If you read "The Sixth extinction" it talks a lot about this. Her hypothesis is that the main cause of this is in fact humans, but not human-caused climate change -global trade and travel.
"Kolbert then explains that global trade and travel are creating a virtual "Pangaea", in which species of all kinds are being redistributed beyond historical geographic barriers. This furthers the first chapter's idea that invasive species are a mechanism of extinction."
The article says, "the project looked at more than 330,000 species...." and "...seed-bearing plants have been disappearing at a rate of nearly 3 species a year since 1900 ― which is up to 500 times higher".
So since 1900, that's 357 species disappearing, out of 330,000 (~0.1%)
How did they arrive at the conclusion that this is an "alarming rate"? Also, "up to 500 times higher" means, the expected rate is less than 1 plant going extinct out of 330,000 species, which sounds way too good to be true.
> Also, "up to 500 times higher" means, the expected rate is less than 1 plant going extinct out of 330,000 species, which sounds way too good to be true.
Speciation does not occur in human timespans. If 3 species of seed bearing plants out of 330,000 went extinct per year, we could expect to live on a barren planet within 110,000 years. This is a very rapid rate, given that plant life has existed for 5,000 times longer than that.
Naturally evolved unknown or little studied species are a rather different proposition to 100 new varieties of well studied apple and wheat etc, created by and for industrial agriculture.
Who knows what chemical and medicinal discoveries we shut ourselves away from as species are dying out. Consider a single poppy species that gave medicine 4 or 5 chemicals that turn out to be the basis of the vast majority of medicine's strong pain relief repertoire.
1) Many of the bred/GMO cultivars are sterile and/or unable to survive in the wild. They actively work against biodiversity.
2) Many of the bred/GMO strains are used in monocultures either in agriculture or gardens. These both displace the native plants, steal resources, and are also far more vulnerable to pests, disease, etc. Again, not improving, but destroying biodiversity.
3) Much of human activity in addition to breeding new species/cultivars is also deliberately or inadvertently moving species into new ecosystems. Some of these become rapidly spreading invasives that damage or destroy the local ecosystem, both plants and insects, animals, and birds that feed on the now damaged ecosystem (& no, they usually cannot just eat the new plant, nevermind if it's not toxic).
4) Many of the bred/GMO variants, even if planted in their native habitat, are incapable of providing sustenance to native insects & birds. While they may still have the external characteristics to attract them (odor, UV spectrum colors, etc.), they lack the actual nutrients, e.g., because they are sterile. So, not only do the human breeding/GMO activities damage biodiversity in plants, they are also damaging the other ecosystems.
So, if you are going to count human bred/GMO'd cultivars, they need to be counted against biodiversity.
Between these disruptions of the plant ecosystem, pesticides, habitat destruction, climate change, and other effects, we are much more dangerously close to breaking the food chain than people imagine.
This is invisible because of ignorance, normalcy bias, and the fact that these are enormously complex ecological webs, and they are very resilient until they aren't -- at which point the system collapses and it is too late to repair.
Numerous civilizations and indeed ecosystems have collapsed because of this sort of problem (see e.g., Permian Extinction which nearly extinguished life on the planet).
We are now causing this on a global scale and, except for the asteroid ~65MM years ago, at a pace unprecedented in geologic history.
Yes, and that's the problem. We breed new subtypes of plants for human consumption.
The problem from a mass extinction of plants is that we don't know what the reverberating effects of those eradications can mean. There are many animal, insect etc species which may be reliant on said plants for primary nutrition which then percolates all the way up the food chain and potentially decimating other animal populations.
It is not hard to imagine the potential side effects of say, the resulting plant extinction resulting in massive bee population losses for example. But that's just one prominent example of what lost biodiversity can potentially cause. This lost biodiversity can then further contribute to the rise of invasive species and the result is a destabilization of multiple biomes which have been relatively stable for a long period of time.
I wouldn't say "no bearing". But if current trends continued, there wouldn't be much left except people, livestock, pets, crop plants (including trees), insect pests, and microorganisms. And stuff in zoos and botanical gardens.
