The claim was made to promote their “solution”: Genetic engineering of the natural world.
Conservation genomics, AP said, will help species adapt faster than evolution normally allows. And of course, so AP claimed, reducing emissions and protecting habitats is also necessary.
Anthony Watts explains why AP is talking a load of baloney.
The Associated Press (“AP”) claims in ‘Climate change is outpacing evolution. Scientists are using DNA to catch up’ that climate change is moving so fast that species cannot adapt quickly enough, forcing scientists to intervene genetically. This is ridiculous and false. The dramatic comparison between evolutionary timescales and modern warming is rhetorically powerful but scientifically shallow, and it ignores how evolution, ecological adaptation and climate variability actually work.
The article opens with the declarative line, “Evolution works over millennia. Climate change is moving far faster.” That framing sets up the entire scare narrative. It suggests an unprecedented mismatch between biology and climate that will inevitably result in ecosystem collapse.
But the time comparison AP made is completely irrelevant.....<<<Read More>>>...