The rapid depletion of Earth’s biodiversity indicates that the planet is in the early stages of its sixth mass extinction of life since becoming habitable 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study published in Science.
The UN stated some years ago that we were 'losing' 200 species a day, which sounds incredible. I wasn't able to find out how they arrived at that figure.
It now looks more accurate. But are there really only 71,000 species on the planet? That's what the article says. That sounds low.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
emordnilap wrote:The UN stated some years ago that we were 'losing' 200 species a day, which sounds incredible. I wasn't able to find out how they arrived at that figure.
It now looks more accurate. But are there really only 71,000 species on the planet? That's what the article says. That sounds low.
I think it is too low E. From what I have read it's nearer to 9 million.
However, I might be tempted to qualify that number down somewhat by assuming that many of those species are members of species-families that are more or less the same/similar. Also, a significant number of them will be microbial/bacterial. Not that these forms of life are unimportant (indeed, in terms of providing the scaffolding on which all other life is built, they are crucial). Just that in terms of the environment that humans directly inhabit and experience the number of species will undoubtedly be considerably lower than 8.7 million.
The global estimate of the number of species keeps going up, as we get better and better at differentiating smaller and smaller life forms. The classified number for the number of beetle species alone is 350,000 and no slowdown in the rate of identification. Now the number of identified bacterial species is rising rapidly given modern gene sequencing techniques, and could well outnumber all other species, which is hardly surprising given they have been around for longer.
Ultimately, at the bacterial level the definition of species becomes less useful, as they often end up swapping genetic material either directly, or via viral infections.
There is little humanity can do to save itself or other species. It can't stop itself growing and will soon face crises when it exceeds global carrying capacity (which in my understanding faces imminent contraction to a likely severe degree). Humanity as an entity will probably survive but much of the population will not.
