A widely touted United Nations report predicting mass species extinction took a beating Wednesday at a House subcommittee hearing, with Republican-called witnesses blasting the claims as “highly exaggerated” and “authoritative propaganda.”
The executive summary released May 6 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded that “transformative change” was needed to save as many as 1 million species at risk of extinction.
Challenging that premise was Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace leader, who argued that species extinction has declined in the past century thanks to international efforts. He insisted there was “zero evidence that any such event is occurring now or has even begun to occur.”
“As with the manufactured ‘climate crisis,’ they are using the specter of mass extinction as a fear tactic to scare the public into compliance,” Mr. Moore said in his prepared remarks. “The IPBES itself is an existential threat to sensible policy on biodiversity conservation.”
The result was a feisty hearing in which Mr. Huffman took aim at the credentials of the Republican witnesses and Republicans accused the subcommittee of holding a hearing based on a document that nobody had read.
The report was prepared by 145 authors over three years using 15,000 peer-reviewed publications and 15,000 comments, but the full document remains classified and has yet to be released. A summary was released two weeks ago at a plenary session in Paris.
“Right now, I feel like I’m part of a book club, and we’re going to give opinions on the book, except we’re all making it up because no one has actually read the book,” said Rep. Rob Bishop, Utah Republican. “If you’d actually waited until the report was released and people could look at it, maybe there would be a point at that point that this could be a legitimate hearing.”
The five factors driving the extinction threat are “land and sea use changes; exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution; and invasive species,” Mr. Huffman said.
“All of these are things we can do something about, but we’re not on track to slow the extinction crisis,” Mr. Huffman said. “We need to do more.”
The “extinction crisis” claim met with skepticism from Rep. Tom McClintock, California Republican, who ticked off previous apocalyptic extinction predictions, including a 1970 warning by a Smithsonian official that 75% to 80% of all animals would be extinct by 1995.
He also challenged the report’s claim of an estimated 8 million animal and planet species, including insects, noting that the International Union for Conservation of Nature has cataloged only 1.8 million. About 800 are known to have gone extinct since 1500.
“You cannot call yourself a scientist if you pretend that there are 6.2 million species that have no names and have never been identified,” said Mr. Moore. “That is not science. That is fiction. Fairy tale stories. And that’s what we’re being told here.”
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano described the report as a politically driven document, “the latest U.N. appeal to give it more power, more scientific authority, more money and more regulatory control.”
“At best, the U.N. science panels represent nothing more than ‘authoritative bureaucracy,’ claiming they hype the problem and then come up with the solution that puts them in charge of ‘solving’ the issue in perpetuity,” Mr. Morano said in his prepared remarks. “A more accurate term for the U.N. than ‘authoritative science’ may be ‘authoritative propaganda.’”
Mr. Huffman fired back at the Republican witnesses by noting that Greenpeace has denied that Mr. Moore is a co-founder, despite a Greenpeace screenshot listing him as one of five founders, and referring to Mr. Morano as a troll.
“I don’t know what inspires someone to make a career out of trolling scientists or monetizing contrarian ideology on the YouTube and Ted Talk circuit, but it’s just a very different kind of conversation than the science-based conversation I think many of us would try to have,” Mr. Huffman said.
No House committee hearing this year would be complete without a climate change row. Republicans took aim at the Green New Deal, the Paris climate agreement and the 97% scientific “consensus,” while Democrats’ witnesses stressed the impact of global warming on species.
“As we’re already observing, climate change is radically changing our weather and moving species’ habitats,” said Defenders of Wildlife’s Jacob Malcom. “Climate change alone is a terrifying transformation of our planet. In combination with the other threats, the damage we have done and are doing is almost unimaginable.”
Mr. Moore argued that most animals that have gone extinct since 1500 were the victims of invasive species such as cats, rats and foxes brought by European colonialists.
“Today, it’s introduced species, especially on islands, where it’s a small area, and a rat can get on an island and eat all the bird’s eggs, and that’s the end of the bird,” Mr. Moore said. “That is the classical situation that has occurred lately.”
Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, lamented the Republicans’ approach to climate change. “There’s not so much climate denial going on in Congress anymore,” said Mr. Grijalva. “It’s climate avoidance — anything to avoid the topic and to avoid doing something serious about it.”
Read more at Washington Times
Why is Patrick Moore refereed to in the article with the title “Mr.” while the photo identifies him as “Dr.”?
The United Nations wishes it had Chinese like political power.
I doubt that the UN would throw themselves prostrate before Xi.
Pater I think you are on to something there . I don’t know of any government that doesn’t want to expand it’s power . The UN is a Chinese front to move to one world government run by guess who ?
These apocalyptic scare stories get ever more fanciful and bizarre. It is high time to give these UN bureaucrats the boot and force them to look for real jobs.
Excellent point SONNYHILL . You don’t see the Hollywood hypocrites sitting around their dung burner cooking up snakes .
Climate Change activism is the modern day racism . The rich trying to keep the poor in a constant state of poverty .
I am also heartened by recent election results but we have a way to go .
Really it’s all the work from a group of scientists who refused to be intimidated and people like Marc Morano and Patrick Moore who are brilliant street fighters . But lets not forget Al Gore for the internet .
I think that the global warming scam will have believers far into the future. However, I’m heartened by recent election results. People, empowered by democracy and their confidence in humanity’s ability to adapt, are sending fear – mongering politicians to early retirement.
Seriously? Climate is not weather? Why should we be concerned about some abstract idea that manifests itself only through another abstract, average global temperature?
The Third World is using every energy source available to them to claw their way out of poverty. They are the people living in tin shanties, the most vulnerable. That says everything.
Putting both Moore and Morano in the same room of these nincompoops
actually seems a bit unfair . At least the Republicans brought in some tanks .
Where would we be without Morano and Moore taking on the biggest con-game on the planet ?
Do these jokers not know that 99.9% of all species that ever lived on earth are now extinct.?
It’s the natural order of things.
Personally, I don’t mourn the passing of the sabre-toothed tiger, the wooly mammoth or the dinosaurs, not to mention the golden coqui, the Puerto Rican tree-frog or the Hawaiian chaff-flower.
Get a grip, fellas
The bedwetters go all soggy….again.
The Summary For Policymakers is the exact same political scam they use in the warming/climate fraud.
YAWN.
JD.
The UN warns for nothing.
Grijavla can be counted on to say something stupid and he delivered .
Humans are not about to shape the climate in any meaningful way despite arrogant virtue signaler politicians with zero scientific credentials .
Grijavia and Maxine Waters have nothing to offer except their pout hurt feelings look .
Global cooing (1970’s ) global warming 1980-90’s, climate change 2000’s ,
mass species extinction . As soon as one foolish big scary runs out of gas
a new one is hatched to keep the cash flowing into the biggest scam in history .
The United Nations is accountable to no one, unaccountable.
I’m ashamed that my country, Canada, is a member.
Introduced pest like Rats and Snakes are a threat to many island Birds like in Hawaii and some other Pacific Island plans to exterminate these introduced pest are already taking place this has nothing to do with Global Warming/Climate Change we have already seen the effects of Starlings
“highly exaggerated” and “authoritative propaganda” — that is the entire Climate Alarmist story in a nutshell.
Can’t take control and assume the 0.1% ruling class without a good ‘ol crisis for them to take over to “solve”. The bigger and more immediate the crisis, the better.
So the examples of animals going extinct are ones we’ve known about forever, invasive species. That has zero to do with any claimed climate change and it isn’t going to result in millions (or even hundreds) of species disappearing.