“Remarkably, we found here that species-level extinctions related to climate change have not significantly increased over the last approximately 200 years.”  – Saban and Wiens, 2025

According to many recent studies intended to alarm the public about the consequences of tenths-of-a-degree warmer surface air temperatures, “20-30% of all plant and animal species may be lost to climate change in future decades” (Saban and Wiens, 2025).

A landmark 2004 study published in Nature (which has now been cited over 10,000 times) predicted one million species will be driven to extinction by 2050 due to climate change.

But now a 2025 study published in The Royal Society finds (a) “climate change is not an important threat to biodiversity,” (b) species-level extinction rates “peaked many decades ago,” and (c) there has been no significant increase in climate-related extinctions in the last 200 years.

Ongoing habitat loss and the introduction of invasive species (primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries) on islands remain the two most predominant extinction threats in recent centuries. The authors express surprise that the threat from climate change (surface air temperature warming) has remained insignificant throughout the modern era.

“Extinctions from invasive species and (surprisingly) climate change did not change significantly over time.”

“[P]ast extinctions strongly suggest that climate change is not an important threat to biodiversity.”

“[T]hese past extinctions do not show biodiversity loss as rapidly accelerating, but instead show extinction rates that generally peaked many decades ago, and that declined in some important groups (arthropods, plants).”

“Most groups showed declining extinction rates after peaking in the 1980s.”

Image Source: Saban and Wiens, 2025