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Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this a bit exaggerated?

Here's an estimate that shows one third of all species going extinct by 2070 https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/21/weather/species-extinction-cl... And "In a worst-case scenario, that number could rise to over 55%."

This protected death of millions of species, 50 years out from now, is based on an analysis of 538 of them.

That sounds woefully inadequate information for something as complex as what this model is trying predict.

That's like predicting the weather from only a handful of temperature sensors, or doing patient studies with N=4.

If you select the proper species then you can make fairly accurate deductions due to cascading effects of the food chain.

Key indicators and foundational species like coral are effective metrics.

A mass die offs of coral, which is currently happening, will decimate ocean ecosystems and have a cascading effect on the rest of the world.

People have been saying this for decades, its not new news. Its just inconvenient and impacts shareholders.

Luckily no one is able to predict most anything beyond 4 years in the future. Ask any economist or epidemiologist.

This is false.

We have been accurately modeling climate change for over 50 years now.

Also, epidemiologist have been predicting a coronavirus outbreak specifically for about 10 years, and a larger global pandemic for about 100.

You can choose to ignore science if you want, but that doesn't mean people havent been warning us.

So they have been wrong for about 100 years. Great record.

I predict the sun will run out of steam and we are all gonna die. Furthermore, some volcanos will erupt too.

And we have not been 'accurately predicting the climate for 50 years' : about 50 years ago, there were worries about a new ice age.

In what sense? Seems realistic to me. The past ten years alone have been terrible for extinction; we lost about 500 species. And there is a feedback loop with these sorts of things.

You're not accounting for adaptation, which nature is very good at.

Not at the timescale humans are forcing.

Things will probably fill in niches later, but there will still be a lot fewer species by the end of the century, which is what the original comment said.

Evolution takes time.

We are much better at consumption than nature is at adaptation.

Do you have a source for that fishy number?

"Since 1900, 543 species of vertebrates have gone extinct. And those are just the ones we know of. In the past century, we have witnessed the disappearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), the Round Island burrowing boa (Bolyeria multocarinata), the laughing owl (Ninox albifacies), the sea mink (Neovison macrodon), and the golden toad (Incilius periglenes), to name a few."

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/less-than-a-thousand-remai...

@Omnitaus, you seem to be dead? Check the thread in incognito.

“In the past decade, 467 species have been declared extinct (though they might have gone extinct in decades prior), according to the global authority on species conservation status, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN.”

https://biobrief.org/species-the-world-lost-2010-2019/

And how many new species arose?

Is that an attempt at a counter argument?

Burden of proof is on you if you want to make a claim like that.

I think we can debate magnitude, but not direction.

I feel recently it's been a long time since I came across examples of where nature is increased or restored. Every time it's about nature disappearing.

Beware of availability bias here.

Bad news is reported far more often than good.

There are signs of the planet greening as a result of higher CO2, for instance.

That doesn't diminish the potential damage, but it's not all bad.

The largest mass extinction in history was due to rising 02 levels.

Its the rate of change, not the change itself that causes mass extinctions.

The only example I can think of is the area around Chernobyl seeing a return of many species.

Which just goes to show that deadly radiation is better for the environment than the presence of humans.

Not really, we have lost 50% of the life in our oceans over the last 30 years.

Current trends show major ecological collapse within our lifetimes.

Better to act like it isn't.

Care to offer your own diagnosis, or just here to frown at people?

I'm old, I tried over my lifetime and failed.

Give it a shot if you care. Education isn't the problem, it's the will to sacrifice our comfort for a better world.

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