322 chemical disasters in 2023 in the United States alone, of which only 8 were weather-related:
preventchemicaldisasters.org/c…
Quite the "hidden" cost of the petrochemical industry.
Chemical Incidents Near You Click on the map to view chemical incidents that have occurred in the U.S. since...Prevent Chemical Disasters
"Undiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves"
Cooke et al. 2023 nature.com/articles/s41467-023…
Meanwhile my neighbor, a cat owner, tells me that domestic cats "only" kill birds that are ill or weak in some way, therefore helping out wild populations stay healthy. The stench of wishful thinking can be felt from across town, cf.:
"The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States", Loss et al. 2013 nature.com/articles/ncomms2380…
Don't be mislead by the statement: "Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality", because "we define un-owned cats to include farm/barn cats, strays that are fed by humans but not granted access to habitations, cats in subsidized colonies and cats that are completely feral".
The true number of human-driven bird extinctions is likely larger than we think. Here, the authors combine recorded extinctions with estimates from the fossil record to suggest that ~1400 bird species have gone extinct since the Late Pleistocene.Nature
What needs to be done, clearly I am not biased, is to fund more studies in entomology, and to open and expand entire new undergraduate and graduate schools dedicated to invertebrates, with emphasis on insects.
Sadly, "Soon, we may not be estimating how many species there are on Earth. We will be estimating how many there were."
We ran computer programs that simulate ecosystems 70,000 times and the results are very worrying.The Conversation
