E pur si muove
19 hours ago Willis Eschenbach
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A few years back, some scientists got together and invented something they call the Living Planet Index, or LPI. It’s supposed to measure how well (or poorly) the species that make up the living world are doing. They say it is a “measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species.” So it’s an index based on the decline of some selected species, which is claimed to represent the decline of the species of the “living world”.
Here’s the big news from their latest report.
The Living Planet Index claims an average 70% decline in the populations of species worldwide since 1970.
YIKES! 70% loss since 1970! EVERYONE PANIC!
But is this true?
Over in the Twitterverse where I’m @weschenbach, I said that based solely on my experience, their claim was nonsense. I’ve spent a lot of the last half-century outdoors in the elements, both on land and on and under the sea, around the planet. I said I would have noticed a 70% reduction in species populations.
Of course, folks who spend their lives behind desks in a city thought I was being ridiculous, and they laughed uproariously. How could I be so certain? Plus of course, there were the claims of “But Willis, those are actual scientists! How can you doubt them?”
So I thought I’d take a look at some real data. Let’s get a sense of the number of the species involved.
There are estimated to be around 8.7 million species on earth. Of these, about 65,000 are vertebrates.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/06/e-pur-si-muove/
