Scientists undercount trees by 2.6 trillion, but assure us animals going extinct

By Patriot Outdoor News

Maybe it’s the new math.

Every so often you will see articles warning that some species is going extinct. And usually it’s not really a species — you never hear about “leopards” going extinct, usually it’s “purple dotted left handed bisexual Nepalese leopards” or some subvariety. We are assured they are going extinct because fewer have been seen recently.

But the Earth is so big, how can we really be sure that some subspecies is going extinct just because we see fewer of them? After all, only three percent of the land mass of the Earth is urbanized. Animals could easily be hidden in the other 97%.

This fallacy becomes clear when scientists reveal that they have undercounted the number of trees on the earth–by a mere 2.6 trillion. Formerly scientists believed there were 400 million trees. Now they believe the number is slightly higher, in the range of 3 trillion trees.

The 3 trillion figure is seven and a half times more than the previous estimate of 400 billion trees worldwide as of 2005. That estimate, which translates to about 61 trees for every person, was made by a professor of environmental studies at Evergreen State College in …read more

Source:: Patriot Outdoor News