I attended the commencement exercises of the University of Connecticut School of Agriculture on Saturday evening in Storrs. It was a great night (not the least because my daughter got her well deserved degree.) I was struck, however, by the student commencement speaker who told the graduates that he had only four minutes to speak, but that during that four minutes, there would be 200 species that would become extinct around the planet. That statistic bothered me. 200 extinctions in 4 minutes is 3000 per hour and 72,000 species extinct each day. Over a year, that would be almost 27 million species extinct each year.
It got me to wondering. Clearly the number used by the speaker was wrong. There is no way that during his four years in college, the earth lost over one hundred million species. There just are not enough species of plants and animals for the loss to be that high. I wonder if anyone else noticed?
It got me to wondering. Clearly the number used by the speaker was wrong. There is no way that during his four years in college, the earth lost over one hundred million species. There just are not enough species of plants and animals for the loss to be that high. I wonder if anyone else noticed?
1 comment:
It is reassuring to know that someone double-checks these fictitious statistics.
A Confirmed Fact Checker
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