Nature crisis: Humans ‘threaten 1m species with extinction’-BBC
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
Jaime Jessop responds to the latest UN report on bio-diversity:
The BBC has just reported on the newly published Summary for Policy Makers of the as yet unpublished UN 1800 page global assessment of nature compiled by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The two day old ‘climate crisis’, so recently [not] declared by the British government has already been knocked off the top spot as far as existential crises are concerned and is now officially languishing in 3rd place, in the Second Division. Land use change is now Premier Division. However, unlike action on the ‘climate crisis’, which has become a $1.5 trillion industry, action on land use change has been negligible to non-existent. Even hunting (legal and non-legal) and the direct exploitation of wildlife is one division above climate change in terms of the threat to biodiversity. Bugger all has been done to address these threats too, relatively speaking, during the last three decades, whereas trillions has been thrown at ineffective, and socially, economically and environmentally damaging attempts to limit global warming to 2C (and latterly 1.5C). I warned about this 3 years ago.
They just expect us to ignore this devastating indictment of international policy, shrug our shoulders and now accept the new recommendations for ‘saving the planet’ (eating less meat and getting rid of your dog!). It’s not going to happen. People will be angry – very angry – at being so dreadfully misled for so long by finger-in-the-pie climate doom merchants and they are going to be even more sceptical about the claims of imminent catastrophe now being advanced by the new merchants of doom at the UN.
Full story here.
Meanwhile, Donna Laframboise adds her twopennorth:
Here we ago again. For some time, I’ve warned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a template, that the United Nations is up to the same tricks elsewhere.
Today, in Paris, an IPCC clone known as the IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – will announce the completion of an 1,800-page report.
Jonathan Watts, the UK Guardian‘s global environment editor, has already told us everything we need to know about this ‘IPCC for Nature‘.
Under the headline Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk, UN scientists to warn, he insists this report was written by “The world’s leading scientists.” Funny, that’s how compliant, gullible journalists described IPCC personnel. For years and years. Until I began to notice that some of those involved were graduate students in their 20s.
Watts further tells us that:
The final wording of the summary for policymakers is being finalised in Paris by a gathering of experts and government representatives before the launch on Monday, but the overall message is already clear… [bold added by me]
In other words, as happens at the IPCC, scientists are recruited to write a report. Afterward, they draft a summary known as the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Then politicians and bureaucrats representing national governments attend a plenary meeting where the summary gets examined line-by-line and rewritten.
More here.
While we can all see the effects that mankind is having on the natural world, it strikes me that nobody has anything constructive to say about possible solutions.
The BBC report makes the usual references to eating less meat and catching less fish, but neither addresses the real issue of how we feed umpteen billion people and stop their standards of living returning to the middle ages.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
With the UN it’s always ‘worse than we thought’. So predictable.
The clue is in the name – UN. So UN scientists blah blah. Or written correctly – unscientists blah blah. The UN is an UNnecessary nihilist parasite.
I see that they are bleating that all of this was written in Paris as though that is meaningful. France has not been a factor in the scientific community since the late 1700’s.
The well known alarmist, Sir Bob Watson, is behind this yet again. He moves from one alarmist UN role to another.
As usual in Fear-campaigns the essence is half-truths and presentation. There are estimated to be over 1 trillion species on earth and species extinction is part of nature’s cruelty or fairness depending on which side of the extinction-fence you sit. So, is threatening 1 b (a fraction of one percent) of species unusual in natural history?
Man has been a major species-eliminator for centuries and we still eliminate species that we do not like quite happily.
Do not expect any logical or scientific debate to occur as this like pollution and climate-change are settled-science to the believers; who have so far been able to totally dominate the meja and governments.
100000 species?? Name them – every one – and the 1,000,000 corresponding evidential studies used as evidence. This is another GIGO computer study, not worth the cost of the computer it was written on. Pure bollocks.
