Posted on 05/18/2011 8:17:47 PM PDT by 1010RD
A group of researchers agrees that Earth is facing a mass extinction event, but they are daring to overturn dogma on how fast species are disappearing. The researchers say they have discovered why and they recommend a different way to calculate the rates.
SNIP
We don't even know how many species actually exist, though it is known that biodiversity is declining drastically. Previously estimated extinction rates — some experts thought half the world's plant and animal species would be gone by 2000 — haven't matched what's actually been observed. Other researchers have claimed the difference originates from the lag time between when a species' habitat becomes unsustainable and when the species begins to disappear.
The researchers believe that the overestimation is actually due to how we derive these estimates in the first place.
SNIP
To prove a species is extinct, however, one has to find the last remaining example of that animal. And Hubbell and He explain that the amount of habitat needed to find the last individual is much larger than the amount needed to find the first.
In fact, the researchers mathematically prove in their paper that the habitat loss required for extinction is always larger, usually much larger — up to 160 percent — than the area required for discovery of a species.
SNIP
Another method, called the endemics-area relationship, is more logical, the researchers say.
They tested the two methods using computer models and with known species, including rain-forest plants and birds in North America, and saw that the endemics-area model is a better fit to the actual data.
The researchers warn, though, that this shouldn't lead to complacency about habitat loss. Many species are still going extinct because humans are destroying and disrupting their habitats.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Good and short article once again demonstrating that design of experiments is weak when mingled with funding and political agendas.
Of potential interest to your list, when you wake up. ;-]
Brilliant deduction "scientists/experts", good to know your on top of things.
"Biodiversity".....how I hate that word, too close to diversity!
There is no money for species that aren't dying.
Conflict of interest, but hey, that's science!
This is not what 'extinction' means in the all important politicized scientific slum-world of the environmental wackoes. In that feeble twilight world of assholery, "extinction" means that a local population has disappeared--like from a river, say, or a valley. The same animal/plant may be flourishing a few miles away but if they are no longer present in a given locale, then the envrio-nazis will say they are "extinct."
This, btw, is the language and definition of extinction used by the Endangered Species Act (ESA,) and is the reason these whorehouse versions of scientists get away with such lies.
You can look it up.
Are you saying that the leftist Greenies are lying?
Wow, that’s never happened before.
So, basically, if I don't have anymore beer in my fridge, my beer isn't extinct, I'm just too lazy to get more?
Excellent article, it’s not science, it’s an agenda. Greenies always twist what little “data” to fit their agenda to control every aspect of our lives.
Biodiversity. Wherever that word appears in the context of a region, it is usually followed by a land grab.
THe only species I want to go into extinction are communists, islamis jihadists/fundamentalists, nazis, Democrats and liberals.
Not just on the Endangered Feces list - pure extinction. Darwin would approve.
Besides, I can’t take supposedly educated people who use the phrase “go extinct” anyway. The proper phrase is “become extinct”. So, as long as they can’t speak properly how can I imagine they actually have an education? Idiots.
If we’re not guilty, fearful or ashamed they can’t control us.
Biodiversity joins a long list of liberal/progressive memes without meaning.
What is sustainable? What is renewable? These nonsense words rule our world. Words without meaning mean whatever ‘we’ want them to mean whenever ‘we’ want them to.
Diversity, tolerance, and even hate and love are twisted all out of normalcy.
Which I suppose is the goal.
I hear you, but actually the more I read history the more I realize that these nuts have been with us, in one form or another, since the dawn of time.
Has there ever been an era of human history without maniacal control-freaks with a slaver’s agenda?
It is weird looking.
“What is sustainable?”
Nothing.
Add in the fossil record and the history of life on earth is extinction. Which way do they want it - natural or unnatural?
Exactly.
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