We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Current countdown on the Extinction clock…

April 18th 2003:

Crash course towards massive species extinction, says Defenders of Wildlife.

Nina Fascione, Vice President for Field Conservation Programs at Defenders of Wildlife, quote: “Frankly, it looks like we’re on a crash course towards massive species extinctions in the next 20 years […] We could lose one-fifth or 20% of our species within the next two decades. That’s a very short amount of time”.

As of time of posting, 79 days left to come true.

17 comments to Current countdown on the Extinction clock…

  • FrankS

    The basis for these eco-doomster forecasts, of which this is but one of many, does not lie in nature but rather it is merely in the minds of zealots looking for headlines and more funding. The all but inevitable failure of such forecasts does not matter to them since it does not generate headlines nor more funding.

  • Mark

    I’ve not seen this before, much obliged for the link.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Thank you for the timely reminder.

  • John

    Our Monarch is not entirely guiltless when it comes to making such predictions. One hopes he has finally got it out of his system.

  • Roy Lofquist

    “Billions Dead As Doomsday Clock Springs Forward For Daylight Saving Time” ~ Babylon Bee

  • Our Monarch is not entirely guiltless when it comes to making such predictions. One hopes he has finally got it out of his system.

    I doubt it. More likely that the diplomatic strictures involved in becoming Chuckles Buggerlugs III has finally silenced his idiocy. Just keep talking to the plants about Climate Crisis Charley Boy!

    Bet he’s still a whacking climate bore at dinner parties, but fortunately I don’t get invited.

    There still remain some joys in being a pleb.

    😀

  • Chester Draws

    Surely the fact that Chuck III is planning a massive set of coronation events, with guests from around the world, will put paid to any remaining inkling that he actually cares about carbon footprints.

  • Chester Draws

    One of the things to watch with “extinctions” is that Greens and their allies play extremely loose with the word “species”.

    In NZ there is much fuss about a few dozen “Maui Dolphin” going extinct. But the Maui Dolphin isn’t a separate species at all, but merely a sub-group of the much more populous Hector’s Dolphin. No species is going extinct if the Maui Dolphin don’t survive, but it will trumpeted as such.

    If you were to suggest that a Zulu and a Vietnamese were different species, the outrage would be immense. Yet much finer distinctions are applied all the time to animals.

    The reason, of course, is that almost no large animals have become more endangered in the last four decades. It is actually quite hard to find examples of species that have gone from viable to unviable in that time.

  • Fred Z

    She’s just a grifter, a government and/or charitable foundation tit sucker, surely nobody ever took her seriously? Anyway, she now has a truly suitable post as executive director of ‘The International Rhino Foundation’

    https://rhinos.org/blog/international-rhino-foundation-names-executive-director/

    Our Canadian Rhinoceros Party wanted her because the Rhinoceros Party’s basic credo is “a promise to keep none of our promises”, which surely is the basic credo of Nina Fascione, but she knew the Rhino Party would not keep it’s promise to pay her and she found some other suckers.

  • Phil B

    I’m not bothered. There are only 72 hours(and counting down) to save the NHS so we’ll all be dead in … Ummm … take away the three, carry the one … that will be 76 days of rotting in my grave before the disaster strikes.

    At least the animals that are left won’t be feasting on my carcass. I’ve decided to be cremated.

    So there!

    Or, in other words, pull the other one. It has bells on it.

  • Paul Marks

    Most advanced countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, now have a fertility rate well below 2 – which means their populations will fall (yes fall) over time.

    Yet the international establishment elite are still stuck in a 1960s “Club of Rome” mentality – they ignore the greening of areas of the Earth due to higher C02 levels (indeed they hold C02 to be evil), and they insist that there is a population explosion in Western countries due to evil “whiteness” or something – ignoring the basic fact that fertility rates in these countries are below 2, which means that the locals are in decline. This is also true in Japan and other East Asian countries – including China. Even in India fertility rates are only a little above 2.