“The BBC report makes the usual references to eating less meat and catching less fish …”
… but strangely never seems to implore the half of the world’s population which depend on rice for more than 20% of their daily calories to eat less of it.
But then methane accounts for just 0.000175% of the atmosphere!
I’d made a comment in the “About” thread on this earlier. The same papers drooling over the latest crisis are now waiting with bated breath for the appearance of the new royal baby and the marketing opportunities arising from the clothes he’ll be wearing. Sustainability? What’s that?
The only time I have been pleased to welcome yet another royal baby, as it diluted the “extinction crisis” a little.
No doubt the recent Insectgeddon paper will feature heavily, the paper that was effectively trashed on BBC R4 More or Less, the paper that by total coincidence was published just in time to pass the citation rule for reports from UN Priesthoods.
Way back in 2006,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earth-faces-catastrophic-loss-of-species-5329887.html 20 July 2006
“Life on earth is facing a major crisis with thousands of species threatened with imminent extinction – a global emergency demanding urgent action. This is the view of 19 of the world’s most eminent biodiversity specialists, who have called on governments to establish a political framework to save the planet.
Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal “background” extinction rate – and say this is all due to human activity.
Anne Larigauderie, executive director of Diversitas, a Paris-based conservation group, said that the situation was now so grave that an international body with direct links with global leaders was essential.
The scientists believe that a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could help governments to tackle the continuing loss of species.”
Or ‘Hey! Why can’t we have a taxpayer funded free-loading gang just like the climate bunch?’
I second that!
One million species going extinct? Preposterous!!!
I just looked for the number of species on earth and saw figures ranging from 1.7 million to 8.7 (scientists estimate) to a whopping 100 million. Now there is a window for you.
There is also a figure, which I have seen before, that 99% of all species which ever lived are now extinct. And we did not do it.
Not only am I skeptical on man-caused climate change, I am skeptical on the UN/IPCC assertions on pending doom–unless we can find a soon to impact asteroid.
It seems to me that what is often discussed about species diversity is just model speculation, not actual taxonomically named extinct species, but a catalog list of named species considered as endangered or threatened…a different taxonomic analysis. Thus, the question should be about those millions said to be disappearing rapidly. Where is the reliable taxonomic information about those named species that have actually disappeared? Basically, what taxonomists should be trying to get at is the real NET gain or loss of diversity. New species are described every year.
See my comment upthread. Just what I asked.
In the 1970’s I worked on a short-term appointment at the Smithsonian Institution’s Endangered Plant Species Project. Previously I had been at the Smithsonian Institution’s US National Herbarium–our version of Kew.
The “head” of the project had just retired from the Dept. of Agriculture as an entomologist (insects) and was taking a vacation prior to assuming his position as head of the Endangered Plant Species Project. When I came on board I found a number of serious problems. One, he did not understand the significance of a tool we used in the herbarium: “The Gray Card Index” (in honor of Harvard botanist Asa Gray, author of Gray’s Manual of Botany). He told me to use that to validate which species were considered “good species.” The Gray Card Index was used to assert and find citations for those species which had been validly published. That was it. It could not be used to determine if a species was considered valid today or had been put into synonymy. Further, I was to use the US National Herbarium to determine plant distribution. Now it was widely known that the Smithsonian had turned attention to New World Tropics shortly into the 20th century. Therefore, North American collections were old, not being added to and not borrowed so much for annotation. Further, the list I was given was full of sub-specific categories, i.e. sub-species, varieties, and forms. Now you are on shaky ground as these are levels which are much quibbled over.
Some years later, I mentioned this to a colleague from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte while attending meetings of southeastern botanists. His reply was that these sub-specific entities were still on the endangered species list and he and his students were getting government grants to study them and see if they warranted being separated from the species. My tax dollars at work again……
George Carlin Saving the Planet
Whats that saying “There is nothing new under the Sun”
I already knew the IPCC was a political body but this article indicated that it was far, far worse than I thought – quite an eye opener!
