The Claimed ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Is Over Before It Began
If man made CO2 emissions have any effect at all on extinctions — it stops them happening
New research looked at 500 years worth of extinctions and concludes that species loss peaked about a century ago.
Far from the rate accelerating as we pour carbon dioxide into the sky, fewer species are disappearing now than forty or fifty years ago.
Kristen Saban and John Wiens considered data on as many as two million species. They specifically analyzed some 912 plants and animals that became extinct in the last 500 years.
Many of the doom and gloom forecasts took extinction rates from long ago and extrapolated them mindlessly forward, as climate modelers are want to do.
Extinction rates have slowed across many plant and animal groups, study shows
EurekaAlert
“To our surprise, past extinctions are weak and unreliable predictors of the current risk that any given group of animals or plants is facing,” said lead author Saban, who recently graduated from the U of A and is currently a doctoral student at Harvard University.
Humans have wiped out species, but mostly by bringing in rats, pigs and goats to isolated islands:
Extinction rates varied strongly among groups, and extinctions were most frequent among mollusks, such as snails and mussels, and vertebrates, but relatively rare among plants and arthropods.
Most extinctions were of species that were confined to isolated islands, like the Hawaiian Islands. On continents, most extinctions were in freshwater habitats. Island extinctions were most frequently related to invasive species, but habitat loss was the most important cause (and current threat) in continental regions.
Many species appeared to go extinct on islands because of predators and competitors brought by humans, such as rats, pigs and goats.
The researchers could not find any evidence suggesting ‘climate change’ was increasing the rate of extinction:
Somewhat unexpectedly, the researchers found that in the last 200 years, there was no evidence for increasing extinction from climate change.
“That does not mean that climate change is not a threat,” Wiens said. “It just means that past extinctions do not reflect current and future threats.”
It seems like a very comprehensive study. Given it’s importance, I’m sure the UN will be delighted. It’s a wonder they didn’t commission a study just like this 30 years ago…
There are many reasons for extinctions but ‘climate change’ barely rates a mention, which is not at all surprising given that every species alive today has lived through hotter times, colder times and times that changed faster than today.
‘Man-made climate change’ is nothing compared to asteroids and volcanoes.
The best way to protect biodiversity is to understand what actually causes extinctions, not to shamelessly exploit the threat of them as a political tool for power and profits.
Shame on the UN, the ‘greens’ and Greenpeace.
And in the end, rich nations protect the environment better than poor ones. The best thing we can do for the Mountain pygmy possum is to protect our GDP. Poverty has terrible effects on national parks and land use.
As I wrote five years ago — there’s only been one supposed mammal extinction due to ‘climate change’ — a rat on a sandbar:
Let’s get a grip on the current state of the Sixth Mass Extinction — so far the only mammal extinction officially due to “man-made” climate change was a colony of little brown rats which had washed up on a sandy spit south of Papua New Guinea.
The “island” is so small it has no fresh water, no trees, and the highest point is all of 3 meters above the high tide mark. One king wave could have wiped out the colony. Relatives of these rats live in Papua New Guinea, and presumably more rats will wash up there again sometime and the cycle will start over.
As of 2019, that was the only actual mammal anyone can name as an extinction “caused by climate change”.
As of 2025, there doesn’t appear to be any others.
REFERENCES
Saban K.E. and Wiens J. (2025) Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals” by , 15 October 2025, Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1717
See more here joannenova.com.au
Bold emphasis added
Header image: National Geographic
crackpot
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Looking at the bar charts, they list ‘climate change’ extinctions in 1800! Caused by what, horse farts? I mean ‘climate change’ means carbon, right?
This reminds me of a man with COVID dying in a motorcycle crash and being listed as a COVID death. Or how about reporters lammenting ‘fishing boats’ being blown up in the Carribbean?
Stupid leftist word games, aka bulls**t.
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