Don't believe 'um:
Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said.Patience is a virtue. Yet liberals stress that evolution teaches that species adapt--except to global warming. Besides, caving to climate change is standing with . . . Osama bin Laden.
A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well.
Some of the more reclusive creatures managed to hide from sight for 80 years only to reappear within four years of being officially named extinct in the wild. . .
Dr Diana Fisher, of the University of Queensland, Australia, compiled a list of all mammals declared extinct since the 16th century or which were flagged up as missing in scientific papers.
"We identified 187 mammal species that have been missing since 1500," she wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"In the complete data-set, 67 species that were once missing have been rediscovered.
More than a third of mammal species that have been classified as extinct or possibly extinct, or flagged as missing, have been rediscovered."
Mammals that suffered from loss of habitat were the most likely to have been declared extinct and then rediscovered, she said.
Species spread out over larger areas were also more likely to be wrongly classified as extinct.
Suggesting again that "climate change can be solved by applying (Jonah) Goldberg's rule: 'Don’t just do something! Stand there.'"
(via Planet Gore, ScienceNOW, Power Line)
2 comments:
More critical to this folderol is the term species -- in much of populist literature (and even some purportedly technical literature), the term species is bandied about when what is actually meant is variety.
The term species is specifically meant to identify two different, non-viable progeny producing creatures -- two different dog breeds are both the species "dog" because even a chihuahua and a great dane can nominally be mated to produce a "great chihuahua". A horse and a donkey can be mated, too, but the offspring, called a "mule", is almost always utterly sterile and unable to reproduce. Hence the horse and the donkey are of different species.
On the other hand, the "Florida Panther" is on the "endangered species" list.
The problem with this is, as you should grasp instantly in a moment, that the Florida Panther isn't species, it's a variety.
The justification for that proposition is that one of the "approaches" to helping save the "species" is to mate it with the Georgia Panther....
Ah, yeah, so, one must ask: are the counts of Georgia Panthers being included in the "species numbers" for the Florida Panther? I'd lay huge odds on the contrary.
A lot of this enviro-crap is exactly that, flummery and folderol utilizing the technical illiteracy of a generation of modern Public School victims, in order to time and time again promote specious (LOL) programs and ideas which in fact are nothing but flat-out con-jobs -- either by "advocacy" groups or government bureaucracies...
Good point, OBH!
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