However, that's unlikely. Well before that, human society and population will likely collapse, due to climate change.
GP likely isn't talking about lab-grown experimental GMOs, but regular farming. Many if not most of the food we eat is completely unlike it was before humans invented agriculture.
GMOs and cultivars grown in labs not only have no positive effect on biodiversity, they have significant negative effects. See more detailed post above.
I'm no biologist, but surely that is a Pandora's Box of a claim. There isn't even one clear definition of what a 'species' actually is [0].
I can't find a source, but I'm guessing most species are small, short lived creatures with a lifespan of ~1 year; such as mice or insects. That is 70+ generations per human lifespan - 70 generations probably is long enough to get a new species if there is evolutionary pressure.
> How did they arrive at the conclusion that this is an "alarming rate"?
It's a subjective description of a factual conclusion of the study. Extinction rates that are "500 times faster than they would naturally [be]" are certainly alarming to me as well.
Speciation is likely a slow process and 100 years is not a long time on an evolutionary time frame, so without any numbers backing me up 1 extinction per 100 years background extinction rate without a major event seems reasonable.
Why do you think that sounds too good to be true? Why would a species become extinct naturally? Nature seems pretty good at maintaining a species once its evolved to be viable. Obviously things do die out naturally, but to me (a non-botanist) it seems like something that would be very unusual without external factors (eg meteorites, global floods, climate change..)
What do you mean? Plants compete for resources (water, sunlight, soil nutrients) as well.
Also, there are diseases that can target specific plants, when unchecked, can wipe out an entire plant population (see Panama disease for bananas for an example)
Extinction level blights similar to these are not often found in the natural world. They're only a thing because we (humans) eliminated genetic diversity from crops through grafts and clones. If the plants reproduced naturally its likely that a range of genetically diverse children would have been resistant to the fungus.
Based on what I'd expect the rate to be. I'd expect the rate to be much higher.
Why would I expect that? Because of all the "sky is falling" rhetoric. I don't expect that to mean the sky is falling over the next 10,000 years; I expect it to mean that the sky is falling now.
[Edit: Note that I am not saying that this is good news - just that it is considerably less bad than I expected.]
10 000 years is also 2x more than entire recorded history, and about the time since humans stopped being subject to biological evolution as the main driver of development.
10 000 years is a lot of time. Compared to other climate issues, with consequences expected in decades, this deserves at best a "cool, we'll fix that in a century or two, if technological civilization still exists by that time".
I like to draw the connection between the climate change, natural world destruction and the epidemic of loneliness [0]. They all have the same root cause I believe. We are working our ass off chasing illusory happiness of material goods, while not spending enough time with our friends and family.
Take a break. Take a day off. Or two. Go see your friend you haven't seen in a long while. Go for a walk in a park. Good for climate, endangered species and your mental health.
I can take a few days off for no reason. Most people cannot. 40% of American households cannot afford a $400 expense. That means they're at the whim of their employer as to whether they ever get a break and if they do they're going to take the overtime instead. Most people aren't simply chasing the money either, they're just trying to live.
Leisure is a commodity that is out of the reach of many people now. It is no longer a part of life. This will not change through individual choice, it requires a coordinated reorganization of our society.
The "good news" is that most people (those 40% of American households) are not the biggest emitters. One of the biggest emitters are us, the HN crowd, people who can afford to "take a few days off for no reason". Let's start with us.
I think it's moreso that we are forced into working our asses off in a system of perpetual growth and concentration of wealth. I think many of us would love to take days off and take breaks but most people cannot afford to.
I also believe many people would be happy to consume less or at least consume in a more sustainable fashion but the option to do so is often not available to us. The system favours business that produces disposable things that don't last and promotes a fashion of always having something new and different.
So the change really needs to happen on a systemic rather than an individual level. We need to change the incentive structures under which we are all living and operating. Unfortunately, those with the most power right now have the most to gain by keeping things the way they are, so they would have to be deposed in some way first.
