Today, there is a new story
on Livescience.com entitled “Quarter of Species Gone by 2050.” It
is just stated as a fact. Guess why all these species are going
to die out.
You guessed it: Global warming. This story was disseminated via Yahoo and I am sure other major sources for information. Plenty of people now will not take this as fact.
The story says “scientists predict that a quarter of the world’s
plant and vertebrate animal species would face extinction by 2050.”
Really?
All scientists predict this? How about a consensus? Um, no,
not exactly. This alarming headline is based on one study from a “Contributed Paper”
in the journal Conservation Biology. Five authors wrote the paper
(my guess is that this is a small % of all the scientists in the
world). Two of the authors are from environmental groups: the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Conservation International.
Couldn’t
they have said “the report’s scientists” or “five scientists” and also
had a more reasonable title? Yes, but it would lose its effect.
Certainly,
they did some investigating and looked into what other scientists
thought of this paper, especially given the magnitude of the
conclusion. They did interview an assistant professor at the
University of Toronto and the chief climate scientist at WWF.
They actually praised the study. The only problem is they are two
of the authors.
I am going to do a new paper called “All Puppies
Will Die Unless Global Warming Continues.” For some reason, I
don’t think Livescience.com and media outlets will just take that as
fact.