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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:14PM (3 children)
"Confirmation bias" is the tendency of researchers (and everyone else) to see what they think they will see, irrespective of what's there to be seen. This is why double-blind studies are often used in research: If the researchers don't know what to expect from each result, they can't overlay their personal expectations, and so the results are more likely to reflect reality.
With journalism, including "Expert statements", that's not possible, and so it's incumbent upon the reader to correct for any bias they detect.
The following statements:
Indicate a pro-eco-alarmism bias that the reader must remember to correct for.
The degree of bias is indicated by the degree of emotion (rather than reason) imparted by words and phrases like wiped out, annihilation, civilization-threatening emergency, massacre, destroying billions of years [of progress], the "sleepwalking" zinger, jeapordising the future [of life as we know it], and others.
The degree of bias indicated by the extremity and density of such statements in this case shows that the value of the article is probably just about nil unless you are studying "rantings of eco-alarmists," in which case it should be very instructive.
This is the same type of correction that you should apply to material that's prefixed with any emotional assertion, such as "Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the conspiracy-industrual complex!" and other such extreme claims.
Alarmist nonsense: Global warming is a hoax! Wake up sheeple!
Reasonable and likely: We should take better care of the environment, and we are doing a terrible job at it.
Alarmist nonsense: Wanton anthropocentric massacre threatens civilization!
Let the reader beware.
P.S. Civilization, by the way, is the art of living in cities, something a terrible massacre of wild animals would probably encourage, not discourage....
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:58AM
True, and one of the many core problems that needs addressing.
As for the alarmism, yes, the article is written in that tone and may be guilty of puffery and all the other emotional irrelevance, however, without some of this emotional appeal to the masses, the majority of the population will not respond to the cold hard facts.
The cold hard facts have been known for decades, the numbers are there, the surveys have been statistically significant for a long time... it's past time for the alarmism and past time for effective political action. We've "preserved" a couple of percent of the oceans.. that number needs to move from 2 or 3 up to 50, or even higher, fast.
https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org]
https://mission-blue.org/ [mission-blue.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:49AM (1 child)
Funny how you criticize the article for "emotion (rather than reason" but all your comment is nothing but an opinion, and obviously chock full of bias as evidenced by phrases like "eco-alarmism". You discredit no finding of the article and present no facts of your own. You're just pandering to the "business as usual" crowd.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:15PM
Actually, I quite suspect that once the bias is corrected for, the underlying facts (if not the alarmist conclusions) are either right or at least trending in that direction.
A problem is that there are many nuts who present "alternate facts" with zeal using emotional language to "sell" them because their information can't speak for itself.
When someone wraps actual science, data, or facts in that sort of nonsense, the whole assembly fades into the background of conspiracy theories instead of standing out, as it should, as actual reality, clearly distinguishable from nutty conspiracy theory.