Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals? (theatlantic.com) 86
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. "
Are most claims in news stories exaggerated? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I can't tell which set of statistics are wrong here. The first or the second or the coming third article?
80% of the first 1/3 of the articles contain numbers, three-quarters of which are off by 65%, plus or minus 3 standard deviation radishes [wikipedia.org].
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80% of the first 1/3 of the articles contain numbers, three-quarters of which are off by 65%, plus or minus 3 standard deviation radishes [wikipedia.org].
By definition it should include your post as well. Does it?
Some source would make it more trustworthy.
Bingo (Score:4, Interesting)
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... [jumpingfrog.com]
Re:Are most claims in news stories exaggerated? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Has anyone else noticed how trolls, conspiracy theorists, and otherwise mentally unstable people have a tendency to use the ampersand in place of the word 'and'? Is it because the ampersand appears to be important since it's a symbol specifically made to replace an entire word?
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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.
Most news headlines are a bit exaggerated, not the news stories themselves. I'm not talking about the opinion section, talking heads, etc. Just the the straight up news report. Most just state the same findings that the researchers state with a bit of detail to make it interesting. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer sources for direct news reporting. Science Friday (NPR) and Quirks and Quarks (CBC) are good science radio shows (also podcasts) that cover science news in detail.
Don't lump soc
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I would add The Science Show from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to your list of shows/podcasts. I prefer it to Quirks and Quarks.
For podcasts the BBC has Inside Science, Science in Action, and The Life Scientific. The last one is interesting because it interviews a noted scientist about their work and why they got into science. The interviewer is a scientist. I normally don't like interview type shows but I like this one.
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I guess the article's author felt that confusion on this point was worth writing about, though it seems unnecessary to me since the conclusion is the same regardless of specific way in which the data manifests.
OMFG (Score:1)
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Outside your insane imagination, the entire reason why we're wiping out species is because we're making Earth more livable for humans. Everything from wiping out disease-bearing insects (see: war on malaria) to destroying alpha predators that have any meaningful chance of competing with us for top slot (see: history of wolves' interaction with humans) to wiping out life forms that interfere with our food production (see: agricultural development) is about making our lives better, and making the planet able
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How are any of these species more beneficial to us as species than elimination of things like world hunger, which we have all but achieved in time that beat most optimistic UN projections?
See, if you view biodiversity as just "dogmaically good", your argument makes sense. But the moment you do the realistic assessment of "benefits vs harm", it falls apart in a spectacular fashion. Which is exactly why we have the progress we do now.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Except we're not making earth more liveable, we're risking exterminating ourselves also.
Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN -
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
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And then, you stop reading speculation what "could" happen and read on what is factually happening. Such as effective elimination of world hunger, because of agricultural advances wiping out life forms that were detrimental to it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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scsirob vouchsafed:
Alarmists have a track record of cherry picking data.
As do flacks, pundits, lawyers and all other propagandists.
Your point being ... ?
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And why are you concerned about alarmists, when you can listen to scientists or simply read a book about it?
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scsirob rejoined:
Flacks, pundits, lawyers and other propagandists lies don't make climate alarmist numbers any more credible.
Nor do they make anthropically-mediated climate change deniers any less risible.
Again, what, exactly, is your point ... ?
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Alarmists have a track record of cherry picking data.
But this is way beyond cherry-picking. You can't take percentages (of differently sized populations) and then average them - mathematically that's just flat-out wrong. It's no different than completely inventing a number at random. This is falsified data, not merely biased.
(It's also poor strategy since the actual problem didn't need to be exaggerated, but now their credibility is gone.)
Yet another inescapable categorization issue... (Score:2)
...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!
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Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes."
--Thomas
For Those Not In The Know (Score:1, Funny)
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vastly outnumbered
We'll see how many congressional seats they gain this Tuesday.
What about humans? (Score:1)
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.
Exhibit A (Score:1)
The Death of Objective [Empirical Science] [Reporting] [for the [[willfully] ignorant] masses]
Yes (Score:1)
But they were so delicious, and even better served with dabs and a little Chianti.
This article is missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
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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Maybe if you had proper capitalization and spelling I would be more inclined to listen to you, but you just sound like a raving idiot.
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Every mass extinction is different, of course. The species alive today are very different than the species alive before the other 5 major mass extinctions. It's a pretty safe guess, though, that mass extinctions make life unpleasant for the species that are dying off, and probably also quite unpleasant for the species that are able to survive through such an event. Whether huma
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The species that survive end up doing great though.
Humans will do just fine, the animals and plants we rely on are farmed, which means massive proliferation. 60% of all mammals are livestock, and 70% of all birds are chicken (source [livekindly.co]).
Wait, doesn't that mean (Score:2)
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we're putting all our chickens in one basket?
I wouldn't be too surprised. We're doing this with bananas for the second time, now.
Lying with statistics (Score:2)
Look at yesterday's article on the subject of lies, damn lies and statistics.
Genetic extinction (Score:2)
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:
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That lie just won't stop getting repeated no matter how many times it's debunked.
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Don't mess with my brain (Score:2)
60% or Animals? (Score:2)
Does this mean that there is a bunch of wildlife hobbling around with nothing left below the lower torso?
Average average (Score:2)
Obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:1)