A new and more precise recalculation of the normal background extinction rate — what it would be without the human presence — shows the rate to be lower, meaning that the rate of extinction in the human era is as much as 10 times worse than had been thought.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
The gravity of the world’s current extinction rate becomes clearer upon knowing what it was before people came along. A new estimate finds that species die off as much as 1,000 times more frequently nowadays than they used to. That’s 10 times worse than the old estimate of 100 times.
It’s hard to comprehend how bad the current rate of species extinction around the world has become without knowing what it was before people came along. The newest estimate is that the pre-human rate was 10 times lower than scientists had thought, which means that the current level is 10 times worse.
Extinctions are about 1,000 times more frequent now than in the 60 million years before people came along. The explanation from lead author Jurriaan de Vos, a Brown University postdoctoral researcher, senior author Stuart Pimm, a Duke University professor, and their team appears online in the journal Conservation Biology.
“This reinforces the urgency to conserve what is left and to try to reduce our impacts,” said de Vos, who began the work while at the University of Zurich. “It was very, very different before humans entered the scene.”
In absolute, albeit rough, terms the paper calculates a “normal background rate” of extinction of 0.1 extinctions per million species per year. That revises the figure of 1 extinction per million species per year that Pimm estimated in prior work in the 1990s. By contrast, the current extinction rate is more on the order of 100 extinctions per million species per year.
Orders of magnitude, rather than precise numbers are about the best any method can do for a global extinction rate, de Vos said. “That’s just being honest about the uncertainty there is in these type of analyses.”
The Latest on: eExtinction rate
[google_news title=”” keyword=”eExtinction rate” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: eExtinction rate
- Is your smartwatch really that smart? What doctors say about their accuracy plus an FDA warningon May 8, 2024 at 11:29 am
Doctors say they are still a long way from the accuracy of medical devices. Dr. Danny Noonan says fitness watches have a positive predictive factor of anywhere from 40 to 80 percent. FDA has issued a ...
- Is the End Near? Victor Davis Hanson Ponders Threat of Annihilationon May 8, 2024 at 7:45 am
Victor Davis Hanson tackles a topic related to military history in his new book, “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation.” ...
- Elon Musk Warns 'America Is Headed Towards Extinction' And Urges People To 'Have More Children' To Fight Off 'Population Collapse'on May 6, 2024 at 9:48 am
No one can call Elon Musk a hypocrite with his calls for people to "have more children." Musk himself is the father of 11 children with 3 different women. Two of his kids are with Shivon Zilis, an ...
- New mammal found in Colorado dates back to the period just after dinosaur extinctionon May 6, 2024 at 6:06 am
The researchers named the mammal Militocodon lydae in honor of two extraordinary contributors to the Corral Bluffs project.
- Galactic-Scale Extinctions: A Bleak Answer To The Universe's Great Silenceon April 30, 2024 at 6:09 am
"The gamma-ray burst model is therefore one where galactic scale mass-extinctions occur often. Ten billion years ago, the rate was quite high, perhaps every 3 million years," Annis explained.
- 'Moving Towards Extinction' Says Elon Musk As US Birth Rates Hit All-Time Lowon April 26, 2024 at 4:48 pm
In 2023, the United States experienced a significant decrease in birth rates, reaching a new record low, according to a CDC analysis of birth certificate data.
- America’s Record-Low Birth Rate Could Slow Economic Growth, Doom Social Securityon April 25, 2024 at 8:56 am
New federal data shows America’s birth rate hit new lows in 2023, part of a growing trend that is threatening to slow the economy and strap government programs that run on taxpayer money.
- Too hot for a lizard? Climate change quickens the pace of extinctionon April 19, 2024 at 7:20 am
That includes the likely extinction of the lizards Wiens has studied ... In a scientific paper, Wiens and his colleagues calculated the rate at which the lizards were dying, concluding that ...
- How interspecies competition led to a 'bizarre' pattern in our own evolutionary treeon April 16, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Speciation rates increase and then flatline, at which point extinction rates start to increase. This suggests that interspecies competition was a major evolutionary factor." However, when van ...
- Are we in a 6th mass extinction?on April 12, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Studies have estimated that species are currently going extinct between 100 and 1,000 times faster than the normal background rate of extinction, calculated based on when species evolve and go ...
via Bing News
