Talk:Extinction event

approximately symbol breaks column header sorts

In the "Extinctions by severity" section the table contains the use of '~' for some values. This means the numbers aren't properly sorted. Some columns all the data has the approximate symbol. Other columns like the year have only a few uses of the symbol and its negative impact can be seen.

The easiest way to fix the sort would be to remove the ~. It could be argued that every value is approximate and that the symbol only increases confusion in implying that some years are exact. Quelrod (talk) 16:03, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

This entire chart is useless to the average reader, as it is. Unless someone has a background in this stuff and knows how it's discussed, they're not going to even know what the columns mean. There should either be additional explanation (optimal approach) or it should be removed entirely to reduce confusion. 2603:9001:6C01:CC08:EAB4:7C50:8619:37B7 (talk) 15:15, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The tilde doesn't seem to impact sorting for me. If it does, Template:Sort can fix it. –CWenger (^ • @) 16:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

“Marine” versus “aquatic”

The text reads, “Non-dinosaurian archosaurs continued to dominate aquatic environments, while non-archosaurian diapsids continued to dominate marine environments.” The difference between a “marine” environment and an “aquatic” environment is not likely to be clear to most readers; it certainly isn’t clear to me. I hope a qualified editor can address this.

Poihths (talk) 17:46, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

NPOV and source-integrity concerns: the article overstates what its own sources support

I want to flag several problems with how this article handles its sources. None of this disputes that human activity has caused extinctions, that habitat loss is a serious and growing threat, or that some regions and taxa are in real decline. The issue is that the article repeatedly states conclusions stronger than the cited literature supports, and gives short shrift to peer-reviewed work it does cite. Per WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:WEIGHT, that needs fixing. 1. The article misrepresents Barnosky et al. (2011). The lead and body lean on Barnosky et al., "Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?" (Nature 471:51 to 57, 2011) to support an "ongoing" and "unprecedented" mass extinction. That paper concludes the opposite. Its finding is that current losses do not yet meet the mass-extinction threshold, and that "if currently threatened species ... actually went extinct, and that rate of extinction continued, the sixth mass extinction could arrive within as little as 3 to 22 centuries." Barnosky's own summary was that with today's threatened species still alive, "Earth's biodiversity remains in pretty good shape compared to the long-term biodiversity baseline." Citing a paper titled as an open question for the affirmative answer it declined to give is a WP:V problem. 2. The article conflates population decline with extinction, against its own warning. The text correctly notes that defaunation "is not to be confused with extinction, as it includes both the disappearance of species and declines in abundance." It then uses WWF Living Planet Index figures (the 68 percent and roughly 70 percent average declines) as "further evidence that humans have unleashed a sixth mass extinction event." Abundance decline is not extinction. Worse, the article cites but underweights Leung et al., "Clustered versus catastrophic global vertebrate declines" (Nature 588:267 to 271, 2020), which found that the headline decline "is driven by less than 3% of vertebrate populations; if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase." Leung et al. do identify genuine regional declines (notably the Indo-Pacific) and the paper drew rebuttals, so it should be presented fairly, not buried in a subordinate clause. 3. The dramatic projection rates rest on a contested method. The "100 to 1,000 times background" and the higher figures trace largely to the backward species-area relationship. He and Hubbell, "Species-area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss" (Nature 473:368 to 371, 2011), showed that this method systematically overstates losses, noting that estimates from it "are almost always much higher than those actually observed." That paper was contested (Pereira et al. and others argued the result is not general), and He and Hubbell themselves stressed that habitat loss remains a real threat. The article should present the modeled rates as model outputs whose method is disputed, not as settled observations, and should distinguish them clearly from documented extinctions. 4. Documented versus projected losses are run together. The IUCN Red List, the standard reference, records on the order of a few hundred to a few thousand documented extinctions since 1500 (the Royal Society's biodiversity review counts 711 vertebrates known or presumed extinct since 1500, with comparable figures for plants and invertebrates), against roughly 170,000 species assessed. That same review candidly notes the true total "is certain to be far higher" because most taxa are unassessed. Both facts belong in the article. Presenting "one million species at risk" and "dozens per day" without the documented baseline, and without the caveat that the documented count is itself incomplete, leaves readers unable to tell observation from projection. 5. WEIGHT and tone. The section attributing the crisis to "capitalism" and "neoliberalism" (Harvey, Rees, Hickel) presents a contested political-economy thesis at length and in a register that reads as endorsement, which is a WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV issue. Pull quotes such as "we are currently, in a systematic manner, exterminating all non-human living beings" are advocacy, not encyclopedic summary. 6. Notable expert dissent is absent. The article presents the "sixth mass extinction" framing as near-unanimous. It is not. Paleobiologist Douglas Erwin, an authority on the End-Permian extinction, has argued in interviews that "people who claim we're in the sixth mass extinction don't understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument," and that the count of widespread, abundant, durably skeletonized marine taxa gone extinct so far is "pretty close to zero" (Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, 13 June 2017). Erwin is explicit that humans have done great ecological damage and that more extinctions will come; his objection is to the comparison with the Big Five. That distinction, between a biodiversity crisis and a mass extinction on the geological scale, is exactly what the article elides, and WP:NPOV requires it be represented. Suggested fixes: (a) correct the Barnosky characterization to match the paper; (b) separate documented extinctions, modeled rates, and population-decline indices into clearly labeled categories, each with its uncertainties; (c) give Leung et al. (2020) and the species-area critiques due weight in the main text; (d) trim the political-economy section and the advocacy quotes per WEIGHT; (e) add the paleontological dissent on the mass-extinction comparison. I am happy to draft specific replacement text for any of these. ~~~~ Brahman12 (talk) 02:05, 31 May 2026 (UTC)