Mass extinction folly [View All]

[guardian]

I'm following up on a post from the General Discussion forum. Some DUers are claiming that the planet is currently experiencing a mass extinction event. I disagree.

1. I followed various links discussing "mass extinction" found them to be hysterical rants about coming doom and gloom with no real supporting data. Just a bunch of crap claiming a species goes extinct every "20 minutes" or another claims "137 species go extinct everyday" which equates to one every 10 minutes. The primary extinction link given by one DUer says "one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years." This works out to about one extinct species every 6-7 minutes. The gross disparity between these estimates (read as pulled straight from their ass) shows just how much they are guessing. Just mindless emotional ranting and no empirical data.

2. Some posters and websites claim "the 6th mass-extinction we're in now" is already underway. Yet at best I can only find a few lists of named extinct species that list a few dozen species. A few dozen species out of the estimated 5-30 million currently living species represents a fraction of one percent (i.e., 0.000333%). Stated another way for the math challenged, in the last century 99.6666% of all species are still alive!

HARDLY A "MASS EXTINCTION" EVENT.

Even then, how does this extinction rate compare with the natural average historical extinction rate? Duh. You have no answer for that one either.

And of those few dozens species a significant part was to do over hunting and not due to climate or habitat destruction. Maybe pushing for awareness to the Asian culture to start using Viagra instead of tiger penis or rhinoceros horn we can save a few more.

The global warming gloom and doom people need to get clue and stop with these unfounded hysterical rantings. I think Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace) is right on track with an environmental philosophy. Let's focus on real problems and solutions. The U.S. is doing pretty good with environmental protections. Sure there is room for improvement. But we are not in a crisis.

Worldwide, the worst environmental problems come from developing countries like China, India, those in Africa, and other places that have zero environmental controls and are clear cutting forests for cooking fuel and heating. The effort and awareness messages should be on that, and not some mythical global warming pile of shit.