Cambridge Scientists: Climate Change Is Not The Cause Of Megafauna Extinctions

The alarmist talking point insisting human CO2 emissions and “climate change” have been driving and will continue to drive the Earth’s 6th Mass Extinction event is not supported by the evidence.

Twenty years ago it was claimed climate change (global warming) would drive the extinction of one million species by 2050. This presumes human-induced rates of warming are so accelerated and unprecedentedly fast that species cannot adapt quickly enough.

It’s odd to believe ecosystems can withstand seasonal ±15°C temperature swings from summer to winter, or within a span of 6 months, but not the 0.005°C per year change since 1860.

A new study indicates the megafauna extinctions over the last 50,000 years – mammoths, giant sloths, giant armadillos, as well as the extinction of Arctic-dwelling horses, rhinos, bison, and camels – occurred primarily due to human occupation and predation in regions we had never been before.

The climate changes over the last tens of thousands of years (for example, the 4-5°C warming across the Northern Hemisphere within a few decades 14,700 years ago, or the 24 abrupt 10-15°C warming events within decades or less across Greenland, had a negligible to non-existent impact on megafauna extinctions.

“Hence, the global analyses strongly support human causation, and even indicate little or no interaction with climate change, neither in the severity of extinction and decline nor in the timing.”

Perhaps alarmist claims about mass extinction from climate change are, as they say, going the way of the dodo.

Image Source: Svenning et al., 2024