It's interesting that the image used for the article, from the windward side of Oahu, shows only invasive species (or maybe that's the point). Ironically, the biodiversity of plants on the Hawaiian Islands has increased tremendously since the arrival of man. The graphic shows 79 species of plant lost. Anyone that's been to Hawaii knows there are far more than 79 introduced plant species.
I'm not saying this is a good thing by any means, but it's interesting to see that novel forests of invasive species are still maligned even if they contain a greater number of species/area than what was displaced. If anyone is interested in this comment, I can unearth at least one paper that examines these values.
In the end, I suppose we value the total number of different species in existence, and as that number decreases, there is a Great Loss. Yet I do like to mull over why conservationists favor native species that are struggling to survive over the introduced that are flourishing, often at great economic cost to control said invasives.
Note: this comment only considers plant species, which probably makes it very uninformed and bad. Take it with a grain of salt.
> The graphic shows 79 species of plant lost. Anyone that's been to Hawaii knows there are far more than 79 introduced plant species.
But these two things are not directly comparable. On the one hand, you have species that have gone extinct -- no individuals of these species are known to grow in the wild anymore. This does not count species that are declining towards extinction. On the other hand, most lists of introduced plants for Hawaii only count species that are invasive. These are plants that not only grow and reproduce in Hawaii, but whose populations are increasing.
While species diversity as a whole in the Hawaiian islands is likely increasing, due to introduced species, the diversity at smaller spatial scales is likely decreasing as endemics become rarer.
> But these two things are not directly comparable
Correct. You simplified my comment nicely here (though I'm trying to find papers about smaller scales):
> While species diversity as a whole in the Hawaiian islands is likely increasing, due to introduced species, the diversity at smaller spatial scales is likely decreasing as endemics become rarer.
How do conservationists make value judgements in cases like this?
Recycling has a negligible impact on this problem. The big areas that could actually make a difference are: Power generation, mass transit, and food production.
But we don't seem to have the political will to fix any of these areas. Pushing ineffective solutions that require effort from consumers is an unfortunately effective trick to keep people distracted.
I think recycling is overrated. Even with very high compliance it wouldn't make a dent in carbon emissions. Transport, heating/cooling and farming constitute the majority of carbon emissions. At worst I think recycling is a costly distraction from more important measures.
Regardless of whether humanity caused this or not, we ought to be sequencing the DNA of all of these species in the event that we survive the climate shift.
If the conservative talk radio is right that humans aren't causing a shift or that there isn't a shift at all, great! We'll still want to be able to study the DNA of these extinct species to improve our understanding of living systems.
Sure. But thats a false equivalency and you know it. When pretend that because species do go extinct in nature, and humans are currently causing extinction, that the two are even remotely close to the same thing is a clear attempt at disinformation.
There have been other times when plants have gone extinct at the current rate. They usually involved city+ size asteroids.
Plants, animals, humans are just a disaster for biodiversity.
> Most extinctions have occurred in the last 114 years (that is, since 1900; Table 1).
> modern extinction rates for vertebrates varied from 8 to 100 times higher than the background rate
> for example, that under the 2 E/MSY background rate, 9 vertebrate extinctions would have been expected since 1900; however, under the conservative rate, 468 more vertebrates have gone extinct than would have if the background rate had persisted across all vertebrates under that period. Specifically, these 468 species include 69 mammal species, 80 bird species, 24 reptiles, 146 amphibians, and 158 fish.
All that matters is that unlike during the age of the dinosaurs, this time around there are humans that can catalogue dead and dying species for analysis in some potential future.
It doesn't matter if the climate is or isn't shifting.
It doesn't matter if humans did or didn't cause this.
It doesn't matter if the species will go extinct or will evolve to survive in some form.
Depends on how you define legitimate. Also, given today's research "climate", I imagine publishing a dissenting opinion is tantamount to career suicide. Good luck getting funded to prove anything. Particularly considering how politicized climate science has become.
Which is unfortunate, because skepticism should be a part of healthy scientific practice - and I think it'd be a stretch to say that climate science isn't subject to the same problems, like p-value abuse and selective publishing, that plague other non-experimental, purely model and statistics based fields. No one is going to publish negative results when they can tweak any of hundreds of model variables to force agreement with data.
