[MCN] How US politicians came to fear admitting to human-caused change of climate

[Lance Olsen]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0>
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 “We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Much remains unknown about this ‘Anthropocene defaunation’; these knowledge gaps hinder our capacity to predict and limit defaunation impacts. Clearly, however, defaunation is both a pervasive component of the planet’s sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change.”

Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S. Young et al. Defaunation in the Anthropocene 
Science 25 JULY 2014 



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