Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the 2014 book The sixth extinction: an unnatural story, places the future of humanity at a dystopian level typical of the most catastrophic science fiction films. Maybe you're right, but there's no solid evidence that this is the case either.
The book also quotes the anthropologist Richard Leakey, co-author of the 1995 book The sixth extinction: the future of life and humanity, which also claims that the rate of extinction of living species is accelerating. But this and other similar statements are based on a model created in 1967.
Species-area model
evolutionary biologists Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson developed the species-area model in 1967 and is based on the assumption that as more species compete for declining resources, fewer would survive. But the model was incorrect, as he suggested in 2011 A study one published in the magazine Nature.
Besides, Direct observation contradicts the most dire estimates. For example: more new plant species have emerged in Europe over the last 300 years of those that have been documented as extinct in the same period. In fact, if the model were true, half of the world's species They should have been extinct by now. during the last two hundred years.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 6 % of the species are critically endangered, 9 % are in danger of extinction and 12 % are vulnerable to extinction. Only 0.8 % of the 112,432 species of plants, animals and insects included in their data have, in fact, become extinct since the year 1500. That's a rate of less than two species lost each year, for an annual extinction rate of 0.001 %.
The Earth has suffered at least five mass extinctions throughout its history, but ironically, after each of them, a growth in the biodiversity that already existed has followed. As abounds in it Michael Shellenberg in his book There is no apocalypse:
The vast increase in biodiversity over the past 100 million years vastly exceeds species losses in past mass extinctions. The number of genera, a more powerful measure of biodiversity than species counts alone, has thus tripled over the course of this time period.
To combat the problem of the environment, therefore, we must not resort to alarmism, extremism or religious behavior, nor to exaggerate for the sake of moving: the data must be presented in a solid and robust way so that no denier throws them down, and above all all with humility not enough to accept that we do not know everything that is happening or what will happen (and that must be taken into account when establishing a cost-benefit calculation on what measures to adopt).
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The news
Species are not becoming extinct as fast as some apocalyptic voices point out
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.