    I am sometimes accused of “living in the past” (and there is some truth in that charge) – but it is not me who ignores (or systematically fakes) recent information (“data”) it is the international establishment elite who do this – they just ignore the facts, because the facts get in the way of ever more power (control over the lives of ordinary people) for them. Their Collectivist Totalitarian political and cultural agenda is all they care about – the facts, to them, are things to be ignored, indeed covered-up.

    I remind readers that the Club of Rome of the 1960s later led to such groups as the World Economic Forum (which is now joined at the hip with the United Nations) which still plague us – plague us with their horrific ignorance (WEF publications sometimes even seem to assume that such things as the Labour Theory of Value, and David Ricardo’s view of LAND are valid – when they were refuted more than a century ago), and their fanatical lust for unlimited power over the lives of ordinary people.

    I can think of a continent where there is still massive human population growth – but I will not mention that continent, as I do not want lunatics screaming “racist” at me.

  • FrankH

    Press Release from Defenders of Wildlife (not to be published before April 18th 2023)
    Due to the hard work and dedication of Defenders of Wildlife the world has lost only [insert number lower than 20 here]% of its species in the last 2 decades.
    Click this link to donate to this vital cause.

  • Paul Marks

    Droughts are blamed on C02 emissions – and floods are also blamed on C02 emissions.

    Hot weather is blamed on CO2 emissions – and cold weather is blamed on C02 emissions.

    Sir Karl Popper must be spinning in his grave – a theory that is “proved” by data and also “proved” by the opposite of that data.

    And even basic things such as historic temperature data are systematically “adjusted” to fit the theory (see Tony Heller on this – or just get one of the old temperature record books yourself and compare them to the government and corporate internet sites, with their absurd graphs), which turns the Scientific Method on its head – theories are supposed to be changed to fit the data, not the data changed to fit the theory.

    And last but not least – C02 emissions from the United Kingdom or the United States are held to be evil, but C02 emissions from the People’s Republic of China (which are much larger) are held to be just fine – there is no demand at all that we stop importing stuff from China, it is just Western (not Chinese) manufacturing that must be destroyed.

    And when predictions turn out to be false?

    Just denounce anyone who points it as a “denier” and demand that they be forced out of their job.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    We are all dooooomed!!
    M

  • Mr Ed

    Perhaps there is a ‘hastener’ eco-loon (or two) somewhere, aware of the deadline, wishing not to look foolish and secretly (or more likely, brazenly) wishing for a significant asteroid impact on Earth in the next 10 weeks to verify the ‘prediction’.

  • Paul Marks

    Mr Ed – they have gone way beyond that.

    They have for years now had had such a stranglehold on the education system, the media and the government and corporate bureaucracy (sorry JP – there is no real distinction between the governments and the vast corporations any more) that they can make blatantly false predictions – and if anyone points out that the predictions are false, it is they (the whistle blowers) who will be punished.

    Even the blatant rigging of scientific data is fine, just as rigging election results (hello such Stats as Arizona) is fine – ask the “free market” “conservative” Wall Street Journal (it will always pretend that crooked elections are straight – anything, anything at all, to keep the Credit Money flowing to the Corporations, we must not “disturb the system”). I remember watching a television documentary into the fraud at the University of East Anglia – according to the documentary it was the people who uncovered the fraud who were evil. The degree of “double think” was total.

    We have reached a stage where the Corporate State in various countries can de facto mandate poisons (yes poisons) in order to profit a few vast corporations – and in order to establish political and cultural control. So why should making false climate predictions bother them – as with the “Hockey Stick” fraud, the people who commit the fraud will not be punished, it is the “deniers” who expose the fraud who will be punished – indeed their own children are being taught to denounce them.

  • Stonyground

    The Arctic has been five years away from being ice free in the summer for three decades now. Some of the alarmists live in such a well sealed echo chamber that they have actually chartered a ship to sail to the North Pole. It came as a surprise to them when they encountered a wall of ice when they were still several hundred miles short of their destination.