“Mass Extinction Crisis”
60 Minutes claims that the earth is experiencing a “mass extinction crisis.”
IN FACT, a prominent scholarly journal published a study in 2025 which found that only 0.06% of the earth’s animal and plant species have gone extinct over the past 500 years, and “documented extinctions” have not “been accelerating in recent decades, but instead have declined in the largest group of animals and in plants.”
Assertions to the contrary are rooted in 3 major fallacies:
Fallacy # 1: “A World Wildlife Fund study says that in the past 50 years, the abundance of global wildlife has collapsed 69%,” according to 60 Minutes.
In reality, the WWF study (called the Living Planet Index) doesn’t actually measure the abundance of wildlife, and scientists in academic journals have criticized the WWF and media outlets for claiming that it does:
- Per a 2020 paper in the journal Nature, the WWF’s findings are “driven by less than 3%” of global wildlife populations, and there are no declines “across typical populations.”
- Per a 2022 commentary in the journal Nature, the WWF study “does not measure abundance” but receives “high media coverage” declaring that it does.
- Per another 2022 commentary in the journal Nature, “both researchers and the media must guard against the unfortunately common mistake of interpreting the LPI as measuring abundance loss.”
Summarizing the actual situation, a 2019 paper in the journal Ecology Letters examined the world’s largest database of long-term species abundances and found that 85% of animal populations are experiencing no significant changes, while 7% are declining, and 8% are growing.
Fallacy # 2: “We know the rate of extinction is ‘extraordinarily high’ because of a study of the fossil record by biologist Tony Barnosky,” which found that “today’s rate of extinction is up to 100 times faster than is typical in the nearly 4 billion year history of life,” according to 60 Minutes.
In reality, Barnosky’s research found that the figure of “up to 100 times” could be as low as “8 times.”
Far more important than that, a Cambridge University Press book on biodiversity explains that no “serious” attempt has been made to “judge the reliability” of extinction rates based on fossils because the “uncertainties at each stage of the calculation” would make the effort worthless. Thus, the book states, “Probably no one will be surprised if this estimate is off by a factor of 10 or even 100.”
Worse still, Barnosky’s research makes the naive error of comparing counts of all modern extinctions and every “possible extinction” to counts of fossil extinctions without regard for the fact that vast bulk of modern extinctions are localized to islands, while counts of fossil extinctions are typically global.
As the textbook Conservation and Ecology explains, “The estimates of the background extinction rate” from fossils “derive from the abundant and widespread species that dominate the fossil record. By contrast, the species most likely to become extinct today are rare and local.”
A 2011 paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions pulled back the curtain on this farce by revealing that there have been only 9 confirmed extinctions of continental birds and mammals since the year 1500. Likewise, a 2015 paper in journal Science disclosed that there have been no global extinctions of any marine animal for the past 50 years.
Fallacy #3: “I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that will say we’re not in an extinction crisis,” in the words of Tony Barnosky aired by 60 Minutes.
In reality, a 2008 paper in the journal Endangered Species Research by Australian scientist Grahame Webb states that certain scientists overstate “the risks of wildlife becoming extinct” by using “deliberate and gross” exaggerations.
He also notes that scientists who designate species as “endangered” are “often beneficiaries” of funding that flows as a result of these designations. Thus, “the potential for self-serving assessments has long been recognized.”
Likewise, the scientists who authored the 2011 paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions note that their results are at odd with claims of “grossly elevated extinction rates.”
Similarly, eight PhD-level environmental scientists authored a 2014 article in the journal BioScience in which they wrote that certain scientists and journalists have created “the perception of ocean calamities in the absence of robust evidence.” To summarize their findings, the underlying causes for this boil down to personal and intellectual biases, careless research, political pressures, dishonesty in the pursuit of “righteous ends,” and the desire for recognition and career advancement.
