Science Under Attack

An unprecedented decline in nature’s animal and plant species is supposedly looming, according to a UN body charged with developing a knowledge base for preservation of the planet’s biodiversity. In a dramatic announcement this month, the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) claimed that more species are currently at risk of extinction than at any time in human history and that the extinction rate is accelerating. But these claims are nonsensical hype, based on wildly exaggerated numbers that can’t be corroborated.

The IPBES report summary, which is all that has been released so far, states that “around 1 million of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species (75% of which are insects), are threatened with extinction.” Apart from the as-yet-unpublished report, there’s little indication of the source for these estimates, which are as mystifying as the classic magician’s rabbit produced from an empty hat.

It appears from the report summary that the estimates are derived from a much more reliable set of numbers – the so-called Red List of threatened species, compiled by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The IUCN, not affiliated with the UN, is an international environmental network highly regarded for its assessments of the world’s biodiversity, including evaluation of the extinction risk of thousands of species. The network includes a large number of biologists and conservationists.

Of an estimated 1.7 million species in total, the IUCN’s Red List has currently assessed just 98,512 species, of which it lists 27,159 or approximately 28% as threatened with extinction. The IUCN’s “threatened” description includes the categories “critically endangered,” “endangered” and “vulnerable.”

A close look at the IUCN category definitions reveals that “vulnerable” represents a probability of extinction in the wild of merely “at least 10% within 100 years,” and “endangered” an extinction probability of “at least 20% within a maximum of 100 years.” Both of these categories are hardly a major cause for concern, yet together they embrace 78% of the IUCN’s compilation of threatened species. That leaves just 22% or about 5,900 critically endangered species, whose probability of extinction in the wild is assessed at more than 50% over the next 100 years – high enough for these species to be genuinely at risk of becoming extinct.

But while the IUCN presents these numbers matter-of-factly without fanfare, the much more political IPBES resorts to unashamed hype by extrapolating the statistics beyond the 98,512 species that the IUCN has actually investigated, and by assuming a total number of species far in excess of the IUCN’s estimated 1.7 million. Estimates of just how many species the Earth hosts vary considerably, from the IUCN number of 1.7 million all the way up to 1 trillion. The IPBES number of 8 million species appears to be plucked out of nowhere, as does the 1 million threatened with extinction, despite the IPBES report being the result of a “systematic review” of 15,000 scientific and government sources.

According to IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson, the 1 million number was derived from the 8 million by what appears to be an arbitrary calculation based on the IUCN’s much lower numbers. The IPBES assumes a global total of 5.5 million insects – compared with the IUCN’s Red List estimate of 1.0 million – which, when subtracted from the 8 million grand total, leaves 2.5 million non-insect species. This 2.5 million is then multiplied by the IUCN 28% threatened rate, and the 5.5 million insects multiplied by a mysterious unspecified lower rate, to arrive at the 1 million species in danger. That far excedes the IUCN’s estimate of 27,159.

Not only does the IPBES take unjustified liberties with the IUCN statistics, but its extinction rate projection bears no relationship whatsoever to actual extinction data. A known 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century, with 66 known insect extinctions recorded over the same period – or approximately 1.5 extinctions per year on average. The IPBES report summary states that the current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than this and accelerating, but without explanation except for the known effect of habitat loss on animal species.

Maybe we should give the IPBES the benefit of the doubt and suspend judgment until the full report is made available. But with such a disparity between its estimates and the more sober assessment of the IUCN, it seems that the IPBES numbers are sheer make-believe. One million species on the brink of extinction is nothing but fiction, when the true number could be as low as 5,900.

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A recent Australian court case highlights the intrusion of political correctness into science to bolster the climate change narrative. On April 16, a federal judge ruled that Australian coral scientist Dr. Peter Ridd had been unlawfully fired from his position at North Queensland’s James Cook University, for questioning his colleagues’ research on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef. In his ruling, the judge criticized the university for not respecting Ridd’s academic freedom.

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, 2,300 km (1,400 miles) long and visible from outer space. Labeled by CNN as one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the reef is a constant delight to tourists, who can view the colorful corals from a glass-bottomed boat or by snorkeling or scuba diving.

Rising temperatures, especially during the prolonged El Niño of 2014-17, have severely damaged portions of the Great Barrier Reef – so much so that the reef has become the poster child for global warming. Corals are susceptible to overheating and undergo bleaching when the water gets too hot, losing their vibrant colors. But exactly how much of the Great Barrier Reef has been affected, and how quickly it’s likely to recover, are controversial issues among reef researchers.

Ridd’s downfall came after he authored a chapter on the resilience of Great Barrier Reef corals in the book, Climate Change: The Facts 2017. In his chapter and subsequent TV interviews, Ridd bucked the politically correct view that the reef is doomed to an imminent death by climate change, and criticized the work of colleagues at the university’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He maintained that his colleagues’ findings on the health of the reef in a warming climate were flawed, and that scientific organizations such as the Centre of Excellence could no longer be trusted.

Ridd had previously been censured by the university for going public with a dispute over a different aspect of reef health. This time, his employer accused Ridd of “uncollegial” academic misconduct and warned him to remain silent about the charge. When he didn’t, the university fired him after a successful career of more than 40 years.

At the crux of the issue of bleaching is whether or not it’s a new phenomenon. The politically correct view of many of Ridd’s fellow reef scientists is that bleaching didn’t start until the 1980s as global warming surged, so is an entirely man-made spectacle. But Ridd points to scientific records that reveal multiple coral bleaching events around the globe throughout the 20th century.

The fired scientist also disagrees with his colleagues over the extent of bleaching from the massive 2014-17 El Niño. Ridd estimates that just 8% of Great Barrier Reef coral actually died; much of the southern end of the reef didn’t suffer at all. But his politically correct peers maintain that the die-off was anywhere from 30% to 95%.

Such high estimates, however, are for very shallow water coral – less than 2 meters (7 feet) below the surface, which is only a small fraction of all the coral in the reef. A recent independent study found that deep water coral – down to depths of more than 40 meters (130 feet) – saw far less bleaching. And while Ridd’s critics claim that warming has reduced the growth rate of new coral by 15%, he finds that the growth rate has increased slightly over the past 100 years.

Ridd explains the adaptability of corals to heating as a survival mechanism, in which the multitude of polyps that constitute a coral exchange the microscopic algae that normally live inside the polyps and give coral its striking colors. Hotter than normal water causes the algae to poison the coral that then expels them, turning the polyps white. But to survive, the coral needs resident algae which supply it with energy by photosynthesis of sunlight. So from the surrounding water, the coral selects a different species of algae better suited to hot conditions, a process that enables the coral to recover within a few years, says Ridd.

Ridd attributes what he believes are the erroneous conclusions of his reef scientist colleagues to a failure of the peer review process in scrutinizing their work. To support his argument, he cites the so-called reproducibility crisis in contemporary science – the vast number of peer-reviewed studies that can’t be replicated in subsequent investigations and whose findings turn out to be false. Although it’s not known how severe irreproducibility is in climate science, it’s a serious problem in the biomedical sciences, where as many as 89% of published results in certain fields can’t be reproduced.

In Ridd’s opinion, as well as mine, studies predicting that the Great Barrier Reef is in imminent peril are based more on political correctness than good science.

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