I think a valid proxy for bias is the relative lack of publications discussing possible benefits of climate change.
> I imagine publishing a dissenting opinion is tantamount to career suicide.
Opinions are not publishable. It is so damaging to propagate the idea that some guys over there have one opinion, and then some other guys have a different opinion, and there's really no way to tell which is correct, and that this is what science is about. Discussions about climate science in the public sphere are politicized, but only because of massive disinformation campaigns by those who stand to profit less if reasonable countermeasures were implemented.
> I think a valid proxy for bias is the relative lack of publications discussing possible benefits of climate change.
We might go extinct but if we don't, it might be pleasant to vacation in the arctic? Is this the sort of scientific claim you have in mind?
> We might go extinct but if we don't, it might be pleasant to vacation in the arctic? Is this the sort of scientific claim you have in mind?
I think GP means things like "all that potentially fertile land that will thaw off" that sometimes show up, e.g. wrt. Siberia. Personally, even if true, I suspect it doesn't compensate for the farming land lost - and even if it did, we won't be likely to survive the effects of mass migration and conflict for these lands.
>We might go extinct but if we don't, it might be pleasant to vacation in the arctic? Is this the sort of scientific claim you have in mind?
This is the sort of hysteria that results from one sided science, and makes it less likely for laymen to take climate science seriously. The worst case models predict extinction and so called tipping points. But, if you read the IPCC reports, the further you move down the chain of journalism->IPCC summary->literature, the less certain these catastrophic interpretations become.
>Opinions are not publishable
Sure, perhaps a poor choice of word. Let's call it dissenting literature.
>Discussions about climate science in the public sphere are politicized
You don't think that the same politicization could play at least a small role in the direction that climate science is being taken? These scientists are human beings, after all, and the problem space is broad enough to easily ask only questions that align with certain popular notions.
Not to mention, as someone who has dealt with geoscientific (though not climate) models, given a sufficiently complex model it's generally possible to obtain any desired (consciously or otherwise) result while simultaneously fitting historic and calibration data.
The problem is that skepticism, to lay people, has been equated to "it's not true! Ergo, we don't need to do anything".
Meaning that it -should- be career suicide. Because the evidence in favor is so large, that it's incredibly unethical to give climate change deniers more credibility
The problem with that idea is that we haven't cataloged all of the plant and animal species. There are many species that are going extinct before we've even identified them.
How do we know they exist if we haven't seen them? Is this based on an estimate of the rate of extinction of known species and the rate of discovery of new species?
Why we still place human beings as something alien to nature... If we're wrecking the stuff out of the biosphere may be that's just what we're meant to do as a species. It's sad, but it might be something hard coded in our purpose in this big unknown game of existence.
To take the same thought one step further, why place our desire to preserve nature as something alien to nature? If we’re worrying about the wrecking of the biosphere perhaps that’s also what we are meant to do.
Humanity, as far as we know, is the only species that is aware of the impact it has on its habitat. It is also the only species we are aware of that has come to the realization that its habitat might be the only one like it in the universe, and that destroying the unique life that is found there is beyond tragic.
From a purely scientific standpoint: there is no purpose. Fundamentally, life exists because it can. It reproduces because only life forms that reproduce survive. Wrecking the biosphere is "hard coded" in the sense that we, are a species, are selfish and short-sighted. We just happen to be more capable than other species, we have technology, and the means to radically transform this planet over relatively short time spans.
Over a longer time horizon, the strategy we're employing might backfire on us. As every other species, we'll have to adapt or perish. Overpopulation and the destruction of our own habitat are not viable. I'm hopeful because solar energy and battery storage technology is improving rapidly, while also getting cheaper. We are definitely causing some damage, but ecological awareness is also improving. We have a decent shot at reaching some kind of equilibrium where we take better care of our planet, so that it can sustain us.
"Kolbert then explains that global trade and travel are creating a virtual "Pangaea", in which species of all kinds are being redistributed beyond historical geographic barriers. This furthers the first chapter's idea that invasive species are a mechanism of extinction."