It’s interesting how many of the same sentiments were expressed nearly fifty years ago at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. One outcome was that, whereas industrialisation and technological development by developed countries were seen as related to environmental problems and were therefore discouraged, the opposite was true for developing countries where most environmental problems were seen as “caused by under-development”. Developing countries were therefore encouraged to “direct their efforts to development”.
And they did. Boosted by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change allowing developing countries to give overriding priority to economic development, CO2 emissions increased by 125% from 1972 to 2016. An interesting example of the law of unintended consequences.
Links:
http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20150314024203/http%3A//www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid%3D97%26articleid%3D1503
https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/CO2-emissions?compareTo=CN,IN
What a surprise – summary before the report. Just like the climate crooks, the summary will be a political document that changes the report. I doubt there is any person of repute involved. I think they have learnt their lesson with the IPCC when they sued to get their names removed from the doctored report as it was inaccurate rubbish.
Over on JoNova , Patrick Moore points out that this twaddle stems largely from Harvard Professor Edward Wilson’s computer which claims 50000 species go extinct every year. Including many species that remain to be discovered .
I am aware that the smallpox virus has been allegedly eliminated.
Very sad.
And more recently some mutant rat living on a sand bar off the coast of Papua New Guinea. This one counts against this year’s tally so ‘Professor’ Wilson should be invited to name the other 49999.
Failing which, his hard drive should be rammed where the sun don’t shine.
This has been brewing in the swamp for quite a while, here is the agenda and biographical details from a November 2018 meeting organised by the NAS and Royal Society marketing/propaganda departments. It looks like a whose-who of swamp creatures, including our old friend Camille Parmesan, described as a “Make Our Planet Great Again” scholar:
Click to access sackler-forum-2018-agenda.pdf
Subject to medical advice, and a precautionary increase in blood pressure medication, we can hear the stance of the BBC Politburo at 3:30 pm this afternoon, on R4 “Costing the Earth”.
Sorry, they broadcast instead a shameless 30-minute Party Political Promotion on behalf of the Green Party, pointing the finger at economic progress and the private sector.
Paul: I posted a comment here two hours ago, but it hasn’t appeared. When I try again I get this message: “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”
Please investigate – thanks.
It was in the spam box for some reason!
Quite how the BBC convince themselves this is not fake news is beyond me. You have to assume that once again these are saintly scientists simply doing their saintly best for the world. Strange that every right-wing Think Tank and commentator gets noted as such and generally therefore ignored or given a health warning, but these total eco-nutters, pushing their own agendas without a shred of actual science to back them up, get treated like revered prophets.
Why would they try, when the subject is so on message?
An extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence
… Do they miss any evidence ?
… Is the story PR or is it news ?
Yep news reports shout “one million species will be lost”
.. Yet omit the context of “out of how many?”
Therefore the narrative is PR not news.
Thanks Paul. The ‘evidence’ for an unfolding mass extinction event – the so called sixth mass extinction – is every bit as convincing as the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming and yes, the proposed solutions to both ‘catastrophes’ are surprisingly similar. As Donna Laframboise points out, it’s the same UN template. The difference is, there is an actual problem with land use, hunting and the exploitation of wildlife; species are being pushed to the brink, but we’re not in the throes of the worst extinction since the dinosaurs winked out of existence and the proposed globalist ‘solutions’ to this imaginary apocalypse will do little to address the real issues on the ground, which national governments should be addressing and the international community should be encouraging and supporting them to do so. We don’t need the UN pontificating about “visions of a good life”, “inequality, justice and inclusion”, building a “global sustainable economy”, globalist taxation and “steering away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth”.
Summary for Policymakers
Summary should be for non policymakers. Policymakers should know the damn details, else not be making policy.
More UN PORN!!
It’s that ol’ Genesis Chapter Three-thing again ….
and the ‘Lizard That Lost its Legs’ smiles and slithers away.