the start, but gradually kind of losing their point) tend to be eventually corrected. As a side effect and before reaching there, quite a few valuable lessons are likely to be learned. I don't see a big deal of a problem here.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
It means human beings are winning the war against animals. It is the heart and soul of the argument for Darwinianism and survival of the species. Human beings are doing great. We rule. It is up to the lesser species to evolve and become better. Humans should not curtail our inherent bloodlust just because some species of groundhog has not developed gunpowder.
Let's work together humanity to kill the other 40%. Let's kick some animal ass.
There seems to be a fundamental conflict between left / right / religious / atheists. It strikes me as odd that the liberal God denying left seems most beholden to the old Christian beliefs that all life is sacred (even subhuman life). On the other hand the God fearing right ignores lesser life forms and is firmly in Darwin's camp in practice if not words.
I just know that my evolutionary forebears were a bunch of racist genocidal bigots and I am glad for it. If they had not been as racist as they were, I would have gone the way of the dodo bird.
Thanks Racism! You are the dynamo of evolution.
Does this mean that there is a bunch of wildlife hobbling around with nothing left below the lower torso?
Have gnu, will travel.
The author advocates for better statistics to describe the problem. Fine with me. However, the side effect I'm seeing with the Slashdot crowd (who didn't read the article) is to dismiss the 60% figure entirely and doubt the quality of the analysis of the original article, which I'm sure they ALSO didn't read.
I'd like to see people proposing solutions, not just empty criticism. Just saying "I want better statistics" doesn't solve anything. A journalist once needed a short headline with a number -- there was no space for a histogram or collection of graphs. So they used an average.
Anyone can show up with an opinion. It takes effort to improve upon the work of others.
we're putting all our chickens in one basket?
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If you add in the 1000% overpopulation of humans, you get a net gain.
#1. The work was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund - which is the opposite of unbiased. #2. I couldn't find any peer reviewed paper cited behind all the reportage. I don't know if they published or not but it is telling that this stuff is covering media coverage. #3. According to the media they had over 50 scientists determine the difference in number between now and 1970 for 4000 species. Well, for those who actually passed middle school math, say 4000/50 = 80. roughly. So, if anyone really believes that these guys randomly selected 4000 species and assigned 80 species to each of them and then did a comprehensive count (and that they also did that in 1970) then I've got a bridge you'll be interested in buying. #4 "scientific extrapolation"?? There is no such thing except in the rare well understood system. The Earth's biota is not one of those.
animals don't die out because of climate change. They do however die out of human overpopulation, hunting, air polution, water polution... But not by a few degrees change in temperature...
The average of unweighted averages. Still a useful number. I've learned to question a lot of aggregate values. What do you really mean by "Average", "total", "max", etc?
"Ah, people can come up with statistics to prove anything – 40% of all people know that."