The Latest Mass Extinction Goes Extinct

Species extinction is a bedrock climate and ecological scare story repeated endlessly in the mainstream media and broadcast everywhere from UN platforms to school classrooms

One of the persistent claims made across the twentieth century is that humans are causing mass extinctions of species both in rate and numbers, unseen since the age of the dinosaurs. This is not supported by the data and evidence.

More recently, many researchers, green energy profiteers, green virtue signaling politicians, bureaucrats with environment and energy portfolios, and the fawning mainstream media have asserted climate change has replaced other causes as the driving force behind fast rising extinction rates. The high point of this alarmist rhetoric perhaps was when the misinformed and misguided youth Greta Thunberg was invited to berate the United Nations in a speech made famous on video. Among the many false claims Thunberg made, she said, “People are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing, we are in the beginning of a mass extinction. ⁽¹⁾

This just isn’t so.

A recent study finds that in the past century, amid ongoing climate change, extinction rates have slowed, and they are currently at their lowest in the past 500 years. (2)

For this study, the researchers analyzed rates and patterns of recent extinctions, specifically across 912 species of plants and animals that went extinct over the past 500 years, All in all, data from almost 2 million species were included in the analysis.

The good news is that extinctions of plants, anthropods, and land vertebrates peaked about 100 years ago and have declined since then, even as the climate has changed.

Researchers said, “We show that extinction rates are not getting faster towards the present, as many people claim, but instead peaked many decades ago.”

In the last 200 years, there was no evidence for increasing extinction from climate change

So much for climate change driving the sixth great mass extinction.

Furthermore, the researchers found that past extinctions underlying previous forecasts were mostly caused by species on islands and are not the most important current threat, which is the destruction of habitats.

The paper argues that claims of a current mass extinction may rest on shaky assumptions when projecting data from past extinctions into the future, ignoring differences in factors driving extinctions in the past, the present and the future. ⁽³⁾

“To our surprise, past extinctions are weak and unreliable predictors of the current risk that any given group of animals or plants is facing,” said lead author Kristen Saban.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the researchers found that in the last 200 years, there was no evidence for increasing extinction from climate change.

Contrary to many studies, the rates at which species are going extinct are not rapidly accelerating, the study found.

This isn’t the only report about species doing all right. In 2018, Larry Krumer reported that a close review of the most recent information dating back to 1870 revealed that instead of a frightening increase, extinctions are actually in a significant decline. What is apparent is that the trend of extinctions is declining rather than increasing. ⁽⁴⁾

New Species

Contrary to all the talk about extinctions, according to a new University of Arizona study, scientists are discovering species quicker than ever before, with more than 16,000 new species discovered each year. The trend shows no sign of slowing and the team behind the paper predicts that the biodiversity among certain groups, such as plants, fungi, arachnids, fishes and amphibians is richer than scientists originally thought. ⁽⁵⁾

The team analyzed the taxonomic histories of roughly 2 million species, spanning all groups of living organisms. Between 2015 and 2020, the most recent period with comprehensive data, researchers documented an average of more than 16,000 new species each year, including more than 10,000 animals, 2,500 plants and 2,000 fungi.

“Our good news is that this rate of new species discovery far outpaces the rate of species extinctions, which we calculate to about 10 per year,” said John Wiens of the University of Arizona. “These thousands of newly found species, each year are not just microscopic organisms, but include insects, plants, fungi and even hundreds of new vertebrates.” ⁽⁶⁾

References

1. Heartland Institute, “Climate change weekly #564- turns out climate change isn’t causing mass extinctions,” org, December 5, 2025
2. Kristen E. Saban and John J. Wiens, “Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals,” Proc. Biol. Sci. Volume 292, Issue 2057, October 2025
3. Anthony Watts, “Remember when they told you climate change was causing a mass extinction? Never mind!” wattsupwiththat.com, December 2, 2025
4. Larry Krumer, “Hopeful news for us from the horse manure crisis,” wattsupwiththat.com, June 13, 2018
5. Xin Li et al., “The past and future of known biodiversity: rates, patterns, and projections of new species over time,” Science Advances, Volume 11, Issue 49, December 5, 2025
6. Kylianne Chadwick, “New species are now being discovered faster than ever before, study suggests,” news.arizona.edu, December 22, 2025

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